deciphering the days

I need to rant.... Who would look at a brand-new, first-time mama, with her couple-of-weeks-old baby, and tell her that this wasn't 'real life' and because one day her baby will sleep through the night? Or that she wasn't in the 'real world' yet because this new mama hasn't dealt with a PMS-ing teenage girl? ABSOLUTELY NO ONE! EVER! So why do so many people look at students (elementary, middle, high, college, I don't care - pick one) and tell them that their life isn't 'real life in the real world?' No, most high-school students do not pay their own bills. No, the later chapters of life probably don't include a bubble-sheet scantron for exams. Yes, there are aspects of life that are harder/easier/more complicated/more simplistic/more stressful/more relaxing/or just plain different. But that doesn't make the almost 25% of your life (if you stop at an undergraduate degree around 22-years-old and live well into your ninetie...

Families. Oh man - families. Some of us have some pretty whacked out families. And then children grow up and try to make their own family extension, often successfully. But It's a rough transition for many though, at least from what I have seen. There's a lot of standards. Do her parents like their daughter's interactions with someone else's' son? And do they like him and his family? Not just like immediate personality, but life choices and political stances and social status and life aspirations and every miniscule family interaction ever and and AND !?!?!? Yes, I get very emotionally involved in this subject. I have experienced (in my life and others') families who vehemently disapproved of their child's choice of potential spouse and of the relationship as a whole - and made it known. Miserably and painfully known. I have seen people be uninvited, banned from the home, and denied the family blessing of marriage. I have seen the same people mir...

So I am talking to a friend the other day who is in quite a difficult spot right now. Her family is falling apart, abusive to her, publically humiliates her, and generally makes her life miserable. She is a new Christian. They are not. You can see the Spirit working in her as she has such a passion for showing them the life she has come to know. But it never seems to make a difference and at the end of the day she is discouraged. "...maybe I should have said something different..." "...maybe I provoked it..." "...it is so hard to be a change when I am right back in the situation where everything was so awful..." "...I feel like such a failure..." These are the things she says to me. And I relate and sympathize with all of them. However, last time we were talking about this, the Holy Spirit put into words what I have been trying to learn for so very long. When I think that I am a failure and that the Lord can't use my fumblings, I ...

So why are we, as Christians, surprised when people who do not know God act as such? I see so many Christians confused because of, hurt from, surprised at, and struggling with, the world. More often than not, I am all of those things too. But of course non-Christian people don't always act like Christians do - they aren't Christians. We have God! There must be a better way for us to approach the world without getting so emotionally distraught. It seems, at times, that we take it as a personal attack when non-Christians act like non-Christians. This shouldn't 'throw us for a loop.' We are told in the Bible that there are many terrible things that must come to pass before His Restoration. He told us that the world would not love Him or follow Him. We forget that we would be no better off without Him. And yet here we are, blasting our Facebook newsfeed with the latest terrible stories and expressing our disbelief, dismay, discontent, disapproval, disdain, and any...