just because

Growing up I read some fairy tales. I was a fan of Cinderella and Snow White. When I hit preteens, I became fans of the Hilary Duff and the Amanda Bynes version. I was a sap for a good love story. It was one way I was a typical girl. However, mature adults often told me that life isn’t like the fairy tales and that we should be careful with the romantic stories we read and what fluffy books and movies we watch because it will cause us to have an unrealistic view on life, love and marriage. In fact, it was almost to the point that when I got engaged I was a little scared of marriage and what was to come because of the number of people that said it was going to be hard and the little I heard about the near perfect moments. While I agree, there is truth to this, I would like to suggest that the high emphasis on this view has caused some damage as well. I would like to suggest that there is another way of looking at it and that it isn’t all bad to dream about living a fairy tale life to...

Recently I was talking to a friend who is a teacher. She was saying how she wants to push to become a better teacher, not settle for being the teacher she is now. Now, I am sure this friend is a spectacular teacher already but she realizes that she could be even better! She doesn’t want to settle but rather improve.  This was a challenge for me. How often with things that we do every day do we simply settle for what we are doing rather than trying to be the best we can be. How often do we stop learning and stop improving because we think we are doing pretty well.   We might be a pretty good wife, but what if we could be an even better one. We might be good at our job but what about if we could be even better. We might be a good preacher but what if we could improve. We might be a good teacher but what if we could learn to better handle some of our weaker spots. We might be pretty good at baseball but what if we could be an even better team player.  I might feel lik...

One of the first things our parents have to teach us as young children is that we are not allowed to tell a lie. They push this over and over again. The younger we were the more obvious the lie is. They might ask you if you ate a cookie when you knew you weren't supposed to. You obviously did as there are crumbs all over your face but you tell them you didn’t. As you get older you get more sneaky and smart with your lies. You get better at hiding things. This is when if we have a disciplined conscience it will kick in and make us feel bad for lying. However, as we grow older, lies are still not taken away from our lives. We may not deal with lying in a way that we did as a child but instead we have lies bombarded at us from the biggest deceiver ever. Satan has had years and years of practice in lying. Satan is good at it. Satan can get us to believe all kinds of things. It is important we catch these lies being fed to us when they are young or else we will quickly not notice w...

From the minute we entered this earth we began demanding things for ourselves. We wanted food, we wanted attention, we wanted mom. We began to get a bit bigger and we wanted toys, we still wanted food and we wanted to not go to bed. We hit our teen years and we wanted a cell phone as good as our friends, we wanted a car, we wanted this gadget and that big person's toy. How easy it is for us to want things! We feel we have a right to be happy. What makes us happy? More things, more attention, more love, more free time, more me time, more, more, more! So easy it is for us to live a selfish life. A life where we think mainly of ourselves and very little of others. When we think about why this comes so easy it is no surprise that it does. Because this is something we are born with, our parents will desperately try to train out of us, but due to the large push from society around it is impossible to completely erase from a person's life. Society pushes nothing but self. We now ...

Recently I heard some remarks to the extent of, Why would you want to be a woman and a Christian? A guy I understand. They can do whatever they want. They have complete control. Being a Christian guy would be awesome, but being a woman and a Christian makes no sense. I pondered this for a while. The remarks were of course due to people picking random things from the Bible without actually taking it in context. They claimed that women are treated as property in the Bible and are of a lesser value than a man. While I didn’t agree, I began to think about why I am a Christian Woman and these are some thoughts I came up with. I love to analyze. I analyze too much probably. (just ask Colin) So one of the things I analyze is the differences between women and men. The differences in the way we think, act etc. and the more I analyze it the more I am amazed at how God created us so differently but so very much compatible to match. Over and over again in creation I keep seeing little det...

According to numerous scientists there are over 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 stars in the universe. Over one million earths will fit in the sun. The sun is only an average size star! Over 200 trillion miles away the sun is visible to the naked eye. The sun releases more energy in one second then a billion cities in the earth would in a year. Without that energy from the sun all life on earth would die. Feeling small yet? Man has invented some cool things. The light bulb, the automobile, the computer, the dishwasher, and the robot. No man has invented a human. No man has invented a person who can think, feel and live. When we compare the creator of man, the stars and the universe with humans who cannot even fully understand how our own brain works cause they in themselves are so complex we soon realize, that creator was not just an explosion in the universe or a mere act of chance. Nope! The world is created with extreme creativity and planning. I believe that creator is an a...