Gather the Outcasts

Written by special guest Blogger: Josh Walriven Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Father’s do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. I can remember the day I became a father. I can remember holding that beautiful princess for the very first time. I can remember all the promises that I made to her. I meant every one of them, but…. I have failed in holding to those promises.  A lot of those promises were the normal phrases and promises we make as a new father. I will never let anyone hurt you, I will always be there for you, I will always provide everything you need. The reality is that these promises are not realistic.  One of the major struggles as a father is living up to the societal expectations that are placed on you. We often don’t think of peer pressure being a struggle with adults, especially the masculine, tough fathers that we are to be. A struggle for...

I failed again. I lost my temper. I can't even tell you how many times I've done it this week alone. I'm trying to be more patient and understanding but the stress I feel keeps building over and over until I emotionally erupt. I saw the pain in my children's faces as I yelled. I failed again. I told my wife I'd finish hanging those pictures and get the new light installed in the living room.  It's all still sitting on the floor where I left it yesterday. I just feel so tired that I don't want to get up and do it. Tired all the time. I shouldn't feel like this. At least I don't think I'm supposed to. I failed again. I hate this cycle and I want to change. I have so much I need to do. I have to provide and protect and support and coach and build and play and know and be strong and be soft and wrestle and hug and affirm and coach and lift up and maintain and stay steady and be stable and cool and calm and collected and fit and healthy and dashing an...

  Written By Special Guest Blogger: Jessica Walriven So I was asked, well maybe I volunteered myself, to team with Felicia on the topic of the struggles of being a mother. So many things came to mind when we decided on this topic. As a mother I could speak on the joys of hearing your child’s laughter, the peace you get when all of your kids are safe and home together under one roof after a long busy week. I could speak about the pride you have when your child gets Student of the Week. On an on! However, I don’t feel like that is where God is wanting me to take this. It's easy to speak about all the good. Let’s be real, there is so much happiness being a mother brings you. I want to speak about the struggles we have as mothers. I can only speak on my own personal struggles and hope that at some point you can look at this and relate. I pray it encourages you, that you are not alone, and we are all in this together. Failure Motherhood started for me after what felt like a billion year...

My family and I are currently in a difficult time in life. In 2018, we started noticing some “red flags” with my father. He wasn’t acting like himself. His behavior seemed very off. Some of the things he would say wouldn’t make any sense. He became paranoid, anxious, and off-balanced. By the end of that year, we would have an answer to all of this odd behavior. My father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and was in the beginning stages of fighting a very tough battle. Over the course of the next few months, the word “stages” was thrown around a lot. It was important for us to monitor symptoms of this disease since the onset of these symptoms would measure what stage he was in. Within Parkinson’s, there are four stages. Naturally, he started out at Stage 1. As years went on, I found myself obsessed with measuring the stages. With every new symptom, I became worried that he would progress into other stage, leaving my family and me with less and less time. With Parkinson’s, he c...

So, recently I got to see first hand how often my wife get's messaged by random dudes on social media. She had made comments to me before about how bad it was but seeing first hand just really drove the message home. It was constant and almost never ending. I was trying to watch a YouTube video with her on her phone and notification after notification from strange man after strange man kept popping up over the video. It made the whole thing nearly unwatchable and it stirred an anger in me. My wife's profile clearly says MARRIED. She has used numerous pictures of her and I together as her profile pic. She talks about our kids all the time and tags me in posts everyday. Clearly and without a doubt she is happily married. But the guys just keep coming. I started to time it and while we watched the video a guy messaged her about every 30-45 seconds.  It is obvious why they are messaging her and they don't want to just be friends online.  It's stuck with me and I keep thinki...

Luke 15:15-16 NKJV "Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. "And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. There are a number of things that I have had to rethink over the past few years. Issues that I thought I had all figured out but have come to realize that I was totally wrong. One of these issues is how I go about feeding my spirit. All the things I need to do in order to make sure that my spirit is strong and healthy. You see I became rather lazy. I had grown used to not thinking for myself and allowing others to, in a sense, spoon feed me. I never really questioned what they were feeding me. I just went along with it because I assumed that they would only feed me good things. That whatever they set on the table before me had to be what was best for the growth of my spirit. This is a very dangerous place to find yourself as a grown human bei...