Schmidt, Lisa

Filled with the Holy Spirit … Even in the Womb

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There was much in the news last week on the pro-life front that greatly disturbed my spirit. Specifically, the news out of New York legalizing abortion at any stage of pregnancy made me physically sick to my stomach. With all the noise and debate over whether an unborn baby is a life who has rights and value, I go back to Scripture and cling to a passage from Luke’s first chapter. We know the story well when the angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah and declares John the Baptist will be filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb. But it wasn’t until I participated in The Wild Goose study when those words were truly illuminated for me. Think about this: the first person in the New Testament from the Gospel of Luke to be consumed by and filled with the Holy Spirit is an unborn child. What does that mean for us?

The One Big Thing? Just Give Me Jesus

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Last year a friend completed a program called “Plan Your Year: Your Guide to an Awesome 2018.” It’s a framework where you sit down at the beginning of the year and strategize different goals you’d like to accomplish over the year. You end up narrowing down your goals into the “one big thing” to focus on. Then you break down that one thing into something small and simple you can do each day, each month of the year, in incremental steps. The work my friend did with Plan Your Year helped her focus and channel energy throughout 2018 to make progress with her one big thing. I left that conversation asking: What’s my one big thing?

Happy All the Things! Here’s to Joy-Filled Ordinary Times

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Given we re-enter Ordinary Time tomorrow, Monday, January 14, I guess I haven’t quite missed the boat on sending you Christmas greetings from Das Schmidt Haus. So let’s get it all out in the open now. Merry Christmas, Happy 2019, a blessed Epiphany, and a spirited Baptism of the Lord to you! I pray your … [Read more…]

Thoughts on Listening, Silence and “Floating the Tongue”

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Do you have a favorite place where your heart just sings while there? I have a couple — Napa Valley, California and Conception Abbey in Missouri. A strange combination, yes. But oh, how I love both! Joel and I recently participated in a spiritual retreat for deacons and their wives at one of those locations … [Read more…]

Keeping First Things First: Conducting a Time Audit

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In Sonja Corbitt’s fantastic book Fearless: Conquer Your Demons and Love with Abandon (go get it!) she writes, “I’m no prophet but I have learned through discerning patterns that, when I see or hear something two or more times, I can be sure God is at work somehow. I know to pay attention to what happens next … [Read more…]

Come away and rest a while

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It’s been almost two years since Joel or I have shared any new content on this site. Wow, two years? I really didn’t think it had been that long. It’s not like we set about to intentionally take a break. It just organically happened. In hindsight, necessarily happened. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Mark 6:31: Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.

Joy in the Mourning

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My smile is presently bigger as October ushers in many events and celebrations that simply make me happy. But it’s also a bittersweet time of year for me given my father suddenly passed away on September 30, 2009. I now am annually flooded with memories of that fateful day just about the same time the … [Read more…]