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DEAR ABBY: My husband and I discussed our 25th anniversary and mentioned Hawaii as a possibility. He reached out to his brother and sister-in-law for suggestions, since they have visited Hawaii twice and we never have.
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DEAR ABBY: My sister has always been a liar and a manipulator. She has lost jobs because of her toxic behavior. Our parents passed away 20 years ago, and ever since, she has trashed their memory to anyone who will listen. She claims she was unwanted because she was female, that my parents refused to name her and wouldn’t take her home from the hospital until police were called. None of that is in any way true.
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DEAR ABBY: I was with the same person (my first “everything” guy) for 23 years. A few years after the shock of a divorce, I met someone 10 years my junior. He makes me feel I’m the most beautiful woman in the world, complimenting on what my ex considered my faults, showing I am still a sexy, desirable woman and making me feel like I matter in this world.
Read moreLast week, we introduced and then began to unpack the biblical story of Cain killing his brother Abel (Gen 4:1-17), all the while maintaining a keen focus upon God’s character and His justice in an attempt to gain a better understanding of why God may possibly allow evil to exist. To help keep that keen focus upon God’s character and His actions in the face of evil, we made the following doctrinal observation as summarized by the Christian philosopher Elenaore Stump: “Orthodox Christian doctrine holds that persons once created are everlasting and are of infinite value. If they become defective, it is up to a good God not to eliminate them, but to fix them if He can.” Picking up the story: after the murder, when He comes to punish Cain, God doesn’t kill him. There is no blood for blood, or eye for eye, no tooth for tooth. There is no life for life. Instead, God first brings about a special miracle on behalf of Cain by cursing the ground when and wherever Cain tills it. Then, God sends Cain away to wander “the land of Nod” (Gen 4:16). “Nod,” by the way, is a Hebrew word meaning “to wander.” But before he sends him away, God takes pity on Cain and marks him so no one who finds him will kill him. Something important to note: a bit further along in the story, we read that Cain marries, has children, and establishes a city he names Enoch after his son (Gen 4:17). Now it seems to me Cain’s life after he commits the first murder in history, really doesn’t seem that bad. Meanwhile, his brother, righteous Abel, is cold, and dead, and in the ground. No doubt, this story seems to be filled with injustice, and God is right in the middle of it.
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To get the full gist of the whole Bible without reading all of them at once, you can try this excellent method as suggested by Betsy de Cruz of Crosswalk.com.
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DEAR ABBY: A few years ago, my uncle made a controversial comment about a social issue in my mom’s family group text. The issue was important enough to my sister that she requested discussion about it cease because she didn’t agree with what they were saying. When the discussion continued, she decided to cut Mom’s family out of her life, taking a cue from my brother-inlaw, who had made a similar decision about his own family.
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DEAR ABBY: I’m 22, and my boyfriend is 21. We’ve been dating for a few months. At a recent family dinner, his maternal grandfather hit on me. I was helping to clear the dinner table and leaned across the table to grab some dirty plates when Grandpa shoved his hand up my skirt. Then he leered at me, and my survival instincts kicked in. I slapped him across the face so hard he fell off his chair. It created a scene, and my boyfriend’s mother screamed at me.
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