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Hard Does Not Mean Bad
By Vanessa Rasanen Sometime last year in a desperate attempt to find reprieve from the exhaustion that comes with having four kids (including a newborn), a husband traveling for work, and a full time job, I found list after list of remedies that I couldn’t fathom fitting into my daily routine of craziness. Go to bed earlier? Ha! Post-bedtime is when I finally get to sit and enjoy the quiet so I can hear myself think… assuming there isn’t laundry to be folded or dishes to be done, of course. When my husband is home, that’s our time to connect, talk, or watch a show together. Exercise? Yeah. Endorphins-shmendorphins. I…
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Born Still Part Three
Post 3 By Genevieve Wagner Editors Note: Genevieve is a dear friend of mine for many years. She has graciously agreed to share her family’s recent full term stillbirth, and the hope and faith that her family has. After the birth, our family photographer was allowed to come back while I was getting stabilized – we wanted to make sure I was okay before calling the children back. Soon they came to the room with our friends who had been watching them as well as our pastor. They were surprised to find out the baby was a boy – that brought my son to tears. They were each offered the…
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Born Still Part Two
By Genevieve Wagner Editors Note: Genevieve is a dear friend of mine for many years. She has graciously agreed to share her family’s recent full term stillbirth, and the hope and faith that her family has. Our world had tipped. How was this possible? What are we going to tell our kids? What do we do next? How do you pack for this? Everything we were planning for – the unmedicated birth like 3 of the siblings, the peaceful home waterbirth like the 4 year old’s – it was all instantly switched for a very medical birth… and we wouldn’t be bringing a baby home. Now traveling in rush…
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Open Letter to My Non-Christian Family and Friends
Dear family and friends, I am sorry. I have failed you. Time and time again I have let you down. I have not cared for you as I should. I have been selfish, putting my own comfort ahead of your well-being. Even now, I’m choosing the easy route, typing this out rather than saying it directly to you. Please forgive me. I know it seems strange that I became a Christian, that I attend church every Sunday, that I teach our children God’s Word, that I believe in God’s creation of the earth in seven days thousands of years ago, rather than millions. I know it probably seems like I…
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Finding Contentment in the Tough Decisions
By Vanessa Rasanen I sat uncomfortably on the couch — or was it a loveseat? No matter. The man across from me listened as I rambled a bit, my eyes shifting off to the corner of the room and then to my feet and then back to him. I’ve never been comfortable with eye contact when I’m speaking, and ever since I had someone call me out on my rude way of looking around during a conversation I’m well-aware that I am doing this now. The man chuckles slightly when I finally stop. “You are very black and white in your thinking. You seem concerned with whether you’re doing the…
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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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Are you a Good Christian?
By Mary Abrahamson First let’s answer what makes a person Christian? Well, that’s an easy answer. Belief in one’s total sin and depravity, and further belief that Jesus’ perfect life and sacrificial death cleanses one from all that sin. Somehow though, when we apply the adjective, Christian, to life or another noun, or when we put an adjective such as good or true in front of the noun, Christian, it’s easy to mix up the Law and the Gospel. Or to confuse Sanctification and Moral Living. We hear quite often phrases like Christian living or Christian life or Christian home, good Christian, true Christian, etc. These conjure up images…
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Can Doctrine Become an Idol?
By Vanessa Rasanen Now, I’m a fairly new Lutheran, and certainly no expert or authority on our beliefs, but I at least know we hold our confessions in high esteem. We are often passionate and perhaps a bit stubborn. I, personally, don’t see this as bad. I think this fervor has helped to keep us rooted in scriptural truth for centuries. Yet I have often heard the warning: “Doctrine can become an idol”. And typically from folks who have left the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, actually. For months, I pondered this, weighing it for any possible validity. Were my friends right? Was my church, were my pastors, were all the historical theologians possibly making an…
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Birth Fears, Redux
By Allison Hull It’s a birthday! Everyone’s excited for the first birthday, right? Can’t wait to see the cake smashing and the icing covered face. Can’t wait to see them try to rip into a present and probably pass out from the sugar coma. Birthdays are supposed to be joyous times filled with eagerness for the years to come. For some moms it’s not all joy. Some births are not always joyous and some are downright scary. As I near a first birthday I’m reminded of that time for me over and over again. And I’m reminded of this article Holly posted in July. https://katieluthersisters.org/2015/07/birth-fears/ When she first wrote it…
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Why All This Crazy Violence?
By Keri Wolfmueller Where on earth did all the crazy people come from? And, for goodness sakes, how did they get guns? These seem to be the two platforms people land on when discussing the current rise of violence in our country. The argument sways between more gun control laws or between mental health issues. Well, I’d like to offer up a third alternative. We’ve got to dig a bit deeper, go back a little further. Our country is in LOVE with death. Sound weird? What if I say it like this, our country places NO value on life. Making more sense? I’d like to argue that we have…
