Category Archives: Faith

“The Unlikely Disciple”

Posted on by

While I’ve had a sleepy dude on me, I’ve been able to get some reading done.

While listening to an episode of NPR’s “Religion Podcast” on my iPod, I heard about a book called The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose. His interview was pretty sweet so I decided to acquire a copy from Amazon.

The premise of the book is that Roose is spending a “study abroad” semester undercover at Liberty University, the evangelical liberal arts college founded by the late Jerry Falwell. While on a writing assignment with his boss, he visited Thomas Road Baptist Church, the church founded by Falwell, and found that he really could not communicate with the evangelical college students he met there. Realizing that this was a problem, he pondered the idea of spending a semester at Liberty as it was a foreign culture to him. He was able to arrange it and spent the spring of 2007 as a transfer student there. He lives in the dorms, takes part in prayer meetings, takes the core curriculum classes, sings in the choir at Thomas Road Baptist Church, and even goes on a short-term missions trip down to Florida over Spring Break to win the souls of the throngs of college students down there. He even does an interview with Falwell for the college paper and it ends up being the last print interview conducted by Falwell before he died in May of 2007.

I honestly could not put the book down and was forced to do it in order to get some sleep, to get the young prince to stop crying, or to eat — it was really that engaging. Granted, I’m a blog fan so I enjoy reading about peoples’ lives but this was definitely different. Kevin talked about his prep for heading to Liberty (his friend Laura doing a crash course on Evangelical Christianity for Dummies for him) as well as how he dealt with fitting in and not being conspicuous. One of the more interesting things was his attempts at not cursing — a book that had him using religious expressions instead of curse words which made him sound like a dork instead of blending in. 🙂

As a convert to Christianity, it was interesting to watch how his perspective on things changed as the semester went on. He doesn’t end up “being saved” but he’s moving toward that direction. He starts praying, he has a newfound respect for the Bible and for the faith, and he does start attending church occasionally. His friend Laura had told him that this semester could change him and I think it was a positive change.

The most interesting thing was his reaction when Jerry Falwell passed away. His interview had actually made him more human and I think having seen that side, Kevin was honestly sad when the news came down. I’m glad that he was there at the time because he talks about the two sides of the death. On one hand, Falwell was a monster to those with whom he disagreed (most specifically the GLBTQ community) and his death was a great thing. On the other hand, he was a person and definitely “not a hypocrite” (according to Kevin) and I think having seen him in person and talked to him, it was a real human being dying instead of this caricature in the media.

This is a book I’d recommend reading if you do want a semi-unbiased view of life in a hyper-evangelical environment. There’s no true way to be unbiased in this situation but Kevin does a really good job of it.

What The…?

Posted on by

CNN.Com: Alleged shooter’s ex-wife: He was capable of murder

So… the killing of Dr. George Tiller hits me on multiple levels.

1.) He was killed in church. Shouldn’t churches be sanctuaries from violence?
2.) The senior pastor of the church is a seminary classmate of mine (not sure if he remembers me but I remember him).
3.) Jon’s aunt is the assistant to the bishop of that synod and I’m sure is at least providing pastoral care in some fashion to the members of the church.

It’s one of those just mind-blowing things for me. I mean… I understand that some people feel that abortion is murder. However… murdering someone to show that murder is wrong? That’s a little twisted in terms of logic. There is no conceivable way to justify the murder of Dr. Tiller and those in the right-to-life community who claim to be able to do so are liars and guilty of the same sins of which they accused Dr. Tiller and other doctors who perform abortions. Life is either sacred or it isn’t. Pick one, people.

Incredibly Sad

Posted on by

Great Falls Tribune: Shelby teen dies in accidental shooting

I was awake with a migraine when the phone started ringing at 2:30 a.m. with calls about getting grief counselors set up to go to the high school this morning. Jon got about 4 hours of sleep and was out the door at 7:00 to be at the high school when students started arriving at 7:30. If I wasn’t scheduled to work today and if I hadn’t been flattened with a migraine, I likely would have been at the high school as well.

Graduation is this weekend and what should be a fun weekend for everyone is now going to be a somber occasion for most.

