All beautiful the march of days, as seasons come and go; The Hand that shaped the rose hath wrought the crystal of the snow by Shelly Cruz The night before my dinner engagement was a nervous one. I wanted everything to be extra perfect for my get together the following day. I stayed up praying that evening. Morning came and I felt more at ease. After church service Cecilia’s family followed my family home and for the next 4 hours we talked and joked as if we had been friends for years. I seemed to Full post …
Tag: family-integrated church
Time Heals All Wounds ~ Part 1: The Model of a Christian Woman
March 22, 2010
All beautiful the march of days, as seasons come and go; The Hand that shaped the rose hath wrought the crystal of the snow This is a story of two very different families and how the Light of Jesus overflowed from one to the other. It is also a story about feeling rejected and very alone, when one family decided to end the friendship with the other. Time heals all wounds though, or so they say….. by Shelly Cruz I have always been known as a free spirit, an extrovert; I see life as an Full post …
NLQ FAQ: Are Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar “Quiverfull”?
March 8, 2010
by Hopewell Q: Are the Duggars Quiverfull? By their own admission, Jim-Bob and Michelle were so “grieved” after reading the information pamphlet in a birth control pill package that they turned their fertility over to God. (“About Us” para.1 See also, Dallas News). That decision has been the reason for their incredible family size of 19 children. Recently the media has offered several profiles of just who are “Quiverfull” families. Increasingly, the presence of such large, ideologically driven families is being documented through the medium of the age: reality TV shows and lifestyle cable channel Full post …
Lydia’s smile could have lit a room
February 22, 2010
This post first appeared at Beauty For Ashes by Laurie M. Paul and I have just returned home from the funeral of a most precious little girl. Lydia’s smile could have lit a room. Now it reflects the glory of God the Savior for all eternity. . . . It is now exactly two weeks since we got a phone call….well, let me back up. Over a year ago a new family began attending our tiny church. A husband and wife with nine kids – six biological, three adopted from Liberia. They were a lovely Full post …
Daughter of the Patriarchy: A Jewel or a Trash Can
January 19, 2010
by Sierra William Branham with a woman in his prayer line. (He would lay on hands, pray, and they would walk away healed, allegedly.) If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always had an answer. If you asked again in ten minutes, it would be a different one. I wanted to be a figure skater, detective, veterinarian, zoologist, writer, astronaut and archaeologist – and not just one at a time. When I went outdoors to play, I climbed rocks and saw them as mountains. When I jumped over Full post …
Daughter of the Patriarchy: Scooby Doo and the Angel
January 12, 2010
by Sierra By my eighth birthday, Anna’s church had become our own. My father attended sporadically, but my mother and I adopted a weekly ritual of driving forty minutes through the woods, to the highway, passing numerous small churches on our way to the secret annex of the YMCA. No one would have guessed there was a church there, unless they happened by as we all bustled in with our flowing skirts and dresses and exited under the mid-afternoon sun. My mother was enthralled, talking excitedly to Anna and her new friend Sheila every day. Full post …
It alienates people, pushes friends and loved ones away
January 2, 2010
by Erika My friend was waiting for me to convince her to help me run away. As my freshman year of high school plodded on, things at home became more and more constrictive and conservative. My friends from school started to drift away as my parents pulled the reigns in at home tighter and tighter. The few friends that stuck around were the ones that were known mostly as the “outsiders” at the public school, so they were of a rebellious and non-conformist attitude anyway. I always felt that my other friends had moved on Full post …
Daughter of the Patriarchy: Old-Girl in Young-Girl Disguise
November 25, 2009
by Sierra “What did you think?” My mother asked, as our blue Chevrolet rolled smoothly out of the parking lot, mingling with more expensive cars on a fresh-paved freeway. “I liked it,” responded seven-year-old I. “I actually listened.” We were talking about our first visit to Anna and Sven’s church, an informal affair that gathered weekly in the upper annex of a suburban YMCA. The church had begun in the pastor’s living room, hosting only two or three families. Over the next few years it had grown to six or seven. The pastor and his Full post …
Michelle says, Never enough babies!
