Archive for September, 2009
September 28, 2009 @ 6:47 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” –Matthew 6:25-27
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It’s hard not to worry.
There are many things that cause us to worry. Children, money, careers; true enough, but there are other things, sacred things, things we give up everything for, things that must be true lest we cease to exist.
And those things, they make us worry. They make me worry.
Until I hear the whispered promises. Spoken softly into my ear as I huddle in close, not needing anything more in those pure, quiet moments except His arms, His voice, His love. The liquid music infuses, filling me with a warmth that outdoes the coziest quilt on the coldest day of the longest afternoon of winter. It is steady, sure and does not hesitate.
And along with words, I begin to remember.
I remember the birds, above my head, soaring with no judge or jury, no education or instruction, save the whisper of the God of the universe, saying simply,”FLY.”
I remember the splendor of the flowers, soon to rise up and start their reign on so many ill-managed lawns and forsaken plots of ground. Though they have not received their due care or concern, they cannot - will not - disregard the simple command of the One who breathed life into all the earth, “GROW.”
And so I say to myself today,
Fly.
Grow.
Believe.
September 24, 2009 @ 6:20 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock, The Writing Life
Sometimes I think we look at Bible stories and imagine the characters in those stories to have been perfect in their own imperfect-ness, if that makes any kind of sense.
Though we read about their shortcomings, their weaknesses, their failures, it is almost always the moral of the story - or the end result - that we walk away with. These are the parts of the stories that we tuck like nuggets into that secret place in our souls where we capture the essence of what it is we think we are supposed to be. Or supposed to do. Or supposed to accomplish.
The reality is much more human, and it is that element that I think about this morning.
I love how Moses’ story ties into this. God heard the cries of the Israelites and He desired their freedom, so God invited Moses to join Him. It really didn’t matter what Moses thought the plan for his life was. What mattered most was God’s plan for Moses’ life.
So many of us today have a preoccupation with knowing God’s will for our lives. I know I’ve struggled with this before - some days, I still struggle with it. There are some areas where it is very evident that God is at work (like with my family), but there are other areas where it appears God is silent (like with my writing.)
What I am trying to remember is that God’s focus has always been on getting His people to come into line with His will and with what is on His heart, so that we (I) can adjust our lives (my life) to Him, rather than having God design His plans around us (me).
And what is God’s plan? God is, and always has been, actively drawing people to Himself.
This should liberate me; should free any reckless, nervous thoughts about the future. Because this alone means that I do not have to come up with plans for God, or design ways to achieve kingdom goals.
He is at work, and when I join Him - right where He is, I am in perfect alignment.
devotionals, life lessons, walk with God, writing
September 23, 2009 @ 6:22 am | Filed under: Family, Uniquely Me
So here’s the deal.
I had to write a food memoir for the Advanced Non-Fiction writing class I’m taking. As a self-proclaimed, card-carrying, exuberant foodie, there were about a zillion-and-one things that immediately popped into my head after receiving this assignment.
Long, laughter-filled dinner parties with friends, the way mom always made spaghetti and cherry pie for me on each and every birthday, Deviled eggs at Easter, patterning my own meatloaf recipe after my grandmother’s (secret ingredient is brown sugar!)
I could go on and on…
The long and short of it is that food is more than just an energy source. Mealtimes are a bonding experience and whether it’s as a family or amongst friends, a good meal paired with laughter and sharing is just about as good as it gets.
Maybe that’s why I have such a passion for cooking for those I love…
Maybe that’s why I want to run a B&B one day and have my guests return home with a happy tummy, happy heart, happy memories…
And because I am writing this post instead of doing homework, I am totally digressing…and let’s face it, folks, the homework’s not doing itself.
The following is the food memoir I finally decided on. This memory holds a special place all its own in my heart. I love how its the smallest moments, filled with the most insignificant of things, that are what we remember with the most clarity from our childhood.
Plus, I know that Kevin and our respective spouses will totally get a kick outta this one!