His mother was the nurse who admitted me to the Shelby hospital on April 6th and went down to Great Falls with me in the ambulance hours later. She prayed with me and held my hand and talked gently to me to keep me calm. Two days later, she came bursting into the NICU to see how Daniel and I were doing. I can’t express how awful I feel for her losing her son, especially as she was instrumental in mine making it into the world alive as well as me surviving his birth.

I am just incredibly sad at the moment.

Finally Starting to Comprehend

Posted on by

I’ve had an *interesting* couple weeks. One reason is that I’m back to work three days a week. This is a good thing because I really did miss my co-workers (even the ones I was ready to kill before I went on maternity leave) and I actually missed my work. (I know… I’m crazy.)

The other reason is that I’m now starting to comprehend the gravity of what I was going through during the week of April 5th when Daniel was born. When I saw my doctor on May 1st to get clearance to go back to work, she showed me my hospital report and it was pretty sobering to say the least. My platelet level was down to 30% of normal and in addition to the HELLP Syndrome (the form of pre-eclampsia that I had), there was also a placental abruption and I was bleeding into my uterus. They didn’t know about the placental abruption until they cut me open to do the c-section to save my life from the effects of the HELLP Syndrome so really, I could have lost Daniel and eventually bled to death myself if they hadn’t discovered it at that point.

This is pretty scary to think about because if it had hit 24 hours earlier, I would have been home alone and I could have had seizures and other complications. They were already not telling me how sick I was at the time because they didn’t want to panic me but it was a little unnerving when they had to catheterize me because they didn’t want me walking around in case I had a seizure once I got down to the hospital in Great Falls. I also wasn’t aware that the Ativan they were giving me wasn’t to calm me down but instead to prevent the seizing. (I also wish they’d given me the Ativan BEFORE they tried putting the catheter in, but I can’t have everything I want.)

Faith-wise, I realized that I’m finally able to pray again. I seriously could not pray for myself during that week in the hospital and the fact that it was Holy Week was completely irrelevant to me at the time. While I was (and am still) definitely grateful for all the people who came to visit me, sent flowers, prayed for me, and thought of me, that gratefulness was (and is) covering some woundedness in my soul because I was REALLY angry that God allowed me to get so sick and that OMG I WAS LYING IN THE HOSPITAL AND MY BABY WAS IN THE NICU WITH TUBES STICKING OUT OF HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, it was Holy Week and we were commemorating Our Lord’s Passion — that didn’t change the fact that I was in my own personal hell and what exactly was God doing about it!?!?!?!?!?!?!? My doctor (who is seriously the most awesome person on the planet) was trying to talk me down one morning and was making allusions to all the Holy Week stuff and I was thinking “and your point is?????” It’s so crazy because Holy Week is my favorite week of the Church year and it’s usually a week that I’m seriously into. Not so much this year!

I finally realized how angry I was on Wednesday night as I was driving home from Great Falls and proceeded to have a pretty decent screaming match with God. Seriously, at the time I wanted to know where exactly He was while all this was going on, while I was spending days sobbing, and while I was suffering so much internally while being a sweet grateful person on the outside. And yes, I know what the answer is to that: He was present with me through the people and the outpouring of love from the community. But… I’m still a bit angry and wounded nevertheless and it’s taking some time to really come to terms with that.

While I was driving home on Saturday, the following song came on my iPod and it just completely fit the feelings I was having.

Continue reading →

Chill Out Already!

Posted on by

There’s been a fair amount of flipping out about Obama doing the commencement address at Notre Dame because Obama is pro-choice and Notre Dame is a Catholic school. Apparently, there are protesters pushing baby carriages with bloody baby dolls and I’m sure Operation Rescue has set up banners of aborted fetuses. (Then again, Operation Rescue also picketed Urbana in 2000 so their logic and judgment is a little questionable.)

My word on all this:

CHILL OUT ALREADY!!!!!!

Everyone is acting like his commencement speech is going to promote killing babies and eating them or something. Pro-choice does not mean that you support abortion in every circumstance nor that you *LIKE* that abortion exists. For many people, it means that you do not believe that you have the right to make a decision like that for someone else. And yes, I realize that my stated stance of “pro-life/pro-legal” is essentially equivalent to being “pro-choice” in the eyes of most people. Deal with it.

To all the protesters out there: why don’t you put your money and your time where your mouth is and help to fund Crisis Pregnancy Centers so that women who are in a really tough circumstance can *get* the care they need and have some education about their options.