Soap for Jesus

Basically, a couple of thoughts from my much pondering brain. Which is currently on overload. Firstly - I really need to sort things out. My chats are going into disarray; I have to start implementing a system of replying to every chat systematically before replying to one twice. I have to specifically start setting housework time aside, like I'm doing with sibling visits. I also have to set paperwork, letterwriting and cleaning times aside. I'm useless with all of these and they all desperately need improving. Secondly - I've found out a way to literally keep my brain turning over during the dead-pan time of being on the phone for seven hours with no surveys, which fact a) teaches persistent patient cheerfulness to the respondents, b) it shows me my ill attitude at the increase of pressure and irritation at not being free to do what I want to do and c) makes me want to throw my computer and phone out the window. Anyway - the way. :P It's kinda like the word as...

I'd like to point out a fact. There's parenthood. And there's parents. Parenthood is a God-ordained authority at the head of the family, where husband (leading authority figure) co-joins with wife to provide a supportive guidance network to care for physical, emotional and spiritual needs, requiring implicit trust and obedience when the child is not of an age to make informed decisions for themselves and is still learning about the world. This institution is, as all institutions should be, submitted to Divine guidance and treated with humble fear and trembling by husband and wife, as they (as one) represent the relationship between God as Father and men as His children (when born again). Parents are the people in that institution, and should be fully aware of their responsibilities to the next generation and before Almighty God before ever taking on the role of making babies. While parenthood is a God institution and should be respected as such, some parents trea...

In modern society, there are many new phases and phrases of "expressing ourselves". There are also many new open forms of behaviour - not merely tolerated, nor even accepted, but promoted and taught by subtlety, blatantly and through constant, thorough inculcation. Most of these began in the last century. From 1,900 years of fairly slow changing, there has been a sudden rush of things generally considered "unacceptable" being promoted in the highest degree. Most of these are not really "human rights-centred", as much as being "me-centred". Not as much about correcting incorrect morality - such as the freeing of slaves - as about ensuring the comfort of individuals, which has now enforced the point of freedom of speech so harshly that most of the liberties it grants are curtailed. For example, you are allowed, encouraged and firmly supported to announce that you are gay/homosexual. Even if I like you and am your friend, I am not allowed to ...

Not in chronological order. ;) _ On deciding to work on BfD, I found the second book and took it to work with me yesterday. I was chatting with Navpreet (my adopted daughter) about it casually during lunch break, and she asked to look at it. When she started to read it, she got so caught up she lost track of where she was. One - WHOOPS. Two - YAY! _ For the last two days, I've worn my OYAN t-shirt to work. It's amusing walking down the street and watching people read it. So were my colleagues at work - and liked it. (Yes, Mr. S., I'm attempting to infiltrate the whole of Britain with OYAN. Slowly. :P) This morning, carrying four heavy bags and hurrying towards work, I passed a guy who read it out loud as I walked past him. "My villain can beat up your villain?" And started laughing. I grinned. "Yep! And no arguing about it!" That was funny. _ After almost two years of waiting (cause I even got my close friends' names out of h...

You Never Marry the Right Person Timothy Keller Thursday, 05 January 2012 How our culture misunderstands compatibility. In generations past, there was far less talk about “compatibility” and finding the ideal soul-mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for. In John Tierney’s classic humor article “Picky, Picky, Picky” he tries nobly to get us to laugh at the impossible situation our culture has put us in. He recounts many of the reasons his single friends told him they had given up on their recent relationships: “She mispronounced ‘Goethe.’” “How could I take him seriously after seeing The Road Less Traveled on his bookshelf?” “If she would just lose seven pounds.” “Sure, he’s a partner, but it’s not a big firm. And he wears those short black socks.” “Well, it started out great ... beautiful face, great body, nice smile. Everything ...

By John Blake, CNN (CNN) –True love doesn’t wait after all. That’s the implication in the upcoming October issue of an evangelical magazine that claims that young, unmarried Christians are having premarital sex almost as much as their non-Christian peers. The article in Relevant magazine, entitled “(Almost) Everyone’s Doing It,” cited several studies examining the sexual activity of single Christians. One of the biggest surprises was a December 2009 study, conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which included information on sexual activity. While the study’s primary report did not explore religion, some additional analysis focusing on sexual activity and religious identification yielded this result: 80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex - slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults, according to the teen pregnancy prevention organization. The article highlights what challenges abstinence movem...

Warning: Unsuitable for children under the age of 14. "I am having a lot of difficulty with my feelings about late abortions - and all the pain that's there so much of the time after the baby is moving. So one day, in a need to arrive at a measure of clarity, I went into the room where they keep the fetuses before burning them. They were next to the garbage cans in papers buckets, like the take-home chicken kind. I looked inside the bucket in front of me. There was a small naked person in there, floating in a bloody liquid. He was purple with bruises and his face had the agonised tautness of one forced to die too soon. I then took off the lids of all the buckets and with a pair of forceps lifted each fetus out by an arm or a leg - leaving, as I returned them, an additional bruise on their acid-soaked bodies. Finally, I lifted out a very large fetus and read the label - Mother's name: C. Atkins; Doctor's name: Saul Marcus; Sex of the item: Male; Time of gestation: 24 we...

