Janet's Blog

Sometimes, there are just not enough words.  Emotion swells within us, and mere words cannot begin to express our deepest thoughts and feelings.  I think that's why God has given us tears and hugs and music.  When words fail us, we still have effective ways to communicate with each other and with God, himself. Of everything that God created, only people have been given the ability to speak.  Most plants are unable to generate any sounds on their own, and most species of animals utter only one or two characteristic sounds.  The words of human beings set us apart from the other living things in our world.  With all of the words that humans can speak, you would think that words would be enough.  I am amazed when I think about how instantaneously and effortlessly the human brain can communicate its thoughts, stringing appropriate sounds together to make words and sentences that make sense to the people around us.  A newborn child communicates only though crying, but within just a f

Before we adopted Victoria thirteen years ago, Bill and I were required to sit through long hours of classes for foster parents and other people, like us, who were considering adoption of older children.  In this case, "older" means any age past infancy.  We learned all about basic child care for children with special needs.  We were introduced to all kinds of trauma that might have been experienced by children in need of alternative homes.  I remember, though, that one presenter reassured us that, statistically, only one percent of adopted older children would inherit their birth parents' mental illness. She lied. Or, maybe, she was misinformed.  Or, perhaps, there just wasn't enough research to disprove her claim.  Whatever the reason for her assertion, I can say, without doubt, that all of the numerous children I've known, who have been adopted past infancy, have been adversely affected by some form of mental illness, whether it was inherited or acquired.

Christians speak in code.  Haven't you noticed?  The code varies somewhat, from one denomination to another, and even from one part of the country to another, but the fact remains: the uninitiated often raise their eyebrows as if to say, "what?" Sometimes, even Bible quotations seem like gibberish when taken out of context, especially to people who are not well-acquainted with God's Word.  Hopefully, pastors and teachers explain their references well during the course of their Sunday morning sermons and Bible studies.  But that's not really what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about those catch phrases and made up words that Christians often use to describe doctrinal concepts--short cuts, if you will, that their neighbors in the pew usually understand quite well, because they use the same code.  Words like trinity and second coming and rapture come to mind.  But even a simple word, like saved , can be a code word.  When asked, in all sincerity,

There are hundreds of thousands of words in the English language, or maybe more than a million, depending on who you ask, so you would think that I could come up with mostly unique, one-of-a-kind phrases.  But, no!  My blog is doomed to be riddled with cliches.  I find myself using the same words and phrases over and over again.  Triteness abounds.  Commonality is comfortable.  The English language is filled with common phrases and slang that are universally used throughout the English-speaking world.  Much common English phraseology even spills over into other languages as other world cultures strive to adopt Western thought and practice.  Americans may be the worst offenders where slang is concerned.  Here in America, where we pride ourselves on free thought and speech, certain turns of speech catch the public's attention, and what was originally a unique phrase is popularized to the point that it, too, becomes mundane.  It is what it is. I've heard that the English langu