Tag: christianity

enjoy life, life, prayer

Make Your Commute a Blessing

So, the truck we bought last April has a problem with the transmission. It’s in the shop, although if the repair’s going to cost more than a couple hundred bucks (ha!), we have no way of paying for it. I’m not really sure what the point is. Too bad we have 20 more payments to make on it, huh? But chin up, carry on and all that. So out comes the trusty, dusty 1995 Pontiac Gran Prix to do its duty to the Trotter family once again and haul the hubby to and from the bus stop each day. Which means that I’ve spent more than my normal amount of time driving over the last week. (I’m totally spoiled – if I don’t absolutely have to leave my little town, I don’t!) Last night while driving back home from the bus stop with a sleepy hubby in the passenger seat, I realized that I had left one of my very best idea for enjoying the hard life out of my book: praying while you drive.

A couple of years ago, I was going to be a massage therapist and my teacher was the most unique man – a Christian hypno/massage therapist who claims to be able to see angels around people and read their auras, among other unusual talents. He also believes that after Jesus’ return, we’ll all be nudists. And that Americans ought to be working to overthrow their government and that the law of attraction is basically true. Yeah, he’s a mite strange, but also very smart, kind, humane and tolerant. And faithful. He loves Jesus more than he loves himself. (I always think that one of the real benefits of a properly functioning Christian faith is that it means you’re more impressed that someone is good and kind than put off by how strange they are. You get to meet much more interesting people that way.)

Any ways. As I mentioned, in addition to being a massage therapist, this man was also a highly trained and skilled hypnotherapist. Often he would meet Christians who objected to the idea of hypnosis as un-Christian. He would always respond by trying to convince them that hypnosis is actually the deepest state of prayer that a person can obtain. While in a state of hypnosis, he believed, all the parts of yourself that are keep you cut off from your true identity and connection to God – your tendency to criticize, be fearful, be self-conscious and uncertain – are temporarily deactivated. He would also try to explain that hypnosis is actually a very normal, natural state which we all slip in and out of many times a day. The best example, he would say, is when you are driving. It’s how you can get to where you are going and not really remember much about the drive there.

When I heard him say that, something clicked in my head. Continue reading “Make Your Commute a Blessing”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
life, relationships, religion

First Sunday of Advent – Waiting

I’ve said before that the events which lead to my husband and my separation last year was so intense and sordid that it would have made a great episode of Dateline Special Edition. If only we had no shame and one of us were a homicidal maniac. But, since we enjoy healthy levels of shame and we didn’t devolve into poisoning one another (not that such a thing was never contemplated), it’s a story which will have to wait ’til the great by and by to be widely disseminated. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t really anything either of us did that pushed us over the edge. Rather, it was the way the response to events unfolded which undid us.

In his book, Passionate Marriage, Dr. David Schnarch says that couples are pretty much always working at about the same emotional level. It’s why they are able to bond to each other. Couples who are a mismatch in terms of emotional depth, maturity and functioning who somehow marry each other nearly always end up with a failed marriage within the first two years. What happened with us, and what I believe happens to many couple facing an intensely traumatic experience, was that as we coped (or didn’t cope) with what was going on, we were jolted into wildly different places emotionally speaking. Instead of being matched and basically moving forward and growing up emotionally in the normal push and pull ways that couples do, we were suddenly completely out-of-sync. And within two years, our marriage was kaput.

Of course, we’re back together now although I can’t begin to say that everything is fixed. Instead, we seem to have stumbled into a way forward which is familiar to any serious Christian: waiting. We’re just waiting. Waiting for the other to work through their issues. Waiting for greater empathy and understanding to form. Waiting for time to take away the sting of the past. Waiting.

Waiting on God and for God is a theme found all throughout scripture. Abram waited. Joseph waited. Moses waited. The psalmists waited. The prophets waited. Jesus waited. The women and the disciples waited. We still wait today through dry times and unanswered prayers and silence that as a psalmist said is like a dark cloud God wears about him. As Christians, these waiting times are frustrating. We know that somehow this waiting is for a reason. Usually. Maybe it’s for our benefit. Or maybe it’s because there’s a problem elsewhere that needs to be worked out. Which is part of the frustration – we don’t really know. Continue reading “First Sunday of Advent – Waiting”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter1 Comment
life, prayer, religion

God is Good

Usually I write because otherwise I continually inflict everyone around me to endless prattling about my latest ideas, theories and spiritual experiences. So it’s like a courtesy to my loved ones and people I meet in the grocery store. It probably sounds awful, but the fact that what I’m sharing may be helpful or enlightening to other people is often just a pleasant by-product of dumping what’s in my head onto the page so I can be rid of it.

