What image comes to mind when you hear the words fixed or unchangeable? What emotion do these words bring up in you?
The image that comes to mind for me is the insurance commercial with crash dummies. In the commercial, the car careens toward a fixed cement wall, and you feel your body bracing for impact. Then, the inevitable happens: the front of the vehicle crumbles against the wall, the airbag explodes, and the crash dummy is tossed around inside the car—resulting in the immovable object destroying the car and “injuring” the dummies inside.
Or maybe when you think about unchangeable, you remember a time, like me, when I had to scrap the plans already in motion for our women's groups to accommodate the plans being made for the whole church—resulting in discouragement and frustration over what seemed like inflexible and unrelenting disregard for our team.
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Yesterday I unexpectedly found myself by a lone bench on an empty oceanfront. A boat was just off the shore, solitary but securely anchored in the sea. I ached with the unexpected beauty, the symbolic solitude of the boat. I felt like this boat. Alone, aching, but securely anchored. As I stood there, I thought about the last two months and how a crisis can set off a whole new cycle of grief and loss.
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My strong-willed daughter turned two and I braced myself, expecting increasing challenges in her behavior. However, Zoe sailed through that year with a lively curiosity and mostly content demeanor. That wasn’t so bad, I reflected to my husband as her birthday approached. What’s the big deal with the ‘terrible twos’? Then she turned three.
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I sat in the break room after the going away party the staff threw in my honor before I moved to my new home in the Central Valley, reading my bon-voyage cards and having another cupcake. Debbie, from the billing department, came in to chat. She said, “You are so bubbly. Where does your joy come from?”
It was a perfect time to share where my joy comes from, but the craziest words came out of my mouth! I said something like, “I’m just lucky, I guess! It must be in my genes. My mother is pretty upbeat!” What was THAT?
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"Love is a word that can hold so much hope and so much pain" writes Betsy Cockrell. "Our perception of love impacts our thoughts, feelings, and actions. When we are confident we are loved, our lives reflect courage, security, kindness, and generosity. Feeling unloved, however, makes us respond differently—quick to anger, bitter, withdrawn, insecure, and stingy. Are you feeling loved or unloved? God has been helping me take a closer look at my heart. I want my life to reflect someone who not only is confident she is loved, but can confidently love others...To live like this, my understanding of the incomprehensible love of God needs to grow."
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