Through a friend on Twitter, @gailhyatt I’ve been exposed to some Orthodox Christian podcasts. They are interesting to listen to, they provide perspectives I wouldn’t always encounter from an Anglican viewpoint. Everyone needs perspective.

One of the podcasts I listen to is by a Father Thomas Hopko, it is called “Speaking the Truth in Love”. A week or so ago Fr. Tom read an email he had received from a listener which caught my attention. She wanted to know why God played favourites.

The lady indicated in her email she had grown up in an alcoholic home, which at minimum meant she had experienced emotional abuse. I didn’t grow up in an alcoholic home but I experienced abuse.

The lady wrote that she believed some children are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, they are holy from birth and have all of the advantages. Others never get the chance to become saints because they are used and abused and never have a choice. She asks why some go sailing up the mountain to be saints while others stumble around at the foot of the mountain, never able to trust God enough to make it up the mountain.
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I remember one of those rare times my dad told me a story about his wartime experiences, about his unit’s Chaplain and his unshakable faith. After a long day out on patrol near enemy lines in Italy his unit had found a deserted home to spend the night in. After they ate dad noticed the Chaplain seated by the window catching the last of the daylight, reading. Dad approached him and asked him “Padre, don’t you think you are taking an awful risk sitting there by the window?”. The answer he got was a calm, “son, if the good Lord is ready for me today, it wont matter where I’m sitting” and he returned to his book.

My mind went back to that story many times as I read Walsh’s book. He, who possessed that unquestioned trust in the one to whose hands he had entrusted his life. Walsh recounts her struggles to learn to take the leap of faith that let her trust as he had. She didn’t emerge from the battlefields of war ravaged Italy, she emerged instead from the war within that clinical depression engages us in.

That trust and the peace that comes with it didn’t come to her in a flash of almighty insight. It came to her one small piece and step at a time as she learned Christ doesn’t take us out of the pain that life brings us, he comes to hold us as we go through it together. She takes the reader through her own journey, not back to where she was before depression crumpled her but forward to where her growing trust in the Father was leading her, a step at a time. Read the rest of this entry

Today is Valentine’s Day, that day when traditionally couples express their undying love for each other. Well in some cases, hubby had better express it or momma wont be happy.

I’m a single these days, have been for the last 20 years. When Frank was alive Valentine’s Day wasn’t ignored, it just wasn’t able to be much of a deal. Frank, ever the romantic, would at some point during the day (likely when enough commercials reminded him what day it was) would say to me, “Hey it’s Valentine’s Day!”. I’d nod and he’d continue, “you should have got yourself something.”

Frank was never much on shopping, his idea of giving a gift was to hand me money and tell me to buy something for myself. I was never much into gifts I had to figure out myself, besides I had what I wanted, I had him. In the early years after he died I was hostile towards Valentine’s Day. It was a reminder to me of what I had lost. For all his rough edges, he had loved me and I loved him. Read the rest of this entry