My after picture. The before looks like this but slightly bigger. I lost 50 lbs in 6 months and now weigh less than it says on my driver’s license. How often does that happen? And I wasn’t even trying to lose weight! I haven’t been this size since before I got pregnant with my 16 year old. How awesome is that? Meh, not particularly awesome, actually. Like most people who lose weight quickly without trying, the rapid weight loss was a sign that something was wrong. Severe trau

Managing how they are perceived is a constant concern which can give them an air of distraction. Even if you see what they are doing, it’s hard to tell if they realize what they are doing. Perhaps they simply don’t realize? In fact, these games they play are always on their minds. Remember when people used to say they distrusted someone because they had “shifty eyes”? That wasn’t entirely without cause. If you watch a sociopath, and you catch them when they think no one is wa

One of my working assumptions about life is that only that which can be redeemed is allowed. So anything that happens carries possibilities. Because if it’s happening, it can be redeemed. Now, whether any of that is factually true or not isn’t really here nor there. Even if it’s just a mental construct, it’s served me well through some really crazy shit. Because I assume that everything is moving towards being redeemed, when life throws me a doozy that I wouldn’t choose if yo

Praying for someone and being critical of them are not mutually exclusive things. Neither are loving someone and calling out their wrong doing. And, I know this is hard to believe, but speaking out against evil is not the same thing as sowing fear. Right wing Christians understand all these things when they’re targeting the weak, the vulnerable and the oppressed, but seem to lose site of them entirely when it comes to the mighty and powerful. If one more person tells me that

A couple of weeks ago I ran into an acquaintance who told me that work at his job was so slow that his hours had been cut and he was afraid that by Christmas they would be closing the shop altogether. He’s a machinist, which is one of those jobs which is usually in high demand; I know just a couple of years ago local shops were recruiting kids right out of high school for training. So I asked him about that but he just shook his head and said that it’s changed. Then, to my su

There are sociopaths among us. And if we pretend that there are not, if we insist that everyone just assume the best and look for the good no matter the evidence, we leave ourselves vulnerable to being manipulated by them. Do you know how you dis-empower sociopaths? You make it impossible for them to act on their sociopathic tendencies without being detected. You don’t dismiss or minimize sociopathic behavior. You ask people to act only in ways which are incompatible with soc

If you really want to love people, probably the most important thing you can do is learn to recognize when someone is in pain. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Pain often sounds like anger, like a bad attitude, like defensiveness, like hostility, like self-pity or withdrawal. But if you respond to the pain underneath and offer patient grace for the anger, attitude, hostility and the rest, you will be one of those rare individuals who loves people when they need it most. Pass

I’ve avoided nearly all hot-button cultural and political topics around here for many years now. And I don’t write screeds about how terrible other people’s theology or morality is. Yet, somehow, the overwhelming majority of people who have responded to my writing are not, shall we say, politically conservative. I used to be conservative, but reading the bible has a funny way of changing that, it seems.  These days I’m a pretty flaming progressive. I’ll go back to being a con

Back in college, I had a friend named Joe. He was funny and smart and deep. And he wore Hawaiian shirts with mismatched print sleep pants, so even better. But from time to time Joe would do something incredibly stupid. One time, after he told me the story of how something he had done had gone all to shit, I asked him, “what did you think was going to happen when you did this thing that quite predictably lead to a bad outcome?” (Because I’m super sensitive like that.) He respo

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Once upon a time a dastardly villian took a girl out to sea and left her there in the water, in the dark.  She knew she was in a struggle for her life.  But it was night and she could see nothing to guide her way.  So she decided to just tread water until morning came up.  As the sun came up, she was tired, but not spent.  She spotted land in the distance and started swimming in that direction.  Her survival now depended on whether sh

A random thought to ponder: Just because you think something, doesn’t mean you have to say it. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #life #thoughts

A random thought to ponder: After the angels who announced the birth of Jesus, only demons ever spontaneously recognized Jesus as “Son of the most high God.” The devil’s theology is probably more perfect that yours or mine will ever be. Except that he doesn’t understand love. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #christianity #religion #theology #thoughts

A random thought to ponder: If you want to understand life, look for the dynamics underlying what you see. Learn to spot these dynamics at work in different circumstances and contexts and the whole world will open up to you. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #life #thoughts

A random thought to ponder: In some tribes with high infant mortality rates, new mothers give their infants jewelry and beautiful trinkets in an attempt to entice them to stay. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #thoughts

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”  — James Baldwin Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #hate #life #thoughts

A random thought to ponder: We too often think that our wildest notions about God represent the outer limits rather than the jumping off point. “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into mind of man what God has planned.” Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #God #life #thoughts

Some days I can handle more stupid, some days I can handle less stupid. We need to learn to respect each other’s limitations. My brain is very, very tired right now. Some days my random thoughts are more interesting than others. This should make up for it: I saw a mamma fox with three kits tonight. A little later and a few miles away I saw what may well be the dad. Did you know that foxes can be domesticated? We shouldn’t domesticate animals we aren’t willing or able to take

You would not believe the problems I have had getting online the last two day. Seriously. If anyone would like to send me $400 to upgrade my internet, that would be so awesome. It took me about 4 hours to get ours working today. Yesterday, it just randomly fritzed out about 20 times. So, yeah. That kind of makes it hard to be consistent. We just paid $900 for car repairs on our only vehicle, so unless some of our hard work finally pays off soon, that’s not going to change. An

A random thought to ponder: We don’t have to become perfect; just better. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #thoughts

A random thought to contemplate over your lunch break: What if the physical world is like heaven’s version of cable TV? Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #thoughts