Living life with steps of faith

Came across this blog post and just had to share!  It it Sarah Jakes writes, “Frustration arises when those surrounding us [clergy] begin to believe that the cost of my calling is relinquishing my humanity.   Because I have been given this or that, I am not allowed to receive the same grace I see you seek every Sunday?”

I don't know if I'll ever get use to when a church member says "goodbye."  The first time I experienced it was my first summer church internship.  I visited a woman at the hospital and when she told me "bye" I just knew it was the final "bye."  Next time I visited she was no longer with us. It comes as even more of a shock when it comes from someone who has been healthy and no one else would have a clue that they are dying.  Yet you both know that the "good-bye" is THE "good-bye" when it is said. There is a finality to it. I think that is why one of my High School classmates and I always end our conversations mid-sentence to be picked up next time we meet - however many years later it may be.  He had a final "good-bye" with a teenage friend and I now wonder if he knew then that it was THE "good-bye." Back in the "old days" people were more attentive to those dying moments.  We no longer keep ...

There are different stages I've been through on this infertility struggle.  The first was to not accept the diagnosis.  That whole pentecostal charismatic Christian idea that if you don't claim the disease it isn't really yours.  It will somehow go away.  But, then I did some research and the more I read the more I identified with the traits of someone with PCOS.  A few weeks ago I went through that denial stage again.  "Perhaps the doctor made a mistake and misdiagnosed me."  "Didn't the second ultra-sound technician say... wouldn't that mean that nothing was wrong."  etc. I kind of feel like I'm back in this stage again.  "Perhaps my medication is contributing to the fact that we are not having children." (Even though this medicine was introduced after diagnosis and I immediately experienced benefits to it.) Then I went through the "I don't know" stage. "I don't know what to think."  "I don'...