Skip to main content

A small offering

"Breathe in and out."

That's what I'd tell them, the parents who woke this morning, if they slept at all, still living the nightmare from yesterday, if I had occasion to speak with them, if they asked me how they should go on. But they are many states away, and I don't know them. I'm fairly sure they don't want my opinion.


But you are here, which means you probably know me, and might care about my opinion.  I've written about grief a good deal. I don't have any new insights since my last bout of sermonizing.

So here is a run down of what I've written already:

I don't know what to say, reprint, originally from December 2009
How the story of Job teaches us what to do when our friends are hurting.

On the Phone, August 2010
What to say to people who are grieving.


What it means to Pray, August 2010
If prayer doesn't come easily, or if you think you can't pray, this is a simple way to start.

When the Lid is Taken Off of Your Life, December 2012
A sermon I preached recently on what it means to get ready for a personal crisis.


Comments

  1. Thank you for all of that. I was just thinking about the lid coming off last night.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Butter(less) Chickpeas

On Monday morning I got a call from a client, warning that my services would be needed soon. The threat of labor makes me pretty efficient. I filled and ran the dishwasher, cleaned the sink, took the boys grocery shopping, got the groceries put away, fed the boys lunch, emptied the dishwasher, made snack and dinner for the boys, filled the dogs' water, cleaned the dog' ears, and put the flowers in the vase. I spent the rest of Monday at the birth, watching a skilled nurse-midwife facilitate the VBAC my client wanted despite circumstances that might have sent some providers running for the operating room. It was a great birth, the baby was perfect and I'm glad I was there to witness it. But it meant that I didn't get to bed until 2:00 in the morning. When I say that I am a morning person, I do not mean 2:00 in the morning. A mere five hours later the sun was up and my children were up and my husband was getting ready to leave for work. I had a follow-up scheduled for...

Making Christmas

Years ago, when my parents married, my mother asked my father what he would like her to make for Christmas. He asked for Julekake, a Scandinavian Christmas bread. It was common in the bakeries in my father's childhood Chicago, but it was more difficult to find in the small Army towns where my father was posted, so my mother found a recipe, and baked her own. We ate it with eggs or bacon or sausage every Christmas breakfast of my childhood. My mother baked simple round loaves studded with raisins and candied cherries. When I grew up I swapped out dried cherries for the candied ones. I baked it in the oven of my boyfriend's apartment before I went to share Christmas with his family, inhaled the scent of them to make it Christmas when the traditions around me were not my own. I've discovered that the fruit is not mandatory, though I'd never leave it out. A braid is traditional, and I'll make a braided loaf when I have time, though for gift giving I ...

Brown-Butter Buttercream Birthday Cake

Brown-Butter Swiss Meringue Buttercream I have come here today to confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned.  In full knowledge of the importance of birthday cakes , I did willfully try to get away with making a pound cake for a friend's birthday because I didn't want to be bothered with frosting a layer cake. My feet were only set back on the path to righteousness by a stern rebuke from my friend's husband. (Okay, not a stern rebuke, but "statement of my friend's mild preference" seems sort of anti-climactic, doesn't it?) And, as it turned out, a different friend of mine had spurred a thread about brown butter over on Facebook and I had filed away the phrase "brown-butter buttercream" for future use. So I decided that if I was going to frost a cake I was going to do it with style. The first step is to brown the butter, which is a simple matter so long as you're willing to hang around the kitc...