The Warren & the World is Story Warren’s weekly newsletter, providing a round-up of our favorite things from around the web as well as a review of what was on our site over the past week. We’re glad you’re here!
Around the Web
Losing Hope and Giving Birth
- We sit at the dinner table talking through my tears, his day, our year. We circle the same bushes we’ve been circling since we left our home and community in Texas. The same burning bushes friends have pointed out whenever they come visit for five days or ten. Beside those visits, though, no one has pointed to our marriage or our lives in a year with an eye toward hope. We left our home on June 25 and walked into triage. We watched my body bleed and a policeman bleed and our finances bleed and our new church bleed and our hope bleed and there was no stopping any of it. We bled ourselves out and now we’re shells of the people we were a year ago.
I Forgot You Were Four
- I’m sorry.I forgot you were four.
I rushed and pushed and let exasperated sighs slip and angry words bark. I forgot that you’re just figuring this stuff out and that so many things that are old to me are still brand new to you.
I forgot that you need time to process, to investigate, to explore, to decide. I forgot that the tiny moment of patience by me can prevent an hour of frustration for all of us.
What to Do with Unanswered Prayer
John Starke writes at The Gospel Coalition about the problem of unanswered prayer.
- Anyone who’s given himself or herself to prayer for a sustained amount of time has likely experienced the disappointment of unanswered prayer. But the more theologically astute among you may not like that phrase “unanswered prayer.” You may call it a category mistake. I understand your point. In reality, there are no unanswered prayers. God is sovereign and giving us all what we would’ve asked for if we knew everything he knows.
And I’m sure David was told something similar when he penned Psalm 13: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” (v. 1).
Surely you know, David, that God hasn’t forgotten you!
I’m sure he knew.
David continues: “Consider and answer me, O LORD my God” (v. 3). Apparently, David hadn’t experienced an answer to his prayers for a while, and was asking God “why?” I trust you could give a quick, theologically accurate answer.
But David is a serial offender in the Psalms.
Raising Brave Children
Shannon Lee Miller writes at the Nashville Mom’s Blog about helping our children respond to the horrors of this world.
- “Is that a scary man?”
My own son is standing at the bottom of the stairs. He woke up early, and I’m watching CNN. Both of his index fingers are outstretched at Omar Mateen. I’m still processing. There is grief and rage, and I don’t know what to say to him.
I watch as my own uncertainty washes over his body. His eyes shift back and forth from underneath those heavy lashes that all little boys seem to have been magically bequeathed with from nowhere, and his little body—dotted with the very first freckles of his life—begins to stiffen. How do you explain the increasingly complex climate of the world to someone whose entire universe consists of neighborhood twirly slides and Targets and sandwiches shaped like stars?
Around the Warren
Fight for the Beautiful
Glenn McCarty reminds us the importance of fighting for what is beautiful.
- My older son was born the same week as the Pixar movie Wall-E, and I’ve always felt a bond with the little trash-collecting robot. Like Wall-E, I’m a bit of a pack rat, I have a fondness for old musicals, and I have atendency to run into things when I’m trying to impress someone. Only a few years ago, though, when I heard director Andrew Stanton explain Wall-E’s driving motivation during a TED talk on story did I put together what it was about the robot that I truly admire. Wall-E’s driving force, his “spine,” as Stanton calls it, is to find and protect the beautiful.
How great is that?
What’s In A Library?
Liz Cottrill writes of the joy of libraries–our own and the ones down the road.
- The craziest things can happen when you have an undying affection for books.
But, let me back up. I’m sure that affection grew from the stories poured into my ears as a little one, and definitely was given full “scope for the imagination” (as Anne Shirley of Green Gables would say) by my visits to the library. Oh, the smell of the books, the immensity of stacks upon stacks of shelves containing untold mystery and tantalizing treasure. Bringing home bags of books was bliss.
So, whether it was the collection my parents built up over the years for me, and the bookcases built to accommodate it, or the idea of a library with card catalog, I naturally began to accumulate my own library. This multiplied when my children came along as each of them in turn had to have their individual bookcase and collection. Those collections were as diverse as the children who gathered them.
And, of course, I regularly trotted my own children to the local library too.
Something to Do with Your Kids
Summertime is generally a socks-free season, so perhaps it’s time to go through your sock drawers and purge the ones that are a bit too small. If you need something to do with them, here are 50 suggestions!
And Something to Watch
This short little film gives a glimpse into a child’s imagination in the real world.
Thank you for reading. We’re on your side.
You can find her at carolyncgivens.com or on Facebook or Instagram at @carolyncgivens.
- The Warren & The World Vol 12, Issue 43 - December 5, 2024
- The Warren & The World Vol 12, Issue 42 - November 30, 2024
- The Warren & The World Vol 12, Issue 41 - November 23, 2024
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