Happy Tuesday, friends! I’m huddled up in my tiny home office, watching avalanches slide off my roof onto snowbanks that are already well above the windowsill, but my virtual self is considerably less snowbound. I expanded my recent blog post on young men and violence for Relevant magazine, including a few solutions various experts have [...]
The Boston Marathon bombing. The Sandy Hook shooting. The “witch hunts” in Papua New Guinea. Gang rape in India, piracy in Somalia, rampant violence worldwide. These tragedies are not as disparate as they seem. The crimes are different, but the perpetrators are the same–angry young men making a desperate grab for power and identity. I [...]
It’s not often that I brag up anything I read on Yahoo, but this article by Dan Wetzel about what happened in Steubenville was excellent. Here are a couple highlights. “Rape, experts say, is a crime of power and control more than sex. Underlying all of that is arrogance, and in Steubenville it was taken [...]
I was first introduced to Day of Discovery’s “When Love Hurts” series at an AVA (Advocates for Victims of Abuse) training last year. I was thrilled with the way they handled the subject, a conservative, biblically-grounded series that landed hard on the side of the oppressed. It’s the sort of video you could show at [...]
Like most Americans, I spent Friday alternately weeping, hugging my children, and wanting to kick someone in the ribs. I have nothing to say about this tragedy right now. So I won’t. I do, however, want to say something about the “kick someone in the ribs” reflex. When tragedy strikes, we naturally want to find [...]
Today’s guest post is from Tim Fall. Maria de los Angeles “Marita” Veron disappeared ten years ago. Her mother hasn’t stopped looking for her since. Marita was 23 at the time, the mother of a 3 year old daughter. At first her disappearance was unexplained. Then a tip came in: she had been kidnapped and [...]
Yesterday, I wrote a post that talked around the horrible, outrageous, and really inexcusable things politicians have been saying about rape. And I’m not just talking about the conservative men who said the horrible, outrageous, inexcusable things. I’m also talking about the people who horribly, outrageously, and inexcusably used their opponents faux pas as a [...]
Call me naive. But until last week, I had no idea just how creepy “reputable” sites like Reddit could be. Oh, I knew that pornographers used the internet to anonymously cater to all sorts of perverse fantasies. But I truly had no idea that creepy old men had been stealing pictures of scantily clad under-16 [...]
Women’s rights and the gross consequences of gender inequality have come back into the spotlight this week. PBS aired “Half the Sky,” a documentary based on the book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. People in the Twin Ports got to see WuDunn speak at St. Scholastica. And yesterday, the media announced that the Taliban [...]
PBS will be airing a documentary based on Half the Sky: Turning Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn tonight and tomorrow at 8 pm CST. I am SO excited that PBS is airing this! Be sure to tune in tonight and tomorrow!
I’m so excited to have my friend Meg guest posting here! Meg is a thoughtful, compassionate, and gutsy woman with incredible insights. I hope you get as much out of them as I do! Bio: Meg lives in Orange County, California with her one husband and four children. She worked for more than 6 years [...]
I’m so excited to have my friend Meg guest posting here today and tomorrow! Meg is a thoughtful, compassionate, and gutsy woman with incredible insights. I hope you get as much out of them as I do! Bio: Meg lives in Orange County, California with her one husband and four children. She worked for more [...]
Yesterday I wasn’t feeling well, so I crawled into bed and indulged in one of my favorite geeky pleasures–a documentary marathon featuring social histories and folklore, mostly pre-1492. First came a couple King Arthur documentaries–the history of the myth and, possibly, the men. Even though my fuzzy thoughts were in a tired tangle, I had [...]
Yesterday, a friend forwarded me a link about the rise of acid attacks in Colombia. I was appalled. I had heard of acid attacks in places like India and Afghanistan, but South America? It got me thinking once again about the horror of these sorts of attacks, the hatefulness. While acid is sometimes used against [...]
“For everyone who cares about our military and feels it is our duty to stand up and protect the people that give their lives to protect us, The Invisible War is your call to action,” said Alexandra Marie Daniels on TheWip.net. According to the Department of Defense, over 20 percent of female veterans have been [...]
I first noticed it when I bought my Nook Color last year. Erotica. Everywhere. Written by and for women. So much for letting my kids peruse the free books section! It seems that e-readers opened up a whole new world to women, a world they were too ashamed to admit interest in with a Barnes [...]
