along the way

A Really Good Story

2008-02-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

I’ve just finished reading Joshua. It was part of my daily Bible reading, following Scripture Union’s “Encounter with God” guide.

He dies at the end of the book.

One day I will try to write something about how special the death of a godly person is. But right now I want to look at something else – related, but different.

After his death, Joshua was called the Servant of God, the very title given Moses after his death.

More than half way through the “Think Further” section that goes along with the daily readings, I found this compelling statement:

“God calls us not merely to serve but to be servants. An important distinction here. If I serve, I decide when and how. If I am a servant, all personal choice is gone; someone else gives the orders.”

Does that challenge you as much as it challenged me?

I’m just learning to serve. Now I have to quit that and become a servant?

Yes.

But I have a great story to tell about what that looks like.

I shared this Beth Moore story with my friend, John, earlier this week and he asked me (told me firmly) to write it up in my blog.

But I didn’t get around to it – until I read that bit about servants.

Now I want to.

John didn’t know who Beth Moore is, never heard of her. So he didn’t know whether I told the story correctly or not.

Many of you do know who she is – a Bible teacher extraordinaire whose teachings are being used by groups all over the world.

You may have heard her tell this story, in which case I plead your forgiveness for even trying to convey is here. I will leave out so much and maybe even get a little wrong.

But I won’t miss at least one of the messages of that story.

She started her telling by explaining how she got “filled up” with worship by singing and dancing to praise music one day before leaving for the airport to begin a trip to somewhere she was supposed to speak.

Being so full of the Lord, she decided to spend her time on the first leg of the journey trying to memorize the first chapter of John. Her method is to read this chapter of the Bible aloud several times and then to look away and see how much of it she could recite. Somewhere during the process, when she paused to try to remember, the person in the seat next to her provided the missing words – with an edge to her voice.

But Beth persevered. In the next airport, waiting to board a plane so small she didn’t think the airlines had a name, she continued her memorization efforts. Sitting with the Bible on her lap and a row of other waiting passengers facing her, she tried to focus – until she realized they weren’t staring at her, but at something behind her.

It turned out to be a man in a wheelchair, who was pushed to a stop at the end of her row, a couple of seats away. A man who looked at least 136 year old and had long nails and white hair way down his back. It couldn’t be Howard Hughes, but that’s who it reminded her of.

Then she felt the Lord preparing to speak to her and she said, please don’t make me witness to that man. Please don’t make me.

And He said, brush his hair.

I’ll witness, Lord. Really I will.

Brush his hair.

So she got up and went over to him and quietly asked if she could brush his hair.

And he said, what?

So she repeated it a little louder.

And he said, If you want me to hear, you will have to speak up louder.

So she did.

And he said, if you want to.

She said, I do, but I don’t have a brush.

He did, in his zippered bag behind the wheelchair. So she knelt down and felt through his jimmies and found the brush and stood up behind him.

His hair was clean, she said, but very tangled. Full of snarls and matted.

I am the mother of daughters, she said. I know how to get tangles out. You start at the bottom and work your way up.

So she did.

When she was finished and his hair was clean and shining and tangle-free, she came around and knelt in front of him and put her hands on his hands and said, Sir, do you know Jesus?

He said, as a matter of fact I do.

And he told her that he had been in a medical facility for a long time after being very ill and his wife had not been able to visit him. But now he was going home.

And, he said to Beth, you have made me beautiful for my bride.

I cried. And I wasn’t the only one.

Forgive me if I didn’t get all the details right. Go get Beth Moore’s “Loving Well” teaching series and listen and watch her tell the story herself.

In the meantime, I don’t think I really need to tell you how this speaks to being a servant, not just serving.

Beth was specifically teaching about how to really love well, how to love like Jesus. She had spoken to us about how to love those who are a joy to us, how to love those who are testy and even those who are our foes.

But until we learn to love those who are far from us – either across the world or across an airport waiting room – whose who cannot love us in return – we will not really know how to love well.

And until we learn to let God order our ways, we will not know the incredible blessing of being part of God’s blessing on someone else.

I have a lot to learn about loving well.

I have a lot to learn about being a servant.

But I cherish the seed sown through the telling and hearing of this story and I pray that this seed may take root and grow in my life and bear fruit.

And in yours, too.

I Can't Do It Alone

2007-12-14T07:29:00.000-08:00

I have struggled at times with Sahara-sized dry periods brought on by my inability (unwillingness?) to accept gracefully the circumstances in which the Lord has placed me.

