Real Life Reflections

Gideon: By his own admission, his family was the weakest of his tribe, and he was the weakest in his family (Judges 6: 15-16). Midianites: Big bullies who oppressed the Israelites back in the day. As the story goes, this little-nobody-Gideon is doing manual labor for his dad (I'm thinking that this might be akin to working at Walmart - not exactly a career - or even a job - that causes anyone to preen), when an angel calls him, "a mighty man of valor" (Judges 6: 12). Huh? Oh, you mean this other guy, right? Nope, I'm talkin' to you. Fast forward and we find this little-nobody-Gideon camping near Israel's oppressors with a team of 32,000. This seems like a lot until Gideon checks out the enemy and finds that there are so many Midianites and their pals, the Amalekites, that no one can count them. They seemed "like locust in abundance and their camels were without number as the sand that is on the seashore." (Judges 7: 12) Gulp. What does God ...

This is my son with his wife and their son (taken over a year ago - note to self: take pictures of your children, not just your grand children at family gatherings!) My son's birthday is coming up, which as birthdays do, causes me to reflect on him and on his life. If you read my last post, A Letter to My Son , you've probably figured out that he wasn't the golden child that all his teachers dreamed of having in their classroom. At times, I feared that he wouldn't graduate (at least not with his class). I shed a lot of tears during those first eighteen years of his life. So did he. At the end of this month, he will turn thirty. Thirty. (Yikes!) Not only did he graduate high school with his class, he graduated college too - in four years. He's married to a wonderful woman who is totally crazy about him (and he, her). They have an adorable son. She is a pediatrician. He is a well-respected audio engineer - the type that gets called out of the blue and offered...

This is my grandson (I know. He's pretty dang cute, right?) His daddy, my son, posted a picture of him on Instagram with a caption stating that he could not love this baby any more. What he doesn't know, what he can't possibly know right now, is that he will... Just wait, my dearest son, just wait. When his kindergarten teacher mistakes his inability to sit still for rebelliousness. When she pulls you aside on a daily basis to tell you all that he's done wrong that day. When she gives him eleven demerits in just three hours of school. When she keeps him in from recess day after day, although recess is what he needs most in his structured day. When he's in trouble so often that you find him lying on his bed sobbing and wondering why God made him, and he says, "I should just kill myself" - in kindergarten. And your heart breaks. When his best friend finds a new best friend. And your heart breaks. When you walk by his 5th grade classr...

The three of us stood there talking after service. It's what we do at my church. Little groups of people standing around throughout the sanctuary catching up and making plans and meeting new friends. I was speaking with a long-time friend and my sister-in-law. The long-time friend is one of our ministry leaders who has a passion for The Cure by Bill Thrall and Bruce McNicol.  I've read The Cure .  I didn't like it.  My sister-in-law is currently in one of our women's bible studies. They're studying The Cure. Long-time friend asked Sister-in-law what she thought. I started to feel oh-so-uncomfortable. What will I say if he asks me if I've read it? What do I say that is both supportive and honest? The next service was about to begin. We needed to move out. The moment passed. Whew. On the drive home, my thoughts zeroed in on that conversation. Over the past ten years or so, I've read countless books with the same message as The Cure . It's not the...

Mary and the infamous Martha: I've long pondered these two sisters. It's always seemed so unfair of Jesus to rebuke Martha for her busy-ness. I confess, I've taken it personally. I'm very practical. I see what needs to be done, I do it. I like life to be orderly and organized, and with a house full of guests, just like Martha, I'd be in the kitchen. Why should she be rebuked? I'm not a Bible scholar, and I don't know this for a fact, but I think Mary and Martha are mentioned by name in the gospels of Luke and John more than any other individuals besides the twelve apostles. That has to mean something, right? Like maybe "pay attention to these stories, they're important!" The other day I began reading John 11. It's the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I'm reading along: Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His ...

A little over a month ago, I set out to go through the assignments in the book, The Highly Sensitive Person's Companion. Five blog posts later, I've found that there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in this particular subject. My motivation in writing on the life of introverts is to encourage and support those blessed with this character trait. If that's not happening, I have no problem moving on. Which is exactly what I plan to do. I have several writing projects in process, and I plan to take a break from blogging to spend some time where my passion is - children's literature. Of course, if you're an introvert in need of a little encouragement or some helpful hints, please feel free to contact me by email (lgal116@gmail.com). I'd be more than happy to offer whatever support, advice, and encouragement I can!

A few years and two children after my husband and I married, we gathered in front of a TV along with my small crowd of in-laws. One of my brothers-in-law had converted a collection of home movies into the latest cutting-edge technology: VHS tapes. We watched the black and white antics of twenty-seven cousins who grew up closer than many siblings do. As the tape played, I began to marvel at my mother-in-law and her sisters. I only had two children and often enough felt like sanity was just beyond my reach. Here were three women with twenty-seven children between them. And no, they were not sweet, calm, book-loving children that never gave their parents cause for hair-tearing. They were lively, spirited, wrestling, yelling, prank-pulling, Little Rascals-worthy normal children. As one Easter, somewhere in the 1960s, scrolled across the screen, and these cherubic children in their clean, pressed, darling Easter attire paraded down the front steps of my husband's boyhood home, my marv...