Discover how understanding God’s purpose and design can empower you to be the mother you long to be. No calling is greater, nobler, or more fulfilling than that motherhood. Every day, as we nurture our children, mothers influence eternal destiny as no one else can. Tragically, today’s culture minimizes the vital importance of a mother’s role. In The Mission of Motherhood, Sally Clarkson helps you rediscover the joy and fulfillment to be found in the strategic role to which God in all his wisdom has called you, for a purpose far greater than you can ever imagine.
Mission work is not for the faint of heart. We admire those brave souls who leave behind the comforts of home and go to foreign fields to bring the love of Christ to people in need. And sometimes it feels uninspiring to be stuck at home in the day-to-day of parenting when others are out there changing the world, soul by soul. Shontell Brewer has a message to renew the spirits of everyday moms: they too have a critical calling as the very first missionaries their children meet. In her informal, funny voice, Brewer points out the many unexpected parallels: A missionary may need to learn a foreign language and new customs to understand and communicate with those around her. A missionary has to follow the path God puts before her, sacrificing sleep, comfort, time, and toilets. Sound like any moms you know? Brewer tackles common challenges from mom-guilt to the temptation to be a martyr to those days when it feels like only a box of cookies and a Netflix binge can restore a sense of peace. But through it all, she shares the truth that there's more to parenting than potty training and orthodontist appointments. Mothers make the love of Christ tangible and understandable to their children. With determination and a few purposeful steps, moms can embrace their own mission field, leading their families--heart, soul, mind, and strength--to Christ.
If "Who am I?" is the question you're asking, Rachel Jankovic doesn't want you to "find yourself" or "follow your heart." Those lies are nothing to the confidence, freedom, and clarity of purpose that come with knowing what is actually essential about you. And the answer to that question is at once less and more than what you are hoping for. Christians love the idea that self-expression is the essence of a beautiful person, but that's a lie, too. With trademark humor and no nonsense practicality, Rachel Jankovic explains the fake story of the Self, starting with the inventions of a supremely ugly man named Sartre (rhymes with "blart"). And we--men and women, young and old--have bought his lie of the Best Self, with terrible results. Thankfully, that's not the end of our story, You Who: Why You Matter and How to Deal with It takes the identity question into the nitty gritty details of everyday life. Here's the first clue: Stop looking inside, and start planting flags of everyday faithfulness. In Christianity, the self is always a tool and never a destination.
As her sister was missing on her wedding, she had to replace her and marry the man. However, the groom was so angry due to her sister's escape and punish her without mercy. As a result, she had a miserable wedding night. Furthermore, he didn't love her at all and tortured her all the time. She also signed an unfair contract. What was worse, he was so cruel that he asked her to admire them while he was flirting with another girl. Wasn't it enough to sign the contract? And he still wanted to humiliate her again and again? Nevertheless, no matter what he did, she was never afraid and looked elegant. Surprisingly, he was attracted by her indifferent expression. He was angry. Did she really not care? He couldn't stop thinking of her and even threw her onto the bed without mercy. But at this time, he found that she was more important than he realized...
Science to build a starship. Wizardry to take it past light speed. A crew to give it a soul. The Mobius is a cobbled-together ship with a matching crew. Captain Carl Ramsey is an ex-Earth Navy pilot whose crew won’t let him fly his own ship. The pilot is his ex-wife, the mechanic is a drunk, and the chief of security is from a predatory species. Instead of a star-drive to travel through the astral space between worlds, the ship’s wizard does it by hand. Mission 1: Salvage Trouble A salvage mission turns into a rescue, and no good deed goes unpunished. With two refugees onboard, the Mobius crew is hounded by bounty hunters, border partols, and corporate enforcers. Mission 2: A Smuggler’s Conscience “Don’t open the package.” It’s the smuggler’s credo for good reason. When the Mobius crew takes a peek at their illicit cargo, the entire job takes an about-face. Mission 3: Poets and Piracy The Mobius crew gets caught in a turf war between a pirate fleet and a galactic criminal syndicate. The trick is getting everyone out alive (and maybe getting paid in the process). Mission 4: To Err is Azrin Sometimes you can’t go home again. When a job takes the crew to their security chief’s homeworld, she gets dragged into a familial power struggle. Can the rest of the crew bail her out of an old feud gone horribly wrong? Bonus Short Story: Guardian of the Plundered Tomes Mordecai The Brown has been on the run from the Convocation for decades. How does a respectable wizard with a wife and two kids end up crisscrossing the galaxy in the company of outlaws? Black Ocean is a science fantasy series set in the 26th century. Do you wish there had been a second season of Firefly? Do you love the irreverent fun of Guardians of the Galaxy? Have you ever wondered how Star Wars would have turned out if Luke and Obi-wan had ditched the rebellion to become smugglers with Han and Chewie? Then Black Ocean is the series for you! Pick up your copy and aim to misbehave with the crew of the Mobius!
