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Showing posts with the label peer pressure

Influence

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It has been a long while since I have posted anything here. I have been busy completing three years toward my B.A. in English and my senior year is underway. My current class (Creative Writing) has finally given me the space to take off the tight harness of academic writing rules, and it feels SO GOOD!! After reading my first assignment, Mom and Daddy gave it their thumbs up and suggested I make it a blog post, so here it is. It is my story and their story. It's a little longer than my usual posts, but as with everything I have ever posted here, I pray it encourages you to run "up the sunbeam to the sun" (C. S. Lewis). "Follow my example,  as I follow the example of Christ." 1 Corinthians 11:1 NIV I sat above them on the stairs. Looking down through the window-like openings in the partition between the living room and the stairway, I listened to the basketball players, football players, baseball players, wrestlers, track athletes, both the lettermen ...

Chew, Test, Pray

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I would like to think that peer pressure only afflicts teenagers. But it doesn't. It jumps up and grabs my heels every once in awhile and afflicts a decidedly post-teen me.  It clings with a tenacity that surprises me, and I find myself fighting to regain my equilibrium.  I stop and look at it to see what is trying to make me move in a direction of it's own choosing.  More surprise!  The peer pressure is emanating from the voices of other Christians I admire. I have been reading words and hearing admonitions written and spoken by people I truly follow as they follow Jesus; words full of truth and light and . . . Him.  'Yes!' I think, 'I agree with much of their thinking . . . So w hy do I feel so uneasy? Is this disconcerted feeling a good thing, or not?' This time I think not. Then comes the questioning, wondering if I'm on the wrong side of what they are saying.  Wait . . . c onviction is a disconcerting feeling . . . is that what this is? ...