Rebekah Speaks

Glossary of terms: Shindiggler (noun) Running girls who display the following attributes: tough but tender, serious but silly, centered but just a tad to the right of crazy. Shindiggled (verb) past tense, as in, "to be shindiggled," to cross the finish line behind a Shindiggler Yes. I was shindiggled yesterday, four times over. Though it sounds like this condition of being shindiggled could be painful, it really isn't (at least in retrospect.) Let me explain. I've been writing for some time about "my" Shindigglers, a group of college girls who I used to coach as high school athletes. Nowadays, we spend hours together, running up and down mountains and along country roads, (mostly so we can gather in my kitchen guilt free to inhale cupcakes and ice cream). We turn the night before a race into a sleep-over, watching episodes of "Fixer Upper" before bedtime. We embrace challenge and share in each others' accomplishments. And, oh how we ...

" Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.   March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days.   Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”. . . And he ordered the army, “Advance! March around the city. . .” (Joshua 6:1-7) Seems like a crazy story, huh? But at least three major archaeologic excavations in the southern Jordan valley of Israel confirm the crumpled walls and destruction of Jericho by fire in about 1400 BC. Strange but true. I had my own Jeric...