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The mid-summer Texas afternoon was near perfect: cloudless blue sky, sprawling green lawns, and all up and down Bayshore Drive, the squeals and laughter of neighborhood kids as we ran with abandon through whirling water sprinklers. The morning lay like a long, winding ribbon behind us, lazy yet loud, and we didn’t know any better than to expect the hours until dusk to be exactly the same. Then and only then, when mothers, one by one, would stand on front porches and call loudly for their respective kids, would we begrudgingly turn for home. Turning to yell an occasional promise of “Tomorrow! We’ll do it again tomorrow!” to our friends, we’d trudge home with bare, dirty feet, smudged grins, and a tummy rolling with hunger. This was a scene that was repeated more times than I can even count. Only one thing ever marred those priceless dinner hour memories. But that one thing…was big enough, horrid enough, smelly enough…that my brother, Kevin, and I—much to the horror of our mother—still talk about it today.
Homemade pickles.
If you’ve experienced pickle-making of the homemade variety, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t…let me explain. Pickles come from cucumbers and did we ever have some cucumbers growing in our backyard. I was a child of the seventies and it was not uncommon for a middle-class suburban family to grow their own vegetables in neat little rows against the back fence in those days. We were no different. Neat green clumps of lettuce, juicy red tomatoes, and the most prickly okra you’ve ever felt in your life found their way up through the earth in our backyard. Unfortunately for Kevin and me, cucumbers also grew in vast amounts. Sometimes they would grow so fast and multiply in number so quickly that my mother would carry brown paper bags full to eager neighbors.
Other times, she’d make…pickles.
There are no words to describe running up your driveway, tired and hungry from the hours spent outside, and being assaulted in the garage by the smell of vinegar and cucumbers! It is unique, to say the least, and the acidity and sourness blend in such a way that—truly—it can only be described as a stench. One whiff and I no longer had that boisterous eight-year-old appetite. Instead my tummy whirled and spun inside of my skinny little self and I’d beg to go to bed, gagging all the while. In hindsight, my brother and I kind of wonder if the pickle-making process was just Mom’s way of needing a quiet night with the kids tucked away early! I’d hold my nose during a quick shower while the warm, soapy water washed away the day’s grime but did absolutely nothing to dilute the smell that had such a talent for wafting its way from the kitchen into the farthest parts of our home. Scarcely dry, I’d jump into pajamas and make a run for my bed. Once there, it didn’t matter that it was ninety-five degrees outside or that the sun had yet to disappear completely behind the horizon. I’d go as far down in the bed as I could, pulling every stitch of covers up over my head, burrowing my face in the pillow. Praying for sleep to quickly deliver me from the smell, I’d almost always fall asleep wondering one simple thing. Why on earth did Mom go and ruin a perfectly wonderful summer day with a pot full of silly old cucumbers?
I still don’t eat pickles.
The memories of those pickle-making summers, however, have turned out to be something I wouldn’t trade for any amount of money. The richness of shared family recollections, no matter how smelly, provide endless hours of laughter and reminiscing. Our spouses shake their heads every time Kevin or I bring up the subject of pickles, but even they are wiping away tears of laughter by the time the story has been told…one more time.
Not the pickles again!
Family, summertime memories, writing
September 15, 2009 @ 6:22 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock
“I used to have a comfort zone where I knew I wouldn’t fail. The same four walls and busywork were really more like jail.” — My Comfort Zone
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I glimpsed the elderly woman as I pulled into the parking lot of the department store. Obviously somewhat crippled, she hobbled slowly, with one of her arms tucked in an awkard position against her chest. My heart clenched just as it has been doing more and more often these past few months. I can’t explain these moments but it’s as though all of my senses are - for the briefest of seconds - keenly aware of all the most minute details.
Even as she walked into the store and away from my view, I had a feeling I had not seen the last of her…
My dad is the kind of neighbor everyone loves. Sometimes I can’t help but be entertained that - at near 70 - he’s constantly mowing the yard of an elderly neighbor or sitting on the porch of a much younger one, taking a little advice. The business of age seems to mean nothing to him; he sees people, not their mile markers in this life.
My great aunt is a woman who listens to God’s voice. If she feels God stirring her heart she jumps in the car and just GOES. Many, many times I’ve had a hard, challenging day and she would just shows up. In recent years, it’s been the phone call…the one that often lasts a looooooong time. But it’s the ending of these phone calls that I know I’ll always remember: “Okay, hon - I’ll talk atcha later.”
I’m surrounded by people who consistently minister to others. I marvel at them. Admire them. Want to see this same thing in me. These are folks who aren’t afraid to pray with people, and - when seeing a heart that needs a lift - simply don’t care about anything else in that moment except doing what they can to meet it.