But every once in a blue moon, I do stop to ask God, “is there something you want me to say?” Usually there’s not. In my experience, God is far less opinionated about our lives than you’d think from listening to many Christians talk. But several times recently I’ve asked God, “is there something you want me to say?” And each time, I’ve gotten the same answer: “Tell them that I’m good.” Just that – “Tell them that I’m good” over and over. Which is fine and true and all, but doesn’t make for much of an essay. So finally I asked, “anything else?” And there was. “The only way out is through.” Ahh, now I’m beginning to see.

Here’s the deal; we’re all waiting to be rescued – aren’t we? I know I am – or was. I’ve pretty much accepted that there’s not a miracle or even necessarily a break just waiting around the bend. It’s a hard thing to make peace with. It’s probably a particularly hard thing for Christians to accept. From the time we are small we are raised on stories of the God who rescued the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt. The God of the Psalms who is our deliverer and will not let us fall. Who brings victory to us by his mighty right hand. A Savior with such healing power that simply touching the hem of his garment healed the woman with the issue of the blood. God is our savior, our deliverer, our ever present help in times of sorrow. The God who rescues is mother’s milk to us. And it’s all true. Every last bit of it.

But mother’s milk has to give way to meat. And it’s not a parent’s job to provide meat to a child for their entire life. At some point, we have to learn to go hunting for ourselves. And I believe firmly that we – Christians and humanity as a whole – have arrived at a time of having to grow up. God is with us. God will redeem whatever we go through, but it’s time for us to go through. Continue reading “God is Good”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter18 Comments
religion

Church and the Parable of the Talents

Our lesson today, ladies and gents, is the parable of the talents and what it can tell us about ways we Christians end up being like the bad servant:

“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

“The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

“Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ Continue reading “Church and the Parable of the Talents”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter11 Comments
enjoy life, family, humor, life, relationships

Thanksgiving Family Survival Guide

An oldie but a goody! BTW, I have something you’re going to love in the works for y’all. If you enjoy the advice I share here, you’re going to love The Upside Down World’s Guide to Enjoying the Hard Life. It’s a collection of enlightening essays for thinking better, being better and growing where you’re planted. I’ll be taking pre-orders for delivery well before Christmas starting after Thanksgiving. At only $5 it’s the perfect stocking stuffer. (The price will go up to $6 a copy after publication.) If you’d like a sneak peak, just send your email address to ratrotter73@yahoo.com and I’ll hook ya up. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Since I am a contrarian at heart and everyone and their brother is doing the “Let’s talk about what we’re thankful for” bit, I’m going to offer up something completely different.  Because as important as gratitude is, I also know that on Thanksgiving there are an awful lot of people for whom the answer to “what are you most grateful for?” is “that I don’t live any closer to these people.”  So for those of you going over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house which had damn well better have a well stocked liquor cabinet waiting, I’ve dug through the archieves to create The Upside Down World’s Thanksgiving Survival Guide:

1. Develop an Appreciation for the Absurd: My grandmother once had to be dragged away by a horrified aunt from her very concerned inquisition into the causes of my obesity.  One of my cousins made a big deal out of being “sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk” after resolutely ignoring every smile, nod, wave or question we threw her way from the next table over at my brother’s wedding.  Learning to laugh is a much better tactic for dealing with people being absurd than any other I know.

2. Learn to Tolerate Conflict: Wishing you would have stood up for yourself is only rarely less painful than the discomfort of conflict.  The determining factor being whether you hold it together long enough to cry in private or abruptly leave the table after bursting into tears in front of everyone.  Thanksgiving probably isn’t the best time to confront your family with a list of all the things they have done to hurt you, but being able to speak up for yourself is a form of self-care everyone needs to know.

