In Gennesaret

The more you heal, the more comfortable you are being the villain in the story of people who don’t want to do the work to heal themselves. I saw this statement in a meme on Facebook a few weeks ago and reposted it because it hit home with me. I’m not sure if my FB friends read it the same way I did. A couple people seemed concerned that it implied allowing yourself to be wrongly abused or mistreated by someone. Which would not be okay, of course. Exce-e-ept there’s that “turn the other cheek” bit that Jesus gave us in the Sermon on the Mount. If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer them the other one. If someone sues you to take your shirt, give him your coat, too.  Clearly, there is wisdom needing to be applied here. Eugene Peterson in The Message put it thusly: “If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.” I don’t believe Jesus is telling us to allow ourselves to be abused and d...

If you haven’t seen the Barbie movie, intend to, and don’t want spoilers, you should stop reading and come back to this later. On the other hand, if you’ve already seen it or don’t intend to see it at all, please read on. (Especially if you’re avoiding the movie because you think it’s offensive.) I had no interest in seeing this flick. None. When I heard about it, my first thought was “Oh, thank God my girls are grown and gone so I don’t have to watch another Barbie movie.” But I had friends who heard it was good and wanted to make a girls’ night of it . . . and you know how I’ve been harping here about doing the community thing. So, I went with them. It wasn’t until the next morning that I read reviews and saw people slamming the film as “woke” and misandrist (there’s a new word I learned: “man-hating”). Wow. I’m wondering if they saw the same movie I did.  In the movie I saw, when Barbie returns to Barbieland and sees that Ken has transformed it into Kenworld, a patriarch...

I sent a text message to some teachers on my team asking their opinion on something, and in my text, I happened to use the word “begrudge”. And suddenly, I wasn’t sure I had used it correctly – and I told them so. Here’s the conversation that ensued: JoAnne : “To give reluctantly or resentfully.” I looked it up. Me : LOL! I did, too. Still unsure . . . it sounds right in the sentence, but not sure the definition fits my use of it. JoAnne : You don’t resent her for asking. Courtney : Webster’s also says “to regard with envy or discontent” and “to regard disapprovingly,” so I think you nailed it. Also, this is the only text thread on my phone that causes me to consult my dictionary at 7:56am, and I love it! Maureen: And “begrudge” is the right answer!!! (Why do I feel like I should be giving away a trip to Hawaii?) Y’all. I LOVE MY PEOPLE. I don’t know how I could do life without my people . Since I turned 21 and officially became an adult, I have lived in seven differen...

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention lately, Texas has been going through a hellish heatwave. Here in San Antonio, our daily highs were over 100 degrees most of the month of June, I believe, and are on target to be so for the rest of the month of July. And y’all . . . August is still coming . Pray for your suffering brothers and sisters here in the South. In light of this climatic insanity, I emailed my landlord the other day to thank him for replacing my A/C unit back in May. I had been holding my breath waiting for it to die since the day I moved in three years ago. I doubt it would have survived this craziness, and I don’t even want to THINK about sitting in this house in these temperatures with no air conditioning. My sister said the other day, “God was looking out for you,” and I think he was. However, I have two friends whose A/C did go out last week in the middle of the wicked heat (and on the same day, oddly enough). At least one of these units was only a few yea...

A friend of mine in my teen years was one of those girls that everybody loves. She smiled at the world all the time, and she had a lovely smile. She lit up a room, and everyone enjoyed her company.  As her close friend, however, I knew the sadness she struggled with. The feelings of inadequacy. The consistent low-grade depression. When we were alone, I could see it on her face and in her demeanor. It was astonishing, however, the way she would change when someone else came into the room. Suddenly, the smiley face was back. The perkiness. The energy. It was clearly a mask – and a mask that, by this point, she felt was expected of her and obligatory. At the time, it concerned me because I knew it was fake. I realize now that this was a necessary skill she had learned . . . she just picked it up earlier than the rest of us. Because this is a skill most of us "good women" have, particularly us Christian women. Put on the smiley face. Be effortless for all. Say yes to every re...

While rushing to get to an online date a year or so ago, I mentioned the need to get my makeup on. “You mean, he hasn’t seen you without makeup yet?” my daughter gasped.  Um . . . no. No, he hasn’t.  And you can just wipe that look of astonishment off your smooth, lovely, twenty-something-year-old face, my dear. Let’s talk about this again when you’re in your fifties. I don’t wear as much makeup as many women do. I used to wear more – blush, eye shadow, mascara. But what I wear now is pretty minimal and pretty natural-looking. Some foundation and a bit of cover-up for the blotches and under-eye circles that never completely go away. Powder to smooth it all out. And a bit of eye liner, just to make my eyes look a little brighter. But I rarely go in public without. I mean, I’ll run an errand or two au naturel if I’m going to a place where I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. And of course, I don’t wear makeup to Zumba where I’m going to sweat it all off anyway. But to...

My daughters are 23 and 27. Both are at that stage in early adulthood when they are trying to figure out what they’re supposed to do with their lives – and one daughter’s boyfriend is in that place, too. All three of them know themselves well; they know their skills, their passions, their weaknesses, their strengths. They have a general sense of the kind of work God made them for. And I’m quite grateful for that – they’re already steps ahead of many young people their age. Now, my ex and I both feel very strongly about the girls not getting stuck in careers that are not fulfilling to them, and I think we both communicate that to them. I love what Dorothy Sayers once said: Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live but the thing one lives to do . It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.   (emphasis mine) Yes, Dorothy. Tha...