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In: Family and Friends, Prayer and Devotions, Suffering

  I joined the Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month Blog Tour due to personal experience. In my teens, my grandfather suffered a form of Alzheimer’s combined with dementia and ended up losing his home and much of his possessions before anyone realized he was unable to take care of them and defend himself from con artists. It was a terrible time and as he was living with my family we continued to be baffled by his odd behavior. Like many families who don’t understand the disease and/or don’t recognize the symptoms, my family operated under the mistaken idea that Grandpa could be persuaded to “buck up”Read More →

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In: Book Reviews, Gospel, Random Acts of Thinking

As a Christian writer, I want to make a positive spiritual impact on my readers. Some insist the best way to do this is to hide my beliefs while trying to subtly influence the reader’s beliefs. As I understand the Bible, a faith that is hidden can’t touch anyone in a way that will draw them closer to God. What can touch people is a plain-spoken, humble faith that is neither fake nor forced but lived out naturally. When we do that in any setting, the only non-Christians we’ll offend are folks too hardened for the Holy Spirit to draw them by any means. InRead More →

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In: Bible and Theology, Faith, Lament, Prayer and Devotions, Suffering

Christians like to argue over the nature of the thorn in the flesh, whether it’s physical disease or a demonic assault. My response: who says we can only have one thorn in our flesh? I have several of the chronic illness sort. Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome is a hormone problem that can cause depressive moods. On top of that, I have inattentive-type ADD, which can cause meltdowns, especially if I get over-stimulated, and I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which again has triggers that can cause me to regress back to the way I thought as a child. When that happens, I’m stuck thinking like an ADD child/teen inRead More →

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In: Abuse, Book Reviews, Prayer and Devotions

I asked Adam Graham to buy me One Mind’s Eye by Kathy Tyers for my last birthday for a couple reasons. One was, at the time, it was priced higher than I was comfortable spending on an ebook for an ordinary occasion. The second was the title reminded me of an old title of one of my books and the plot line included the use of artificial reality, as she calls it. So for once I was curious about her tech gadgets rather than simply suckered by a cute, abused orphan. Okay, so there is also an orphaned teenage girl dealing with a controlling momRead More →

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In: Devotional Writings, Faith, Fear and Anxiety, God's promises, Suffering

Some fear Ebola. Some fear nuclear attacks on or our own governments attacking their own people. Some fear disasters like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Some are so afraid, they ignore that in Mathew 24 Jesus said such phenomena are not signs of the end, implying they’re instead the status quo on the way to the end. It seems to be getting worse since we get reports from further away, faster than ever. If these are “birth pangs,” the earth has been already having contractions for millennia, and we haven’t been measuring long enough, widely enough, to really have any idea how far apart the contractionsRead More →