3. Learn to Avoid Conflict: At the other end of the spectrum, sometimes we need to tone it down.  Not every confrontation need to happen and not every invitation to conflict needs to be accepted.  Learn to see the difference and how to stop it before it gets started.

4. Deliberately Look For the Good in People: Thanksgiving with relatives is the perfect place to put this idea into action.  One of my grandfathers used to corner us Continue reading “Thanksgiving Family Survival Guide”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
bible, culture, life, religion

Ways to Make a Christian Faint

“Christians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any other or, conversely, some Christians try to show that it is a better religion than the others. People attempt to take possession of God. Theology claims to explain everything, including the being of God. People tend to transform Christianity into a religion because the Christian faith obviously places people in an extremely uncomfortable position that of freedom guided only by love and all in the context of God’s radical demand that we be holy.” –Jacques Ellul

We Christians really are a faithless bunch. Want to send the average Christian – particularly a Christian like a pastor or church elder – into a nervous sweat? Tell them, “Jesus said the world would know his disciples by how loving they are” without adding any qualifiers at the end. No mention of morality or the need for correction. In fact, if you want to send them into a dead faint, point out that the biblical definition of love doesn’t include correction, purity or virtue.

Or tell them that you’ve decided to take Jesus’ instruction not to judge literally. From here on out you’re just going to take a live and let live approach. A person’s choices are between them and God so you’ll just leave the judging to God. You may want to bring smelling salts. If they’re still standing, you can add in that Jesus said we should be perfect like God who causes the rain to fall and the sun to shine on the good and evil alike. So you think we should help anyone in need without regard to whether they deserve it or not. And no making loans – if you’re going to help someone, you need to do it without expecting repayment. That should finish the job.

You could suggest that instead of fighting to protect our rights, Christians should follow Jesus’ teachings and example and refuse to fight. Let the other side defeat us without resisting it. They’ll either give you a blank, uncomprehending stare or quickly escort you off the premises.  On the way out you could add in that God doesn’t really care if you receive or keep what you’ve earned through hard work. Just to make sure you’re never invited back.

Of course, not all Christians are like this. There’s a growing segment of Christians who already have a live and let live attitude. They work hard to be loving, accepting and willing to lose. Not that they have it all together either. Try telling them that no one has a right to inflict the horror of fatherlessness on another human being, so Christians are morally obligated to refrain from sex outside of marriage and to encourage others to do the same. Tell them its a matter of social justice. Be prepared to witness much equivocating. Continue reading “Ways to Make a Christian Faint”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter18 Comments
prayer, relationships, religion

When My Beloveds Talk Together

I’m going to tell you strange things today. Like about the times early in my marriage when I prayed to God, telling him about the pain of being married to another broken human being. I brought to God things I had never said to my husband because I knew he wouldn’t be able to receive them. And it happened more that once that my husband came home from working so hard to take care of us and said, “today, I really felt like God was telling me . . . ” And nearly word-for-word what I had said to God came out of his mouth. It turns out that the man who God provided for me has an uncanny ability to listen and hear God. It wasn’t the last time he would tell me things he had no way of knowing.

But one of the strange things about this life is that as much as we might want and seek after God as a way of protecting ourselves from the chaos and pain of life, it just doesn’t work that way. In time when the blows of life finally overtook us, this marriage of ours fell apart. I’d always said that we’d either end up as one of the world’s great love stories or self-destruct in a truly spectacular fashion. For a long time, it has seemed that the latter was our fate. It wasn’t that we stopped trying – far from it. In fact, in the middle of our worst arguments, my husband began to stop to pray and listen to God. I followed his lead and began doing it as well.  We became the only couple in all of creation perhaps that would actually stop to seek God in between throwing accusations and curses and venom at each other. And yet, even with both of us seeking after God, our marriage continued to devolve.