I have been ashamed of that and have not wanted to write about it -- it seems such a poor witness. But I now see that when the Lord pushed me into admitting the truth, it was the first step toward a solution (healing?).

After identifying the problem for what it was – rebellion and resentment – I was able to tell the Lord that I wanted to dig that particular root of rebellion all the way out. At least I had the good sense to know that I didn’t want to knock the head of th plant off and look good on the surface. I wanted to get rid of the whole ugly thing.

So I asked the Lord to dig another shovelful of dirt away from the root.

Until that moment, I had been working on the premise that I had to conquer my rebelliousness by myself before God could possibly bless me. And I had refused to ask for help. I had forgotten that His saving grace is the only thing that can be victorious over my sinful nature.

Scripture says we are to transformed by the renewing of our minds. There I was trying to make myself a new person by renewing my own mind and that is something only God can do.

But when you give Him permission to work in your life, you can be sure He will.

His first response was to remind me of a simple, homely truth. It is easier to pull a root out of the ground when the soil is wet.

I had been, as it says in Psalm 63, like a dry and thirsty land. It is certain that I needed water, but I had been trying to water by digging a well all by myself.

Tears of repentance are the only water I can produce. And they are a necessary part of the renewing process.

But the primary source must be the spring of living water that wells up inside simply because Christ is there. As I let the barriers down, I began to experience the outpouring of His refreshing love.

He did not wait for me to deal with my faults. While I was still a sinner, He loved me.

Then I confessed my struggle to some in my church and asked for the help of their prayers.

How foolish I had been to go on so long alone. No sooner did they hear of my need than they began lifting me up. And everywhere I turned I found assurance of God’s saving initiative, of His love in action.

Then, when I was sure again of God’s love for me, a love deep enough and wide enough to wash away all my sins, He pointed out my specific problems to me. I identified jealously and selfish ambition at work in me.

I confessed this as sin and asked the Lord to forgive me – and to change me, to set me free from the power of those emotions so I might delight in His will for me.

It’s a process. It’s happening as I write. After all, He said he came to set the captives free and He keeps His Word.

What I Almost Saw

2007-11-27T11:15:00.000-08:00

I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. I think if I had tried to look straight at it, I would not have seen it at all.

In fact, that may be what I’ve been doing all these years. – trying to look right at something that can’t be seen that way – at least not by me – at least not now.

I remember that before I had surgery to remove cataracts in my eyes, I would often see something more clearly just to the side of my vision. Actually it was more like catching it just as I looked passed it. I know it made reading the eye chart difficult. I could read the letters on the sides but not the ones in the middle.

But enough about that already.

Since I did not get a straight-on, clear image of this thing I saw, it is a bit hard to describe it. In fact, I don’t think I can, really.

But I will make a stab at it because the process of trying to find worlds may help clarify my vision.

What I think it was was the Body of Christ – the church universal – the Bride of Christ -- something like that anyway.

I have understood intellectually that there is such a thing as that. I had just never caught a glimpse of it before.

It’s like knowing in your mind that the church is not the building, but not quite being able to flesh out exactly what it is instead.

It’s all the believers.

All which believers?

Well, let’s not take a negative approach here. Let’s not focus on what I didn’t see, but on the little that I did see.

I saw something that I am a part of and that includes more others than I can count, and they come from everywhere – Africa, Asia, America, all over.

If I had seen it straight on, I think I could tell you exactly who they were. But I can’t – yet. I hope to later. I don’t know how much later.

But I saw that I am part of them and they are part of my. My prayers are for them and theirs are for me and each other. And my believing supports them and theirs supports me. And each other.

I think God can see it as One thing, while He still sees each individual in it.

I can’t see either the whole or the parts.

I just caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye.

But now I know it is there and I will be looking for more of it to be revealed. He has not shown me this glimpse for nothing.

We're Different

2007-09-06T17:49:00.001-07:00

I went to lunch with John Cowart and his daughter-in-law, Helen, last week to talk about “the books.”

The books are collections of the columns I wrote to run on the Religion page of the Florida Times Union back when I was employed there.

But I don’t want to talk about the books, at least not right now. There is something else on my mind.

While John and I were driving to the restaurant to meet Helen, he commented that after reading my columns, he had decided we were very different kinds of Christians. Very different.

And he is quite right. We are different.

I’m older. He’s younger.

I talk and he acts.

I like music. He doesn’t.

I write sporadically. He writes daily.

