Cards Against Humanity

On By StephanieIn Reviews

A lot has been said about the controversial party game Cards Against Humanity, some positive and some sharply negative. If you were to ask me what I think about this Party Game for Horrible People (the game’s tag line), here is what I would contribute to the conversation.

Back when I was doing ministry among a very conservative, “innocent” crowd, the family game Apples to Apples was the go-to social activity. I would grin and bear it, but playing Apples to Apples always made me feel so bored. There wasn’t enough spunk or grit to Apples to Apples. Then came Cards Against Humanity.

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Crumpled paper

Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

On By StephanieIn Personal Growth

Several months ago I put my car up for sale on Craigslist. I’m on the cautious side when it comes to posting my contact information online, so when I created the listing I decided not to include my name, phone number, or personal email address. Craigslist has a “reply” button which forwards messages to the seller’s personal email account. That would work just fine for me.

Apparently not for my first potential customer. I received an angry email accusing me of leaving out my personal contact information from the ad itself because I was just trying to scam people, that I was not actually planning on selling the car, and that I would not even do him the courtesy of replying to his inquiry. He must have been burned by Craigslist scammers in the past.

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Exercise balls

Exercise My Way

On By StephanieIn Recreation

I have never been very fond of exercise. I hated high school gym, which essentially amounted to stretching, running in circles, and attempting to throw a ball for whichever sport happened to be in season. I was gleeful that the second year of required PE (Physical Education) would be waived for any student involved with a high school sport. Gleeful because for some reason they counted the marching band, in which I was a reluctant participant, as a sport. Finally a silver lining to having to wear those terrible uniforms!

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Pocket watches

Twice as Inefficient

On By StephanieIn Relationships

I love efficiency. I love getting things checked off my to-do list, and the more things I check off (and the more quickly I do that), the more accomplished I feel. And subsequently, the more happy.

So when I got married and acquired twice as many to-do’s and a to-do partner who doesn’t value efficiency as much as I do, I became twice as inefficient. And I got a little depressed. I mean, who was I if I wasn’t being super-productive??

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The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

On By StephanieIn Reviews

I’ve been fighting off (and, if I say so myself, coping fairly well against) deep-rooted unhappiness since I was 6 years old. It manifests itself most-strongly around the winter holiday season when I struggle with a bit of depression. So last Christmas I got myself a book about happiness to combat the annual slump: “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin.

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Hiking in mountains

Mountains of Decisions, part 2

On By StephanieIn Faith

Prologue from part 1:

I am not a hiker. And though I appreciate the beauty of green and flowering things from behind the glass of a window, I’m not even really that fond of being outdoors. So I was surprised to discover that the image that came to me year after year as an analogy to describe my life, was a mountain. Complete with hiking trails.

The second time this mountain imagery came up, I had already decided to sign on full time with the ministry I’d been part of for 6 years. I’d been offered the choice to move to another city in a nearby state, or to stay at the campus I knew and loved. They asked me to pray about it, and when I did, the same mountain image emerged from my subconscious. Only this time, there were two ways up the mountain.

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Hidden faces

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

On By StephanieIn Personal Growth

I love personality profiles. Something about categories helps me feel like less of an anomaly, that there are other people out there who are like me, that I can embrace aspects of myself that are valid personality traits rather than flaws to overcome.

The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator is my go-to. I know social scientists give it mixed reviews of its science-iness, but I don’t even care, it’s so useful! Since I learned about the MBTI, it has helped me understand myself as well as embrace the differences of my friends, colleagues, roommates, and the guy I married. When bewildered by their ways of thinking, communicating, and decision-making, instead of demonizing them I recognize that it’s just a personality difference. And that is much easier to navigate than a situation in which one or both parties unnecessarily think of the other as the scum of the earth.

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Reflecting alone

Sensitive and Single

On By StephanieIn Relationships

I belonged to a group of single working women at my church a few years back. We met occasionally to discuss the blessings and challenges of being single, pray for the desires of our hearts (which included much more than catching a man!), and form friendships with other young women who were in a similar stage of life. Our meetings were something we all looked forward to very much.

Each time we gathered, our leader (a kind woman our mothers’ age who was living a different type of singleness having been both married and divorced) gave us a handful of thoughtful questions to discuss. One particular gathering she posed the question, “What do you wish others who are not in your situation could understand about you?”

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