There is something mysterious about being on campus when few other souls are braving the heat with you. There is something mysterious about focusing on one soul class in a “let’s get it done” mentality. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’d something new and fresh. Something fun. Something different. And I like it!

Thank you, God, for the blessing of Your joy and this beautiful day.
I love You.

Yesterday a message was repeated in my head more than I would have desired and it causes me to have great sadness for the welfare of “the common man”.

I found myself walking into Walmart which, for those of you who know me, happens very, very seldomly due to Walmart’s employment stance. But alas, I caved in and walked down the grungy aisles of Walmart, viewing the overpriced, cheap garbage that they were selling for that day and remembering the smile of the little old lady who stood at Walmart’s door as a greeter. Upon entering the check-out line, I held my bicycle helmet (seriously, dude, my old one was all broken) and patiently waited. The cashier spoke in an exhausted voice to the couple in front of me, “Hello, did you find everything you were looking for?” The “college age” man acknowledged the cashier’s existence and dismissed her question with a quick nodd. The “college age” woman continued placing items on the conveyer belt. As she rounded the shopping cart, two small blue-green eyes peered at me from a carseat securely propped up in the cart’s child seat.
I smiled at the little one as she studied my face. But no smile came in return. What I assumed to be her father, seeing that I was watching his baby, jumped around the cart into the baby’s view and smiled a huge smile at her. The baby’s response? Nothing. She looked away from him. Dissatisfied with the response from the child, the father lower his eyebrows, smirked, and walked off in annoyance.

At this point, “mom” had loaded the groceries, paid for them and begun to reload them into the cart. “Dad” muttered about the price of the expenses (all of which excluding a magazine were baby expenses) and dragged the cart off by the cart’s back end as the “family” proceeded out the door. One thing I noticed… no rings.

I stepped outside my apartment and headed for the car. I had forgotten something at the store and needed to pick it up before tomorrow. “Bummer, Monica…” I thought, “I really have to get my homework done.” I walked down the steps heading for the Little Green and her familiar balding roof as, “You should have remembered…” echoed through my head.

Two, what society would label as, “college men” stood on the sidewalk below my building conversing about something. I didn’t bother listening. You know, try not to eaves drop. But then a voice cut out through my thoughts, “Dude and she was like, ‘I have those same thoughts every time we have sex.’ ” My heart broke. I think I knew him from high school. One thing I knew… no rings.

A Mexican couple walked along the aisle of Meijer. The woman walked ahead with a cart-load of produce. The man walked behind, eyeing some brightly packaged cookie box in the center aisle. In his right arm, a chubby little beauty, smiling her gummy grin. “Dad proclaimed something in Spanish to “mom”. “Mom” walked off, choosing to ignore him. She rolled her eyes and grumbled as she passed me. No rings.

A teenage “couple” sat on a big blanket at the Fairborn Pool. All thirty-one of my Kindgarteners were securely enjoying themselves at the pool, but I noticed three little girls who were not swimming. The girls sat on their towels, partially wrapped to keep the wind from chilling their bones. They laughed and stared at the teenagers. The teenage girl flirtatiously spanked her boyfriend as he tackled her. “Where are their parents?” I thought as I turned my head away from the wrestling and rolling of the string-bikinied girl and the overly-excited guy.

“Girls,” I called to my Kindergarten audience, “Come get your snack.” Shield your eyes, I thought. And it really hurt my heart as I thought of the messages that they were receiving on a potentially harmlessly fun childhood fieldtrip.


The idea of Co-habitation rolled through my mind during “rest time” after the pool field-trip and later on in the night. How easily we, as a disinterested society, claim to know the best way to raise our children to be responsible adults; the very same children that we allow to raise themselves. Afterall, “co-habitation will allow them to experience the bond of marriage without the commitment”. And that’s a good thing? “It will help them become more comfortable with knowing how to live with someone else.” Do we really think they’re not having sex? Like, seriously? And do you know how many “Christian” people I know that think co-habiting is okay? Where did we get confused? Where did we go wrong?

I just think of all the broken families, all the broken hearts, all the hopeless, and useless feeling people who result from co-habiting. And we can pick one story that we think is a success from co-habiting, but give it ten years. Give it twenty years.

Perhaps the value of the rings have gone down in society’s mind. But why have psychiatrist and couseling visits increased? Why have divorce rates skyrocketed? Why is it now common to have more children in a classroom from divorced families than married ones? Why are teachers being trained to deal with children going through the battles of parental custody wars? Why do we have so many ADHA kids and children who are depressed? Why are there so many pregnant teens and pregnant college students who are fighting for child support from uninterested “fathers”? Why are there so many abortions? Why so much hurt from what we think is an “unneeded” tradition of exchanging vows and rings?

Dare we accept the challenge to live with someone for the rest of our lives? Through thick and thin? Yet running from commitment and careless living seems so much more satisfying… But only in the temporary. [Do we not see that from the past?]

I hope that churches will begin to make a bigger deal of marriages. Please, Body of Christ, stop overlooking the pain of divorce. Stop sweeping it under the rug. May our applause of fifty-year anniversaries NEVER stop. And may this society finally wake-up.