Only I’ve discovered that hearing God isn’t enough. In communication there is what is said, what is heard and what it understood. And it turns out that one must know God better than we humans actually know him to understand what he is saying. I learned this when one day my husband told me, “be careful – God told me that there are two voices you are hearing.” The way he said it made it clear that he thought I was being deceived. This was his own belief – that I was wrong and refusing to deal with reality. He thought God was confirming this. Only unbeknownst to him, I had been praying regularly to God complaining that I was no longer sure if I was listening to Him or just hearing what I wanted to hear – talking to myself. Over and over again, I had asked, “how do I know that when I think I hear you, I’m not just hearing what I want to hear?” And he answered me – “you’re hearing two voices.” I knew what it meant – you’re not just talking to yourself. But my husband, working with a different set of assumptions and knowledge, took away something totally different. As we can see perfectly well with all the people who know God’s word yet know little of love, simply hearing God is quite different from understanding Him. Continue reading “When My Beloveds Talk Together”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
bible, enjoy life, life, religion

Godly Thinking vs The World

“Encourage one another and build each other up ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Godly thinking believes you can be the person you heart desires to be and accomplish the things your heart longs to accomplish. The world believes you can be the person they want you to be and accomplish the things they think you should want to accomplish. “Do not be conformed to this world, but … Continue reading Godly Thinking vs The World

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter8 Comments
current events, family, life, politics, relationships, religion, women

Why I don’t consider abortion when voting

Let me be clear up-front: I do not support a right to abortion on demand. In fact, if I were made ruler of the universe, I would make abortions enormously difficult to get. Because I’m a mean and cruel woman. No, not really – I’m actually very kind and empathetic. But I am in agreement with Mother Theresa: “it is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live”. I don’t think abortion is an answer to what is really a societal failure. I don’t only oppose abortion from a pro-life perspective. I think abortion is bad for women, worse for relations between men and women and displays a level of animosity towards women as they are – people whose bodies can start new life – which is evil and vile. If we have a society where the normal functioning of a woman’s body regularly ruins women’s lives, we’re doing it wrong. And abortion doesn’t do anything to fix that – it simply enables it. Nearly 60% of abortions are influenced by pressure from fathers, husbands, boyfriends or others with power in a woman’s life. That’s not empowering. Nor has ready access to abortion resulted in a world where people who shouldn’t have children don’t as abortion proponents used to argue. Far from it. And yet . . . the issue of abortion has nothing to do with how I vote.

Yes Democrats not only support abortion rights, but celebrate them the way most of us celebrate Grandpa’s 90th birthday. But despite using the abortion issue to garner votes for the last 30 or 40 years, Republicans haven’t and won’t do anything to stop abortion either. Sure, they’ll fiddle around the edges and I’d much rather live in a country where doctors don’t deliver a baby up to its neck before suctioning its brains, crushing its head and completing delivery. But show me one child who is alive today because we banned “intact dilation and extraction”. It’s a symbolic victory at best. The reality is that for all their rhetoric, the Republicans have shown no more willingness to do something about Roe v Wade than their Democratic opponents. If anything, I can at least give the Democrats credit for being honest about their support of abortion as birth control. But voting for someone simply because they claim to be pro-life does nothing what-so-ever to advance pro-life policies. It’s just giving my vote to the person who has set their dog-whistle to the right pitch.

Another reason abortion isn’t a factor in my voting is that abortion is only marginally a legal issue. 1.2 million women have abortions each year. By some estimates, one in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Including a good number of women who are Christian, pro-lifers. That’s a social problem. You don’t fix social problems with laws. Social problems get fixed with people. Continue reading “Why I don’t consider abortion when voting”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter18 Comments
bible, religion

The Sacrifice of Isaac . . . Or Provincial Much?

Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. ~ Micah 6:7-8

In the pantheon of weird stories in the bible, the Sacrifice (or Binding) of Abraham is often treated as the most inexplicable or as the clearest evidence of how capricious the God of the Old Testament is. However, it seems to me that these conclusions simply demonstrate our poor understanding of history, God’s ways and human nature.  In context and with a decent concept of human nature as well as a proper understanding of what God is about, the story and it’s moral aren’t so hard to understand.

The reality is that infanticide has always been part of human behavior. It’s been practiced everywhere and through all time periods. Including during the time of Abraham. In fact, there is evidence from both ancient writings and from archaeology of wide-spread infanticide and ritual child sacrifice in the Ancient Near East continuing into Greco-Roman times. Continue reading “The Sacrifice of Isaac . . . Or Provincial Much?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments