Tag: religion

life, religion

Angels in my Bedroom?

After a longer string of good days that I’ve had in I don’t know how long, I woke up pretty out of sorts this morning.  Which is bound to happen.  Especially, you know, every four weeks or so.  So, rather than ruining my whole day by pushing myself until I’m too overwhelmed and drained to function, I grabbed my still groggy, crabby 2 year old and went back to bed to cry like a baby myself until it passed. 

After a couple of minutes, Olivia looked up at the corner above the bed and began pointing towards the ceiling.  She does this fairly often.  I always say, “do you see an angel?” although I never see anything in the corner she’s pointing to.   Continue reading “Angels in my Bedroom?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
life, religion

Seed Catalogue Dreaming

This is not what my yard looks like

I have been resisting the temptation to look for a couple of weeks now, but . . . SEED CATALOGUES ARE HERE!  I love seed catalogues.  I can sit and pour through them over and over again during the short days of winter.  But this leads to dreams of turning my scraggly 2 acre yard of reclaimed brush land into a lush garden oasis.  I develop delusions of having a thriving vegetable garden with well planned rows and patches.  Maybe this will be the year that we try our hand at growing giant pumpkins.  Visions of sunny sunflower patches.  Rose bushes!  A koi pond!  Maybe even cluster of blueberry bushes and a few fruit trees at one corner of the yard.  I can just see my children frolicking about the gardens, stopping to pluck a flower to adorn their curly hair while I sit with a glass of iced tea and soak in all the beauty of it.  If only my yard didn’t actually look like it was waiting for a Chevy on cinder blocks to adorn it.  One day.

For years I started seeds in a spare room under lights each spring.  Each morning one of the first things I would do is go into the room to check and see what had sprouted or put up a new leaf overnight.  Frankly I couldn’t even tell you why, but not much makes me happier – especially when it’s snowing in April – than seeing these little green shoots emerging from the soil.  A few years back I had to leave town for a few days in late spring before I was able to plant out that year’s crop.  The qxh, apparently not understanding that my request that he water them daily while I was gone wasn’t really optional, didn’t.  When I got back about a third of my plants were dead.  I’m normally a pretty tough cookie, but I cried for days.  Continue reading “Seed Catalogue Dreaming”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
religion

When a Clown Loves You

Doll by Jolene Nelson, AKA Locket

The room looks and smells not too different from the library in the middle school I attended while growing up.  Walls lined with books.  A floor covered with short, blue looped carpet.  Encouraging posters dominated by animals reading books are pasted to any wall without shelves.  Florescent lights buzz overhead.  The room smells like books do when the humidity from hot Chicago summers seeps into their pages and yellows them.  Missing are any of the trappings one finds in school libraries these days.  No computers or technology of any sort.  A typical, old school library; except this one isn’t in any school building. It’s on the lower level of a juvenile prison. Continue reading “When a Clown Loves You”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
enjoy life, prayer, relationships, religion

The Emotional God

A couple of years ago, I was sitting on my front porch steps after dinner, watching my two oldest daughters playing and complaining to God in my head.  I don’t remember what it was (nothing too serious), but the qxh (quasi-ex-husband) had done something to chap my hide.  As I wound down my complaints and let the whole thing go, I asked God in an almost off-handed way, “do you ever have to deal with people treating you like this?”  At which point I’m pretty sure all of heaven burst into hearty guffaws.  But soon a funny thing started happening: as I dealt with people in my life, often some parallel experience between God and people would pop into my head. 

Sometimes it was something little, like calling someone who did not answer their phone.  How often does God try to reach out to people who ignore or reject the call because they are too busy, inattentive or just don’t feel like it?  I would ask one of my boys to load and run the dishwasher only to discover at dinnertime hours later that we had no clean pots, plates or utensils.  Suppose God ever asks people to do things that don’t get done?  Ocasionally, I would have to deal with someone who insisted on talking over me, refused to listen to my perspective or treat it with respect.  Yeah, I’m sure God never has to deal with stuff like that, right?

By the next summer a variety of calamities, traumas and disappointments had hit my family full force.  As the qxh started to dissemble and then turn on me, these parallels became more pointed and poignant.  Loving someone who is being supremely difficult, unreasonable and hostile turns out to be something that God is intimately familiar with.  Continue reading “The Emotional God”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
life, religion

Fear of the Lord

Proverbs famously says that fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.  Old time fire and brimstone preachers said this meant we were to live in fear of the coming judgment.  Others, pointing to the finished work of Christ said that we need not fear judgment and that this verse was simply saying that we needed to have an attitude of reverence towards God.  Or it was fear like a child has of their parents.  But the word used is fear, not reverence and using fear to control children is rapidly falling out of favor. 

I have come to my own understanding of this verse.  I think that fear of God comes from really knowing that God does not respect our limits.  This is a God who created a world of predators and prey.  This is a God who made a world with mosquitoes and earthquakes.  Why would God create a world like this?  A lot of people embrace some version of religion which denies that God did create a world like this. Continue reading “Fear of the Lord”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
prayer, religion

The Theology of Poop

My dream throne.

Would it weird you out to know that I do much of my praying on the porcelain throne?  In my house, the toilet is one of the few places I can have some hope of being left alone for ten minutes at a time.  My daily devotional book and my favorite bible have pretty permanent spots there.  It may seem odd, but really, it’s quite apropos.  Allow me to explain.

In the bible, the words of scripture, the words of God and Jesus – the word made flesh – are all compared to food.   Continue reading “The Theology of Poop”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter9 Comments
prayer, religion

Prayers that get answered

"Please, please, please!"

Prayer used to confuse me.  Or I should say, prayers asking for specific outcomes used to confuse me.  Like, “please let my car start” or “please let that guy I have a crush on notice me”.  Worthy or not, these are the “please give me what I want” category of prayers.  Or sometimes “please let reality not be reality for me just this once”.  I used to pray such prayers with great fervency.  Jesus said ask and you shall receive.  If I just believed enough, it would be granted to me.  It was prayer as magic.  But magic isn’t real.  And it never worked.  As a matter of fact, people who spend any time around me will tell you that I have remarkably bad luck.  I got 5 flat tires this summer.  At least twice a year my mail is returned to the sender for no apparent reason.  And those are almost always two pieces of mail with money in them.  As a child, I got sick and missed the class field trip 3 years in a row.  It was probably the only time I was sick all year.  That’s just the way it has always been for me.  I don’t know why.  Continue reading “Prayers that get answered”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
prayer, religion

Do You Treat God Like Old Aunt Myrtle?

“Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” Luke 18:17

When ever I have hear this verse taught the point is pretty much the same: we should have a child like trust.  What does that even mean?  It gives me a vision of children sitting around gazing up at us with trusting goo-goo eye all day.  As if.  Obedience?  Ever known any real-live children?

Become like little children.  Perhaps Jesus meant this comment more literally than we usually take it.  I happen to know a thing or two about children and off the top of my head, here’s a quick list of typical behaviors:

  • They bring you their boo-boos to fix
  • They follow you around chattering about any little thing they can think of, just to be with you
  • They ask questions – lots and lots of questions
  • They test boundaries
  • They look to you to show them who they are
  • They sometimes have to learn things the hard way
  • They like to make you laugh
  • They seek you out when they are lonely, bored, restless
  • They like to learn more about you and your life
  • They ask more questions
  • They like to show off what they’ve learned
  • They want you to approve of them
  • They want to share all the tiny details of their lives with you
  • They must often be prodded, pushed, persuaded and sometimes even punished to behave properly
  • Their love for you sometimes boils over and they have to let you know how much they love you
  • They push back to learn where and how firm the boundaries are, what the motivation is, and if you can be trusted to be fair
  • They need you to understand them when they mess up and forgive Continue reading “Do You Treat God Like Old Aunt Myrtle?”
Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
prayer, religion

Would you run?

Could you forgive the way that the father of the prodigal son forgives?  Would you want to? 

Last winter as things were really unravelling with the qxh (quasi-ex husband), I was, of course, very upset with him.  I was considering at what point a couple could say that they had hit the point of no return.  At what point would it be reasonable to say that I’d had enough and wasn’t going to consider trying to fix things anymore?  To my horror, as I prayed God brought to mind the story of the prodigal son and challenged me to be like . . . the father.  Really?   Uh, that’s not for me.  Tell me I’m the prodigal who needs to come home or tell me that I’m the older brother who needs to get over himself.  But don’t tell me to run out to joyously meet someone who has willfully ripped my heart to shreds without even getting an apology and admission of wrongdoing first?  Ugh. 

I’m not kidding when I said I was horrified.  Yet each night before dinner our family prays “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  When we pray that, it’s not just a quid-pro-quo: “I’ll forgive him and you’ll forgive me”.  It’s also telling us that forgiving as God forgives is our goal.  And God does forgive by running out and making a complete fool of himself to welcome back the wayward son.  He doesn’t wait for us to grovel, to set up a payment plan, to promise on our lives never to do it again.  He just says, “welcome back.”  Continue reading “Would you run?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter1 Comment
life, religion

When God Cleans

"I don't wanna take a bath. I like my stink just fine!"

For some time a couple of years ago I was blessed to have a spiritual director who I met with monthly.  Towards the end of my time with her, I remember complaining, “I feel like God is getting down into the nooks and crevices and cleaning out every little speck of dirt he can find.  I wish it would stop.  Hasn’t he done enough?  Does he really have to get into all the little, tiny places?  I’m ready for him to be done”

It’s like it says in scriptures: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.” (Hebrews 12:11)  Too often, we think of discipline as punishment, but discipline is teaching.  It is correcting, leading, challenging and pushing the recipient to mature and grow up.  In proverbs, discipline is described as “training a child up”.  Punishment isn’t the point.  Correction is.  And when we submit to the training God would like to take us through, it is easy and rewarding enough.  But often God starts messing in places we’d just as soon leave alone.  I mean, if I sometimes say mean things when provoked, that’s only normal and hardly needs God to attend to, right?  But God says that his work is to perfect us. And according to him, such things really do require attending to if they are not to be a barrier between us. 

The end of that verse from Hebrews holds the promise, though: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”  Today, I am glad that God was willing to reach into all those nooks and crevises to get out as much dirt as possible.  There is no way I could survive the place I am walking through if he hadn’t.  At the time, I just wanted it to stop, but God knew what was coming.  Continue reading “When God Cleans”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments