Disappointment is an unfortunate reality in the entertainment industry for performers and fans alike. For performers, this may take the form of being passed over for a work opportunity they really wanted or being denied an award that they deserved. Both of these circumstances are also disappointing for fans, who want to see the performers they admire honored for their talents and given plenty of opportunities to use them. Continue reading
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Tete-a-tete: Having trouble keeping your New Year’s resolutions? It could be “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” Syndrome
A formidable foe lies in wait to derail your New Year’s resolutions. It’s not a lack of willpower, a lack of self-discipline or your warm, snuggly bed. It is “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” Syndrome.
“If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” is a popular children’s book that, as the title implies, chronicles the complications that ensue when you offer a cookie to a mouse. First, the mouse wants a glass of milk to go with his cookie. This leads to requests for a straw, a mirror (so he won’t get a milk moustache), nail scissors (so he can give himself a haircut) and a broom (to sweep up his hair clippings).
The story continues, with the mouse pursuing items and activities that are further and further removed from his original intention of eating a cookie. Everything eventually comes full circle, however, leading the mouse to ask for – you guessed it – a cookie.
Just as the mouse gets sidetracked by things that are only tangentially related to his original intention, we, too, get distracted from the primary purpose of our New Year’s resolutions. Some of the things that come up do need to be dealt with in order to accomplish our goals, but we need to keep those goals in sight and not become mired in the details.
Let’s say, for example, that your resolution is to exercise regularly. You decide to start with the most obvious step: joining a gym.
But joining a gym means exercising in public, which means your stained sweatpants will most likely not be appropriate attire. So you go online in search of new workout gear.
You notice that the site from which you’re buying your new track pants also sells sneakers. Remembering that your left knee sometimes aches after you run, you do some research to find out which sneakers are the most effective at absorbing impact.
Then again, maybe a knee stabilizer would be better. You could buy one at the drug store, but these are your joints we’re talking about – you can’t be too careful. You call your doctor for advice and realize that your children are overdue for their annual physicals. After scheduling their appointments, you decide to check in with the dentist as well to make sure the kids are up to date with cleanings and X-rays.
You go to mark these appointments down on the family calendar, only to discover that the kids left the caps off the markers you use to color-code the calendar and the markers have dried up. An emergency trip to the office supply store is in order, and you might as well pick up the dry cleaning while you’re out.
Wait a minute. Wasn’t there something specific you were going to do today? You drive past the gym on the way to the dry cleaner’s, and the sight rings a faint bell.
That’s it – you were going to join a gym! And instead, somehow, you are picking up dry cleaning and buying new markers.
Here’s another scenario. Your resolution is to finally clean out and organize the junk drawer. You’ve avoided this daunting task for many years (since you moved into the house, come to think of it), but this is it. This is the year it happens.
You take out the first item to be dealt with: a screwdriver that tends to wedge the drawer shut every time the drawer is closed. Easy enough – that goes into the toolbox, which is right outside in the garage.
Next to the toolbox are a few cans of dried-up paint, left over from painting the porch last summer. When is the next hazardous waste collection day at the dump? You go back inside, look up the phone number for the town offices, and call to find out.
You mark the date on the family calendar with your brand-new markers and notice that the cat has kicked some of her food into her water dish again. Before you can wash and refill her dish, however, the breakfast dishes need to be taken out of the sink and loaded into the dishwasher.
Oh, except for that one. That mug needs to be washed by hand.
Your hand stings from the soapy water and you realize you have a cut on your finger. Ten minutes of rummaging in the upstairs bathroom produces a Band-Aid and the antibiotic ointment, which expired in 2010. It’s been a while since your last tetanus shot and since you don’t know what caused the cut, you’re off to the pharmacy for antibiotic ointment.
While you’re out, you might as well pick up the dry cleaning. And there goes your day of cleaning out the junk drawer.
I don’t think “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” Syndrome can be completely avoided – interruptions are a part of daily life, and everyone gets distracted from time to time. Being aware of the syndrome, however, can help you to be more aware of when you’re getting off track and you can then choose to return to your original task.
If you get so distracted that you miss your opportunity to work on your resolution on a given day, don’t berate yourself or give up. Instead, take a cue from the mouse: have a cookie and start over.
– Teresa Santoski
Originally published Jan. 29, 2015.
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How to pray for and encourage performers through social media
You’ve decided to take the Prayers for Oppa Performer Prayer Challenge and pray for a performer and encourage them through social media. But how exactly do you do this? Chances are you don’t know the performer personally, so how can you be sure the messages you’re sending them are relevant to their circumstances and pleasing to God?
In addition to the more specific guidance you’ll find in my Prayers for Oppa performer/fan devotional book, here are a few practical tips to guide you on your way: Continue reading
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Tete-a-tete: When Christmas starts before Thanksgiving (a reflection on temporal discombobulation)
Since mid-November, I’ve felt unusually off-kilter. I feel awkwardly situated, as though I’m in the right place but at the wrong time or vice versa.
This is, I’m afraid, the direct result of having gone to the mall two weeks before Black Friday and discovering that Christmas had already arrived.
The mall itself and all of the stores were completely decorated, with holiday music piping over the speakers and a bored-looking Santa posing for selfies with his assistants because parents with small children had yet to get into the festive mood.
I am accustomed to a certain amount of chronological disorientation due to the nature of my work. I worked in the Telegraph’s newsroom for about ten years, and it was just a fact of life that you never knew what day of the week it was. You’re not only writing articles for the next day’s paper; you’re also working on pieces that will run a few days from now all the way up to a month or more in the future. Concepts like “Tuesday” only exist as deadlines, not actual states of being.
Now that I work for a magazine, it has only magnified my confusion in regards to time. Newspapers typically plan ahead in increments of days and weeks; magazines work several months ahead. I edited the December issues, with all of their Christmas content, back in September. Now that it’s finally December, I’m editing the March issues and mistakenly believing that warmer weather is just around the corner.
This temporal discombobulation is nothing, however, in comparison to the retail world welcoming Christmas before Thanksgiving. Younger Sister and I had ventured out to the mall to pick up Christmas hand soaps for a gift basket for a silent auction, and I must confess that our errand took longer than necessary due to my bewilderment. I simply could not get my mind around what I was seeing, and I kept stopping to gape at decorations and displays.
Entering the bath product store that sold the hand soaps was even more mind-boggling, with special holiday scents and gift sets having already taken the place of the non-seasonal inventory. There were so many Christmas items to choose from that I had to double check with one of the clerks to make sure I hadn’t overlooked any of the options.
The clerk was very helpful, but she looked as overwhelmed as I felt. I asked her how she felt about the premature holiday influx, and she admitted that it was a little disconcerting. But that, she said, is the direction retail is taking—getting the holiday merchandise out to shoppers as soon as possible, even if it means skipping another holiday in the process.
Don’t get me wrong—I adore Christmas. The spiritual significance of the holiday is paramount to me—my family’s Christmas dinner includes a birthday cake for Jesus (though we blow out the candles for Him). I also love the decorations, the lights, the music, and the emphasis on generosity and goodwill towards others that accompany the holiday.
But I also believe that the anticipation of a good thing is part of its enjoyment. Part of the reason that Christmas is special – indeed, that any holiday is special – is because it’s only celebrated for a limited period of time. If the celebration of Christmas was a year-round event, the ornaments and the prevalence of red and green would become a bit tiresome, just as even the hardiest New Englander welcomes a change of season after six months of snow.
Given the economic climate, however, and the fact that brick-and-mortar stores are trying to remain viable in the face of their online competitors, it’s hard to imagine Christmas returning to its normal time frame if these tactics prove successful. As someone who was able to assemble a Christmas gift basket for a silent auction two weeks earlier than anticipated, I must admit the early sales do have a certain usefulness.
So what, then, is the best way to combat the temporal disorientation that results from this bypassing of Thanksgiving?
When I worked in the Telegraph’s newsroom, we had metal racks labeled “Monday,” “Tuesday” and so forth that held the newspapers for that particular day of the week. My coworkers would walk over to the racks to get the day’s paper and, more often than not, freeze in confusion.
And so, I made a little sign that said “Today” and, after double checking the date on my computer, clipped the sign to the appropriate rack. Problem solved, at least in these particular circumstances.
I therefore propose that when stores set up for Christmas before Thanksgiving, they require their staff to wear large pins shaped like turkeys—the animal, that is, not the Thanksgiving dinner staple. That way, every time you interact with a store employee, you will be reminded that even though you’re buying hand soap that smells like gingerbread and candles that smell like holly wreaths, you still need to think about turkey with all the trimmings before you start trimming the tree.
– Teresa Santoski
Originally published Dec. 4, 2014.
