The Hey You Lady

I did something wrong. I failed. I let you down. I’m sure that you must think less of me now. I don’t know how to be right with you again. Every time I look at you I see how I let you down. So I turn my eyes down. That way you can’t see in to my soul. I look down. I cannot see outward, cannot see forward. So I look inward. Inward at my inadequacy. My wrongdoings. My shame. My guilt. All I see is the emptiness that once was me. A huge hole where I was once whole. And it will never be made right. I’m so sorry. Not even God will forgive me. A nd so the burden of Guilt takes hold. Gripping. Controlling. Suffocating. It can weaken even the strongest of bonds. Yet it is one of the worst types of bondage there is. We’ve all been there. Some are still there. Inside a prison cell, without a key. I look up. For the first time in what seems like months I let you see my eyes. Afraid. Anxious. I look at yours. The eyes of my Sav...

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. -- Ecclesiastes 4:12 I am the middle of three siblings in the Thuente family. As a child, I was often content to sit alone in the corner of the living room, even though I wasn't in trouble. My dad would ask me what I was doing, and I'd tell him I was "thinking." "What are you thinking about?" "Nothing..." "Then when do you know when you're done?" I'd just shrug, and contemplate some more. In a home with two sisters growing up with an older brother, alliances are continuously being formed, and eventually someone gets left out. Our brother would find some reason to try to pick a fight with my sister and me. If my sister and I happened to be in alliance at the time, the fight-picking would not be very intense. BiggieBrother knew that his two sisters were able to fend him off ... most of the time. H...

I n elementary school, a common lesson in teaching the value of others is this lifeboat scenario: If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctor, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbageman, and one person had to be thrown overboard to save the others, which person would we choose?” This type of thing is done every day. You see it in the school yard when teams are chosen for dodgeball. The weakest players are seldom chosen first. Why? The team captain doesn’t want them in the lifeboat. It carries over into adulthood. Recently on Celebrity Apprentice it happened in the final show. You had two team captains, and thus, two “lifeboats.” The first captain chose the player who the other team captain had grown to rely upon the most, which weakened the other captain’s team. In a family, even small children have a basic understanding of lifeboat theory. Mom is fixing lunch, and little Suzy is pe...

Lately it seems as though I have been drawn to books and blog posts about people who are not "set i n their ways" about Jesus and Christianity. Monday morning a friend of mine sent me the YouTube link about the "church of Oprah exposed." Combined with th e "10 questions that every intelligent Christian must answer" video and the " God is imaginary " website, it is easy for me to see how people can have serious questio ns about what they believe about God and about Jesus. I’ll be honest – as a Christian I’m a little afraid to deeply explore the ‘God is imaginary’ and ’10 Questions’ links on my own. It’s like voluntarily walking into a dark cave and leaving the light of the world behind you. My fear is that I will get too far from the light and the light will grow too dim, and I won’t be able to find my way out. But at the same time, I feel like God is preparing me for something. My Epiphany word this year is “compassion”. The...

Is God imaginary? Earlier in the week I read a blog post titled “Ten Questions Christians Should Know” (or something like that – I don’t exactly remember). I linked to the post, more out of curiosity than a sense of needing to make sure I knew. The author posed some of the tough questions of life. Questions like “If God has the power to heal, why doesn’t he heal amputees?” “If God is good, why do bad things happen in the world?” and the list went on. The point the author made was that Christians can’t give definitive, conclusive answers without sounding like they’re talking in circles, and the only Then there was a link to a YouTube-type film that supported the argument that “prayer = superstition.” definitive, conclusive answer is “God is imaginary.” The whole thing had me actually questioning what I believe, and why I believe it. What if I had been lied to all this time? What if the things I had attributed to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were all fake? If I ...