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Posted in Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Inspiring, Wisdom

What Entraps You?

Posted on by Katharine

What do you like more than you like your family? That’s it.

What do you think of when your mind is on auto-pilot? That’s it.

Whatever you do that divides you from any member of your family. That’s it.

  • Making a grocery list during the sermon? Entrapped by productivity?
  • Emailing while husband talks to you? Entrapped by social media?
  • Bending the truth? Entrapped by making a good appearance?
  • Ruining your health for no good reason? Entrapped by sugar or leisure?
  • Zoning out when others are talking? Entrapped by vain imaginations?
Truth
Truth (Photo credit: 22nyharborparks)

Okay, sometimes we find the truth divides. It’s okay to do the truth and cause division, when you cannot avoid division because of the truth.

It is not okay to:

  • beat people with the truth for no reason
  • redefine the truth for false motives
  • lie and pretend it is truth
  • tell yourself there is no hope
  • enjoy the division

We have so many reasons to prefer division, it’s a wonder anyone still has a family!

The best definer I ever heard of Christianity is: relationship.

Every relationship has the potential to be a picture of Christianity; every broken relationship is a tragedy.

Breaking the family is the greatest tragedy.

Why do we go there so willingly?

Related articles
  • Family (katharinetrauger.wordpress.com)
Posted in Blessings of Habit, Inspiring, Wisdom

Family

Posted on by Katharine

God put people in families.

Those who are not in families might disagree, but the facts are, those without families are out of place and feel out of place, often, because of it. Young women who feel out of place in their own families often marry early in life, in an attempt to find the feeling of being in a family.

We get a family by being born into a family. Those who were not born to a family may not agree, but the facts are, those not born into a family often are also feeling out of place and have great difficulty, often, in making wise social decisions.

Family should be the foundation of every life, whether the sad facts of our existence allow that it actually is, or not. It should be.

The orphan, widow, or divorcee is never the goal. Parents and spouses make family. Good parents and good spouses make good family.

And family should be the foundation, and not just a very fine thread that barely holds its members together.

And the one thing that separates families probably as much as, or more than, any other one thing is: entrapment.

Entrapment? What?

Yeah.

You’re not entrapped?

Think again.

We are entrapped by the TV, by games, by workaholism, by imagined standards, by debt, by promises, and by many other controlling factors.

Some entrapments, we never meant to get into, but they slowly encircled us.

Others we judged necessary and entered cautiously.

Family watching television, c. 1958
Family watching television, c. 1958 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And some, we flew into, headlong, with great delight. And if we notice the entrapment in them, and the way they divide our family, we scratch our heads or shrug, but make no effort to escape. Oh, we do many of them, each at the same time, so we call it family time . . .

Those last ones, the ones we love and shrug about, are the ones I want us to consider.

You see, the word entertain actually mean entrap. Yes, entertainment is entrapment.

Games, movies, music, fantasy, novels–they trap us like sticky traps and we wallow in them as if they were the most important things of life, until we are totally bound up and unable to escape.

If you cannot go 21 days without some entertainment, I’d say your are entrapped.

And your family is divided.

family trip to Oregon
family trip to Oregon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And you don’t have to wallow; there is a way out.

Posted in Blessings of Habit, Winter

The Last Bouquet

Posted on by Katharine

Traces.

Traces of Summer Fading
Traces of Summer Fading

Old roses, pouring out a Springtime show, a last reaching for the sun, blooming, rich scented musk, and we inhale delight.

Tomorrow we will be satisfied with the damp, spent fragrance of fading roses, and gather spent and fallen petals to dry and save for dark places that welcome old scent.

Their baby cousins left outdoors will be dead, frozen, never to be seen in bloom.

We will remark how the last bouquet is always the rarest, while dark winds blow and traces of sleet fall.

We will inhale traces of delight from the remaining blooms, longing to imprint their gifts in our memories.

And failing.

And we will satisfy ourselves with the spices of oaken smoke and old recipes.

And dried, faded petals scattered in the dark places.

And we will put them away again when the first traces of warm earth rise up like ghosts of summers past, to take us back to the roses.

Once a Month Habit

Another WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

Once a month I take a trip to the big city to visit my eye doctor. He’s an expert at helping people keep their eyesight, and he knows one important factor in his job is to check my blood pressure.

After my visit, I make another visit, this time to my favorite eatery, Julie’s Deli.

Get the Julie's Deli Habit!
Get the Julie’s Deli Habit!

And if my blood pressure tested really good, I reward myself there, with coffee and dessert.

Today, I had pecan pie.

Because the cheesecake was all gone.

For more reading about habits, check out some of these:

  2. Habit How-to: Beginning
  3. Habit How-to: Repeating
  4. Habit How-to: Reminding
  5. Habit How-to: Requiring