To those who requested it: herein lieth the letter I wrote at age 15 and 9 months to an imaginary future son. March 4th, 2008 To my dear eldest son, Scott David, Your mother is only fifteen, nearly sixteen as she writes this letter to you. I am foolish, and don't know much, but I thought I should like to write a letter to the boy who, perhaps, will one day be my son. Maybe you will come to me through adoption, maybe through the sweet-bitter joy of giving birth, and maybe you will always stay - a child of my imagination. I wonder what it will be like to look down on a tiny baby face, or perhaps that of a young boy, and say, "My son!" My heat seems to thrill as it whispers the words. I wonder what you will look like. Will you have golden hair, black hair, brown hair or my red hair? Perhaps it will be as vivid as mine. Will your eyes be blue, grey, green, brown, hazel or a mix of two or several? Still, that will not matter as long as you are strong and healthy and what God...

So I've had a lot of new experiences really, as God changes my life and turns it upside-down, inside-out. I've learned to babysit, day in and day out, moving from a six-month old to five and two year olds. For a girl who wants a goal of thirty children (God and husband willing :P), maybe that's not such a bad thing! I've learned to cope with mildly primitive living conditions, with raw emotions and trying to support other people simply by listening, to dealing with shifts and changes, to eating things I don't like, doing things I don't like. Well, this experience was a new one, and I call it my first in home education - the reproductive system. We'll skip a small part, for while the childish candour had my sister, friends and myself in hysterical laughter, it might not be suitable for younger ears. Jamie (5) holds up the doll that his mom uses to teach her classes. (Toni is a doula, and teaches other women.) Jamie: "This is my baby, Rosie. Why haven...

Some of you might like to see an update of my beautiful little niece... Here she is at the age of three months! She can: Gurgle baby coos, Smile, Laugh, Support her own head (was doing that at two weeks), Roll over, Attempt to sit up alone, Attempt to stand up. My twin brother Jose and I, with Ayanna in the mirror. The photos to the left are Jose and I as children. :) Ayanna and me, again in the mirror. Ayanna, her Mom - my sister Sam - and me. :D A little blurred, but Ayanna smiling. :D

Thinking about whether to flick the central heating on...but my sister says it's already too warm. I'm freezing though, sitting here curled up on the posh mauve pink chair in my fluffy baby pink dressing gown over my schoolgirl pinafore. Ooh, aren't there some dressing gowns you adore! I guess I'm sitting here scribbling for lack of motivation to do anything. I mean, I need to doctor some photos, write a story, write a poem on snow, and write other blogs with more meaning. Just in a lazy mood and not doing it. :P My baby niece, Ayanna, is lying in front of me, asleep on her bouncing chair. I am balanced on the edge of the seat with one foot on the wire edging, ready to start rocking again if she stirs (which is occurring every few minutes!). My sister lies huddled up to my right on our sofa bed, asleep; exhausted by long feeds, very little sleep, stress and depression. On the final Friday of my two-week sojourn at my sister's to help her round the house and provide ...

So! After that last blog, I really have to do the follow up photos before getting on with my multitudinous other blog posts. I mean, this whole morning is devoted to blogging...and I need to look up exam papers and work on my CV too. Argh! :P Well! Last Thursday or rather, two Thursdays ago - day after Miss Ayanna made her appearance into this chilly world of ours - Grandma, Grandpa Jeff and Auntie Sian made their way over to the Safari household, just as soon as they were back from hospital. I'm glad Sam and Dennis have given Dad that title. To Jamie and George, Dad is known as "Uncle Boo" (from peek-a-boo ;) ), as he is only "stepdad" to Simon and Sam, and Si was 16 and Sam 10 when Dad married our Mom. So it really is nice that with both sets of Ayanna's real grandparents alive, that they chose to give Dad that name. Rambling again, sorry! So here are the photos. Mommy got a little cross with Auntie cause Auntie kept flashing lights and Mommy thought Ayann...

Beleaguered with requests for photos, and having made promises to one or two people to blog on her - ie, Nick Holley and Jay Lauser , here is my promise fulfilled. I started on her birthday - November 10th, 2010, at 8:15pm. :P I finish today, the 22cd, at 1:00pm Smiling a little, I leaned down, tucking the quilt around my mother and kissing her cheek goodnight. Even as I silently moved across the room to tug off the lightswitch, she was still talking; drowsy, mumbling her words, but still talking. I've not seen Mom so verbal in ages. Although she was lacking 36 hours sleep, as soon as she had eaten her day-old homemade, reheated soup and drunk a cup of steaming, fragrant coffee, she sat there for ten minutes describing in vivid detail the birth of her latest grandchild - her first granddaughter. More amazing for me, I was sitting there with an inane grin spread over my face, highly excited over the recital, instead of landing in a heap on the floor! (I am useless with blood and gut...