We both believe in the Gospel as revealed by God in the Scriptures.

But I think the difference he was referring to is that I talk about feeing God’s presence and he says he doesn’t.

I talk about having faith and he wonders if he has any.

I think he’s just a much more humble Christian than I am.

I have experienced some dark nights of the soul, one that lasted several years. He has lived most of his life in a darkness that relies on knowledge that God is, but not on experience of Him.

I have led a few retreats, spoken to a few women’s groups and taught a few Bible studies. He has done all that and served meals at places that feed the hungry and delivered clothes to places that clothe the not quite naked and responded to requests for all kinds of help. He has stood on street corners and taught about the Lord with stick drawings. He has also taught a blind man how to do the same thing by making a board with nails on which colored string can be strung to make pictures.

All based on a firm conviction that God is and that the Bible tells us so.

I think John finds my emotional relationship with God quite “other.”

Years ago I worried about his lack of a warm and fuzzy relationship with God. According to my haphazard journal keeping, I even spoke to Ginny about this. Fortunately I can’t remember the conversation now. I just noted at the time that she said quite nicely that I shouldn’t worry.

My relationship with my Lord is not just warm and fuzzy. It is painful and joyful, life-giving and death over-riding. Most of what I have learned about being a follower has come through painful encounters with the truth of who I am and Who he Is.

I don’t know how to describe John’s except as I did above – you know Him by what John does.

John serves Him continually. It why he does whatever he does.

It’s why he has put in hours turning my thoughts about trying to actually BE a child of God into a book. He thinks there are a lot more Christians like me out there in the world and that they could benefit from reading about my efforts, failures and successes, my failing and getting up to try again.

I hope he is right.

It would never have happened if it depended on me. I told him I couldn’t deal with the articles any more. That time was past for me.

So he told me to bring it all to him and I did.

He has put an enormous amount of himself into getting the books made. I would never have done it. And I really would like his efforts to be rewarded. Especially if he is right and the columns can still minister to people.

I actually pray that the books will be successful, that people will want to read them and in doing so will find ways to draw nearer to the source of all joy.

I also pray that people will read John’s blog, Rabid Fun, and learn some other ways of doing the same thing.

Relatives

2007-08-30T16:29:00.001-07:00

My grandson is 28 years old now, but he was much younger when he helped me learn something important about God. I wrote about it at the time this way:

My grandson, Russell, asked me a question recently that pointed up how far the world is from fulfilling God’s plan for the family – and how great his mercy and love are in forgiving and renewing us.

I was taking care of my two grandchildren while my daughter and her husband had dinner with her father and some of his relatives. The children would have gone, too, but Russell had chicken pox.

Russell, who is 6, asked me why I hadn’t gone to the dinner.

I said something about that being another part of the family and families being like that today.

It triggered another question, one I believe he must have been pondering all along because the words came so quickly.

Russell asked if his stepfather was my stepson.

I answered, “No, he’s my son-in-law.”

He stared at me, a puzzled look on his face. After a brief pause, he tried again.

“He isn’t your stepson?”

“No, Russell,” I replied. “I don’t have any stepchildren. The only children I have are your mother and your Uncle Nathan. Your daddy is my son-in-law.”

He grew very still, very serious. It was almost possible to hear the wheels of thought turning around in his head.

“Then what am I?” he asked, with as much challenge as question in his voice.

“You are my one-and-only, very precious grandson,” I said.

My delight in that fact must have been conveyed by my expression and tone of voice for he raced to me and gave me a big hug.

“I’m your chicken pops grandson,” he shouted with pleasure.

He repeated the hug, then turned to pick up a toy.

Life goes on.

So did my thoughts – on to the difference between our lives and the lives of so many people I know and the intention of God for families as expressed in the Bible.

How many men and women I know are no longer married to their first husband or wife. How many children have step parents and stepbrothers and half brothers.

How many opportunities we have missed for knowing God’s blessing through obedience to his word.

It made me very conscious of the pain we have caused each other and of the burden of guilt we bear before the Lord for making such a mess of things.

Without Jesus’ death for us on the cross, we would have had to bear that burden for ever.

I am so grateful for the forgiveness which God made possible for us through his great love. I am enormously thankful for the fact that he can bring blessing even out of such failures.

Russell has parents and stepparents, a half sister at his mother’s house, a stepbrother and hal brothers at his father’s and a couple of extra grandparents.