I mean… we all can dream of something, right?
As McDonald’s used to say in naive bewilderment, “It can happen.”

Saturday night, I volunteered at the Attic (a teen club). The Attic had a huge Underoath concert that was completely sold out for the final showing. The earlier showing had a fair turn-out, but nothing could have prepared us for the seven hundred teens and parents who showed up for the final show. Oddly, during the last show, I had less of a job because we were so well staffed. So, I found myself wandering about during the last band, Underoath. I stood on the “staff side” off to the right of the stage and watched as hundreds of teens screamed the lyrics along with Underoath’s main singer guy. I had earplugs in (a God-sent) so I was sort of watching the events from a bit of a distant view. (Or at least that’s the best way I can describe it to you. Want to know what I mean.. try putting in earplugs and functioning as usual.) But that’s when I saw the most prominent illustration of mercy.

Let me explain a little about the set-up and the environment at that time to help you understand. The stage area layout has a waist-high bar to keep fans from rushing the stage. So there is about a two person wide walkway between the fans and the “stars”. Security usually stand there in order to make sure there’s no “fishy” business going on between fans breaking rules of “stay back” distance. On this particular night teens were packed so tightly into the “fan” space that there was this humidity that lingered above the crowd [and reeked]. All the teens were drenched with sweat. There were girls pressed up against the waist-high bar, screaming and reaching out for Underoath. Security had no problems with the seemingly “over-excited” crowd.

But as I looked further I spotted something. There was a girl who was pressed against the bar. She looked as if that bar wouldn’t have been there, then she would have surely passed out. She kind of hung from the bar, screaming the lyrics until she was red in the face. I watched as she gave every last drop of dehydrated energy within her to participate, often gasping for air between lyrics. Her head was doused in sweat that poured down her face. And she wasn’t the only one. There were so many other teens that looked just like her.

During the songs, various teens were thrown up into the crowd and the security guards leaned into the crowd to hold those teens as the fans thrusted them toward the gap of cement flooring between the audience and the stage. It amazed me how the security guards didn’t ask the teens to quit the, quite frankly, dangerous sport of crowd surfing, but they just kept catching people as they were thrown at them. One security guard, Mark, waited anxiously for the next crowd surfer, standing on his tippy-toes to check if there were any coming.

And in between crowd surfing catches, the security guards did another act. Huge boxes of water bottles lay at their feet. They opened the water bottles and poured water into awaiting teens mouths. It was the typical picture of a mother bird feeding her baby a worm. And security also sprayed the crowd with water to keep them all from passing out from the heat.

It just amazed me to watch the balance of handing out water and catching crowd surfers. Not once did someone say, “Hey, hold on a second! This is getting out of hand. Stop your crowd surfing! Stop your pushing and just spread out so we have enough room!” You may look at this story and think, “Man, the attic staff are morons for not controlling that concert better.” But I would like to stand in defense for the Attic.

These teens are coming to the Attic because they are in the process of rebelling against rules. They seek a “thriller.” They want to experience what “everyone else” appears to be doing. The Attic was not designed for the saved, but the unsaved. Not for the found, but the lost. Wild? Oh, absolutely. The place is wild. But it attracts teens from all walks of life to come into a crowd which is doing the same things that other teens are doing minus the sex, drugs and unsupervision.

But last, night, it was such a huge picture of mercy to watch the security guards catch one teen after another and distribute water by the gallons. It was as if to say, “I am not going to make you stop living your lifestyle. I’m not here to judge. Just to love on you. I’m only here to love on you in a real way.”

I have no doubt that those six security guards went home with bruises from the teens that hit them with flying elbows and knees. I watched a few of them get kicked. I watched some of them literally landed on by some not-too-tiny teens. But the response was always the same. Their arms immediately shot back into the air, ready for the next teen.

Thank you, Lord, for that vivid picture of having compassion on another.

Your mercy is Beautiful.

Yesterday after church I went Swimsuit shoppping. Now, let me remind you of one thing, this Monica is not a fan of swimsuits. Swimming? Oh, I could eat it up. Swimsuits… YUCK!

So, I discovered a few things while I was out swimsuit shopping. First of all, modesty is almost completely etched out of our society. Secondly, there are very few swimsuits out there that are designed to swim in. Most are designed to barely cover your necessities, but don’t move or the thing might fall off. Thirdly, I am too “out of fashion” to shop at Target, K-mart, and Meijer, and too too “hip and young” to shop at ValueCity Department store. And, as I also overheard a mother guiding her daughter’s swimsuit choice, I shop in the “old people” section. Now, I’m not really sure what the lady ment as she whispered to her daughter before vanishing into the newest partial-nudity of this day and age, but if “old” equals modest, then sign me up! I defaulted to Kohls. Yes, wacky expensive and totally frustrating to find only a few modest choices without being dressed like a whale. I found my pick in the “athletic section” though there were a few “athletic” choices in which I pondered their ability to stay on, let alone survive “athletics”. So, the winning choice was… [insert picture] oh… {extremely sarcastic} BUMMER… the picture wouldn’t paste. Man! Better luck next time!

So, the moral of my shopping experience? The fallen world is most certainly not rising any higher in their standards. AKA… SWIMSUITS STILL SUCK!