SoulPerSuit is Beginning a New Study

SoulPerSuit is starting up a new fall study group and you're invited!

September 7, 2009 kicks off Kona with Jonah
We're excited because we'll be going through Sandra Glahn's new Coffee Cup Study "Kona with Jonah". It's available for free shipping when you purchase $25 so now's the time to bundle your order with the new "Frappé with Philippians" and another Coffee Cup you've been wanting.

*Amazon.com has been a little slow on releasing and shipping this book, so if we have to push back the date because no one has their book yet, I'll be sure to let you know. As long as you'll be sure to let me know you want to join our study. ;) *

Invitation: SoulPerSuit doing Java with the Judges

SoulPerSuit is hitting the books and art supplies again this spring!

Through the months of March, April and May, we'll be hosting a group venturing through the book of Judges using, Java with the Judges, from the Coffee Cup Bible Study Series, by Sandra Glahn.

I sure would love it if you'd join us. All you need is a Bible, your imagination, a copy of Java with the Judges, and Internet access.
We'll be hosting the Judges SPS group in the blogosphere again (it seemed to work really well when we did it over Christmas so we're going to take another crack at it), BUT you do not need to have your own blog to participate. If you don't write to a blog, don't let that stop you; SoulPerBlog serves as a quasi-art studio/coffee house/bean bag laden discussion room. We'll brew up some cyber cafe mochas and green tea over there so everyone can enjoy the dialogue in the comments section.

Get your Java with the Judges book here (and get it quick 'cause we're kicking off March 3):
Amazon
Borders
BooksChristian.com (<< cheapest I've seen it)

And stop by SoulPerBlog to let us know to fluff up a bean bag for you!

Divine: The Sprite

Meet the culprit in the Broken Santa incident.

She's turning 5 years old today.

I love her dearly. So dearly.

Today, I reflect that the joy and delight she brings to our home far outshines a paltry Superglue-repaired salt dough Santa (or any other thing I think I care about).

His face glows jaundiced with primary school tempera paints.

Her face glows with sprightliness.

I think we shall indeed live happily ever after- despite what breaks among us;
this Sprite, the Broken Santa and me.

SoulPerSuit Mini-group

SoulPerSuit is starting it's next theme, running the entire month of February.
January was dedicated to examining the idea of "decay." Now it's time to dip our toes in to the "divine."

I invite you to come and join us. Poetry, knitting, calligraphy, claymation, music videos, playing card art... it's all welcome in the creative hopper. Let's offer ourselves to the molding hand of God and see what comes out!

Details are over at SoulPerBlog.

Broken and Beautiful: The Damoff's Story

I could not have planned a better time to read Parting the Waters, by Jeanne Damoff.

Lately, I have been examining the effects of decay upon my particularly occupied patch in this universe (I assure you that as a melancholy, this comes quite naturally) and find myself now on the cusp of drinking deeply and refreshingly of the divine nature that tempers the world's decay. (As a contemplative, I relish the opportunity to bask in the beautiful good.)

Parting the Waters illuminates the notion that decay and divine work in tandem, complimenting one another, providing a teamwork approach to leading us into deeper understanding of God. But we have to be open to looking for it, expecting God to show Himself.

Jeanne's story starts at an end. The end of her eldest son, Jacob. Or Jacob-as-he-was, rather.
At 15 years old, his near drowning and subsequent brain injuries thrust Jeanne and her family into the murky waters of doubt and trust. It held them under, gasping for breath.

This was the end of easy faith.
The end of a pretty, gift-wrapped theology.
The end of passing familiarity with the God of widows and orphans.


I cried in almost every chapter of this book. Jeanne's accounts of the Divine reaching His hand through to her broken, breaking and suffocating family... words fail to describe the rush in my heart to read His acts of goodwill toward them. The God of widows and orphans met them in the doorway of their pain. He drew them near, got down on His knee and looked them in the eye as He tenderly ministered to their wounded hearts. And in the case of Jacob, his wounded body. Real hands, audible voices, wet tears- visible and tangible ministrations surrounded the Damoffs. God was moving through His people.

