Leaving a Legacy of Refuge
This guest blog post is written by Jamie Bailey of Expedition Marriage. The Three Cs: Calm, Cool, and Collected I will forever have these words etched into my heart and my mind. Those were the words spoken by my grandmother hundreds of times over throughout my childhood. They were spoken often, because they were needed often. Even from the earliest age, I don’t remember my life being anything close to calm, cool, or collected. I think if I were to return to the generations before me, I believe those words would still only be relative for instruction instead of descriptive of the atmosphere or anyone’s mind. The 3 Cs were…
An Advent of Yearning: Reconciling Loss With Gain
Honestly, is it really beginning to look a lot like Christmas? Methinks not, as Charles Dickens might have said. These days, the calendar and the commercials remind us. And we may be getting our decorations up. And for those of us who prepare our hearts for the Christ Child’s arrival, we can look for cues in carols and readings. Yet our hearts long for so much more. Because we are, in this, an advent of yearning, reconciling loss with gain. Preparing Our Hearts Means Inventorying Losses and Gains This reckoning is twofold. Advent is indeed a season of anticipation. It consists of the four Sundays preceding Christmas. Generally defined, it…
