The mystery of DNA.

How do you explain the mystery of DNA?

I was confronted with that question at 7:30 this morning when my six year old son walked up and asked, "Mom, I've been wondering. If it takes a sperm and and egg to make a baby, do I still have your egg and daddy's sperm inside me?"

Try answering that question for a young child before you've had the chance to infuse your own biological system with caffeine!

I love it when my children wonder about the the world around them, as well as the world within them.

Through their eyes, I've been given the rare and unique opportunity to appreciate and to admire the miracle of life over and over again. I've always considered the miracle of birth as one of my most profound experiences...but I think it is in raising children that I have truly experienced the miracle of life.

Jerri
PS--Paul Thiessen created the DNA graphic and has graciously allowed me to use it here in my web blog. I would be remiss if I did not mention his website: http://www.chemicalgraphics.com/paul/DNA.html

Hop on over and give his website a gander! You will see some wonderful images and all are available for purchase in poster form!

Second Rate Christian?

I've always had the feeling that I'm a second rate kind of Christian.

I don't understand God the way others do. I don't talk to God the way others do. I don't experience Him the way others do. I just kind of flounder around and reach for Him as best I can. Sometimes I don't even do that, sometimes I just flounder.....

Right now, if you were to ask me how I would describe my spiritual life, I would tell you that I am currently experiencing an electrical short in my spiritual wiring. That's certainly the image that comes to my mind when I consider my spiritual life. I feel like I'm one of those downed power lines that hisses and spits and sparks all over the place. I feel cut off, and disconnected, and angry.

I do not like how this disconnected feeling forces me to look inward and confront my own failures, anxiety and self condemnation.

I have an intense aversion to looking upon my own flawed soulscape.....and yet this is precisely what I find myself compelled to do. Moreover, I feel compelled to do this in God's presence and I am afraid. What if God doesn't see me through the eyes of His perfect love?

Somewhere, deep within my spirit, there is a part of me that does not waver between belief and unbelief. It exists as a quiet rustling and a gentle murmuring, which says to me, "Fear not Jerri. God loved you before, He loves you now and He will love you always."

I suppose that some might call this "faith"; but I don't feel the need to name it. Right now, I just have the desire to believe it, and do you know what?

I think that I do.

Jerri

Healing made simple?

Nothing profound to say today.

Just a little quote to ponder, and perhaps apply to your own life!

Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are
-- Rachel Naomi Remen

Sounds awful simple don't you think? Do you suppose it really works?

I'm thinking it just might be worth the try!

Jerri

Coffins Costco Style!

You will never guess what I've just learned! Costco is now selling coffins! Yes, you read correctly, coffins!

Hmmmm, don't believe me?

Click the link and read for yourself!
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3860056

Am I the only one who thinks it is strange for Costco to now begin selling coffins?

I'm sorry, but doesn't Costco get enough of our money while we are alive?

I shudder to think that Costco's next traveling trunk show might feature their economical, yet super glam coffins....

Of course, my understanding is that Costco won't be selling coffins in their warehouse style stores anytime soon.

Thank goodness I say! I'd hate to be reaching for my jet fresh fuji apples and accidently bump my head on the coffin display!

Jerri

Race For The Cure

The other day, my six year old son and I were watching tv. After viewing a commercial about "Race for the Cure" which is a 5 K run/walk held all over the United States in an effort to raise breast cancer awareness and money, my son looked at me and asked, "Mommy, can men get breast cancer?"

I told him that yes, sometimes men get breast cancer too.

He then asked, "But Mommy how can men get breast cancer when they don't have any breasts?"

What followed was a brief anatomy lesson, that I'm sure was only partially understood because as I mentioned words like "tissue" and "areola", he would look confused and ask for clarification. At one point, we even pulled up his shirt to use his own body to help explain how even though men and women's bodies appear to be different; they are in actuality, very similar.

On a very basic and fundamental level, we are all similar. We each experience the same response to painful stimuli (emotional or physical). Disease and illness don't discriminate and are equal opportunity destroyers. After all, once the common cold gets its viral hooks in you, no one escapes the ensuing snot fest.

I suppose it is in understanding our sameness, that I fail to understand why the human race seems so determined to destroy itself by perpetrating horrible acts upon itself. Mass genocide, ethnic cleansing, war, child abuse, murder, rape, pedophilia, starvation, female genital mutilation, theft, assault, racism, torture...this list could probably run for pages.

We are nothing, if not ingenius in the ways we devise to torment both ourselves and one another.

I just don't get it...

Do YOU?

Jerri
PS--For more information on "Race for the Cure" please visit this link!
http://www.komen.org/intradoc-cgi/idc_cgi_isapi.dll?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=298

Let Me Out!

This summer I have been locked in a constant state of inner turmoil.

I vacillate between believing that I am the most evil person on the planet and thinking that maybe I'm fairly groovy for a fat, middle-aged mother of five. This thinking seems to mirror my opposing beliefs that God is imminently pleased with me on the one hand, and that He desires to chop me off at the knees on the other.

All of this inner angst is further pricked by the fact that I feel both constrained and tortured by the choices I have made throughout my life.

I feel constrained by my decision to marry and to create a family. I am bound by the demands these relationships present me; yet all the while I am tortured by the many missed opportunities to make a difference in the lives of others.

I am constrained by the city, the neighborhood and the home I have chosen to abide: and yet, I am hopelessly tortured by my own indifference and unwillingness to choose differently.

