Comments on: Catch and release

By: Nana

Nana — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:04:13 +0000

Pauline 5, I could have written the exact same first three paragraphs that you did.

Reg, I used to volunteer at a rescue mission and found that the women were “tougher” than the men, but I kept emotional distancefrom them. What I hadn’t counted on was a minister who got too “close.” I haven’t been the same since. How are you? I’m going to try to read this book and look forward to the movie.

Report comment to moderator

By: Allen Wrench

Allen Wrench — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:02:16 +0000

Okay, folks, I finished the book last night but I would have appreciated someone telling me to have a supply of tissues at hand.

Report comment to moderator

By: REG

REG — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:20:51 +0000

it can be heavy load for a daughter to bear alone expecially when it is involving “reaching out” to a male…let alone a female, stay invoved anyway

Report comment to moderator

By: REG

REG — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:09:17 +0000

it sounds good
it could be heavy load for a daughter to bear alone (that would be my story)
do it together as a family, as a mother-daughter-team, adult involvement, stay involved

Report comment to moderator

By: Rolly Church

Rolly Church — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:05:59 +0000

Dynamite! A long fuse, but an explosive ending. A must read. How convicting.

Report comment to moderator

By: Allen Wrench

Allen Wrench — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:56:49 +0000

I’d heard about Same Kind of Different as Me but forgotten it. Yesterday I checked it out from the library and started reading aloud to my wife last night. We’re no more than one-fourth of the way into the book but it’s captivating already.

Because the two men seem to have nothing in common I wonder how they’ll be brought together (though the jacket notes give abundant clues).

Report comment to moderator

By: fisherman

fisherman — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:30:04 +0000

I think we don’t believe that Jesus was really serious when He said “unless we become as little children we cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” We think that surely our sophistication, intellect, and accomplishments mean much to Him. But unless they are built on a foundation of dependence, trust, forgiveness, transparency, and joy, our maturity is merely a mask.

How God’s heart must throb as He shares with you (Amy, Cheryl and Pauline) these realities of life. Oh that His churches might discover more of the joys of being His children together, seeking to share His love with broken world.

Report comment to moderator

By: Thorn

Thorn — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:18:20 +0000

This is what James warns us about. We arent just to cloth or give food..anyone can do that. We are told to invest in people, especially our fellow brothers and sisters. The reason they are poor and needy is so that we can not only invest what God has given us into them, but so that we can also invest ourselves and establish relationships with them.

Report comment to moderator

By: Pauline

Pauline — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:14:20 +0000

To clarify one thing in my previous post, this woman still chose to go to her own family on holidays after visiting with us, because she felt obliged to – as much as she says she doesn’t want to be around her mother, she seems unable to say no to her mother. Our first moment of “bonding” had actually been when she told me about how she had been so busy doing stuff for people and I asked her if she found it hard to say no, which struck her as very perceptive on my part. But I have the same problem, so it’s easy to recognize.

Report comment to moderator

By: Pauline

Pauline — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:09:02 +0000

I am not good at either making or keeping friends, except in a very few cases where someone else works at being friends with me. I’m not unfriendly, I just am a loner by nature (very introverted), and – according to my husband and a pastor at a church we used to attend – I don’t really trust anyone.

I don’t think anyone intentionally shunned me in school, at least not until 7th grade (when I was skipped from sixth grade in November), but after first grade few people tried to be my friend either. I probably wasn’t very likable – I found books to be better company than people, and if I had to be with people I preferred adults to kids my own age, who acted silly. I wasn’t fat or skinny or particularly bad-looking, but my mother never taught me much about personal hygiene. And my family had a reputation in town for being weird (with me as a possible exception, according to the person who passed that information along to my mother, when explaining why we were no longer welcome in his house).

I tried to make friends with other kids who didn’t have friends, because I knew what it was like not to have friends. But friendships based on that doesn’t last long, even if no one is trying to exclude me. (I actually was nominated for class president in 5th grade, on the basis of being the smartest kid in the class, though a guy who was much more fit for the role won the election.)

A few years ago, I became friends with a woman who is borderline mentally retarded and whose husband definitely is. She initiated the friendship, somehow having come to greatly value my company when we saw each other at the Salvation Army (where my husband worked and we and they both attended church). We invited them to join our home Bible study, and also invited them for holiday meals, so she didn’t have to go to her own family (where she had been physically, emotionally, and sexually abused growing up).

Then my husband was fired from his job at the Salvation Army (officially he quit, but the captain who had been his supervisor spread a story that he had molested a teenage girl – since it was his word against hers he was advised not to fight it, as long as it wasn’t on his official record). So we switched to a different church. He got a job working nights, six or seven nights a week, and he had to give up leading the Bible study. For a while I still invited those friends over on holidays, but that was the only time we ever saw them, except for occasionally seeing each other at Wal-Mart. She doesn’t like the church we go to now (too big), and her work schedule is almost as crazy as my husband’s.

I feel somewhat bad not to have kept up the friendship, but it’s hard to maintain friendships when you don’t have regular contact with someone. And it’s hard to have regular contact when you don’t have any activities in common, and you both have busy schedules. I admit I never was good at conversations with her – mostly I would listen, which was what she wanted. Now if I see her around town I feel guilty for not having kept in touch, and don’t go out of my way to find her in a crowd if she doesn’t seem to have seen me. (Neither of us likes crowds, but we go to school concerts because our kids are in them and she goes because her friend’s kids are in them.)

Report comment to moderator