I cried when Jacob's body was revived. When Jacob made his first voluntary movement. The first time he laughed. I cried at his silent weeping as music moved his soul. When doctors and family saw small signs that he is still "in there." When Jacob said, "Mom."
I cried when he walked. When he got on a horse. I cried that he could eat a bowl of cereal. When his quiet presence ministered to others - just his being there with them- I teared up.
When he quipped, "Shoot me now!" Yep, I even cried at that point. (It was hysterical and thrilling to my mother's heart to see his quirky personality bubble back up to the surface. I have quirky kids of my own, Jeanne, so I delighted with you over this. Why just say "Ow" when you can holler "Shoot me now!" The effect is much more grand.)

Jacob Damoff, a young man who's outside appears a picture of decay and loss, reveals that the God who breathed life into Him is not finished glorifying Himself through him. The Divine in the Decayed.

Yeah, I was a mess from all the beauty. A beautiful mess. Which is a darned good way to be, I think.


One special touch that I am immensely enjoying are the personal accounts of many who have been impacted by Jacob's accident and the years since. This was not an isolated story, just for Jeanne to tell. It affected mother, father, husband and wife, sister and brother, best friends, pastors, school teachers, doctors, physical therapists, park rangers, students and complete strangers. Reading their own words of how God has met them intimately through Jacob's drowning knits my heart to this small arm of the Bride of Christ. Through them all, I know the God of orphans and widows better today.

Thank you George, Grace and Luke, in particular, for articulating how God has hovered attentively over your lives. Someday, that Great Someday, when Jacob's body might better cooperate with his will, I would love to hear Jacob himself tell how the Lord has hovered over him all these years. I bet I'll cry then too.

--------------------------

Now that I'm at the end of this book, I'm asking myself the question,
"These things our flesh understands and defines as decay- broken bodies, broken spirits, broken relationships- could they really be instead, the Divine breaking through to reach in and release us from our decay? Is it possible that decay might be a part of salvation?"

-------------------------

Above the book title are the words, "A True Story." This really did happen (and still is happening) to the Damoffs.
It's also A Truth Story. It's happening to all of us. Decay, wrapped in all it's losses, fears and pains, sets the stage perfectly for us to thrill at the climax of our faith story- God, the beautiful Divine.

Splintered: Willow Tree

Our backyard is residence to a pair of lovely weeping willow trees.

Shopping for a new home nearly 4 years ago, my pulse quickened as I spied the mature, green giants waving in the spring breeze. Weeping willows are my favorites, hands down.

Part mobile- with each and every sinuous branch fluttering and flowing on the tickling wind.
Part sculpture- with those solid trunks sliding into the earth, embracing soil, rock and mineral. Supporting their own weight and grounding them firmly into their base, they are sculpture in the round.
Part watercolor- in the Spring, new leaves sneak out in shades of chartreuse and lemon. Wispy, soft and dream-like. I constantly want to bring a book down the hill to visit the dappled shade and kick off my shoes.
Part impressionist painting- Like a pleasant childhood memory, I'm never quite able to nail down where the leaves come from, or even when. How did they manage to burst onto the scene when I thought I'd been watching so carefully? And in the Fall... well, the leaves are just suddenly gone. (Perhaps I only had the impression the leaves were there?)

In winter though- oh the Winter!- the boughs and limbs take such a beating. Neighbors tell me we've had a couple of icier years than normal. Snow is not a problem, it's the ice rain. As beautiful as it is to see each individual twig encased in a crystalline sheath, our weeping willows simply cannot hold the weight.


We lost ten thigh-sized limbs last year. Already two this winter. I cry inside to watch the weeping boughs I love so much snap beneath their burden.
They're calling for freezing rain tonight.

Busted: The Blue Vacuum

I'm not sure why I took a photo of the guts of our broken vacuum. Perhaps I sensed a pattern when it tanked just hours after the Santa episode.

Plastic shrapnel and acrid burning wire.
It was like a scene from an appliance war movie. Frightened villagers running for cover and all that.


The Blue Vacuum was not fancy. Steve and I bought it with gift monies from our wedding. We bought what we could afford, which wasn't much, but it was sufficient to suck up whatever found its way to the carpet of our tiny first apartment. Then the second apartment. And then our townhouse.
Then we got a couple of cats (and the fur and dander that goes with them.) The Blue Vacuum still held its own.
We had a baby. Then we had another baby. We moved into a house and doubled the square footage required of The Blue Vacuum.
And then had another baby.