Deep inside myself I hear this persistant voice demanding, "Let Me Out!"

No, I don't want out of my marriage; nor do I want out of my role as mother. I don't even necessarily want out of the neighborhood where I currently reside.

What I want is for the real me be free. I want the strong and loving woman I know that I am to assert herself and to be the caring (both self-care and other-care) empowered person she truly is.

What I want is for the fear, the self-doubt and the self-loathing to remove themselves, or at the very least to loosen their grips on my soul, so that I might break free of them.

What I really and truly want is to fully grasp the enormity of God's love for His children and for me. Above all things I desire to claim and to live His love out loud!

I hate this process of discerning what it is I truly want from life. It always forces me to give a brutal and honest assessment of myself. I frequently don't like what I see. To expose all of my spiritual warts, my physical blemishes and my emotional scarring is enough to strike the sighted man blind.

One day I hope to answer that persistent voice within, and then instead of hearing "Let Me Out!", with my own lips I shall joyfully cry, "Free at Last!"



Jerri

The Falling Months!

This summer is rapidly drawing to a close. I can feel it in the shortening days, see it in the changing leaves, and smell it in the air. Funny how we really don’t need calendars to tell us these things, isn’t it?

Right now, we are in an in between time. By that I mean the air is still hot and sticky, but already the leaves on the trees are beginning to blossom from green into orange and crimsom hues.

Soon, the leaves will have completely transformed themselves and they will begin to fall. At first one will slowly drift down, followed by another; and then, as if by magic, they will begin to drop in soft waves that undulate with the Fall breeze.

I find that my own life often mirrors the seasons. Like these late summer leaves, I feel as though I am in an in between place. No longer young, but not quite over the hill, I too am transforming pieces of my life.

Slowly, one by one, I am letting go of my old habits, as well as the self defeating thoughts and behaviors that no longer serve me in my present life. It's a painful process at times and truthfully, I fear to see myself naked and seemingly barren, like the trees themselves shall soon be.

As I begin to transform my old defensive habits, as I begin to let go of the resentment, and as I begin to release the haunting fears that have dominated my life, what will remain? Who will I be then?

Hmmmmm, just who will I be then? I wonder.....

Jerri

Disturbing News....

Every now and then I will read something in the news that is genuinely disturbing to me.

Perhaps you know the kind of disturbing I mean.

It's the kind of "disturbing" that seems to stick with you for a few days. It's the kind of "disturbing" that you feel in your gut before you even realize you are thinking about it in your head.

Here, I have a good example. Go read this story.
http://www.wftv.com/newsofthestrange/3643877/detail.html

Did you read it? Did it disturb you?

Wasn't there anyone in this woman's life who cared that she was living in filth and literally becoming "one" with the couch? What an ignoble and inhuman way to live; much less to die.

Do you suppose that there might be someone like this existing in your neighborhood? Do you even care?
I do care.

That others might not, disturbs me even more....

Jerri

Summer Colds, Soul Whispers and Denial....

I'm sick today.

Yesterday I tried to pretend I wasn't ill. Don't ask me why I sometimes think if I just pretend hard enough, whatever is wrong will just disappear! Unfortunately, denial is a futile endeavor. No amount of pretending is going to make this sore throat go away....

Is there anything worse than a summer cold? (This is a rhetorical question...of course I know there are things which are a thousand times worse!)

The one good thing I will say about having a cold, is that it slows you down.
Sometimes I get to spinning so wildly out of control in my daily life, that it takes something like a cold to slap me into stillness.

There's much to be said for stillness. I myself have been frightened by it of late. I'm hearing too many quiet whisperings inside myself when I'm still. Whisperings that are demanding life changes I'm not prepared to make.

So, I'm doing to the whisperings what I did with the cold. I'm pretending they aren't there. Eventually, as with the cold, the day will come when I shall no longer be able to pretend, or ignore or deny.

Stay tuned...perhaps when that day comes, I'll share the whisperings with you!

Jerri

Life itself is the proper binge!

If I could go back and relive any age, I think I would choose to be three again.

Why, you might ask? Well, have you ever watched a three year old?

Only a three year old knows how to properly marvel at a spider web.

Darn near every three year old still thinks they can fly!

A three year old intuitively understands that their Mother is the most amazing creature on earth....and all because she knows how to turn their clothes right side out!

Three year olds are also some of the most authentic artists of our world, because they haven't yet forgotten how to draw pea green skies and purple cows.

Julia Child once said, "Life itself is the proper binge." I think three year olds live that truism from moment to moment in their amazing, young lives.

Somewhere along the way, we grownups have forgotten how to be awestruck by life itself, and try instead to fill it with cars, and jewelry, and houses,and designer duds, and trophy wives....

Ohhh, how thrilling it would be to dive off the living room couch and really, really believe that I could fly!

Yes, I do believe that given the opportunity I would love to view the world once again through three year old eyes !

Jerri

Living out Loud!

What does it mean to live out loud?

I think it means many things to different people.

For too many years I've been living in the shadow places of my heart. I've pretended peace in the midst of turmoil. I've pretended joy in the midst of sorrow. My real feelings have always been hidden deep inside and lived solely in the shadow places of my inner being.

The time has come to live out loud, and in full view for all to see. It's going to be messy at first, and uncomfortable at times; but this little jailbird (who's really not so little) is breaking free!

You are welcome to join me on this journey...or not! Your choice!

Adios and LOL! (That's, Live Out Loud!)

Jerri