The Older Woman

  “Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap”, Rex Gutwein, a Biblical Prof. had changed my life with those words. I needed to hear them desperately the day he uttered them. I was running on absolute empty and those around me were starting to suffer the consequences of my sleep deprived irritation. They were words that gave me permission to stop for a min. and rest.                 Fast forward fifteen years into the future, and I shared my teacher’s wisdom on the internet. I was immediately hit with comments about how a nap cannot be spiritual. I was told that was encouraging laziness. I also was told more than once that psychology had crept into the church. I was shocked to read the comments. I did not see why anyone was against such a benign comment, or how they had read psych dependance into it.               ...

                 “Let’s pray that God gives us some good fish”, my son said this with a smile, knowing what I was going to say before I even said it. “Don’t forget to hold onto your rod during the prayer”. Giggles from several children as they remember Grandpa’s story about his rod being jerked right out of his hands during fervent prayers for fishing blessings.             “Do you remember?”, my father asks it every single time we pass the old field. “Yes, Dad, God set that field on fire to answer our prayers for gas money. We prayed, with zero dollars in our pockets, and God sent us someone to help who would not say no to compensating the saving of his field.             “Remember when Dennis did not even know it was formula? We told God we had no food for Ruth and no money to buy any, and went to church expecting God to se...

  A Mechanical Device That Can and Will Fail                   Summer sun was filtering directly into our eyes as my sons and I arrived for training. As a person with migraines, I was less than thrilled. I would have preferred to skip it. I do, however, believe all children should learn to handle firearms safely, they are everywhere and knowledge creates wise children who take appropriate actions with dangerous tools. As such when the Boy Scouts offered the firearm merit badges, the boys signed up. I am very glad that I didn’t leave because the lesson was worth the discomfort of the sunlight. Before a single book was opened and way before anyone touched a weapon, the teacher stood up and told the kids the motto he wanted them to live by. “A safety is a mechanical device that can and will fail”. He maintained that people treat the “safety’ on a weapon as an excuse to treat a device that kills as “saf...

  At twelve years old I stood five foot seven- and one-half inches and weighed 80 pounds. It was just as grotesque and boney as it sounds. I was the local missionary’s daughter who usually wore dresses every day and had not yet figured out how to brush curly hair. It was mostly a halo of frizz around my head. Though I was not very old I had been helping with VBS and Bible release time classes for years. Each summer youth teams from New Jersey came to my mountains to help run VBS’s for several weeks. We were sent out in teams of one adult and 4 or 5 teens to run as many as three different VBS’s, in differing times and locations in a week.             Imagine a twelve-year-old, who looked as cool as I did, fitting into a group of sixteen- to eighteen-year-old kids from the city. It is as unimaginable as it sounds. It was a long week for me, ministering to the children that I loved while being a total outsider on my own team. As...

  Make Love at Home                   Way back in the dark ages, 1998ish, my brother and I were two single teens attending a weekly marriage seminar at our church. To fully get the picture you need to understand our church only had about 30-35 people attending. This seminar was held on Sunday evenings and mostly married people attended. Very married people. What I mean when I say that is my Grandparents, married 57 years and our oldest deacon and his wife, married 50+ years were the staple of our attendance. After that the pastor, married 30 years came in as the lightweight married couple. There were also a few single ladies and my brother and I, quite the cast of characters.                 The seminar had the title “Making Love Last Forever”. I am still unsure today why the seminar was necessary, the two couples attending...

  My friend Kayla recently lamented the lack of older women following the biblical mandate to instruct younger women. She pointed out that Titus 2:4-5 says “Older women are to teach the younger women to love their husbands and children. They are to teach them to think before they act, to be pure, to be workers at home, to be kind, and to obey their own husbands. In this way the Word of God is honored.” I thought about how often in my life I have also lamented the lack of Godly older women to take me under their wing and teach me. My friend was speaking passionately against the apathy of the older generation. I found myself considering the reasons in my own life I have seen the failure of following this model in churches.                 First, I always wonder at what age we should become the teacher. I am always looking for an adultier adult, a wiser woman to stand up and speak. James 3:1 warns us “not man...