Relationships and More
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Celebrities for Jesus and Fred Rogers
In a time when large swaths of the America church have merely mimicked worldly concepts of power, going for bigger, louder, glitzier, we have to return to the small, the quiet, the uncool, and the ordinary. Obscurity may very well be the spiritual discipline the American church needs to practice the most in the coming century. Katelyn Beaty, Celebrities for Jesus My husband and I finally watched It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the Tom Hanks movie from 2019 about Fred Rogers. Wow. I had instant childhood flashbacks–sitting in my grandma’s den on her little couch, drinking my glass of orange juice, and watching Mr. Rogers calmly explain things…
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Boy Meets Girl and Other Romantical Nonsense.
I have a confession to make: I’m totally in love with Netflix’s Anne with an E. Potentially bordering on obsessed. Fortunately for me I don’t have time to binge-watch anything so each episode is stolen in little chunks. Unfortunately I then stumble around life in a daze dreaming of Gilbert Blythe. I realize they totally butcher the story line, but I’m not purist. Mostly because the characters they’ve created are so REAL that I would watch them do anything. Anne was a peer of mine growing up so I’m kind of attached to her, not to mention Diana and Gilbert. Spending my teens in an ultra-conservative, cultic sphere of Christianity…
- \'rant\ : to talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner, Relationships and More, Things We Don't Talk About
But First We Are People
We recently took our kids to Chicago for a quick weekend. I’m not a city girl, not by a long shot, but I do like a good adventure. My husband is also pretty willing to take a chance. So, after finding a great deal on a hotel north of the city, we decided to take the Metra train into Chicago for the day and then use buses to travel around. It seemed like a good idea. We weren’t exactly familiar with public transportation, but how hard could it be? Almost impossible actually. Buying our train tickets online was a breeze. Getting onto our train and traveling into Chicago was exciting.…
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The Lump Under the Rug
It started small and undetectable. Just a few little things brushed under the rug to create peace. But as time went on a noticeable bump rose in the middle of the room. Everyone ignored it. Life continued. The bump grew into a lump. People had to walk around it to get from one side to the other. It was slightly awkward, but no one wanted to talk about it, so the lump stayed. It’s amazing what you can get used to, what you stop noticing after a while, and what starts to feel normal. Click here to sign up for my newsletter. Then one day someone new came along. They…
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Mental Illness, Possessed Baby Dolls, and the Church
I’m going to tell you an embarrassing story. When I was a teenager, in the middle of religious cultic craziness, I thought I’d been given the gift of spiritual discernment. I truly believed that I could discern whether or not people’s toys, specifically baby dolls, were possessed. Parents in my church brought me their children’s dolls so that I could stare into their eyes and tell them if there was a demon inside or not. Yes, I now recognize that this is absolutely nuts. Yikes!! But at the time, it seemed very real. We had all heard anecdotal stories of people’s experiences with possessed toys. We had heard stories about…
