Anita Yoder's Blog, page 2

What I Wish I Would’ve Said

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Last month I gave a talk on Strength to Strength Sisters about God’s design for older women to teach the younger. You can call it mentoring or teaching or friendship or influencing. One Biblical term is “discipleship.” It was for women who want to live with eternal purpose, but don’t have 10,000 followers on Instagram like big influencers do. I didn’t talk about following a particular mentoring program, but about ordinary women connecting in ordinary ways.

I gave...

Come to the Feast of Love

This is the last of four weekly devotionals from the archives. They first appeared in the lovely Daughters of Promise devotionals way back in February 2018! I felt it’s time to get these words out, dust them off, and think about them again. (The imaginary scene at the beginning  comes from a restaurant I walked past many times, experienced, and wrote about here. But I digress.)

You pass by this scene every day on your walk to work:

Candles flicker on the stone step outside the door. String ligh...

Love’s Posture

I wonder if you’ve seen how you’re surrounded by love this month. I wonder if you’ve been surprised or disappointed. I wonder how you’re responding to that surprise or let-down.

When we open our hearts to ahava, we risk loss, misunderstandings, and even heartbreak. One human response to this is anger and a commitment to avoid ahava in the future.

But the posture of ahava is an open hand. I’m here to serve you. What do you need that I can give?

Alternatively, the posture of anger is a clenched fi...

God So Loved That He Gave

One of the times I felt most alive was when my friends and I swam in the Dead Sea. The buoyant water let us do gymnastics we could never do before! The clear, turquoise water, briny with salt and minerals, made my skin silky smooth, and soothed the sunburn from the day before.

An Israeli company takes the salts and minerals from the Dead Sea and produces a beautiful line of skin care products, choosing the name Ahava for their brand. A friend I was swimming with in the Dead Sea gave me a tub of...

Surrounded by Love

Surrounded by Love

This is the first of four weekly devotionals from the archives. They first appeared in the lovely Daughters of Promise devotionals way back in February 2018! I felt it’s time to get these words out, dust them off, and think about them again.

On my desk at work, I have a Willow Tree figurine. She’s holding a spray of red flowers and burying her face in them. The title of the figurine is “Surrounded by Love.”

I keep her there because she reminds me, with her relaxed posture and ...

Hope Opens Every Door

Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

This is the time of year when all the Christian writers come out of the woodwork to offer their Advent devotionals. Every year, I get tired of all the serious, sober one-liners we should reflect on for the whole season. They’re all wise and thoughtful, but it gets to be too much to take in.

So if you can’t absorb one more pithy statement or rumination about how a Christian can approach Christmas, please scroll on, with no hard feelings.

These days, I keep think...

Our Trip to Savannah

Back in May, I flew to Georgia to visit Lolita for a weekend. In the first hour, I knew she and Michelle and I needed to spend a weekend together. They had both been through traumatic years: caring for Ukranian refugees in Poland, re-entry to the US after 20+ years, a teen son with recurring osteosarcoma. They were still living in the ragged stages of recovery and survival and I knew in my soul we needed time to talk, breathe slow, and be present with each other. “We three should get tog...

Look For a Lovely Thing

I took a walk this evening. I was sleepy after supper and didn’t feel like walking, but I told myself, “If you don’t take a walk, you’ll die.” It’s not that dire, of course, but I was feeling melodramatic, and when the sky is clear and the next half hour is free, a walk is always the best idea.

When I crossed the road in front of my house, I saw this leaf in the grass and it gave me an idea:

Dr. Elissa Weichbrodt, on Instagram, does what she calls “color walking.” I heard her speak earlier this...

What We Make Much Of

Women often tell me, “I don’t have anyone experienced I can talk to about this.” Or “I’d like to have a mentor, someone I can ask questions of and learn from, but I don’t know how to find one.”

I make at least two deductions from this common theme:

Younger women need older women in their lives.Older women rarely advertise their willingness to walk beside younger women.

There are a million influencers out there and some of them contribute to some women’s anxiety, FOMO (fear of missing out), f...

Blood, Red

“The Advocate”
Artist: Paige Payne, https://paigepaynecreations.com/ https://www.instagram.com/paigepayne_creations/

My pastor says

If we could hear the stories

Of what happened last night

In every house

Within

A two-mile radius from us, it would

Break

Our

Hearts.

 

My pastor’s breaking voice and

The tears of Jesus

Keep me from crumpling

At the chaos, wails, shards

In humanity,

In me.

 

In the garden of agony

He knew last night’s stories.

The olive press, gnarled trunks,

Cracked earthen paths gav...