“I was close to giving up on prayer altogether. Instead, I started to pray for laughter.” These words of Amy Julia Becker remind us that sometimes that is the perfect prayer to pray. Read her guest post on Ann Voskamp’s blog here. Good to read even if you don’t feel like giving up on prayer . . . ’cause some day you surely could.
This photo will make you laugh–if nothing else. Me as a child. 🙂
Amy Julia Becker, with whom I disagree on some issues, has a marvelous weekly post for guest authors called “Perfectly Human**”. Here is her description of the purpose of this column:
This weekly feature is intended to provide a picture of life with a disability in all its possibilities and limitations, gifts and struggles. The title of this feature comes from the Greek word telos, which can be translated as “perfect” but which also can be defined as, “the end for which it was created.” People with disabilities are just as human as anyone else–flawed and gifted, beloved and broken. They are “perfectly” human, which is to say, created with a purpose. This space is intended to convey the things that connect us as human beings, things that go beyond our perceptions of able/disabled. And this space is intended to suggest ways in which individuals with disabilities can, at least sometimes, help individuals without disabilities to understand their own humanity.
This is this week’s entry: “All People Are Messy.” I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
I’m on my way out the door early today, so I’m sending you somewhere else to read this morning–to Amy Julia Becker’s blog, Thin Places. I think you’ll enjoy her reflection today on imitating God. You can read it here.
I would like to refer you to an excellent article I read yesterday at First Things, entitled “The Reality of Hope.” It’s written by Amy Julia Becker who lost her mother-in-law to cancer six years ago. She writes about what the word “hope” really means as you live through the experience of losing someone you dearly love.
After she died, it was as if I had broken my arm. A part of me ached all the time, and something that had been functional was now useless, and everything about my daily routine needed to be navigated differently. It was difficult, for instance, to stand in line at the post office or buy groceries or make dinner. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
I had spent much of the final six months of her life with her, my mother-in-law, my friend: Penny. And once she was gone, I missed her. I missed the Penny I knew when she was healthy—the woman who had enjoyed kick-boxing, who loved ice cream and didn’t like cilantro, who had hand-addressed our wedding invitations. I missed the Penny I came to know in the midst of her battle against cancer, who, after surgery, laughed so hard in response to a get-well card that staples holding her wound together were dislodged, who walked around the block in sneakers and a nightgown just to get outside, who held my hand as she slept, who said, “thank you” even at the very end.
You can read the rest here.
Witnesses to Hope 