All posts by Abby Smith

About Abby Smith

Abby is a person. She works at being an emotionally intelligent person whose main focus currently is being a happy and loving mother to four kids and wife to Malcolm. Born and raised in a General church minister's family, she has been exposed to the Bible and the Writings since childhood but is enjoying reading and understanding these books as an adult more and more. The amazing knowledge about love and wisdom and all of the emotions that follow have truly made her a happier and more self-assured person.

Finding My Way of Sharing the New Church

Article

I’m no evangelist. I tend to be quiet and introverted, and am usually too busy following my kids around to have much of a deep conversation – especially with people I don’t already know well. But that’s also why chasing my kids around suits me well. 🙂

Don’t get me wrong – I have plenty of big opinions when you get me one-on-one. And I can be plenty stubborn and pushy about what is right, and why I am the one who is right. And I care about and think about things deeply. But, because of my personality, that just doesn’t come out in my usual conversations.


Being raised in a ministers’ family (with a very outgoing, ready-to-talk-and-get-into-deep-things-quickly kind of mom) and now married to a minister, I have often struggled with feeling like I was the lame part of the pair in terms of sharing the Word. It’s not that I don’t think I’m doing good work: being a stay-at-home mom and fully immersed in the life of my kids is exactly what I want to do, and I feel useful doing it. But, if so many of my family member have poured their lives into sharing and spreading the Word, where is my role in that? It’s a question I’ve thought about frequently. Since I’m not comfortable pushing into other people’s business and (even if I wanted it) I don’t have a venue for public speaking like my husband (or a conversation that lasts more than 5 minutes for that matter) I don’t really share my experiences, thoughts, or feelings about the Lord and the Word. Continue reading Finding My Way of Sharing the New Church →

We Must Fail To Succeed

Quotes and Reflections

We each fill many roles. There can be a lot of pressure to “get it right” in every aspect of life. The pressure can build to succeed in any role – student, wife, mother, co-worker, sister, friend, daughter. Sometimes it builds up in many places simultaneously and can be crippling. But, so long as we continue looking to the Lord and striving towards the long term goal of growing in love towards a heavenly life, “failure” is a useful necessity. For our Easter Sunday church service at New Church Westville that was the point of the sermon, which you can listen to here. In some ways even Jesus had to “fail” to accomplish His long term success. When we focus on moving forward and following the Lord failure helps us to grow in ways we never could otherwise and ultimately reach our heavenly goal.

“The fact that those who are being reformed are brought into a state of not knowing any truth, that is, into a state of desolation, insomuch that they experience grief and despair, and that at this point for the first time they receive comfort and help from the Lord, is something that is not known at the present day for the reason that few are being reformed. Those who are such that they are able to be reformed are brought into this state, if not during this life then in the next…. Continue reading We Must Fail To Succeed →

Dealing With Differences With Dr. Seuss

Article

“And I began to see
That I was just as strange to them
As they were strange to me!”
-Dr. Seuss’ “What Was I Scared Of?”

I love children’s literature. Given that I have four young kids I get the chance to read a lot of it. I enjoy it (and feel it’s a sign of it being good literature) when the books I’m reading to my kids make me think and feel and connect with thoughts I have about people and the world. Living away from my country of origin in these rather dramatic first weeks of 2017, which have been full of unrest and confusion in some ways the world over, I have thought a lot about similarities and differences.
Continue reading Dealing With Differences With Dr. Seuss →

Communities in Heaven and on Earth

Quotes and Reflections

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last year about the significance of community. Having a group of people who you feel known and understood by, loved and supported by, and with whome that feeling is reciprocated, is an amazing gift.

Earlier in my life I experienced high anxiety as a result of a lack of that kind of community. More specifically it was feeling like my internal emotions and experience didn’t line up with the external appearances about the community I lived in. In terms of religion, skin color, and economic standing I fit with the majority but internally I didn’t feel like I fit in. I also felt as if I had to hide some part of me and that caused significant anxiety.

In some ways being an “obvious” part of the majority of the community was a big part of my emotional conflict. I didn’t feel confrontational or brave enough to demonstrate to people the ways I didn’t fit expectations, but the internal awareness of the fact that I didn’t fit and hiding that caused a lot of anxiety. Continue reading Communities in Heaven and on Earth →