Snapshots of My Heart

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  • In Memory

    In Memory

    I miss your laugh

    And your wrinkles

    I miss seeing your eyes light up

    Whenever we walked in

    I miss your strength and courage

    I miss the music you loved

    I miss your hugs

    The smell of soggy toothpicks

    And your soft hands

    I miss your joy and your critiques

    I miss your outlook on the world

    I miss “See you later, Alligator”(s)

    And “or in the air”(s)

    I miss your grumpy days

    I miss the ways you loved us every day you were here

    I miss hearing you pray

    The way you bossed

    The way you worshipped

    I miss the way you cheered and yelled at referees

    I miss the way you squabbled together

    And the way you held hands

    I miss the thoughts you shared at book club that never made any sense

    I miss the way you drove

    I miss the way you found deals on your favorite foods (cherries, apples, almond butter)

    Just so you could stock up

    I miss the way you danced and celebrated

    The ways you played pretend with us

    The ways you teased

    I miss the ways you saved money

    And the ways you spent it

    I miss knowing you’d be at every game

    And all the nights we stayed up late

    I miss Barney Fife

    Amir Tsarfati

    Robert Portnoy

    And Tucker Carlson

    Being the biggest celebrities in your house

    I miss the way you read God’s Word and prayed over our family

    Every morning

    I miss the way you wanted to set us up on dates

    I miss telling you surprises and struggles

    I miss asking you questions

    And hearing a familiar story told all over again

    I miss your wisdom and Bible teaching

    I miss your years of piano instruction

    I miss the beautiful souls God fashioned in you

    Through pain, trials, testing, fire

    I miss you

    In most loving memory of:

    Grandpa Jim (James Roger Wiggans, Jan 31, 1944 – Feb 10, 2024)

    And

    Grandma Kathie (Kathleen Marie Wiggans, Dec 30, 1953 – Feb 8, 2025)

  • Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospel

    Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospel

    Alright, stick with me for one minute. I believe in the God of the Bible (God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit). I believe that Jesus came to earth on a mission to save our broken world and redeem me from my sin (along with all humanity). I believe he lived a perfect life, performed many miracles, rose from the dead, reigns in heaven, and is coming back soon to take his Church home.

    Hold up! Look at all of those things I just said I believe. They are wild! Many of the events I just mentioned are supernatural and so, by definition, are difficult or impossible to measure or explain. Believe me, I see that.

    Growing up in a generation that primarily sees life through the glasses of philosophical naturalism (a view that exclusively values properties and causes that can be confirmed and measured by science) I have to defend my faith regularly, mostly to myself. I do not like being fooled. I want to know the arguments that can be made against the Bible and the God it describes. I also want to know what defense the Bible, history, science, archaeology, and philosophy can make to argue for the scriptures and the God they describe. I want to face every tough question that comes up because if the Bible is true (as I believe it is), it changes everything in beautiful ways.

    Cold-Case Christianity is an excellent resource for examining the reliability of the New Testament. The author, J. Warner Wallace, walks his readers through the investigations he made as a skeptic in his thirties.

    Wallace was working as a homicide detective who specialized in cold-case homicide investigations, looking into cases that were years or decades old where the original investigation team had been unable to find or convict the killer. One of Wallace’s tasks was to examine all of the old eyewitness reports and to weed out any that were unreliable. Every eyewitness report has to acceptably answer at least four questions before it can be considered trustworthy.

    1. Were they there? Was the witness actually present at the scene?
    2. Are they corroborated? Can the witness’s story be corroborated by other evidence?
    3. Are they accurate? Does the witness’s story stay consistent?
    4. Are they biased? Does the witness hold any biases that would compel him/her to withhold or highlight certain pieces of information?

    When Wallace decided to investigate the claims of Christianity, he centered his examination on the New Testament. Specifically, he wanted to determine whether the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John could be trusted as eyewitness accounts. Much to his surprise, he eventually concluded that they could.

    I appreciated learning from Wallace’s unique perspective. I was surprised to see the overlap between tools that he used in his work as a detective and tools that he used in his study of the gospels. I came away wanting to do more research of my own.

