In Love And Warr

I am not good at listening to my body. I am good at listening to others. I am good at listening between the lines of lyrics, speeches, and news reports. But I do not listen to my body.....until it yells! This past year we all experienced the pandemic and the quarantine in many different ways.  It was both traumatic and life giving at the same time.  It gave us time to slow down and live in our homes; which we sometimes just past through.  It brought up stressors and fears we have never experienced.  During so much uncertainty and suffering around the world due to Covid-19, living through this time has brought many of us a greater sense of what and who really matter!  We see very clearly that the life we were rushing through was taking a toll on us, our bodies, our families, and our planet in ways that were extremely harmful! This was certainly the case for me.  I realized this past year that I NEVER listened to my body.  I never stop when I feel pain, ...

  As silly, offensive, and wrong as it may sound, I grew up believing that Christians could only be republican.   And by grown up, I mean well into my 20’s!   I honestly do not remember politics being openly discussed in my home or at church, but somehow little me got the clear message if you are a Christian, you vote for the anti-abortion party, aka the republican party.   I did not stray far from the party line.   Not because I genuinely believed in the politics of the republican party, I had no idea what they were, I voted republican because I thought if I did not and a democrat won and there were no laws on abortions then the blood of those babies would be on me.   Dark I know, and very irrational, but my brain was not fully developed, and I was working with what I had.   Around my late high school, early college, days Fox News came onto the scene.   It was on quite a bit in my home.   We stopped trusting the “other” “biased” media and wo...

  I stumbled across the writing of Rachel Held Evans and would never be the same!   Her writing and use of stories and words broke me open and brought the lyric lover in me back to life! She was raised in a church very similar to mine and she writes so beautifully in her books Faith Unraveled , Searching for Sunday , and Inspired about how she lost her faith from her childhood but in its place found a truer to her soul faith.     I saw asking questions and sitting with those questions for days, months, and in some areas, years was what I needed.   My questions led to others and others and slowly I began uncovering answers and new meanings to teachings and ideas.   This of course did not happen overnight; nor did it happen without shaking up my life.   The ripples spread.   I stepped down from leading the small group I led, I just could not fake it any longer, my faith was changing behind the scenes.   I learned new ways of relating with fait...

  In my opinion there are two main types of music lovers.   You have your ‘beat’ people.   They are the ones who feel the music in their soul.   They sway, they bob, they move; the music flows through them.   They can listen to a song and get so carried away by the beat or rhythm of it that it can completely escape them as to what the song is about.   That leads to the second type of music lover I have noticed, The lyrics person.   The lyrics lover is all about the words.   They get lost on the meanings of phrases and choruses.   They see themselves, their stories, their loves behind lyrics.   They can spend days and hours tracking down the stories behind the song interviews.   Anything to help bring more life and story to the lyrics of songs that move them.   I am not implying that these lyric lovers don’t feel or care about the music nor do I think the beat lovers pay no attention to the lyrics; from what I have seen between ...

  I feel I have changed more in the past 5 years personally, emotionally, and spiritually more than in any other time period in my life.   To some this change appears to have happened overnight.   It may seem one day I woke up and proclaimed, “I no longer believe this/that” and the me as they “thought” they knew vanished and they were left wondering “who are you and where is my daughter/friend/etc.?”   This is mainly in part because I kept all the growing and changing unseen and on the inside of me.   I would slowly share and bounce ideas and opinions off those closest to me like my husband or kids, but for the most part my questioning and pondering took place out of view from most I knew.   I was raised in a religious tradition of absolutes.   You had to absolutely believe one thing and be prepared to argue and fight and defend that belief.   In Christian schools of my upbringing, they literally teach kids how to defend their faith and have the...