Speaking:
Blessed Are They Who Mourn
Sermon at Cornerstone Fellowship
Urbana, IL, 3/13/2022
Defining Shame
How does shame define us?
What is the genesis of shame?
Can shame be healed?
March 27, 2019, Life Community Church, Mahomet, Il,
Jeff Augustine, Pastor
August 25, 2014, Life Community Church, Mahoment, Il
Jeff Augustine, Pastor
Magazine Articles:
Today’s Christian Woman article: “I Was A Food Addict”
Marriage Partnership: “Sticks and Stones”
Todays Christian Woman: “Free to Say Yes”
Todays Christian Woman: “Redefining God as Father”
A Dozen Helps to Forgive:
- Forgiveness is both a choice and a process.
- Make a decision to give up anger.
- Pray to be made willing. Or to be made willing to be made willing.
- Feel your feelings in a safe place, with a safe person.
- To say, “I forgive,” but never feel your pain is denial.
- To feel your pain, anger, and sadness but never choose forgiveness is stuck.
- Ask for grace both to feel and to forgive.
- Study Jesus’ words on forgiveness.
- To forgive is not to condone
- To forgive is not to excuse.
- To forgive doesn’t mean you don’t matter.
- Trust God for justice.
Feel free to use, with this credit: ©Karen Rabbitt 2009
For those of us who struggle with eating too much:
Cookies
I reached for the chocolate chip cookie, hot from the oven. Before I knew it, I’d eaten six.
I reached for the chocolate chip cookie, hot from the oven. I thought, why am I reaching for sugar and fat? Before I knew it, I’d eaten five.
I reached for the warm chocolate chip cookie. I thought, Why am I eating? I sat at the kitchen table, found paper and pen. I wrote, “I’m angry because I can’t make my daughter stop fighting her homework.” I ate three chocolate chip cookies.
I reached for the day old cookie. Why? I feel angry and scared. “God, you know my fear. You know my anxiety. Please help me trust you for her future.” I ate one cookie.
I stopped baking cookies.
© Karen Rabbitt, 2007 All Rights Reserved.
Mrs. Rabbitt, I worked as a teacher’s aide for Mr. Robert Smith, at Prairie Elementary School in Urbana, Il., in 1983-85. Your daughter, Jennifer, was a student in his class those two years and one of my favorites. All these years I’ve kept a beautiful picture of her that I took (and I’m sure I gave her a copy to take home). On the back of it I wrote: Jenny, the girl who loved hamsters, and who had a 50-50 chance of being empty-handed come homework time. I joked, “Jenny, you’re going to end up at the adult education center down the street if you don’t do your homework.” This is the look I got. Recently I googled “Jenny Rabbitt, Urbana, Illinois.” Excerpts from your book fortuitously popped up, and I bought a copy. How lucky I feel to have read your story of glorious triumph over abuse! I have lived in Colorado since 1987. God bless. Mark McCarthy
Mark, thanks for the story about Jenn. Thanks for your input into her life in those days.