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The Treachery of Contempt: Killing Each Other Softly
My first brush with contempt happened in sixth grade. A new boy enrolled in the tiny Lutheran private school I attended. I knew how hard it is to break into a new school, so I tried to be nice to him, to make him feel welcome. For whatever reason, he responded to my friendliness by calling me an unspeakable name. I still remember the moment for a number of reasons. Firstly, no one ever called me a name like that before this. Secondly, the sexually explicit term he called me felt like an assault. I felt the hurt all over my body. You have heard that it was said to…
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Three Methods that Helped Me Conquer Anxiety
I became aware of my anxiety, ironically, when suddenly I had less to fear. I found myself a single mother of four wonderful daughters and free of a narcissistic and cruel ex-husband. I was so used to feeling numb that when I began to reconnect with my emotions, all the fear I lived with for years came to the surface. My approach to life, similar to my father’s, is to get a few books on a topic and begin to educate myself, but somehow specific methods for curing anxiety proved elusive. The one thing that kept popping up in my research is that the brain is plastic, and we have…
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Courting Miracles: Instructions for Walking on Water
The problem with miracles, I have found, is that they are easy to forget. Already I hear dissent. Unbelievers like to claim that if they were to truly witness a miracle, then and only then would they lay down their unbelief. But in my experience, miracles don’t even make believers believe. Consider the Hebrews. The Red Sea parted for them, and they were led by a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. Bread rained down on them. Tangible corporate miracles and yet, no heart change was evident, and only two of the original generation set foot in the Promised Land. I first noticed this tendency for…
Healing Through Art & Words