All of us love him dearly, but not one of us singly or all of us together can give him righteousness, peace and joy. Only his heavenly Father can do that.

Good or Bad News?

2007-08-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

I’m writing from a position of extreme ignorance – I only know what I heard on a TV newscast.

According to the news clip, Mother Theresa was not sustained in her ministry to the poorest of the poor by a warm, comforting relationship with her Lord. In fact, she wrote to a friend saying she was not sure she had any faith at all. And had not been sure for a long time.

.The guy on the television said this revelation might change the way we thought about Mother Teresa. He said it with a studiously neutral voice. I have no idea whether he thinks we will think better or worse of her.

But I don’t really care what he thinks. And it doesn’t really matter what I think about it unless it affects the way I live when I can’t feel my faith.

Perhaps she did not feel it, but she lived it anyway.

This morning I came across something I wrote 20 years ago. I wrote it after a time of dryness and lack of any feeling of contact with the Lord. I’m not comparing my life to hers, my brief dark trying of my soul to her long painful years. I wouldn’t dare.

But perhaps your lives are more like mine than they are like hers, so maybe this will speak to you, too.

This is what I wrote;

I had some good news and some bad news last week.

The good news was a note from Reader’s Digest saying it was thinking about running an anecdote I submitted – maybe three years ago!

The bad news was that my air conditioner had to be replaced.

The wires melted. And for a time it appeared that the damage might be even more extensive.

After calling the air conditioning repairman – and making the decision to replace the central unit – I opened windows, turned on a floor fan in my bedroom and went to sleep.

Sometime in the night I woke to the sound of rushing wind. For a moment I thought it was beginning to rain and prepared to hop up and close the windows. Then I realized it was just the fan – just the fan acting very strange.

It would slow down, come almost to a stop, then start again with a rush.

As the fan stopped entirely, I glanced at the digital clock by my bed to see if it was still working. Its dark face confirmed that the problem was electrical.

My next thought was that bad wiring must have burned up the air conditioner and was now about to burn up everything in the house – if not the house itself.

I turned off the fan and checked the house to see what else was or was not working.

The refrigerator was acting just like the fan. The sound of the starter motor grinding away conjured visions of more melted wires -- which sped me on my way to the circuit box to flip a breaker or two.

With half the house shut down, I went back to bed, but I must confess, not back to sleep.

The electrician, when he came, said a “bad” wire at the meter box was the culprit. He replaced it, checked the circuit box, charged me a very reasonable fee and left.

A new three-ton air conditioner is expensive, but it could have been much worse.

The amazing thing about both the good news and the bad was that neither disturbed a deep, joyous peace I felt within. That peace had been mine ever since I confessed my rebelliousness and anger to my Lord in the presence of a friend and she prayed for me that I would be able to delight in all he had for me.

If that notice from Reader’s Digest had come before I asked him to deal with my jealousy and selfish ambition, it would have been fuel to that fire within. But coming as it did after that confession, I was able simply to delight in the possibility that they might print something I wrote.

And I was wakeful the night the electrical wiring in my house acted up in case something else might go wrong, but deep down inside, I was still happy. When someone asked later how I was doing, I said, “Great!” and meant it. I could not have done that without God’s peace in my heart.

Surrender and obedience sound like such grim things to do. But when that surrender and obedience is to the Lord, this is not true. Then it is the beginning of something wonderful and the fruit is that peace which passes understanding and joy beyond measure.

What can I say?

2007-08-22T10:47:00.001-07:00

My friend John Cowart says it’s more important right now for me to paint book covers than to retype columns.

Boy, am I relieved!

I wrote those things years ago and I can’t even read the small type now, especially on yellowing newsprint.

John says he thinks that, put together, the columns will amount to a spiritual classic.

If so, it’s true that God can use anything or anyone He wants anyway He wants to. Singly, which is the way I wrote them, they were reflections on my spiritual journey, the rocks I tripped over, the ditches I fell in and the oases that turned out to be just more sand – and the occasional moments of peace and joy and fulfillment given to those who try to follow.

I sat with John as he scanned in just one column. I was overwhelmed by the process, the amount of detailed – DETAILED – steps involved. And he has done all these steps hundreds of times

When I retired, I stopped writing. It felt all burned up inside of me. I had nothing left to say.

Or so I thought. And I may have been right.

But John has put my fingers back on the keys and I press them down one at a time, prayerfully, waiting to see if the Lord has anything He wants me to say.

Like thank you.