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Tete-a-tete: Sizing up a new family pet, or the difference between a cat and a hamster
Welcoming a new pet into the family is always an adjustment. Every animal is accompanied by its own particular routines, needs, and idiosyncrasies, and it takes time to acclimate.
Following the conclusion of 18 years of cat ownership, we’ve brought a hamster into the mix. And though it sounds a bit ludicrous to spell it out in this way, the thing that’s giving us the most trouble is that hamsters are much smaller than cats.
Cleo, our winsomely cranky family feline, passed away in July at the ripe old age of 22. That’s 22 in human years – in cat years, she was a supercentenarian. Over the years, our vet told us that Cleo must really love us to have persevered in the face of so many medical challenges. This is a kitty who stubbornly taught herself to walk again after suffering a stroke and insisted on navigating through the house on her own in spite of having become deaf and blind – conditions we were not aware of until the day Mom vacuumed around her and barely got a reaction.
Sadly, the hot summer weather proved too much for Cleo’s elderly ticker, and that stubborn little heart of hers finally gave out. She died at home, in Dad’s arms and surrounded by much of her family.
Seeing as Cleo was part of the family longer than 17-year-old Youngest Brother or 15-year-old Younger Sister (a fact I would occasionally point out when they complained about her stealing their spot on the couch), you can understand why we didn’t want to adopt another cat right away. Dad has also mentioned that if we got another cat and it lived as long as Cleo did, it could very well outlive some of us human family members and there might not be anyone to care for it.
The majority of the family had resigned itself to a petless existence, but Younger Sister was not so easily daunted. She is, to put it mildly, a tenacious and resourceful individual and took it upon herself to research cute, furry animals with relatively short life expectancies.
Which is how Younger Sister became the somewhat smug owner of a tan and white hamster named Jinx.
Since we are all rather starved for furry companionship, Younger Sister tends to draw an audience when she takes Jinx out of the cage to play with her. Such was the case one recent evening when Mom, Youngest Brother, Friend of Youngest Brother and I congregated in Younger Sister’s room to watch her clean the cage and let Jinx roam free in her little plastic ball.
At least, that was the ideal. In reality, Mom cleaned the cage while Younger Sister played with the hamster.
Mom asked if she could hold Jinx and attempted to cradle the hamster in the crook of her elbow, the way we used to do with our cat. Cleo would snuggle in this position briefly and then climb her way up the arm of whoever was holding her, ultimately coming to rest on their shoulder and burying her face in their neck or their hair.
Jinx, being much tinier in comparison, viewed this not as an invitation to cuddle but as a launching pad to freedom. She leapt out of Mom’s arms and into the void.
I happened to be occupying the airspace across from Mom at the time, holding the plastic hamster ball in one hand and the lid to the ball in the other. With Jinx hurtling toward me, I knew I only had one option.
Since my life is not an action movie, this option was not catching the hamster inside the ball. Fearful of accidentally squishing our newest addition, I instead permitted her to ricochet off my shoulder and onto Younger Sister’s futon, from which she was rescued – completely unharmed – before she could further broaden her horizons.
Jinx’s brief adventure led to a discussion as to who was ultimately at fault: Mom for attempting to cuddle the hamster in her arms, me for failing to catch the flying hamster, or Younger Sister for taking the hamster out of her cage in the first place. The consensus was that we’re simply not used to having such a small pet.
In Cleo’s younger years, we would often find her curled up in a dresser drawer or squeezed into some narrow crevice between a piece of furniture and the wall. Though it might take us a while to figure out where she was napping on any given day, we never worried that she may have gotten lost inside the house. Stuck somewhere, possibly, but never lost.
Jinx, on the other hand, is in a potentially perilous situation the moment we take her out of her cage. The house is unfamiliar territory to her, and she’s not big enough to really have a perspective as to which room is which. There are also far more places where a hamster can get stuck than a cat. We never had to be concerned, for example, that Cleo might get stuck in an empty mug that Younger Sister left on her bedroom floor.
It’s definitely going to take some time to adjust to the smaller size of our new pet and to learn how to handle her accordingly. In the meantime, we might want to distribute catcher’s mitts to anyone who happens to be in the vicinity when we take Jinx out of her cage.
– Teresa Santoski
Originally published Nov. 6, 2014.
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Tete-a-tete: When your worst fear comes true
It has been said that 90 percent of the things we’re afraid of will never happen. This is comforting until you realize this means that 10 percent of the things we fear actually will happen.