In this groundbreaking volume, Fred Moramarco and Al Zolynas bring together a comprehensive and widely representative selection of poetry reflecting both the diversity and commodity of male experience in the United States today. Since the beginning of the contemporary phase of the women's movement in the 1960s, various anthologies devoted to the poetry of women have articulated and defined a distinctive sensibility attuned to the particularities of a woman's life in our time. Although much has been written recently about the male role in our society as well, the discussion generally has assumed a sociopsychological or mythic perspective. Poetry, Moramarco and Zolynas believe, can reveal most about the nature of male life today, especially the enormous changes men have experienced in recent years. As the editors state in their introduction, "A quiet revolution has been taking place in men's poetry over the past few decades, as men have been chronicling the 'history of their hearts' and have been examining those relationships central to their being in the world: their connections to their fathers and mothers; their own sense of fatherhood and of being sons and brothers; their marriages, divorces, and other aspects of their love lives; as well as the ways they conceive of maleness and femaleness." The poems collected in Men of Our Time--257 from more than 170 poets--include a wide mix of ethnic and racial perspectives that reflect the multicultural tenor of American life. They reveal men's most intimate feelings about the loss of childhood, sexual anxieties and fantasies, aging, self-sufficiency and dependency, and the perennial quest for a masculine identity. Above all, the poems are unapologetically grounded in a distinctly male experience or imagination. Men of Our Time reclaims a poetry that is connected to and expressive of men's lives in the closing decade of the twentieth century.
More than 70 percent of women with children under the age of 18 work. And that's why I found it so astounding that when I searched for a book that explained to my toddler what I was doing all day after he was peeled from me, crying, at daycare, I couldn't find a thing.There was plenty out there about separation anxiety or going to school, but so little about what mommy did when she disappeared for the day. I had grown up without a role model for a working mother myself. Raised by a wonderful stay-at-home mom, I worried that I wouldn't know how to reconcile my career ambitions with my love for my family. Like many moms dissatisfied with what is available to them, I decided to make my own, and that's when I created Mommy Goes to Work. My goal is twofold: to facilitate the conversation between mother and child about what we moms are doing all day long in a relatable way, and to help employers signal to their employees that their workplace is family-friendly by giving them a copy of this book.I envision Mommy Goes to Work as a building block in your relationship with your child and with your colleagues and tribes. I hope it provides a conversation starting point where you can share with your little one the important things that you do all day when you're not with them--a foundation to be an incredible working mom role model. And I hope that it allows you to find your tribe of fellow working moms who will welcome you with open arms.