Not, thank you, John, for all the work you are doing to make books of my columns. There is no way to do that. Besides, I don’t actually think somehow that he is doing it for me.

But Thank You, Dear Lord, for reminding me of all the trials and all the joys and all the in-between moments of the life which You have given me and in which You have been with me.

Bless those who labor in Your vineyard, Lord. I ask for a special blessing on those who are working on this book because they believe it will bring glory to Your name.

Their labors already do that.

So I’m off to the other labor, painting pictures for book covers. I am as skilled at this as I am at doing all those other things You have ask me to do, Dear Lord.

So go with me, please. And thank You.

Roses: Fragrance and Thorns

2007-08-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

After several weeks of talking about thorns, I’d like to say a word about roses.

A true appreciation for colors, shapes and fragrances of roses can be lost in the press of attention to the thorns.

If you are standing far enough back from the flowers, you can enjoy their beauty without paying any attention to the danger. But you can miss the perfumes they hold for those who come up close.

If you’re standing in the middle of the rosebushes while a windstorm is swirling them all around, it’s hard to do anything but stay out of harms way.

The trick seems to be to get close enough to smell the roses while staying far enough back to avoid the thorns.

I think a lot of Christians try to do that. They try to get as close to Jesus as they can for the warmth and comfort his presence brings, while staying far enough back to safeguard whatever it is they are afraid he is going to take away from them.

I do that.

And I do it very well. I disguise my true motives, saying I am concerned with this or that aspect of the matter. I even find Scripture to back up my stance. But all the while, the truth is that I want something to be different from the way the Lord wants it to be. I want it my way.

Only sometimes you don’t get to choose where you stand. You can only agree to stand there or walk away.

Before I walk away, I’d better make sure the ground I’m leaving isn’t the one on top of the rock. I might be headed for sand instead.

If I’m sure of my ground, I can risk standing around among the roses even in the whirlwind.

The words of a song I’ve heard recently speak to this issue. The song goes, “Oh, let the Son of God enfold you in his Spirit and his love. Let him fill your heart and satisfy your soul. Let him have the things that hold you and his Spirit like a dove will descend upon your life and make you whole.”

Let him have the things that hold you – everything that holds you back from touching and smelling and living among the roses of delight in his will, delight that quickens the senses, that fills rising in the morning with joy and going to bed at night with peace.

Of course, letting go can hurt. I’ve been hurt before and I still flinch when the thorns come my way. I can’t seem to help it.

Sometimes I even ask the Lord if I couldn’t have just a little recess from admiring the rose, a break from dodging thorns.

But no thorn ever comes my way that will be more than I can bear. He promised.

All those thorns have been taken by Jesus.

The thorns that do come serve to snatch away those things that had been holding me back – things we had been holding back and are now ready to release.

And when I look back from the other side of that place called “letting go,” I can mean it when I say that his yoke is easy and his burden light. Then I can renew my strength and soar on wings like eagles. I can run and not grow weary. I can walk and not be faint.

For I have smelled the roses of the Lord now and no other fragrance will ever sartisfy.

The Chartreuse Hat, Part II

2007-08-12T13:10:00.000-07:00

There is a deeper meaning to the event of the chartreuse hat (see the previous item for the original story).

I thought of it during Sunday School this morning when the teacher made an of-the-cuff remark. He said, “How profound we are in our shallowness. We can drown in a puddle.”

The “deeper meaning” of my finding a chartreuse hat to wear while painting – and getting lots of positive feed back from folks who saw me wearing it – may only be puddle deep. But it’s there.

But when there hasn’t been much rain, a puddle is still water.

What I received with the hat was laughter. A floppy yellow-green hat with a turned up brim seen on top of a quite wide old lady made me laugh when I looked in the mirror.

And I think it amused God, too. I think He planned it that way and I was fortunate enough to see the plan.

Every morning I pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

And I believe He does.

The trick, if I may call it that, is to learn to see the widely – and sometimes wildly – different forms bread can take.

It can take the form of a chartreuse hat.

That hat with its floppy up and down motion and outrageous color fed my spirit with the idea that God picked it out for me and left it in the Boutique for me to buy.

You don’t think He does things like that?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But Scripture says He knows my sitting down and my rising up, my going out and my coming in. He knows my thoughts before I think them.

There are certainly deeper proofs of this than a chartreuse hat, things deeper than a puddle. But I believe you can find your own deeper meanings if you try. Or God will show them to you if you ask Him to. Or at least give you hints and clues for you to ponder while wading.

