Happy birthday, Domestic Minister! You’re 3 years old now.
This past year was busy and challenging, and that showed in my ability—or more accurately “inability”—to create posts consistently throughout the year, especially in the latter half. It’s hard to think creatively when the mind is full of other projects and concerns. Compared to previous years, the crickets were heard quite a lot this year on this site. Still, I managed to come up with 12 posts!
Your 3rd year started off with“Haunted by an Easter Song!” I’m still disturbed by those lyrics. They’re a constant reminder to let Jesus truly live through me, to let Him do through me the kinds of things He did when He lived on this earth. The absolute last thing I want is for Jesus to be living in me only in the sense that He’s bound and gagged in a dark neglected closet of my life!
Next, just in time for Mother’s Day, I reworked some notes I’d written years ago and added some new info and insights I’d gained about a Bible passage that has been both a standard Christian women feel obliged to meet and a source of angst for the same. The result is “What is a Proverbs 31 Woman?” I think I figured out how to understand this passage so that it remains a goal/standard without being a source of guilt-trips for not being Suzy Homemaker!
For anyone who was still struggling with their Spring Cleaning even as summer was starting, I shared my collection of helpful tips. “25+ Questions to Help You Declutter” is a great one-stop resource of questions and explanations designed to get you past your hesitations about letting go of the junk you’ve been collecting.
For Father’s Day, I wrote a rather unusual post—certainly not an expected topic for a celebratory holiday! “Forgiving Fathers” is for anyone struggling to celebrate their own dad due to his failures or just needing guidance on how to forgive anyone. This may be one of my most powerful posts to date!
“Practice Your Obedience” followed shortly afterwards. This post focused on the need to be obedient—not because the task we’ve been asked to do is something of great importance, but to simply practice the act of compliance regardless of the tasks. If you want to obey God in any big, important moment, then you’d better practice obeying Him in every insignificant one. Why? Because how you will perform in a “public-eye” moment is determined by how you practiced when nobody was watching!
In July, I was in the middle of a move (from apartment to a house). So, I decided to share a short video I’d made nearly a year before when we were moving from one state to another. Thus, the title of “U-Hauls and U-Turns.” It’s the story of how I made a driving mistake I’d NEVER made before in all my 30-plus years of driving and what can be learned from it.
By August, I was starting to feel overwhelmed by a variety of things (as if moving wasn’t enough!). So, my two posts this month, “Just Keep Plodding”and “Press On!” became an unplanned 2-part series about enduring challenging situations.
Since September is Suicide Awareness Month, I decided I’d share my own unusual story about suicide. My goal with “Envious of a Dead Man” is to reveal how subtle the earliest suicidal thoughts can be and how to nip them in the bud!
My next post was a highly practical one called “How to Be Sick So You Get Well Faster.” Considering how the whole world is currently battling to survive the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ll admit it’s intimidating to offer this small and very simple advice in the face of such a Goliath! Still, even though I’m no medical doctor or expert, I think my basic admonition aligns with current guidance to stay home! (Please comply with all approved methods of combating this corona-virus!)
By this time in the year (late September and beyond), I was so overwhelmed with daily life tasks and other challenges that I was starting to lose hope of ever being able to get back to this blog! Thankfully, I was asked to speak VERY briefly at a women’s prayer breakfast and got my portion of the meeting recorded on my phone by a friend. It’s not a high-quality video, but “Guarding Against Hard Heartedness” is a powerful message we all need to let sink in!
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, my beloved mother—who was less than 2 months away from 90!—went quietly and peacefully to live forever with her beloved Savior and Lord! As a very young girl, she had a vision of walking through Heaven with Jesus. As they passed by many beautiful mansions, she saw a place that was just getting started in its construction. When she asked Jesus whose mansion it was, He said to her, “This will be yours if you’ll live for me all your life.” Having heard that wonderful story many times, my dad and siblings often said, “When Mom dies, we’re going to have her grave’s headstone say, ‘Her mansion was finally ready!'” Wow, what a mansion it must be!
Well, as you can imagine, a close family death during major holidays creates a major amount of stress and falling behind on maintaining life. Not to mention other stressors about money and trying to find more full-time employment. All this combined together was not very conducive for the creativity needed for blogging.
But God was still very present and speaking. Sometimes what He said was SO powerful that I just had to make the time to write it down so I wouldn’t forget! And that’s how we got the last post, “Learning about Unanswered Prayer by Feeding the Cat.” This is a powerful lesson to learn that’s highly appropriate during this current situation where we’re praying for quick healing and deliverance from this viral plague and its concomitant issues (financial woes and social isolation)!
Uhm, I just identified 3 posts as being “powerful” reading! Can there really be that many?
You tell me, readers. Which of these blogs do you like best? Leave a comment here or with the post(s) itself. I look forward to getting your feedback!
Thanks for reading!
Featured Image by Herbanu Tri Sasongko from Pixabay.
Domestic Minister 