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: Life is hard. God is good. We need each other. The Sparrow's Home is a place for gathering and sharing about all things 'home'.
Hugh Hefner died last week. While I don’t revel in his death, the phrase ‘good riddance’ did cross my mind. Hefner contributed heavily to bringing pornography to the mainstream, making it more easily accessible and normalized. Grieving his death never entered my mind.
What did make me sad was hearing Dennis Prager speak about his father subscribing to Playboy. He said that he felt no shame over it. After all, his dad had been faithful to his mother for seventy-some years.
I heard a story recently about a young man who was out in his father’s watermelon field working, with strict instructions not to eat any of the fruit. Giving in to temptation, he attempted to hide the evidence by burying the remains off in another part of the field. He was sure he’d gotten away with it until his father noticed watermelons growing where they didn’t belong. The evidence was irrefutable. Undeniable. Once the fruit appeared, the son could not hide that he had buried the seeds in just that place.
I have said for years that 99% of problems could be avoided or solved quickly with better communication. That very scientific assessment is reinforced to me when I see the breakdown of society in being able to disagree civilly.
I am always on the lookout for resources that can teach, encourage, or help create better communication skills. And please don’t read that and think that I’m putting myself on some kind of communication-skills-high-horse. I happen to come from a long line of abrasive women. (I’m pretty sure it was women like us that caused the early church to forbid women from speaking in church.) Speaking respectfully and kindly is something that I have worked on, with many failures, over the years. My gracious husband has been my biggest help in this endeavor.
I don’t know a single mother that would let her child play near a street without supervising him. We make sure that our whole family is buckled in before we leave the driveway. I could make a list of 100 things we all do to protect our families every day.
You want to know why I think? I think that we want to believe that our husband, our children…that we are not susceptible to the myriad of temptation that awaits in cyberspace.
If you think that, I’ll start out nice. I’ll give you that one. Maybe your family is not ever tempted to do wrong online. Ever. But guess what? The bad stuff is so pervasive and sneaky that it shows up even when you’re not looking for it.
For the past 9 years, every June, my family spends a week in Indiana at Midwest Family Camp, held at lovely Camp Mack on Lake Waubee. Last week was that week!
During our first worship service, I prayed that God would direct my conversations for the week. I’m a talker, and I so look forward each year to good conversation with Godly individuals. I prayed that God would lead who I talked to and what we talked about, that I would hear and receive what I needed to and that I would share with others what He wanted me to.
If you’re married, that’s not news to you. Even if you’re not, I imagine you’ve heard that before. But what isn’t said as often is this:
My husband and I celebrated 20 years of marriage this past year. Any couple that has been married for any length of time has habits that draw them together and help them function as the team God intended.