Macs in the Ministry - Your ministry demands your time, energy, creativity, passion and commitment. But you've got a Mac, so you have a tool that can save you time and energy, spark your creativity, and enable you to keep your commitments without losing your passion. Find out how to harness the programs you already have, along with additional resources you may want to consider, to help you in nearly every aspect of your ministry. Part One of this book is about Inspiration: about discovering what's possible. Learn how to use online resources or Bible software to prepare a lesson or sermon. Discover the variety of ways you can present your message to a congregation or audience: using video created in iMovie, photo slide shows prepared in iPhoto, original music recorded in GarageBand, and more elaborate presentations using Keynote or specialized worship software. Learn how you can publish your message to a wider audience: through flyers, handouts, and other print publications; by creating podcasts and vodcasts (video podcasts) and distributing them through iTunes; by creating your own professional-quality CDs and DVDs; by making your videos available through websites like YouTube; or by developing your own great-looking websites using iWeb and Apple's MobileMe service. Once you're pumped about all the exciting ways you can present and publish your message, you'll probably need to enlist some help from others. Use the Mac to get members of your congregation or church youth group participating in your ministry. With so many different ways to use Macs in ministry, there are countless opportunities to get people using their gifts in service to the kingdom. Going one step further, you'll even see how the Mac can be used to meet practical needs. Forget car washes to raise money for youth retreats and mission trips! Why not develop and sell personalized greeting cards, calendars, audio CDs, or video DVDs? How about starting a ministry to train people in the community to do basic video editing, page layout, or web design? With a little creativity, you can use your Mac to minister to people's practical needs as well as to present a polished message. Part Two of this book is about perspiration: about actually making these things happen. Here you'll find a series of projects that will show you how to do all the things you're now inspired to do. Get step-by-step instructions for creating an iMovie, developing slide shows and print projects in iPhoto, recording and publishing podcasts, producing a DVD, and developing a web-site in iWeb. See what you can do using other applications like Pages, Keynote, Bible study software, and worship presentation software. Where Part One will get your wheels turning, Part Two will actually get you moving!
When Lorraine Dube went for her annual mammogram on September 4, 1997, she asked the technician for compression films of her upper chest area, right front shoulder, and underarm areas. She explained that, for almost a year, she had felt a pulling sensation in these areas. Although her doctor had assured her many times that it was nothing, probably just an after effect of the radiation treatment she had after her lumpectomy seven and a half years earlier, she still had a nagging concern about that odd tight feeling in her chest. When the technician took the films, it was five times more painful than when she did the routine compression shots of the breast. Tears were running down Lorraine´s face, but she not dare move. Four days later, her doctor called. Lorraine, this is Dr. V. How long have you had that mass in your chest? You have to see a surgeon immediately. Lorraine asked herself why Dr. V had ignored her concerns all those times. She reprimanded herself for not seeking a second opinion when she first experienced that pulling sensation and did not feel comfortable with his lack of response to her concern. So many things went through her mind, yet memories of her own lumpectomy were just the tip of the iceberg. She relived the horror of more than thirty years earlier when, as a mother of three small children at age 22, she heard those terrible words from Dr. DeVillers about her 26-year old husband´s cancer condition & four to six weeks the doctor had said. All of this flashed through her mind at speed warp ten ... literally in just a few seconds. Her life path had taken her through quite a few coaster rides throughout her 57 years, but all those were kiddy rides compared to this one. And so, the mother-of-all-roller coaster rides of life began with that fateful phone call from Dr. V. Lorraine Dube beat the odds. She beat that aggressive Stage 3 sarcoma lodged in her chest wall. But the battle was not without many, many scars. In the process, she lost five ribs, all her lymph nodes in the right arm area, a piece of her clavicle, most of the use of her right arm and hand "and nearly her life. After seven surgeries, chemotherapy treatments, experimental brachytherapy and countless battles with infection, including a flesh eating bacteria inside her chest wall, Lorraine Dube was cancer free but left suffering from chronic, debilitating pain, a souvenir from her ordeal that she would carry for the rest of her life. Lorraine was a survivor, always had been. But this time it was different. Why had God spared her from the terrible cancer and its aftermath of surgery, infections and lost body parts " only to leave her suffering from such unimaginable pain? The cancer was gone, but at what cost? What the heck was she supposed to do with the rest of her life? On her way to figuring it out, her daughter suggested that she write a book about her life. Don´t worry about writing a best seller, Mom. Just write it from the heart. Write it for your grandsons. Five years later, Ms. Dube began writing this book, the story of her life. She tells the story of her life from the earliest recollections of childhood, through the sometimes rough years of adulthood all with a few purposes in mind. She wants to tell her grandsons about her history, their history, and to relate all her adult experiences some good, some bad, some easy, some tough, all with the purpose of showing them that they, too, are survivors like their Memere. Her message: Life may, indeed, be a roller coaster, but nothing is impossible. Somewhere along the line, writing this book became Lorraine´s therapy. She began to make peace with, and sense of, the chronic pain that gripped her and kept her from leading the life she wanted, the life she expected. After all, her golden years were supposed to be her happiest. This b