The Chartreus Hat

2007-08-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

There is an entire society of women who wear red hats and have fun together, attracting attention along the way.

All by myself I managed to do the same thing, only my hart was chartreuse.

My eyes were bothering me the other morning in the arts room so I went next door into the Boutique – which is the fancy name we give the place where we dispose of things we no longer need or have room for – to see if they had a hat. And they had a red one, but it did not fit, too small.

The one that fit was chartreuse, and soft and bouncy. You can roll it up and shake it out and it goes right back to its original shape. I think the slightly rolled brim goes up and down as the wearer moves, but since I was the wearer, I paid no attention to that.

For the best thing about the hat was that it shaded my eyes from the fluorescent lights.

I enjoyed the shade so much, I wore it into the dining room for lunch and there it attracted lots of attention and comments. Mostly positive.

I don’t think I will wear it everywhere, however. I don’t have that much that chartreuse goes with and I’m not really energetic enough to become – and maintain being -- a character.

I got my brace back at about 3:15 yesterday afternoon. It is so much more comfortable than the old black fuzzy boot. With its Velcro bindings and over all rigidity.

Today is an all-mine day, nothing scheduled to do for anyone else.

So I did basically nothing all morning. Not a bit productive.

I think I will go paint a while this afternoon. At least that produces feelings of contentment in me, if it doesn’t do anything for anyone else.

While I concentrate on the picture before me and on how to make it look the way I want it to look, I can’t think about what I could, or should be doing instead.

Like finding a deeper, spiritual meaning in this entry.

Click Scrunch

2007-08-09T02:36:00.000-07:00

I took my brace to Hanger Orthotics and Prosthesis on Tuesday because it was going click clack.

Now it goes click scrunch.

Not an improvement.

Today I will take it back and see if they can repair it by tomorrow. In the meantime I get to wear the old black boot with Velcro closings that they gave me when I first tore the tendon that held up my arch. And now doesn’t.

Getting old really is rough on the body.

There is a lady here who celebrated her 103^rd birthday last month. She still rides a three-wheeled bicycle (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) and writes poetry and volunteers here and there. She must have drawn on a very good gene pool and been much more careful and active and all that stuff.

Ah, well.

There are, of course, others in my shape or worse. When we greet each other and say, How are you? we usually just say, Fine. Meaning fine for the shape I’m in.

However, I am in better shape now than I was when I moved here five years ago. Isn’t that interesting. Compliments to my doctors and thanksgivings to my Lord.

I think it’s a combination of the right medications – heart condition – and prayer and praise. As I increase the latter I may be able to decrease the former. If you can follow all that.

If not. I enjoy life more because of the prayer and praise. And that’s worth a lot.

Art class this morning! Joy, joy.

Hanger after.

Not stupid, not smart

2007-08-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

I can’t begin to tell you how stupid I feel when I can’t get the copy to come out the right size! No one will believe I used to work on a computer every day at the newspaper. But I only learned how to work their program. I didn’t learn anything about computers. Oh, well. I guess I am, well, if not quite stupid, at least not smart.

I received a post card from Switzerland yesterday. It was a picture of a hotel tucked in the crack between snot capped mountains with lots of flowers and trees around. Very beautiful and very cool. COOL. With temperatures at 95 or higher, cool is very attractive.

The card came from Margaret Peattie, who lives in Scotland and is vacationing with her younger sister and her brother-in-law. Margaret and I began writing to each other when we were in high school, right after WWII actually. I remember sending CARE packages to her.

But she is the one who has kept us in touch with each other. When my marriage failed, I quit writing. She sent Christmas cards every year until I finally sent one back. She and her husband visited me some years ago, before I retired. I visited them the summer after I turned 65 and no longer on the job. I called her the night before she left for Switzerland – it’s five hours later there so I have to remember to call early enough not to get her out of bed.

She was my only pen pal. I was not her only one. She visits another pen pal in France and may have others I don’t even know about. But I’m glad she did not let me drop off the face of her life.

Tomorrow’s schedule starts with picking Mary up and taking her for her weekly blood draw. Then I go to the brace place to see if they can find out why my new brace clicks. That will be followed by a meeting of the officers of the residents’ council.

Doesn’t that sound fine? Well, it will keep me out of trouble.

Nighttime serenade

2007-08-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

I ate grilled tuna for the first time today. I have eaten canned tuna for years – when did they start canning tuna anyway? – but raw tuna looked so unappetizing I avoided it. Until today.

