Today a young woman walked into the church and asked to use the telephone. Not a problem, I said. And while she sat in the office dialing numbers and getting no response, I sat at my desk trying to pick out hymns for Sunday. Are you stranded? I asked. She had just been released from…
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The Gift of Patience
For about two years now, I have been playing disc golf. It is a game that is played in many ways like your more typical golf… with a tee pad and the aim of getting your ball or disc into the hole in as few strokes as possible. As I have grown in my ability…
chaotic peace
The other day, B strongly encouraged me to organize my pocketbook. It seemed like such a silly thing at the time, but there it was, busting at the seams with reciepts and cash sticking out and no hope of ever closing. He said – if you can get that thing to close right, maybe there…
The Gift of Peace
How many of you watched the world cup this year? How many of you know what a vuvuzula is? To roughly describe it, a vuvuzula is a long narrow horn – about two and a half feet long – that is a part of South African soccer culture. Perhaps no one quite expected them to…
taking the first steps to healthy
I might have posted something about this before… but pastors, in general, and in the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, in particular, (did I use my commas correctly there?) are pretty unhealthy. There was some outstanding (and not in a good way) statistic a year ago at conference that said that our…
KEEPER!
A fellow pastor has a blog entry entitled “keepers” for this week. My blog post will be nothing like his. Although, his made me think about the fact that it was about time for me to write this post. If you are not a woman, you might want to skip this post. Just come back…
you can’t please everyone…
I’m coming to realize that one of my greatest weaknesses is trying to please everyone. I have a very terribly hard time saying no. I agonize over the fact that I might be letting someone down by something I do or say. And lately this impulse… this attempt to please multiple people at once… has…
The Gift of Love
This week, my husband and I had two houseguests… our niece and nephew. They had the distinct honor of being able to have a sleep over at our house and boy, were they excited! For the most part, I think that excitement came from hanging out with their favorite aunt and uncle. But a few…