Roses: Fragrance and Thorns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.