For 9 in 10 women, endometrial ablation can greatly reduce menstrual flow and sometimes get rid of it altogether. On February 4, Abby underwent a combination surgery including a bilateral salpingectomy, in which doctors remove both fallopian tubes, thereby withdrawing an egg's pathway from the ovaries to the uterus, as well as an endometrial ablation, which removes a layer of the endometrium - aka the tissue lining a uterus.Īccording to Johns Hopkins Medicine, removing this layer of the endometrium reduces the chance of pregnancy because "the endometrial lining, where the egg implants after being fertilized, has been removed."Ībby chose this combination not only to eliminate her chances of having an unwanted pregnancy, but also for the relief endometrial ablations can offer those, like Abby, who experience long, heavy periods that interrupt their daily life.
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I think about this every Lord’s Day morning as I’m preparing food for two meals: one weekly fellowship meal at church and one meal at home with neighbors and friends and folks from church. Have you ever thought that you, your house, and your time are not your own but rather God’s ordained way of escape for someone? It also speaks to the lived tension of applying faith to our trials and then waiting for that way of escape to present itself. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” This passage speaks to the intensity, the loneliness, and the danger of temptation. Radically ordinary hospitality begins when we remember that God uses us as living epistles-and that the openness or inaccessibility of our homes and hearts stands between life and death, victory and defeat, and grace or shame for most people.Ĭonsider with me the tension of 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. He held his breath the whole way to the Agency.Ĭommanding, white, block letters spelled out the words VAMPIRE ENFORCEMENT AGENCY across the front of the small, brick building. Taven’s car reeked of the god-awful cologne he drenched himself in, and Roric hoped his brother wasn’t stinking up his car. This night was so far gone already, who knew what else might happen before he got home. He chugged a blood bag on the way back downstairs then grabbed two more for the road, just in case. He hoped like hell she was still there when he got back. Now, after all that, she was in his room, needing to feed and looking at him like he was a prime rib dinner, and he was leaving to go question the rogue vampire who started it all. God, could anything else crazy happen tonight? When he answered that call a few hours ago, he never imagined he’d end up having his first taste of human blood, turning a human against her will, and being staked, all because of one little human he couldn’t seem to stay away from. All he wanted to do was curl up in his bed, wrap his body around Caroline, and sink his fangs into her. He was weak, exhausted, desperately in need of blood and about ten hours of rest to recover from the staking. It took every ounce of energy Roric had to walk out of that room. To make their voices stand out in the book, Saunders uses his signature particularity: One character has an obsessive concern, another repeats the same phrase, a third always misuses certain punctuation. But the majority of the characters are ordinary people who died with unfinished business-a farmer with daddy issues, or a fastidious couple in which both people refuse to take blame for leaving the fireplace grate open. Some of these characters had unusually inopportune departures: Hans Vollman, played by Offerman, died immediately before consummating his marriage Roger Bevins III, played by Sedaris, changed his mind mid-suicide. I've done this before on a smaller scale, but never something so unrelenting. Or we might shut down like a deer in headlights (i.e., freeze).īut this kind of rumination can only heighten our original stress and discomfort. We might try to concoct an implausible escape plan (i.e., flight). This is when we might swear or murmur under our breath (i.e., fight). With these feelings, our brains are alerted to a potential threat, and our survival instincts kick in. To our brains, feelings like discomfort or aversion are a sign that something is amiss. These hormones activate our limbic region, home of the fight-flight-freeze response. If we don’t feel safe, then our bodies produce cortisol and adrenaline to put our survival instinct into action. Our brains, at their most primitive level, exist to keep us safe from danger. Given the choice between comfort and ease, or pain and difficulty, who wouldn’t choose the former? That’s not because we’re wimps, it’s because our brains are primed to seek safety and comfort and avoid pain and distress. These reactions that we have to discomfort are usually unhelpful and can actually make the discomfort worse.įirst, let’s look at what’s happening when we’re stuck in discomfort. What’s your automatic response? Do you tend to freeze from the pressure? Do you think about how awful it is, or wish you were someplace else? Do you rack your brain for an impossible escape plan? It might be a conversation, a person or place, but for whatever reason you can’t gracefully leave. What happens when you’re stuck in a situation that is difficult, uncomfortable, or even painful? A former chemistry student, Ehrenreich is particularly harsh on the brand of “scientific reductionism” that reduces mystical experiences to the misfiring of neurons, a completely internal event. In fact, what she seems to be backing away from is certainty of all kinds in the face of genuine mystery. She is as disdainful of organized religion as ever, writing that when people run up against the inexplicable they call it “ ‘God,’ as if that were some sort of explanation.” And she insists that “the idea of a cosmic loving-kindness perfusing the universe is a serious, even potentially dangerous error.” But she also seems to back away from her atheism, portraying it as just another arrogant belief system she inherited from her father, a man she sums up as the “great man-god and Shiva-like genius of self destruction” and a “habitual liar.” Embracing her secret allows Ehrenreich to make some wise late-life course corrections. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper-a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kyiv, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son-but Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. The bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history’s deadliest female sniper. And they are high-quality movies - some feature A-list actors like Richard Gere, Mark Wahlberg, Phylicia Rashad, and Alyssa Milano, just to name a few. Whether you're on the hunt for a movie to help you build up your faith or want one based directly on Bible scripture, Netflix has tons of options. Though reality shows like Love Is Blind and vampire-based horror movies such as The Invitation have probably kept a place on your list, sometimes, after a stressful week, all you want to watch is an uplifting faith-based or inspiring Christian movie on Netflix. Whether you're in the mood for a tear-jerking rom-com or are looking for a round of family-friendly movies, Netflix has more than enough titles available for your viewing pleasure. With streaming platforms like Netflix keeping a string of new shows on the horizon, finding something interesting to watch isn't a problem. “Woodson’s unsparing story of a girl becoming a woman recalls some of the genre’s all-time greats: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Bluest Eye and especially, with its darkly poetic language, The House on Mango Street.” - Sarah Begley, Time Like Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood-the promise and peril of growing up-and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant-a part of a future that belonged to them.īut beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything-until it wasn’t. The acclaimed New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years. A Finalist for the 2016 National Book AwardĪ SeattleTimes pick for Summer Reading Roundup 2017 The Bad – There is a section of the book where the author decides it would be a good idea to enact some of the stories as if putting on a “play”. The author spent more time discussing historical issues that only marginally apply to the actual subject matter than the 'matter' itself! I get it that this type of information can be pretty dry, but if written correctly it can work. The Not So Good – The book is just not as interesting as you assume it would be. The best and most interesting part of the book is the chapter about ‘glass’. I was correct and made a wise choice in this regard. The Good – I bought the book on one of the sales for $ 4.95 because it had been sitting in my wish list for about a year and I just wasn’t convinced that it would be worth a full credit. |