Cheerios, cat fur, mud clumps, grass clippings, dead bugs, soon-to-be-dead bugs, an accidental shoelace or two, the edges of the rug (also accidental), and sometimes even it's own cord: The Blue Vacuum sucked it all with vim and vigor.

Then one day in December, 13 years later, it met entropy in a big way.

Broken: Santa

SoulPerSuit's latest mini-group is examining the contrast between "decay" and "divine".

Our first creative thought-provoker is to take a photo of one thing in our life that is decaying. One thing?! Just one?!

(We joke that we ought to name our home "Entropy Estates" because of all that seems to fall apart around here.)


This is the Santa salt dough ornament I made in first grade, 1978. I distinctly remember painting his face yellow because it was the closest color to "skin tone" I could find in the elementary school paint tray. For 30 years this guy has hung near the top of our Christmas tree- first, in my parents' home, and when I got married, in my own home. I was very careful to keep Santa far away from little hands that might be overly zealous with tree decorating.

But then along came a three-year old...

I have to admit that I did not handle Santa's breakage like a sanctified mother. My spirit of Christmas shattered when Santa shattered.

Because I am broken as well.

Lavish Incense

The Kings brought frankincense gifts to lay at the feet of the Christ child. Our prayers go up before the throne of God like sweet, burning incense. Yahweh, himself, specified the ingredients and uses for incense in temple worship. Something about that smell...

Tapped from trees in much the same way we obtain amber or even maple syrup, frankincense has been used for centuries in the middle east.
Unlike our pampered and tendered maple trees on a Vermont orchard however, the Botswellia trees that frankincense is drawn from are scraggly. Hardy. Windblown. Some grow in such harsh environs that they appear to sprout directly from the rock- bare roots clamped around anchoring boulders against the elements.

A picture of life outside of a garden.

Life outside of The Garden.

The frankincense is drawn by piercing or wounding the bark of the tree to cause the sap to rise and fill the fresh wound. The resulting hardened resin is referred to as tears.
Tears developed from wounding.
Wounding a tree that perilously clings to life outside The Garden.

*

These tears are what God wanted to smell always in his Temple. Generation after generation. These tears are what the wise kings carried as gifts to our young Emmanuel.
These same tears are how the Lord describes our prayers. Carried. Offered. Lifted up in worship. Something about that smell...

* The Agony in the Garden, Hans Leonhard Schaufelein, 1516
Lime panel, Munich

Like Trying to Wipe Off the Warmth of the Sun

This year has not been one for smashing records of victorious Christian living.
Not for me anyway.

I have found myself surrounded by a deepening gray fog.
At times anyway.

And sinking in the goopy mire of self-talk, self-help, self-interest.
My defunct self-self.

The battlefield of my mind is the horizon that stretches before me. As far as the east is from the west.
Seems that big anyway.

I lost my dad-in-law. And at the time it did not matter to me where his soul went because at least his earthly pain was finally over.
Finally over.
That's how I felt at the time, anyway.

A very dear friend confessed deep skepticisms about the truth of Scripture. The stuff that is the very foundation of my faith. I have been rocked and shaken.
Wandering for a year in a fog that occasionally seems to lift.
A fair bit, anyway.
--------------------

Standing on the battleground as the fog rolls in.

I will not be so noble as to pretend I don't want to be rescued.

I know I am weak for this.
--------------------

But there is a Bright Light. He burns of his own accord and does not wait for me to acknowledge Him before he radiates in my circumstance.
He is radiating.
He is bioluminescence.
He is burning off the fog.
He is lighting this battlefield in the blazed whiteness of day.
He is burning the image of Himself upon my retinas- so that He is the thing I see no matter where I cast my gaze.
He is drying the miry clay until it cracks and peels and blows into fine granules upon the wind.


So even though the year has found me cold, mired, bewildered and beleaguered...
At times...


Denying the truth of this Bright Light would be like trying to wipe off the warmth of the sun.


