I found that my memories were accurate and that there was not a whole lot that I read that I had forgotten. That wasn’t the problem. The issue was that my understanding of the nature of those events was warped. As I began talking about my childhood and teenage experiences with Dan and a few close friends, they responded with shock and sympathy.
I came to the same conclusion that divorce is… wonderful. I don’t mean it isn’t sad or hard or even tragic when it happens. But it is WONDERFUL that we have a choice. That we aren’t stuck. That we can unmake a decision, walk away, start over, or simply realize that who we are now is no longer suited to partner with the person that made sense once upon a time.
That’s the beauty and the frustration of being bisexual: you have the option to ignore the reality of your sexuality but you can also feel invisible – as if no one can know your fullness without intentional effort on your part.
Attempts to shame, cajole, or threaten people to keep them from coming to new theological perspectives is spiritually abusive. We have got to start taking note of what this looks like and call it out publicly when we see it.
the penal substitutionary atonement theory is just one more toxic belief created by patriarchal Christianity. It does not reflect the nature or desires of God any more than the sexual slavery and genocides seen throughout the Bible reflect God’s purposes. Those things are descriptive of human cultures during those eras, and the Bible records human attempts to understand God with the explanations available to them during their time in history.
Rage has been my friend for a very long time. We have had a complicated relationship full of betrayals and misunderstandings, and truthfully, I’ve been the hurtful one. Rage has stuck by me even when I didn’t love her like she deserved to be loved. When I was around 6 or 7 years old, my pastor’s college-aged son came out as gay. The church was in uproar. I didn’t even know what “gay” meant, but I was heartbroken that the…
I did not expect to wake up this angry today, but grief is a weird companion and where trauma rears its head can rarely be anticipated. Yesterday morning, I received an email from a friend who is still employed by my previous organization, PIONEERS (though not for much longer). She wanted to know if I had seen this article yet. “Sounds similar to your situation,” she said. She had recently found the author, Breanna, through a podcast and suspected it was a…
my counselor casually mentioned how my family had been scapegoated in the missions community. After she said that I spent several weeks reading about scapegoating and trying to decide if she was right. I think she was,
(This is taken from a newsletter sent out a couple of years ago. Having had a number of conversations about my observations on spiritual warfare in Bali, I thought it would be helpful to make it public.) Recently a friend of ours, Adam, came to visit us. One day we arranged for a Hindu friend (Mr. T) who is a driver to take him around a particular area, and that evening ended up at Mr.T’s house enjoying traditional Balinese hospitality. At…
Have you ever wondered about the nasty narratives in biblical book of Judges like the story of Japhthah’s daughter who became a child sacrifice in order to fulfill her father’s rash battle vow? Or what about the one in Judges 19 – 21 that begins with the concubine who is gang raped until dead and ends in the pillaging of Jabesh-Gilead for virgin girls. Why is that grisly story in there? The point of the book of Judges is to…