Churches need to be forthcoming about financial matters.

Money’s a topic that makes people squirm. Many couples can’t have a candid conversation about purchases or budgets or checking account balances. Perhaps this reticence explains why the median credit card debt in American households is $6,600, according to CardTrak.com.

Similarly, churches—both their leaders and members—seem to have a hard time speaking plainly about finances. I’ve heard plenty of long, flowery speeches about firstfruits, multiplication, and abundance. And I’ve listened to a few drawn-out threats that God will forcibly take what’s his if I don’t freely give it. One church I visited took two offerings; and several friends’ churches have passed the plate as many as five times in one service.

Life doesn’t always meet my expectations.

We’ve had a miserable winter here in Minnesota. And oddly enough, the snow and ice and wind and cold haven’t yet fazed me.

However, in these first weeks of April, my part of the country is awaiting yet another snowstorm. Sadly, April snowstorms aren’t that unusual here in the frozen wasteland.

But this year, winter has tried the patience of even the most stoic Midwesterners. Most of my friends here are irritated beyond words at this weather’s continuation. They’ve endured a long, frigid five months, and just want winter to end. So my undaunted attitude in the face of more snow, more shoveling, more scraping of windshields and bundling of children is quite certainly a mark of astonishing growth.

How to avoid squelching the strugglers in our midst

I’ve been studying Genesis for the past year and have found the book’s emphasis on violence rather striking. After Cain kills his brother, he worries that marauders in the regions of his exile will kill him. A few generations later, Cain’s descendant Lamech brags about his own murderous exploits. Soon the earth is so “filled with violence,” as God explains to Noah, that God decides “to put an end to all people” (6:13) in a great flood.

What struck me as I squirmed through the horrific flood account was God’s violence in response to human violence. However evil the people of that time may have been—and surely they were no more evil than the people of today—I couldn’t erase from my mind the resulting image of that genocide, the plaintive cries from high places, the gurgling screams and thrashing that must have horrified Noah and his family as all the world drowned. How could a loving God have done such a thing? I wondered. I struggled to understand what God’s violence says about his character, and how it's relevant to my own life.

How I’ve recognized and treated the symptoms

Ever since my husband’s open-heart surgery last year, I’ve been hyper vigilant about my heart health. Maybe a little too hyper.

I’ve relaxed a bit now, but I was taking my blood pressure several times a day. (It’s always low.) I pop fish-oil capsules and baby aspirin daily. I haven’t eaten pizza in months, and I’m pretty much caffeine free.

Despite my newfound vigilance, I started experiencing heart palpitations shortly after my husband’s operation. So I went to my family physician and told him I thought I had “contagious heart disease.” He told me there’s no such thing, but he took an EKG anyway. When the test results came back normal, he said the palpitations could be from the stress of my husband’s ordeal, and told me I shouldn’t worry so much.