by Liz Flaherty | Jul 25, 2017 | Reflections
As a child low fat diets were all the craze. My mother would put me on low fat diets featuring slim fast shakes and meal replacement bars. I now know that was the opposite of what my nutritionally depleted, unbalanced hormonal prepubescent body needed. I now know that those slim fast shakes contained so many harmful ingredients, including soy products that were damaging to my estrogen levels. It fought against me, not for me. However, as this was before the internet age there was little knowledge, so we were stuck with Richard Simmons and low fat cottage cheese. My challenge with weight apparently began in kindergarten. My mother explained to me one day that I was sent home with chickenpox. It took me about 10 days days to recover and in that time I ballooned two clothes sizes. She explained she couldn’t keep weight off of me after that. Who knows what that was about? Maybe I’m an unrealized X-men with the super power of exponentially gaining weight in a short amount of time? I’ve yet to find the purpose of this power but I’m sure it will serve me in the zombie apocalypse. Because of this superpower, I became aware of being overweight at a very young age. I played sports all through middle school even though (on average) I was 40 pounds heavier than my peers. I ate what my parents fed me. Being low income it was often high starch boxed foods with meat added. Very limited and small portions of vegetables and carbs were prevalent because they were cheap. As I explained in my previous...
by Liz Flaherty | Apr 13, 2016 | Reflections
As I begin to unpack my thoughts regarding how church leaders can best care for the hearts of those who may or may not consider themselves gay Christians or in the LGBTQ community, I have to admit that writing about the subject is weighty. I have friends in so many different arenas, people that I admire and care about, so I want to enter into the discussion with sensitivity. Nevertheless, I write about this because of the increasing number of friends and acquaintances who are rallying behind the idea that the gospel tells us to support the gay community at any measure–that the gospel of love is to truly accept sexual orientation, regardless of what that looks like. In other words, many are believing that the church is evolving as the culture around it embraces a growing acceptance of the diverse LGBTQ community. And while I would agree that our methods of outreach towards a culture involving sexual identity are changing, I do not believe that the church is evolving into an age of “enlightenment” where there are no established safeguards or truth that are based in scripture. For weeks now I’ve camped around the story of Jesus in Luke 7:36-50. 36 When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. 37 A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. 38 As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet...
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