Today I’m honored to have Judy Douglass guest posting. I hope you will find her words as motivating as I do. “Thank you, Mother, for raising a worthless daughter.” These words, part of a lament of a bride going to meet her husband for the first time, summed up the experience of women in China [...]
We hear about human trafficking happening overseas, in places like Thailand and Cambodia. But did you know that it happens here, in our own backyard? Law enforcement agencies estimate that 45,000-50,000 people are trafficked into the United States every year. 15,000 of them are children, and most of them wind up working in the sex [...]
I’m thrilled to have the insightful Tim Fall guest posting today. “Enjoy” seems like the wrong word to introduce this post with, so…read thoughtfully? Tomorrow, I will be posting about some new resources available from the Evangelical Covenant Church to prevent, recognize, and combat human trafficking. Un-Innocent Bystanders Earlier this month my son and I [...]
This article makes me so mad I could spit. For the third time in two weeks, the Taliban has been accused of poisoning little girls, spraying down their schoolrooms with toxic chemicals to discourage the education of women. This time, 160 girls were admitted to the hospital after experiencing headaches, dizziness and vomiting. As horrible [...]
It takes a lot to piss me off. But Larry Flynt has managed. Pundit-phobe that I am, I had never heard of S.E. Cupp until I was confronted with a picture of the pretty young conservative commentator with a penis in her mouth. Apparently Hustler magazine created the cleverly photoshopped image and published it with [...]
Sometimes, I feel like the church has a hard time lingering in places of pain. Abuse. Homosexuality. Bullying. Singleness. Disability. Abortion. Illness. Addiction. Grief. We tend to skim right over these topics, offering quick, carefully-crafted statements about our stance on the issue. It winds up feeling more like a presidential candidate’s stump speech than a [...]
“And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ.” -Philemon 1:6 I was reading Philemon this weekend, and many things stood out to me. Paul’s tone with Philemon, acknowledging Philemon’s friendship, fidelity, and good [...]
I was SO blessed to be able to speak at my beloved Mission Covenant Church last Sunday! The topic was how cohabitation hurts women and children, but we focused on the why–WHY do women get involved in relationships they know are bad for themselves and their children, or stay in abusive, dysfunctional relationships that bear [...]
(Continued from Part 1) What it comes down to is that in many ways, society ascribes value to women based on how attractive they are to men. (This is only exacerbated by women’s idolatrous tendency to base their identity on who they are in relationship with others, rather than on who they are in Christ. [...]
(I know, I know–another inflammatory title. But if you’re not feeling a bit inflamed by the end of this post, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.) Wading through statistics makes me cranky. My inner journalist, latent as she may be, pitches a fit when she hears people making making vague allusions to “research,” or [...]
Okay, yes, inflammatory title. But I read something last night that made my stomach knot up into a ball Contrary to public perception, research shows that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child’s mother, not a male in the household, although the mother’s plight often is complicated by her [...]
If there’s one thing that leaves me completely aghast, it’s Christians hurting one another and using religion to justify their behavior, or citing it as the reason that they didn’t step in to defend the hurting, vulnerable party. It’s the child who is abused on the mission field or in the church, but no one [...]
Melody Harrison Hanson wrote a beautiful, brave post on her blog today about her experience growing up with a father who “was in ministry and was a generous, gracious, loving, God-fearing man,” but who was also abusive. In fact, he wrote a book about it: “Strongest in the Broken Places: A Story of Spiritual Recovery.” [...]
You can’t go online lately without hearing about hearing about Herman Cain and the allegations of sexual harassment haunting his campaign. Those posts inevitably make me wince—not the articles themselves, but the comments crowded beneath them like protestors punching hand-scrawled signs in the air, screaming at the “other side.” Now, before you get all riled [...]
Hi there! I'm Jenny Rae Armstrong, an award-winning writer, speaker, and mommy of four. I live on black coffee and lots of grace (oh, and my husband's incredible cooking). I'm glad you stopped by--stay and chat awhile!
Tim Fall: “Families that don’t talk about money are more likely to end up in a legal dispute.”
Jada and Jon Swanson: “One of the greatest gifts we have given each other is the gift of dreaming BIG!”
Tim: That's my favorite line too, Aimee (even if I do ...
Tim: Thanks, Lesley. I'd have loved to hear those defi...
Aimee Byrd: Best line: "I’d rather walk than make a decisio...
Lesley: Great thoughts, Tim. Your point about more communi...
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