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The Elusive BFF
By Vanessa Rasanen What’s wrong with me? This is a question I’ve asked myself often. Sometimes after I’ve managed to royally stick my foot in my mouth and insult someone — again. Or perhaps after a particularly stellar display of gullibility at believing some made-up claim from my husband. (I’m learning on that one, though… albeit slowly.) Or it could also be following another moment when I stumble and trip over my own sinful feet and treat someone — a friend, my kids, a stranger — in a not-so-nice or neighborly manner. But usually it’s for the simple reason that I seem to be the only woman on the face of the…
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A Mom’s Ministry
By Allison Hull Recently I was in a discussion with an acquaintance. While our kids played, we hit the various “mom talking points”. Health, kids, their bodily functions, who gets the least amount of sleep, and guess-what-that-stain-is all the while being interrupted by a scream from a child or barking at them to stop whatever torture they were inflicting on a sibling. If you’re a mom to young children, you know this is just an average conversation. But towards the end it turned weird. She started asking me about my faith and what I was doing to further the kingdom. Caught off guard I half-smiled, turned and gestured to my…
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Stuck in a Bad Mood
By Vanessa Rasanen My house is currently in disarray. Our to-do list seems to grow right alongside the pile of packed boxes in the corner and my nearly-third trimester belly that has long-been hiding my feet. We are, perhaps crazily, working to get our house ready to put on the market in hopes of moving out — and up — before this fourth baby blesses our home and family with cute coos and sleepless nights. As if that wasn’t enough on our plate, we are also — all of us — adjusting to my husband’s new full-time work schedule in addition to national guard duty, an online course, church commitments,…
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Conversation and Consolation of the Brethren
By Vanessa Rasanen I have a confession. I’m not the most patient person. Shocker, I know. I get easily frustrated with others — including (and perhaps especially) with those closest to me, my husband and my children. Even my dogs. I let the day-to-day irritations of life get under my skin more than I should, and I yell, fume, and even — sadly — stomp my feet. To make it all worse I will sometimes vent to friends, privately complaining about the mess the kids made, the struggle we’re having with the kids’ manners, or even the annoying habit of some stranger on the road or at the grocery store. My…
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Milk, Meat, and Introducing Solids
By Mary Moerbe You don’t have to be a parent to know that life gradually gives you more to chew on and understand. Each one of us learned, “The sky is blue” before we learned how and why that happens — if we learned — and religious life and education is in some ways comparable: there is milk and there is meat. St. Peter is clear: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:2-3). Taste! Drink! Grow by the goodness of our God! Long for pure spiritual milk. Wake…
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Amazing
By Allison Hull “You look AMAZING in that dress!” “Wow, I can’t believe how beautiful you are in that outfit!” “You got a haircut — it suits you so well!” Gushing about other people in their clothes comes easy to me. I can say those things as an outsider looking at them. I can see how the right type of clothes just puts them at ease and makes them glow. I see how a new haircut or color can give them an extra bounce in their step. And I see that when I comment on it they seem to transform and really own their look. They truly do look amazing…
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Four Ways to Support Missions
By Vanessa Rasanen We want to help this ministry or that mission, but we only see the big ways to do so — seminary to become a pastor or becoming a missionary and personally setting our own boots to the ground. Yet we often have other vocations and limitations that prevent these paths being chosen — be that the young children in our keep, physical limitations on our abilities, or financial strains on our budgets. We need not throw up our hands in defeat, though, deciding it simply isn’t our job to help these people and shrugging off our desire to do more. We can help and serve even when…
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For Those Weary in Discernment
By Vanessa Rasanen I am tired. And while a lot of that could be blamed on pregnancy exhaustion and restless sleep, some of it has to do with discernment. Discernment is tiring. How wonderful would it be if we could trust anything with the “Jesus” label on it? How awesomely simple would it be if we could determine Truth based on how we feel? Yet, it’s not that easy. As I’ve grown in my understanding of scripture and Lutheran doctrine, I’ve found myself becoming more wary when approaching the Christian writing of others, whether in blog posts, books, or even simple tweets. A red flag automatically raises when words initiate…
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The Harm of Sharing Personal Testimony
By Vanessa Rasanen Witness and testimony are good and biblical, but somewhere along the lines these became little about Jesus and much more about us. Instead of sharing the Gospel — the good news of His Grace and Salvation (and, ahem, why people need it) — too often we’re sharing stories of life-change or conversion. Left and right, here and there, we hear stories — moving, emotional, impressive, and heartbreaking — of how faith in Christ has helped someone, picked them up out of the rubble, dragged them away from the rock-bottom they had hit, and brought them into a life of joy and peace. Now, I like a good motivational story as much as the next…
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How Do I Handle My Guilt Over Choosing Public Schools?
By Mary Abrahamson “Dear Sisters of Katie Luther, We have made the difficult choice of having our children in public school rather than the local Lutheran school. Though we catechize regularly in our home, we feel inundated with warnings not to trust our children to secular teaching. Despite all the time, energy, and prayer we put into this decision, I am still wracked with incredible guilt. Help?” Dear sister, my most basic answer for almost any maternal guilt is this: think long term. Your primary vocation is to educate your children unto Salvation. This does not happen overnight, nor is there any one way that is more sanctified than others. There are…