And this 10 percent isn’t restricted to the more typical fears, such as being in a car accident. Nope, the completely irrational fears are fair game, too.
Take mine, for example. I have a very specific form of mottephobia, or fear of moths. This is due to coming across the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” on the shelf at our local video rental store when I was a child. To refresh your memory, the cover features a close-up of Jodie Foster’s face with a terrifying-looking moth where her mouth should be.
Ever since then, whenever I see a moth, I get a little panicky and I automatically close my mouth, rolling my lips inwards. My body seems to be under the impression that if the moth can’t see my mouth, it won’t try to land on it or fly into it.
Over the years, my family has tried to convince me that moths are far more interested in cozying up to the nearest light source than in attacking my face. But that’s why it’s called an irrational fear – it’s not supposed to make sense.
You can therefore understand my consternation when I walked into my bedroom a few days ago and discovered an enormous black moth that resembled Darth Vader’s helmet clinging to the wall above my bed.
I enlisted Mom’s assistance in exterminating the unwanted insect, but by the time we returned to my room, it was nowhere to be found. Mom assured me that it had likely flown out of my room and would turn up elsewhere in the house.
She was, shall we say, slightly incorrect.
The next night, after I had turned off my lights and was nearly asleep, I heard a sound like the flapping of wings. I quickly turned on my bedside light and scanned the ceiling. Nothing.
I turned off the light and tried to fall asleep, telling myself it was only my imagination. And then, I heard banging coming from the large Japanese lantern above my bed. I turned it on to see what could be causing this noise, only to discover I had angered the lurking Moth Vader.
It flew out of the lantern, banked in the middle of the room, and then flew directly at me. More specifically, it dive-bombed my mouth.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to scream with your mouth closed. It doesn’t really work.
I shot out of bed, and the moth came to rest on the wall above my bed, settling in just high enough that it would be hard to reach with the fly swatter that I keep behind the dresser for such emergencies.
This was one of the rare occasions I was glad that my eyesight is not the greatest. Without my glasses, I was spared the high-resolution version of this winged terror as I tremulously tried to mash it into the wall with my well-used – and somewhat mangled – fly swatter.
I succeeded in crushing it enough that it left a ghastly black smudge on my wall, but not enough to kill it. It crumpled to the floor and scuttled off under my bed to lick its wounds. Like their less threatening cousin the butterfly, some moths do have tongues.
I quickly came to the dreadful realization that the moth had retreated so far under my bed that I couldn’t have another whack at it unless I crawled under the bed with it. This would give Mothra another chance to barnstorm my face, with the added bonus of triggering my mild claustrophobia.
There was absolutely no way I was getting back into bed until this issue was resolved, so I did what any self-respecting adult would do: I walked up the stairs from my apartment to see if my mommy and daddy were still awake.
I don’t think I have ever been so happy to see Mom washing dishes. With grateful tears in my eyes and the occasional horrified shudder, I brought her up to speed on my eventful evening. She listened sympathetically and kindly agreed to never refer to my peculiar mottephobia as an irrational fear again.
Armed with the heavy-duty fly swatter from the kitchen, Mom crawled under the bed and vanquished Mothra on my behalf. It took two napkins to dispose of its remains.
After thanking Mom profusely, I snuggled back into bed and stared at the ceiling in wide-eyed terror until the sun came up and I finally drifted off to sleep.
There’s something about surviving one of your worst fears that makes you a little braver. I’m still terrified of moths, but I feel more confident that I can handle the worst case scenario if, God forbid, it needs to happen again in order to fulfill my 10 percent quota. Granted, my response may still involve requesting parental backup, but I will do so in a stronger, less quivery voice.
There is definitely something to be said for confronting your fears head-on. Just keep your mouth closed.
– Teresa Santoski
Originally published Oct. 2, 2014.
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Tete-a-tete: Family game night can leave you drawing a blank
Whenever people gather to play a group game, there’s always one person who is, for lack of a more affectionate term, a liability. The game will progress smoothly up until this person’s turn, at which point things hit a snag and the outcome of the game begins a hopeless – and often hilarious – downward spiral.
It could be an elderly aunt whose refusal to wear a hearing aid regularly derails your games of Telephone at family gatherings, or an elementary-school-age cousin who has no idea who Charles Dickens is, much less which of his novels you’re trying to act out in charades.
In our family, the liability is 16-year-old Youngest Brother and his unique way of perceiving the world.
We recently vacationed with a group of family friends and played a game that was a hybrid of Pictionary and Telephone, introduced to us by the mother of one of Youngest Brother’s friends. Each person wrote down a phrase on a piece of paper and passed it to the person on their left, who then drew a picture of the phrase on another piece of paper. They then passed the papers to the person on their left, with the drawing on top.
This person had to write on another piece of paper what they thought the drawing was and pass the stack to the next person with their description on top. The process continued, alternating between people writing what they thought a drawing was and drawing a description, until each person received their original phrase back, along with a stack of papers detailing the evolution of what had initially been written.
Everyone took turns to share their stack with the rest of the group, laughing over the more extreme discrepancies between the original phrase and the ending phrase. It wasn’t long, however, before we began to notice a pattern: in nearly every single stack, the chain of communication broke down at Youngest Brother.
Here’s one example:
Mom started off with a lyric from “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” by The Smashing Pumpkins: “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.” My youngest siblings and their friends listen to a fair amount of alternative rock from the ‘90s, so she thought it was a reference both the teens and the adults in the group would understand.
This led to a drawing of a rat in a cage and an angry face, which was misinterpreted as “hot rat.” This produced a drawing of a rat with wavy lines coming off of it, which became “stanky dead rat.” The next drawing quite accurately reflected this, and was described as “dinosaur (dead mouse).”
The reason for this description is that one of Younger Sister’s friends had noticed a dinosaur-like silhouette against the ceiling light in the cottage where the girls were staying. The silhouette turned out to be caused by a dead mouse stuck in the light, and Youngest Brother and his friends were summoned to assist in the removal process.
The next picture, drawn by one of Youngest Brother’s friends, thus depicted the boys and girls staring up at the rather morbid shadow puppet in the ceiling light, which happened to be located above one of the beds.
Youngest Brother apparently had no recollection of this incident and wrote, “Children being sucked from their beds into a crack in the window.”
I, unfortunately, was sitting on the other side of Youngest Brother, and did my best to create a drawing according to his specifications. This was interpreted as “dream,” which was the last phrase in the stack.
Now, I was willing to give Youngest Brother the benefit of the doubt on this, as the illustration he had to work from was a bit confusing. When I went through my own stack, however, I realized that we had a problem.
I had chosen “Iron Man” as my phrase, figuring that pretty much everyone would be familiar with the superhero who has been featured in so many recent movies. Instead, it led to an illustration depicting the Ironman Triathlon. This became “Muscle Man Triathlon,” followed by an accurate drawing of the triathlon events, which was in turn described as “strong swimmer, bicyclist and runner.”
The stick-figure illustration of these concepts was summarized as “Many stick figures doing various activities: skating, standing sideways, sitting on someone, wearin’ cool top hat.” This was drawn accordingly and somehow became, “Swag ‘Hunger Games’ on Rollerblades.” As such, the next person drew a stick-figure girl with a long braid shooting a bow and arrow.
You may be taking note of the various snags and misinterpretations that took place along the chain of communication and wondering how Youngest Brother could possibly be blamed as causing the ultimate breakdown.
That would be because, after examining the drawing of the stick-figure girl with a long braid shooting a bow and arrow, he wrote, “Girl’s brain falling out of her head while poking the letter ‘D,’” and proudly handed me the completed stack.
I’m still not sure if the issue is that he interprets pictures very literally – he was by far the most skillful illustrator in the group, drawing detailed pictures that matched the descriptions – or if he just likes to throw a monkey wrench into things. It’s likely a combination of the two.
One thing is certain, however. As much as I love our little liability, I will be positioning myself as far away from him as possible during the next group game. I think it’s only fair that other people get to experience the joy, wonder and utter confusion that comes with having to draw “there is only one girl left in the bubble and she is running from all the men.” (That, by the way, was originally “Octomom.”)
– Teresa Santoski
Originally published Sept. 4, 2014.
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Tete-a-tete: When you have a really good reason to skip class
Though it seems impossible that this much time has passed this quickly, it has now been ten years since I graduated from college. I attended my reunion and they had a nametag for me, so it appears this is an incontestable reality.
Although academics are intended to be the main focus of the college experience, reminiscing with friends reminded me that some of my fondest memories have little to do with what went on in my classes. Indeed, one particularly special memory has to do with quite the opposite: skipping class.
Skipping class is a relatively normal occurrence for many college students. My school, however, was very academically-focused, and the overwhelming majority of students prioritized class attendance. As part of that majority, I also had the perspective that I was paying for an education. I didn’t understand why someone would invest good money in a class and deliberately choose not to attend.
I found out one day during the second semester of my junior year.
I had switched to an English major at the beginning of the academic year, and I was taking mostly literature classes. All of my courses had very interesting-sounding topics, such as gender and ethnicity in modern literature and writers of the American Renaissance.
One unfortunate day, however, the readings for all of my classes fell under the heart-wrenching topic of Horrible Things That Happen to Women in Various Time Periods and Geographic Locations.
My first afternoon class would feature an in-depth discussion of “Comfort Woman” by Nora Okja Keller, a novel based on the real-life experiences of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. I had already cried my way through the book once for another class the previous semester, and I was not looking forward to doing so again.
My other afternoon class would focus on “The Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic tale of adultery and hypocrisy in Puritan New England. Having spent most of my academic career in New England, I’ve read “The Scarlet Letter” several times, and each time I just get angrier at the townspeople and at Reverend Dimmesdale.
I expressed my anguish to my friend during lunch, asking her why the English curriculum focused so extensively on such harrowing subject matter – to the point of repeating it in multiples classes – and why it didn’t include uplifting, meaningful material that didn’t center on suffering and despair.
My friend empathized and articulated her own lack of desire to attend her science class, an introductory course in which the professor taught directly from the reading assignments. As a Japanese Studies major, the class was not particularly useful to my friend – she needed to take it to fulfill a graduation requirement – and she was frustrated at putting so much time and effort into a class that she was getting so little out of.
Speaking in hushed tones over our hamburger wrappers in the student center, we discussed doing the hitherto unthinkable: skipping our afternoon classes. And not just going back to the dorm and watching a movie, but taking the campus bus into Boston and doing something lighthearted and fun.
Neither of us had done anything like this before. The only reason we had previously missed a class was due to illness. But there are times when the need to preserve your mental and emotional health outweighs your academic obligations, and this was one of them.
And so, in spite of our initial trepidation, we took the bus into Boston, went shopping (which, for us, meant going to places like the anime store and the sci-fi bookshop) and ate sushi.
It ended up being just what the doctor ordered. We were able to return to our regularly-scheduled academic lives feeling refreshed, revitalized and ready to take on the challenges of distressing subject matter and rote learning.
In addition to being an enjoyable experience, it was also an important reminder that taking a break when you need it is not only OK, it’s beneficial. This was an easy reality to forget on a campus where some students prided themselves on their overloaded schedules and regular all-nighters.
For those of you who will be starting or returning to college soon, I offer you the following advice. Study effectively, learn well and get a good return on your investment of time, energy and money. This will make it a little less painful when you have to start making payments on your college loans.
When college starts to get overwhelming (as it sometimes does), take a moment and consider how the situation that’s troubling you will affect you ten years from now. If it’s something that needs to be dealt with, ask God for strength and guidance – He never failed me during college, and He still hasn’t failed me now.
And if it turns out it’s time to take a well-discerned break, take it. Choose a safe and fun activity, enjoy it and return to your academics refreshed. You’ll have a great memory to share with your friends at your reunion, ten years later.
– Teresa Santoski
Originally published Aug. 7, 2014.
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Spiritual Warfare 101.2: Fighting back with the armor of God
In my previous post, I offered an introduction to spiritual warfare, including why we often become discouraged when we engage in consistent intercessory prayer. The enemy wants to keep us from praying for others effectively and persistently, and he will try to deceive us into thinking that our prayers are not making a difference and are a waste of time and energy.
God has not left us defenseless in these matters. We are not sitting ducks in the midst of the spiritual battlefield; we are fully-equipped soldiers with armor and weapons of our own (Eph. 6:10–17). Continue reading
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Spiritual Warfare 101.1: When persistent prayer gets rough
Paying attention to context is important when reading any book, particularly the Bible. A single verse is certainly meaningful on its own, but considering it within the framework of the verses around it can lead to additional insights.
For example, the foundational verse of Prayers for Oppa, my performer/fan devotional, is Ephesians 6:18 (NIV):
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
Interestingly, the verses preceding this (Eph. 6:10–17) deal with the armor of God. The implication here is that prayer goes beyond conversation with our heavenly Father. It is engagement in battle, a battle that is “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). Continue reading
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