The Great Adventures of Milly and Grandy Frank I

 I woke up with a new thought or perspective this morning.  Instead of feeling frusterated with things of the world, I woke up feeling sorry for it.  What joy is missed out on and what love is never felt when people are fearful to experience.  One of the things that I have heard from so many pastors is that Jesus loves us unconditionally and he can understand us because he came as man and EXPERIENCED our experiences.  One thing both faith and science tell us is that we become more empathtic and understanding and loving when we share in an expeirience with someone else.  Not observe, read about or watch, but experience.  We all have had times where we thought we understood someones grief until we ourselves experienced its depth in the loss of a loved one.  We thought we understood the healthcare system until we had to navigate it.  We thought we understood bullying until we were bullied.   I cannot begin to speak of things I have not...

We must not mistake watching from knowing.  In a world where we can watch everything around us through social media we have entered a new realm both good and bad.  It can be used as propoganda to seperate people and prey on them but it can also be used to bring understanding and community.  However, we must remember we are only watching, from a bias formed from the filmer and from our own experiences and background.  Knowing on the other hand is experience, its the empathy that comes from the depths of the actual emotion that comes from experience.  I can watch a roller coaster and imagine what its like and draw conclustions, but until I ride that roller coaster I cannot really fathom what a roller coaster is like.   Never in history have we lived in a world where at any moment I can look at what is happening in any city, country, household.  While it may inspire me it might also give me insecurity.  You think your house looks fine until you ...

 And it keeps getting worse.....this post is for my children, my babies, who are now full grown adults who have to deal with ignorance on a daily basis.  My children who may not have been born to me but are my ride or die in my heart until the end.  My heart is broken for them to wake up in a nation where the President posts an extremely racist video of the Obamas....... Knowing that people whom my children consider friends will not step up and call it out, who will continue to argue politics and the worst of that support this administration and still call the same Jesus.  That Jesus, yes the one whom everyone applauded when we were called to grow our family and trusted God to bring just the right children into our home.  The God who choose our family to have different varying amounts of melanin.  The family people like to parade around at how "brave" it was to step out in faith.  Those same people who can not outwardly support an administration that w...

With all of the Epstein files being released and seeing the atrocities that have gone on in the shadows of powerful places, it has me contemplating how such evil can be so pervasive that it is able to be hidden for so long by so many.  One of the hardest things in situations involving evil is why...why...why.... how can someone care so little for another much less a child.  I am not speaking in any political way, this goes far beyond politics and sides, this is just pure evil.  But how does it happen and stay hidden at such a large scale and even now and all the years of this and lengths some have gone to protect predators... but that is just is, in that lies the answer.  It is always about power. Victimization is always about secrets and lies, its where it all starts.  Getting into a victims head and you hold the power, use strength and threats, grooming and promises.  Set it up so once they are in they cannot get out.  It was never a choice for the v...

Yesterday  I was singing a song at church that touched my soul, the verse said, "I sought the Lord and he heard and he answered.... that's why I trust him"  For the last 5 or more years I have had to deal with a lot of soul searching within my own faith.  I haven't once lost the love for God or doubted his existence, but I have questioned things that I have heard from the community of believers, pastors, social media, family, friends and most importantly personal experiences.  I find the best way to explain it is biblical, it is all nonsense....we cannot fathom the ways of an all mighty omnipresent God in the same way a 2 year old cannot comprehend the mind of an adult.  I have learned a lot about myself and my walk and my life.  I have clearly seen and experienced what it is to live without God's presence in my life and when he transformed me, I have lived in a marriage where I have seen a husband live without the presence of God in his life and then a tra...

We must be careful when we start to combine church and state.  There was good reason why it was separated and we are already seeing problems as its being reunited. As Christians we are told to go and make disciples.  We for many decades have gone as missionaries to foreign lands to spread the good news.  We are called to love God and to love one another.  Over the years, churches, hospitals schools and orphanages were built to serve others.  The gospel message of one of truth and love.  Mercy and grace were the hallmarks of Jesus' ministry. Government was best described to me by one of my college professors back in the day as simple as it is the organization that ends up taking care of the problems that overwhelmed the current operating systems.  For example, when we don't have private organizations to freely take care of our sick, the government created a healthcare program, when the private organizations were unable to house the poor or care for the ...