Christian Soldier

Sometimes a Christian warrior is a single grandmother living in the inner city fighting the Devil who has come in the guise of her crackhead daughter or has whispered in the ear of her abusive ex-husband. She fights evil with love, and and unbreakable faith. In any fight she may fall and get beaten, maybe even taken captive. But she returns to her G-d for the armor she needs to get back in there and fight again for the kingdom. May his kingdom come.

Pity Parties are the worst

No cake.
No ballons.
Definately no cool gifts.
It's a pity party.
Not to get into any details, to protect the privacy of the one who tried to throw the party, but I crashed such a party.
I am honored to be a close enough friend to speak to the person to ridicule their self inflicted downward spiral of pity in order to pull them out and have them laugh about it. I'm also lucky it didn't get worse.
I was not interested in joining in on how horrible, stupid and other negative descripters they used to describe themselves. They'd beat themselves up enough, anymore would be piling on.
However, in the future, I'd like to make a pity party cake, where it all tastes bitter.

Experiencing the Faith

I'm going through various audiobooks, fiction, history, sci-fi and the such to get me through the tedious tasks at work that don't require my brain. Data entry. (Sigh) I'll be happy to one day get back to the tasks that do need my brain, but anyway... Several of them have been written by atheists or non-believers, who make their beliefs on non-belief known in their works.
One book I could not finish because the topic that the title promised seemed to be less forthcoming as the author began to take more and more swipes at Judaism and Christianity and make more and more claims that his brand of humanism was correct and based in science. Well I wanted the science and all I got (maybe it was later in the book but he wasn't making it worth my while to stick around) was bad history and disagreeable philosophy.
Another book, an abridged Ayn Rand, was informative and tolerable. I agreed with her on some points but not on others. I'm with the mystics and I'm okay. I respect that in that version she didn't seem to think it worth her while to take many swipes.
I have finished a book by Arther C. Clark where I sense he did not understand people of faith and their faith. The story had aliens who come down bring peace and science and for some reasons this wipes away most (except some form of Buddhism) world religions. I'm not sure why this "science explains it all" is supposed to snatch away the power of the Cross.
The most dangerous, is a book I'm listening to in dribs and drabs. It's by an Anglican who describes himself as friendly to the faith but not a believer. Yeah, that sounds CofE to me. His book actually explains where some of the conflicting parts of the Bible, changes and I gather 'fads'/heresies in Christianity's history and some of the best evidence against believing. I told the Help to stay away from this book, he's not good with conflicting ideas.
With all the books I find myself being very thankful that I have experienced the hand and love of the Trinity. There are parts of my life that are downright mystical, and really hard to explain. I have experienced Christ in the hands and feet of his Church. I have experienced the Holy Spirit in ways that have shaken me and moved me and lead me to a better place. And of all that, I can not logically explain it. Heck I can't really explain some parts when the Help and I witness to each other. From the outside it can look mad.
This experience, fed by the practice, so far beats out the arguments against it for me. And I am thankful. Very thankful.