Listening across difference

About 10-11 years ago my sweet little baby girl turned into a monster of a 2 year old… “it’s like trying to break a wild horse” my husband and I would say to each other as she screamed “me do it” about pretty much everything.

One day I read a parenting piece by Nigel Latta, I thought maybe he was going to give me 5 steps how to turn my wild horse into an obedient cherub. But instead he explained how for some children who are characteristically stubborn, the way their brains are set up is to assume that they are right. And so when information to the contrary comes from the outside, it’s almost that it does not compute. And he also said that stubborness has a strong genetic component. It’s what I like to think of as “parental karma”. My husband and I tend to disgagree publically about who the stubborn one was between us, it’s both–his mother tells tales–but really, I know it’s mostly me.

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A piece of woollen crochet with an unravelling thread

Get it together

It is a great consolation to me that God “is mindful that we are but dust.” (Ps 103:14 NASB). 

Myself, however? I tend to live not only un-mindful of that, but in denial of it. We all prefer to pretend to ourselves that we’re something far more substantial, that we have it together—maybe there’s ups and downs and twists and turns in our stories, but at least we know where they’re going and we are making it happen. But it just ain’t so. 

How dusty of us to live denial of our dustiness*

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A photo of Maja's phone background with the phrase "your strength will come from settling down in complete dependence in me" on a moody sea and sky landscape

Settle down

For the last few months I’ve had this phrase on my phone’s background

“Your strength will come from settling down in complete dependence on me”

Isaiah 30:15 (The Message paraphrase)

It’s a reminder that I’ve placed before my eyes as frequently as my phone ever is (too often), in the hope that it will eventually soak into my heart. It speaks to my all-too-human impulse to make it happen for myself, to take things into my own hands and bend them to my own will. To make it work… somehow.

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