--------------------
Press play on the MP3 player to hear my not-so-traditional Christmas song offering: Never Alone, Barlow Girl

Gratuitous

Gratuitous

Would it be gratuitous to linger here
Ankle deep in manure?
To rest my eyes, engage my brain
Fixing on the burn in my nostrils?
To nudge a pile with my toe,
Revealing the ripest aroma,
Seeking the rawest of raw in this stable?

Is it superfluous that we lean,
Faces hovered over rotting compost?
Digging, churning, turning
Unearthing decay and fermentation?
Prodding the layers, loosening the debris
While searching for words to describe its offense?

An un-called-for experiment
This ancillary venture
When matters of pressing importance
And the delicacy of polite society
Apply their subtle pressure.

Perhaps it is
Gratuitous.

But I am arrested.
Stopped. Still.
And the question lives in my head like the acrid smell lives in my nose-



Was it gratuitous that He should linger here
Ankle deep in our manure?
To rest His eyes and engage His brain
Fixing His heart toward those that burn His nostrils?
To embrace fallen man through His presence here?
Revealing our ripest aroma,
Seeking to save the rawest of the raw?

Was it superfluous that He leaned down
Face-first into our rotting man-culture?
Digging, churning, turning
Unearthing decay and fermentation?
Prodding through my layers, loosening the debris
Supplying words, impelling my search- despite my offense?


An un-called-for experience
This ancillary venture
When faces of holiness and glory
And the divinity of heavenly society
Enjoy unsullied communion.


Messiah. Emmanuel.
Gratuitous.

* For SoulPerSuit's Contemplative Christmas: Week 1: Barn Smells

Confessions of a Contemplative- An Invitation

It seems to happen every year. I start the Holiday season with high hopes of cutting back, trimming the calendar, spending the bulk of our time cozied up at home as a family, inhabiting the season in a worshipful and reflective fashion. Some December days are actually that- worshipful, reflective, homey, cozy.
But then there are other days when I think I’m my own worst enemy. I get my heart set on finding the perfect gift for my kids (and shopping for it for 8+ hours on-line!), or operating an elaborate Christmas cookie factory in my kitchen, or I simply get wound up in the dinner-dishes-out-the-door-to-Girl-Scouts-before-we’re-late routine.

December pushes and pulls me. I feel the need to push and pull too.
I’m looking for a way of stepping back and soaking in the ways Christ’s gift of Himself affects me.


I’d like to invite you to join me in setting aside the gingerbread men to gaze transfixed into our Savior’s infant eyes. SoulPerSuit is hosting a Christmas reflection group.
This SPS group is not intended to tax your already-packed holiday calendar. We offer it to you as an aid to pulling back from the quickened pace December takes… to breathe… to gaze… to ponder… to wonder as you wander.

To make your holidays holy days.


This season, I'm all about simple, focused worship. I think this SoulPerSuit Contemplative Christmas group is just that. And I'd love for you to join us. Details are on SoulPerBlog.

Never done a SoulPerSuit group before? Wonder what it's all about? Click here. Or here.

Echocardiogram

Do not handle!
Do not taste!
Do not touch!
Things created, all of them
In and under heaven

Empty notions, captivating
False humility
Puffed up, empty notions
Mere shadows of true things

Fasting, feasting
Drinking, dressing
New moon celebrations
Of human tradition and empty philosophy

Life makes it so hard sometimes
To know what's real
(Cultural arrhythmia.)

Can you feel it?
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.


Dominion masters
Slaves to thrones
Wives to principalities
Children of enemies and outsiders

Gentile barbarian
Scythian people-pleasers
Prisoners
Held captive by fleshly minds of division

Shameful passion rules us
Impure indulgence, gluttons for it all
Appearing wise, appearing
Founded on human commands and teachings
Rather than reality.

Life makes it so hard sometimes
To know what's real
(Cultural arrhythmia.)

Can you feel it?
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.


Circumcised bodies with uncircumcised hearts
Systems and specifics, idolatry
Destined to perish- Flat lining.
Doomed to fail and pass away in cardiac arrest
Decaying into the dust.

And the dust is everywhere.
It is everywhere.
(Cultural arrhythmia.)


Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
You are there.
You are there.
You're Everywhere.
You Are Everywhere.

Our God is here.
(Our Crash Cart and Pace Maker.)
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.





*Cardiac medication*
Take daily as needed by pressing the play button to the right.

Announcement: Cappuccino with Colossians

Registration is now open for the next SoulPerSuit group going through Sandra Glahn's book, Cappuccino with Colossians

If you're interested in joining this study art group, here are some things you need to know:

- Contrary to what I wrote here before, we are NOT hosting the group on ShoutLife. Sorry to misinform you, but after examining the technical details, we decided to go back to the mostly-trustworthy but at least very-familiar Yahoo group. So, if you 'd like to join the discussion, click the purple button on the right.

- This SoulPerSuit group is limited to 10 participants, so if you'd like to join the discussion, click the purple button on the right.

-Our group discussion will begin on April 13 and run for 9 weeks. Get yourself a copy of Cappuccino with Colossians, break out your deck of playing cards, the scissors and glue sticks, and click the purple button on the right.

Free Stuff at SoulPerBlog

Over the next couple of weeks, the women of SoulPerSuit are giving away free stuff. Multiple times. Repeatedly. Again and again.

It's our way of celebrating the fun community we have via the Word, the cyberworld, and our creative brains. It's our way of kicking off the next SoulPerSuit group.

Sandi just posted the first giveaway tonight, a free copy of Cappuccino with Colossians.
Click over to SoulPerBlog to enter. And keep checking back because there's more free stuff to come!

Ant Food

Go to the ant, you sluggard!

movie poster c/o moviegoods.com

Wisdom Wears a Clown Suit

I talked with my sister on the phone this evening. She is, due to stages and seasons (I know, I know), bowing out of this SoulPerSuit study in Proverbs too. (Someday, y'all, we'll be meeting over these great feasts around The Table and we will get to oooh and aaaah over this blessed cuisine together!! Blogging and phone conversations are a decent substitute though- beggars can't be choosers.)


To an unbeliever, the Apostle Paul might as well be in a clown suit when he writes this letter. And the Corinthian Christians form a traveling circus troupe upon reading it.

Here's what Abby, the Poet of Influence, shared with me tonight regarding wisdom:

17God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.

18-21The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written,

I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

6-10We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it's not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God's wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don't find it lying around on the surface. It's not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven't a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn't have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross. That's why we have this Scripture text:

No one's ever seen or heard anything like this,
Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
What God has arranged for those who love him.

But you've seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.

I Corinthians 1:17-21 and 2:6-10 (The Message)



So, where do we go to claim our red rubber noses?

Wisdom and Folly

Our SoulPerSuit group going through the book of Proverbs has been contrasting wisdom and folly.

What marks a person as a fool?
What makes a person wise?
Are fools destined to be fools forever? Is there any hope?
What does the world consider wisdom, and how does it compare to what the Lord defines as wisdom?
Is there a foolishness that masquerades as wisdom?
Is there wisdom that appears to be foolishness?


I only have an answer for the last question today.

Comparing "The Enticers" to Lady Wisdom in Chapter 1 of Proverbs, I get a sense of secret whispering and the low tones of the foolish sinners. "The Enticers" want to keep their ways under wraps, speaking out of the sides of their mouths. They're keeping it cool, looking acceptable on the surface.
Not so with Lady Wisdom! She's in the busy marketplace, at the corners of the streets, shouting her invitation to the world- "Come to me and find life! Ask me and I shall pour out my riches!"

Wisdom is willing to look like a fool in public so that she may save just one ignorant youth from destruction. Wisdom makes a ruckus. She makes a spectacle of herself. She causes a scene. Without concern for her own reputation or the opinion of her neighbors, Lady Wisdom pleads with any who will listen.

Someone else was scorned and despised. He called out to the spiritually ignorant wherever and whenever he found them. He shouted in the marketplaces. He stopped traffic. We esteemed him not. There was nothing within him that we should be drawn to him. And he did not consider equality (and social standing) with God something to be grasped. We thought he was a fool.


Jesus Christ was willing to become a fool in the eyes of the world in order that he might purchase us from the slave market of sin.
"And if that makes me crazy, they can call me crazed. I'm happy to be seemingly naive..."

... And That is Why I Have Issues with Ariel

** Scrolling through my unposted blog entries today, I found this. I wrote this over the summer, in the context of a SoulPerSuit study we were doing on the book of Esther. Charity and I had also been briefly discussing The Little Mermaid. (I used to love that movie. My father disagrees with my opinions about the flick to this day, so decide for yourself if it's a movie with an agenda.) The following is my own reflection on what stirred in my heart as a teen.**


Esther, Erin, and Ariel. Three teenage girls.

Like most teens, they want to be accepted. They want happiness. They want a certain amount of independence, a certain amount of adulthood., a certain amount of credence. Like most teens, they sometimes make choices that are less-than-wise.
Some might even call these choices "foolish."


Esther, a teenager living in 470-something BC, is an orphan raised by her cousin, Mordecai. She is subject to his authority, living in his household, eating his food, benefiting from his protection and provision. Esther honors Mordecai. She listens to his words, she follows his advice, she honors his father-ship in her life. She obeys him.

Now, Mordecai surely makes faulty decisions. Sometimes his advice is lacking. Sometimes he doesn't listen well and sometimes he speaks a little harshly. His human eyes can't see the end game. His human mind can't completely grasp the wisdom of Yahweh. But he loves his adopted daughter and every word of wisdom he issues in her direction comes from that heart of love.


Ariel is a teenager growing up on the bottom of the sea. She's a mermaid. The daughter of the king. Ariel is the youngest of many sisters. (7, 10, 12? I forget. Let's just say there are a lot.) But all her older sisters are... well... old. And boring. And they always obey King Triton. The goody-goodies. Did I mention that they were boring?
Ariel is adventurous. She wants more than a boring existence as a princess. She wants to be where the people are, wants to see them dancing and walking around on those "feet-things." Wants to know about fire and why it burns. Isn't that noble?

Triton loves his daughter. He wants to see her grow and blossom into the mermaid she is meant to be. He wants to provide for her, to protect her from the dangers of the world, which includes the dangers of entanglement with humans. He may be a little gruff, may hand down a few too many ultimatums, might lack a few listening skills, but his words issued in Ariel's direction come from a heart of love.

Ariel is independent though. She is open-minded and free-thinking. And she is "in love". (Which makes all the difference in the world when you're deciding whether or not to obey your parents, don't you agree?) Since Triton just doesn't understand her, he is obviously not worthy of the honor of obedience. So Ariel chooses to do her own thing. Because only she can know what's best for her.


Erin is growing up in a Christian home filled with love, discipleship and laughter. The eldest daughter in a family of six, she is the first to cross the threshold of many of life's doorways. Her parents are feeling their way through the teenage years right alongside her. (Having no previous experience, what else can they do?) But they temper this feeling-their-way-in-the-dark parenting with Biblical principles and with loving authority. Yes, they make faulty decisions. They sometimes decree unilateral family rules out of convenience rather than individualized discipline. They'll even admit that sometimes they parent with a desire for their own comfort rather than a desire to be conformed to the image of Christ. They are flawed parents. But they love their daughter and every word of wisdom that issues from them in her direction comes from their hearts of love.

Erin knows this. But sometimes she doesn't feel like obeying. And sometimes she doesn't feel like honoring. So she just doesn't.

You see, Erin is a Christian teenager with flimsy convictions. She values her independence. She thinks she knows what is best for her. Her parents don't. God doesn't. (Well, ok, in theory God knows what's best, but seriously, what's the big deal with a little divergence from the plan every now and then?) Erin can handle herself. She is wise beyond her years, she is slightly smug and slightly arrogant. But you'd never know it to look at her. In fact, she doesn't really even know this about herself either.


Until she becomes a mother.
I see my teenage years from a whole new perspective now.
I watch the Little Mermaid through the eyes of a loving parent who wants the best for her three daughters.
I read the story of Esther in a different light.
Now that I've become a mother.

Ruth 1:16-17

Do not press me to leave you,
Or to turn back from following you.

Where you go, I will go.
Where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people will be my people.

Your God, my God.
Where you die, I will die.
There, will I be buried.

May the Lord do "thus and so" to me, and more as well
If even death parts me from you, parts me from you,

Parts me from you, parts me from you.May the Lord do "thus and so" to me, and more as well

If even death parts me from you,
parts me from you,
parts me from you,
parts me from you.

HESED