Author’s note: This week was one of those where I was pretty consistently busy nearly until bedtime. I would recommend this pace to pretty much no one.
But I continue to have real-life kids, like the one to whom I have been raising my eyebrows about chores three days in a row. Or whichever one left a fingernail clipping on my sofa. And the one I had to apologize to while editing this version of the post below.
If you’ve been a longtime follower of this blog, bear with me today as I repost an oldie but a goodie, due to extenuating circumstances. It remains true: To the yes-man or -woman in my life, I need you.
Thanks, everyone, for the grace. – Janel
As we prepare to celebrate Good Friday, I’m marveling all over again at these paradoxes bound up in Jesus’ death: all we gained through his loss.
Hope it increases your overwhelming adoration like it does mine.
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Author’s note: This is another one of those posts (like most of mine?) that I write from the thick of it. As in, not from mastery. As in, I was dealing with this last night. Turns out I not only get the “shoulds” with myself; I get them with other people. As in my kids.
My husband has probably said it more than ten times: “When you’re tired, you get the shoulds.”
I should call her. I need to write that note. I think we need to make a plan for disciplining [insert child]. I should be more diligent about…
This morning (or was it yesterday morning?), snowflakes were seesawing down on my hair–and there I was wearing sandals. I kissed my family goodbye and loaded myself and an overstuffed hiking backpack into a friend’s Prius.
And so began my two-week trip to Asia (via plane, not Prius). After about seven years of not really being together, spread out all over the world, my sisters and I are converging in Thailand to celebrate a big birthday of my youngest sister’s. She works with migrants, and she and her husband are treading through the adoption process. I get a kick out of bragging on the two of them because their work is long, slow, hard, terribly important, and literally stuffed with blood, sweat, and tears.
As we prepare to celebrate Good Friday, I’m marveling at these paradoxes bound up in Jesus’ death: all we gained through his loss. Hope it increases your overwhelming adoration like it does mine. (PRINT IT HERE, and feel free to share if you like it.)
Who believes what we’ve heard and seen?
Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?
Isaiah 53:1, MSG
The power of shame continues to make my mind fizz. (Yours might, too: This post on shame in parenting has drawn more readers than any other post on this site, bar none.)
But now all those thoughts are bubbling over what shame might look like in a marriage; in our most intimate concentric circle of community. See, I know shame—this idea that I’m not worthy of connecting with someone—immediately leads me to cover up.
Take the typical fight with a spouse. First reaction is not typically, You’re so right. I’m snippy, and I have a profound case of PMS. It’s more along the lines of blame-shifting (Well, if you’d stop overreacting like some kind of hypersensitive Pomeranian). Denying (I didn’t say you were arrogant! I said you were cocky). Hiding (If I don’t say anything, it will look a lot like peace and taking the higher road).
You’ll have to forgive me for the rather junior-high-level humor today. I now have a teenager (which makes me feel old. Another post, that one) and two middle-schoolers. So you can imagine the stimulating conversation that surrounds the dinner table (which can actually feel more like a cafeteria table. Sometimes I feel like I should be wearing a hairnet. Box of milk with your fries, anyone?).
At any rate—at a certain point in our marriage, my husband kindly asked for us to spend no further dollars on air freshener for the bathroom. His reasoning, at the time: It only kind of layers on top of the real smell lurking beneath. You start inhaling something flowery or sentimental, with a name like Tahitian Sunrise (because who doesn’t want a tangerine sunrise from Tahiti in the loo?) or Honeysuckle Nectar (with a name like that, maybe we should stay in here all day!) or Apple Cinnamon (which reminds one, oddly, of eating pie). Then, BAM. It hits you. This is not nice. This is not nice at all. There is nothing “fresh” or edible about this. Hence my husband’s affectionate moniker of “Poo-potpourri.”
Let us hope that we are all preceded in this world by a love story.
–Sweet Land (PG, 2005)
I tease my husband (the poor introvert!). Because whenever I write about him—he, who washes his hands of anything to do with internet attention—readers eat. It. Up.
“To be able to look backward and say, ‘This, this has been the finest year of my life’–that is glorious! But anticipation! To be able to look ahead and say, ‘The present year can and shall be better!’–that is more glorious! I have done nothing but open windows–God has done the rest. There has been a succession of marvelous experiences of the friendship of God. I resolved that I would succeed better this year with my experiment of filling every minute full of the thought of God than I succeeded last year. And I added another resolve–to be as wide open toward people and their need as I am toward God. Windows open outward as well as upward. Windows open especially downward where people need the most!
“…There is nothing that we can do excepting to throw ourselves open to God.”*
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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