Yet. Yeah, I’m really tired of posting on these phrases now. But since I committed and everything, I feel like I should follow it through. It’s not that I’m facing massive disagreement, just apathy. Mostly people are like, “why are you wasting your time on this?”, a question I’m starting to ask myself as well. I do think it’s important, that the language we use shapes the way we understand the world, but I also think that very few other... Read more
Sentimental Claptrap #3: Love On This is such a creeper phrase that it really, really skeeves people out. I heard it a lot growing up and still hear it from people I love, so I know that it’s usually said with genuinely good intentions and in a variety of different situations. But it doesn’t matter how you’re using it or what your intentions are.* You could be saying, “as a youth pastor, my job is to love on those kids”... Read more
I hate Fridays. It actually took me many years of wife/motherhood to remember what Fridays feel like. When I had small, pre-school-aged minions and the Ogre was still taking classes and doing graduate work, Fridays basically felt like any other day, except Facebook was really happy. Now that I have two kids in school full time and a husband who works 40 hour weeks plus Sunday-Thursday evenings, I’m too freaking tired by the end of the week to enjoy Fridays.... Read more
One of my Evangelical friends took me to task yesterday (gently, cause he’s a kind soul) for painting Evangelicals with too broad a brush. I admit that I did focus exclusively on the tendencies of some Evangelicals, and kind of threw the rest of y’all in there with them. Mea culpa. I think probably the mature thing to do would be to clarify the post so that it more accurately reflects that this is a trend within a subset of... Read more
So last week, Addie Zierman wrote this great post in WaPo about the churchy phrases that are scaring away millennials. I’ve always been skeeved out by those exact same phrases, so I read the post with gusto. Good points, I thought, and yet… I wasn’t satisfied with the idea that these clichéd phrases were just overly simple, vaguely creepy, and laden with poor connotations. That doesn’t explain the way they make me want to pull my own hair out and... Read more
One of my fave facebook friends shared this picture yesterday, and it made me so happy. The American Jesus reports that it’s for sale, and if we had a disposable income, I would snap this up in a hurry and put it in our dining room. Why do I love this so much? I love it because it is completely awesome. It’s a pitch-perfect satire of the shitty, shitty art that Kat used to feature regularly. She replaced the shitty... Read more
Gee, it’s been a while since I ruined people’s fondest childhood entertainment memories. Today seems like a good day to do it again. Let’s focus on Disney, shall we? I know, I know, Disney is the easiest to hate on. It’s basically like shooting a shotgun at the side of a barn…there’s too much there to miss. And yet, there are things about Disney movies that people don’t really talk about. Take this chick, for instance: I saw The Little... Read more
On the way back from Texas last week, our plane made a quick stop in Houston to unload some passengers and re-load others. I had finally coaxed Lincoln to sleep as we landed, and he was nestled cozily between Sienna and I as the new passengers boarded. I heard her before I saw her, of course. A wee little blond lass, 7 or 8 months old, sleep deprived, disoriented, and totally overwhelmed by the airport’s assault on her senses. She... Read more
I took Charlotte and Liam to Mass this afternoon. We were late, arriving just in time to hear the Gospel. The kids weren’t poorly behaved, but after about 20 minutes I let Liam roam to the deserted end of the pew and back, slowly. He was quiet, but mobile. I bowed my head neither at the mention of the Holy Spirit in the Nicene Creed nor during the Consecration. We didn’t shake hands during the sign of peace. I received... Read more
I know you were upset with me for getting my nose re-pierced last week. I remember how you, Dad, and I fought like cats and dogs when I came home from Italy with it pierced, because y’all had spent so much money while I was in high school fixing the hole that Rhinocort had put in my septum, and here I went off and put another hole in my nose. But with 30 rapidly approaching, I knew that if I... Read more
Barefoot and Pregnant
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In