Inevitable stays the fact that I always fight. A chronic adolescent, I sometimes call myself. I fight against life. Against the time. Against prejudices and traditions, manners and conventions.
Fighting can be rebelling. Fighting is also life. We fight against sickness and death, against the human in us and against nature. It’s a fine line between this fighting and this living..
God gives and takes life. Still, we give our utmost and go to the ends to keep life when it seems to end or when the going is rough. We think it’s wrong to let it go just like that. And it is. It’s something oh so special. How then can we know what to fight for and what to accept in peace?
We fight, have to fight, against human sins. Against jealousy, hate, anger, that in us which always wants to get our own rights, and will hurt others if need be, to get that. We have to fight for life, for all that is beautiful, true and pure.
And we have to do the fighting in a state of rest. Lay ourselves down in our Father’s hands, in trust. While also running the […]
I am a list person.
I make lists for everything. To Do lists, Shopping lists, Thinking lists,?Inspirational?verses lists, Books I want to read lists…
Sometimes when I am inspired by something specific during my quiet time, or just during the day, I start worrying that I will forget it. So I write it down for when I need it. It might help me some other day. And then I hope I’ll remember to read it. Because that idea was just so awesome, and I really needed to hear that, and it helped me so much.
But you know, that was my manna for the day.
Sometimes I read it again and don’t feel inspired. It was my manna for last week.
God wants to give me something else today; He knows what it is I need right now.
He doesn’t want me to worry about remembering every single thing that ever inspired me, in case I am ever in need of it. He always has what I need at the moment. So I don’t need to put it in a ‘save my life’ list.
I do write it in my diary, and it is encouraging to read it and remember, […]
Life is made up of moments. Ever so many of them, stringed on the rope of my life.
And when life is busy I keep planning and making lists and I keep shoving them of, pushing them away to some ‘later’ time. But then later becomes now and I still haven’t done it. I haven’t learned to be patient and loving and humble and kind and joyful. On which moment will I learn how to do that? If I would really believe that THE moment would come, you know, the one where you have inspiration and everlasting time and your are totally grown-up and the situation is just right…Then I could just put it of till then.But that won’t come, will it?
So I have to chose today and tomorrow and these times right now to do what I want to do.
When I look back to today, I don’t want to remember me longing for tomorrow; For the perfect day and time that I never quite got to.
I want to make memories today and become a better wife and mom and friend today and live like Jesus might call me home tonight. If He were to […]
A tree is a strong thing. A sure thing.
When I was 6, we lived in a house in town, and we had a gigantic one. A few years ago I went to visit the church that meets there, on the first floor of the building that was our house. And I was quite indignant to see that the tree had been cut down. Like they’d cut down a part of my childhood.There’s a nursery in our living room the grass is long and mostly weeds and I try to see three little children running around. And dad drawing us big pictures on the blackboard and hey! Where’d that go, people?
In the next house, we had a tree with a rope swing. The tree stood on the top of a little hill, so you could grab the rope and really swing. All romantical and real, you know.
The house after that had poplars that we could climb in and since the top was cut of each year, we could stand on the flat part and be hidden by the branches growing above and around it. And then there was a weeping willow with a swing where I […]
I am Naomi’s big sister. Four years ago I married my honey and now I am mama to almost 3 little children. I’m not so good with words as my little sister, but I will try to tell my story as good as I can.? ? I have loved God as long as I can remember. I am so thankful to my parents that they gave me Jesus. They couldn’t have given me anything that is more beautiful, more important and real. ? Whatever my little sister may claim, about how angelic I always was, I have always been a very human human :). I still remember very well how I struggled with my little sins as a child. My egoism, anger, ugly thoughts.. I didn’t want these things in my heart. I didn’t want to hurt God with them and still it was (and is) so hard to get rid of these things. ? When I was about 13 I felt a growing desire to change and have a personal relationship with God. I was?baptized?when I was 14. Right after my baptism I started to doubt very much. Had I been ready for this? Wasn’t I supposed to […]
Asking?frightening?questions within a safe environment During this time I was very involved in a the?Christian?student organization called Ichtus. This was an incredibly enriching experience for me! I met intelligent people who dared to ask questions. I was allowed to doubt, pull out all the stops and I strayed further and further away from the person who I had been and what I had believed. This would have been much more frightening if I had had to do this on my own. I am so thankful to Ichtus that I was able to do it there. Without being cut of, but still part of the group. Searching for Eva
In that time, a good friend of mine died in a car accident. She was someone I looked up to very much: passionate about her faith,?enthusiastic?about God, very convinced! When she died, I was crushed and by absorbing myself in God and faith, I tried to come closer to her. I tried to savor who she had been, and thought that since she was with God now, she was still ‘accessible’ in one way or another. Later on I realized this was part of my grief process and I ended up […]
Sara is my sister(-in-law). She was raised Christian, but a few years ago she faced the fact that she no longer believed. I asked her to write her story down to see the other side…when the story doesn’t go like you think it will. I wanted to hear how she had gotten to this point. How she had faced her doubts and what she did with them.
Ex-christian. A terrible word, but that’s what I am. Naomi asked me to write down how I came to this point. It’s turned into a long story. I tried to keep it short, but it stays quite long anyway because I want anybody reading this to be able to follow the whole process. I don’t want to make all too big jumps.
Normal doubts and questions
As a teenager, I very naturally had my doubts. Do I want this life, as a Christian, where I will never be like my classmates? Do I want to be the outcast that believes in God? I doubted because of my?gigantic?need to be liked. To be like everybody else. Besides that, I also had?substantial?questions, the typical ones like: “How can God be […]
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