    Reading Cold-Case Christianity certainly did not answer all of my questions about the gospels. In fact, it introduced me to some questions I had never thought to ask before. I don’t think Wallace would be disappointed to hear that, though. If I tried to summarize his message in a few words, it would look like this:

    Bring your questions

    One and all

    Skeptic

    Christian

    Doubter

    Student

    ~

    Come near

    Sit here

    And we will look together

    At the questions

    In front of us

    ~

    Don’t hold back

    Bear down

    With all the weight of your uncertainty

    And we will see if this little Book

    Will hold up

    ~

    The God I know is big enough for questions

  • Persuasion and What It Means to Be Human

    Persuasion and What It Means to Be Human

    If Anne had stood her ground

    And ignored the prejudice

    Of her family and friends

    Perhaps her happiness

    Would have been secured

    Much sooner

    ~

    But there is a sweet joy

    That comes from waiting

    And a singular love

    That blossoms from patient hope

    ~

    If Frederick had returned

    On the very day

    In which his fortunes were improved

    And sought Anne’s hand without delay

    His happiness would certainly

    Have been realized sooner

    But their love would only have matured

    A very little

    ~

    Picture Anne

    With Frederick

    Hand in hand

    In their golden years

    Remembering years gone by

    ~

    I do not see regret in their eyes

    Or hear it in their voices

    When they speak of the waiting years

    ~

    Frederick’s voice is strong

    And his face wrinkles into a grin as he remembers:

    “I attempted to convince myself that

    I had never loved you at all

    That our relationship

    Was only a burst of passion,

    A feeling I could feel

    For any other woman.

    ~

    Louisa’s fall in Lyme

    Brought me suddenly back to reality

    With only three thoughts

    Clear in my mind.

    ~

    One was that your tendency to be persuadable

    Was no more a flaw than Louisa’s determination to be unpersuaded.

    Indeed, your flaw suddenly seemed the wiser of the two.

    ~

    The second clear thought

    Was a firm and final admittance to myself

    That I did not,

    Indeed could not, love Louisa Musgrove.

    ~

    The third thought

    Shortly following the second in a burst

    Of sweet and stinging realization

    Was that I still loved Anne Elliott.

    Even the fear that she would not love me in return

    Could not change this certainty.”

    ~

    Anne’s voice is clear

    And her eyes speak

    With candor

    Of love

    For her old captain

    As she remembers:

    “In the days of our young love

    I did not yet fully comprehend

    The immeasurable value

    Of a happy marriage.

    ~

    I came to see it soon enough however

    As I observed

    Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove

    Admiral and Mrs. Croft

    And Captain and Mrs. Harville.

    ~

    The union of these couples

    Brought joy and goodness

    Not only to themselves

    But to everyone who knew them.

    ~

    I came to long for that kind of joy and goodness for myself.

    Over time

    This longing

    Drove the fear of displeasing

    My proud and petty

    Family members

    Far into the background.”

    ~

    Come, reader

    We must leave them now

    To savor the sweetness

    Of memory

    Side by side.

    ~

    Yet I hear them call after us:

    “Don’t forget to treasure the waiting”.

  • Linked

    Linked

    Let’s be real, those woke-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed days are way too frequent. The saddest thing about rotten days, though, is the rottenness they tend to expose in us.

    The kids of Chokecherry are bombarded with difficult circumstances, individually and as a student body at Chokecherry Middle School. On top of the normal struggles of school, becoming young adults, and making friends, these kids are faced with a character dilemma when a series of swastikas start appearing all over their school, and soon, all over town.

    The antisemitic symbols are disturbing and scary, especially as weeks go by without any clues arising as to who is behind them. The rottenness the symbols stand for is wide and deep, and they prompt discussions about the town’s past that are dark and surprising. Instead of allowing the darkness to rot their souls, however, the children of Chokecherry take a stand. A decision is made to begin work on a paper link chain, with the goal of reaching six million links – one for every Jewish life taken in the Holocaust.

    This colossal project inspires the world, but the kids work has only just begun. Their perseverance will be tested as they encounter setbacks, criticism, difficult questions, and sad revelations.

    Linked is a sobering reminder to band together against evil of all kinds, and to forgive others, especially when they don’t deserve it.

  • Persuasion

    Being granted the desires of your heart in an instant is often not as rich a gift as being made to wait first. Anne and Frederick can attest to this.

    The gifts these two received as a result of their waiting included maturity and surety.

    Each of them knew themselves and their world more fully after their 8 years of separation. As a result, they could assert with a larger amount of certainty that truly, of all the other men and women in their acquaintance, they most desired to spend life with one another.

    Frederick and Anne had measured many others against the standard set by each other. In the end, they were forced to conclude that no one else could win their heart’s affection as did this one who proved to be infinitely superior in all their observations.