I went out to lunch after church with a few friends. I’m such an in-a-rut person that I almost always order a particular thing at each restaurant I go to. Tuna was not on that list. But somehow, I felt out of ordinary today and ordered a salad with grilled tuna on top. Asked how I wanted it cooked, I told the waitress I had no idea, never having eaten grilled tuna before. She suggest medium rare and that’s what I got.

Delicious! Who would have thought it!

Other than that things are very much the same as they have been for the past 22 months. My primary focus has been on my 47-year-old daughter’s fight against small cell lung cancer. She is such a fighter. She has done everything they ask her to do – except get a port. As long as they can find a vein, she will go that route. I drive her to appointments, sit with her while she has a treatment and occasionally cook a meal.

I took her Christmas shopping a couple of weeks ago. She used one of the carts with a scooter attached and went aisle by aisle amassing items for everyone on her list. This is not a result of her cancer, but her usual practice. She hates Christmas shopping in December. Too many people in the store.

My secondary focus has been on my son’s off and on struggle to get to the other side of an injury from a motorcycle accident that happened when he was 20. He was 50 last month. This was at one time a primary focus, but it has gone on so long I am often numb about it. There have been so many starts that petered out, so many chances for change that never happened. But I hang in. Positive things are happening now. Maybe this will be the time when that continues.

Any time left over from all this has been occupied by writing minutes of meetings. I don’t know why I can’t stop being secretary of the Residents’ Council here. It’s a volunteer job. All I have to do is say I resign. I just haven’t done it. I’m numb about this too.

Oh, yes. Once a week I spend a morning in an art class, along with half a dozen old folks who live where I live and an old teacher who also lives her and who really knows her stuff. Just lately I have been going back to the arts and crafts room by myself to paint. When I tried a hobby art class 40 years ago I had expectations of really doing good work. Now I have no expectation except enjoying myself. And I am.

It helps with the thoughts that leap into my brain if I wake in the middle of the night. All negative. Maybe just realistic, but not welcome in any case. My son-in-law says there will be no negative speaking around here. And I told the Lord I really didn’t want to give room to the thoughts I was fighting off. I told Him if He didn’t take my load it would squash me flat. I remembered that all I really had to do was give it to Him and leave it there. It. The outcome. The solution. The rescue and restoration. I can do nothing about any of that. But He can.

So I sing to Him – out loud in the middle of the night. The noise interrupts my other thoughts and I believe somehow that it sounds beautiful to the One who listens. And loves and works and accomplishes – whatever it will be. Who better?

Miles of Thanksgiving

2007-07-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

It rained all day yesterday. And I drove through a lot of it.

I picked Mary up at her work place and drove to Baptist South for her chemo.

On the way there, she called a doctor’s office downtown and asked if they had any samples they could give her of a very expensive medicine she is using. They said they did. We would have to pick them up today, because they wouldn’t be open tomorrow.

Getting out of the car under the overhang at the front entrance of the medical building next to the hospital, she realized she had left her purse at work – too many other things in her hands to notice.

So after they started her treatment and I brought lunch up from the hospital snack shop, I left to pick up purse and medicine.

A co-worker came out in the drizzle to bring the purse and, smiling, wished us a good Fourth.

I left my car in valet parking at the downtown hospital and told them I was just picking up something and would be right back, in hopes they wouldn’t actually take it off to the fifth floor of the parking garage, which would mean a 15 minute wait when I got back.

The medicine was waiting for me at the sign-in window and the car was waiting for me at valet parking, which is under a roof. So far I was dry and speedy.

Back to Baptist South, where the rain dropped again to a drizzle as I found a parking space near the back door.

Upstairs, Mary’s various IV bags had run dry and she was ready to leave.

On our way to the back door, she stopped outside her radiologist’s office and asked if I had time for her to try to move her Monday appointment up so she could get the results of the MRI of her brain and not have to wonder all weekend. (Her cancer had appeared in her brain months ago leading to surgery and radiation and this was her first test after treatment)

They moved up to right then! The doctor was just finishing a conference and had time to see her. The news was good. Nothing new at all!

So out to the car and off to her home. The rain started again as she got out to go in, but she made it to the porch without getting very wet. And I headed hone, but stopped at the library on the way because they had a book in I had requested.

It stopped raining as I parked at the library and started again to drizzle as I came out with my book.

Home at last, I don’t know how many miles, but seven hours later.

Today, my body is tired, but my spirit is content.

