Posts by Laura Puiras (Page 7)

Once upon a time, Laura swore she would never get a tattoo… Fast forward twenty years and 1.5 tattoos later, I can’t help but wonder how many things I’ve missed in life because of what I threw myself into (or pitted myself against) as a child/youth/young adult/even now as a 32-year-old! I think that somewhere along the way, because I grew up learning that God does not change and that he never changes his mind, I began to believe that…

Seasonally, we’re in a bizarre state where technically the season we’re in is called Spring… and yet the trees and ground look dull and dead. The bright green patches of grass have not yet taken over the hills or yards and the snow you thought was maybe actually gone, continues to reappear in sudden flurries. And so, we’re left in seasonal limbo which usually feels like looping through an eternal debate about whether it’s time for that slightly lighter jacket…

In our Pastoral Team Meetings, we have been working our way through some potential mens’ ministry curriculum. The Quest for Authentic Manhood. This is not a quest I had ever imagined taking… and it very obviously looks quite different for me than it does for the rest of our team. I confess I have been skeptical and eye-rolly about it, especially towards the beginning. But this curious thing called “pleasantly surprised” has been happening more and more as we sit…

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent… unless you count Shrove Tuesday (the day we eat pancakes for dinner :P) As a church we just finished a month-long fast in January, but Lent is a 40-day fast that the Global Church participates in together. The premise of Ash Wednesday is to bring our attention back towards the cross in a new way. We consider the fact that from dust we were made and to dust we will one day return……

With Family Day just a couple days behind us, I’m finding myself reflecting on family much more than usual. Within my own immediate family there are some pretty significant changes up ahead as my parents prepare to move to Finland. My sister and I have our own places and, in a mystery that Little Laura never could have anticipated, we’re in our thirties and our family unit is back to being “just the four of us”. And it is beautiful…

On Wednesday night at intercession, Uncle Eric led us to do listening prayer from parts of Psalm 37. As I was beginning to ask the Lord what he had for me to take away from the passage, I sensed him saying, “Believe Me when I say that I am true to my Word”. Which, I won’t lie, in the moment felt like a bit of a non-sequitur… Having that word fresh in my mind though, allowed me to notice how…

For most of my life, as much as I hate to admit it, many of my dreams were shaped by what I saw around me. Children have spectacular imaginations!! They think about things differently because they haven’t learned limitations yet… Although I could imagine and make-believe all sorts of fun worlds with my sister in our play, when it came to what I wanted from life, what I aspired for, that creativity seemed to fall a little short. As I…

Okay everyone. Day 21 of our January Church Fast is upon us… well, approximately day 21 for those of us who… had a delayed start date (like I did with social media).I can confirm from my experience so far, it is better late than never! J If you’d still like to join in for the last ten days of January, you are more than welcome to do so!! I’ve been noticing that the more I fast/the longer I fast, the…

I started reading Adrian’s book The Power of Choice this evening and it’s already been blowing my mind so much!(Quelle surprise… Adrian says smart things. Laura’s brain explodes at learning new smart things.) The insights he has shared, throughout the Introduction and first chapter alone, are really beginning to shift around the way I think about things and it was just too good not to share! [SPOILER ALERT!!] One line/point that especially struck me was when he was working through…

The other day I was chatting on the phone with a good friend of mine. They’ve been feeling a little hopeless lately and realized that one of the biggest contributors to that hopelessness was not being able to trust God. Although they know in their heart-of-hearts that God is trustworthy, because there have been so many hurts and wounds in recent years, their heart has become calloused. Which is the natural response to pain or brokenness… to toughen up and…

Although they may seem like an unlikely pairing, I’ve learned some really valuable lessons from the combination of neuroscience and the nativity. As our brain develops, especially in critical developmental stages such as childhood and early adolescence, it begins to create loads of different connections. Neurons fire off synapses like billions of teeny tiny fireworks in your brain! Even after the brain has developed, your brain has the capacity to literally begin to change shape and to rework itself, based…

This week in our Discipleship Group, we were talking about obedience. We’ve made it all the way through Level 1 and I found it so interesting that the final lesson would be on something that almost felt like a loose end? Why end with a lesson that can be so tough and then not have another one lined up for the following week? I think a big part of it is that the lessons leading up to it were filled…