Thank You, Lord, for the safe miles driven, the good report on the MRI, the fact that the nurse found a vein on the first stick for Mary’s chemo, that her co-worker was willing and happy to help, that the car park people were kind, the doctor’s office helpful, the library filled my request for the book so promptly and the check-out lady didn’t mind going to find in on the bottom shelf of the Will Call place (I can’t read the bottom shelf and can’t get down there to find my name on the wrapper).

Thank You for this land and all it offers.

Thank You for raining on the just and the unjust. Thank You for loving us all and making it possible for us to love You, too.

What's humorous?

2007-06-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Do you know what you get when you cross a termite and a mantis? A bug that prays before it eats your house.

One of the retired ministers in residence here told that joke before saying grace over our meal yesterday.

As jokes go, it’s not bad. It’s not good either, but it’s not bad.

His contention is that we need humor, that laughter is good for us. And I certainly agree with that.

And I laugh – or groan with faint humor – at most of his jokes. But I’m also just a little uncomfortable.

I never know what he is going to say. Sometimes when he can’t find a G rated joke, he strays over into whatever the rating would be for sexually suggestive language.

I know God laughs. He must or we wouldn’t know how to. I don’t know what He laughs at or about. I wonder if He doesn’t often find us laughable in gentle, loving ways, as a father or mother might with a loved child.

And He surely knows all about sex. He may understand our infatuation with it and our use of sexually suggestive language to produce laughter. But not when it demeans anyone.

Besides, I can’t help feeling the timing is a bit off. To me “saying grace” is praying; it’s offering thanks to the Giver of all we have and that’s serious business.

Prayer does not have to prim and proper. Honest and real are much better than that. But sexually suggestive?

And when grace is being said over a public meal, the “audience” is kind of trapped into listening.

I did ask him to draw a line he wouldn’t cross in telling jokes before saying the blessing. He didn’t answer. Just walked away.

Most people don’t seem to mind.

I think I will suggest we set aside time for a “humor hour,” a time for jokes and laughter. And everyone who wants to tell jokes can come and do so. And if anyone cracks a joke someone else doesn’t like, well, that person can just get up and go home.

I haven’t done that yet in the dining room. I stay and finish eating.

And come here to complain.

Dear Lord, help me not to take offense – even if it is intended, and I don’t think it is. My sense of humor may be rusty. Help me, instead, to say a blessing over him.

Murmur, Murmur, Grumble or Not

2007-06-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

While driving over to have breakfast with John, I suddenly realized the name of my malady. It is Discontent!

I’ve had a bad case of this for several weeks now, if not longer. But in the last few days it has really begun to take me over. All I can think about is how this is not right and that is wrong.

But with my attention diverted by paying attention to my driving, a thought arose from my subconscious – or somewhere -- that my problem has a name and it is Discontent.

I don’t think I discovered that. I think it was revealed to me.

Meaning , I was being given the change to deal with it and not just keep on grumbling things like:

“My memory is shot. I spend too much time going back for things I’ve forgotten!”

“I don’t know what to say. If I say anything, it comes out wrong. I just make a mess of it.”

“All these people have problems and want to tell me about them and I’m tired of listening.”

And on and on and on. And these are only the “nice” ones.

So I took a look at what Discontent was hiding:

“God, You really haven’t been doing a good job for me lately.”

Wow. That’s what I’ve really been saying. And that really isn’t what I want to say.

Let’s try again.

“I sure do forget a lot, but I remember more than I forget. And I am physically able to go back for the stuff I’ve forgotten. And when I see it, I know what it is and what it’s for. Not so bad after all.”

“I don’t know what to say. Maybe silence is the right thing here. Maybe if I think a bit before I talk, I won’t say so many foolish things. Thank goodness I already know I can be wrong!”

“When people tell me their problems, I don’t have to have the answer. As a friend reminded me one day, the name of the Savior is Jesus, not Barbara. Listening can be all that is required. Really listening, not waiting for the other person to stop so I can start.”

When I think about it, I do trust God to be doing very well by me. Of course, God’s definition of good may not match mine sometimes. I can’t see far enough ahead to realize it. But, well, He’s God and I’m not. And He has proved faithful in the past.

And I really like my second set of thoughts better. I like me better in them.

I suspect I will fall back into discontent again, because it’s an old enemy. But for the moment, I see it for what it is and I choose to turn it around and show it the door.

It’s not just playing Pollyanna. It’s letting the Lord have His way instead of insisting on my own.