Their plans don’t matter in comparison to God’s plans.
From the outside it looks effortless. But I know that there was a time when moving in these realms must surely have required that they move outside the borders of their comfort zones. Even the most confident, self-assured person has fences and borders that protect the raw edges that we don’t want anyone to see or touch. And yet people with a heart for God’s children don’t derive their confidence from their own abilities, talents or even their own personality. They absorb what’s being funneled from the hallways of Heaven and put it to use on Earth’s dusty pathways.
I’m trying to be like that. I’m trying to listen and just do what I feel God’s asking. I’m also learning to be brave - to pray with a friend RIGHT THERE. To make the call. To write the words. Daily, it seems, there is something - either a person or a situation - that challenges me to step beyond the point of personal comfort and venture into another’s life. If I have learned anything over the past few months it is that I want to do as I’m asked.
But I can’t say that it’s always easy for me…
I wasn’t at all surprised last night when - in the ladies dressing room - a fitting room door opens slowly and the elderly woman from the parking peered out.
“Can you help me?”
I stepped inside.
My new friend may have thought the next ten minutes were about someone lending her an extra hand, an extra eye, a great conversation - but I knew the real truth. She was helping me. Helping me to venture further from my place of safety on the sidelines, and to walk bravely into a world that is not at all about me.
But ALL about Him.
September 14, 2009 @ 2:21 pm | Filed under: Uniquely Me
“Openness serves as a bridge to the world of others. It enables us to get involved with others, to understand the thoughts of others, to feel what others are feeling. In other words, if we’re open, we’re able to enter the existential world of others even if at times we can’t identify with someone’s particular world.” –Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness
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There are so many days lately that I find myself craving more time. I fight resentment over the fact that - though writing is my calling - I have so little precious time to devote to it.
I know I am where I am supposed to be right now. I am truly thankful each and every day that I have no doubt about that. But my heart very often leans toward the words that seem to always lie in the recesses of my heart and mind, just waiting for me to mine them and spin them into gold threads for a future story.
Always the stories are there.
Always they call to me in the deep of the night and in the first whispers of morning.
I pray that they not lose patience with me, that these words will find a nest within my soul and cradle there until there moment in the sun.
Openness.
That’s what I endeavor to achieve right now.
September 3, 2009 @ 6:49 am | Filed under: Family, Uniquely Me, he said she said
“The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.” - Frederick Beuchner
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(journal entry from mid-May)
Tonight was a quiet evening. We sat in our (now) small living area - Mike in his chair, with his computer (doing sales call reports) and me in my spot on the sofa, with my computer (doing homework.) It was just a few minutes before nine when there was a knock on the door.
I think it startled us both. In the couple of weeks we’ve been here, we’ve not seen many people, let alone knocking on our door.
Mike set his computer aside and went to the door. Even though he was less than twenty feet away, I could neither see nor hear our visitor. I could only hear Mike’s side of the conversation.
“No, thanks, we don’t really need any this time.” He closed the door and locked it. “That was a local high school girl selling cookie dough for—”
He stopped mid-sentence and I can only guess it was because I had sprung up from my seat and was at his side when he turned around.
I opened my mouth and tried to find a voice for the overwhelming pull that had propelled me upward in the first place. I spit and sputtered, uttering words that seemed to come from out of nowhere. I’m pretty sure that ‘community’ and ‘witness’ and ‘part of the plan’ all came out of my mouth in that brief twenty second period, but I don’t know that it made any kind of sense at all.
Mike unlocked the door and stepped out into the breezeway outside our door, looking down the hallway for the girl. She was at the next apartment.
“Hey, I think my wife wants to buy some after all.” Mike beckoned her back.
I spent the next five minutes introducing myself to Kenesha, a striking African-American teen with the most beautiful blue eyes I think I’ve ever seen, and buying the white chocolate-macadamia cookie dough that - truly - we did not need. Even as we chatted, I was almost mesmerized by her personality, and I even had the briefest of seconds when I thought - again - how unlike me this was, to be so involved in an animated conversation with a complete stranger.
But there was an unspeakable pull toward this teen that began while I still sat on the sofa, before I’d even laid eyes on her, or heard her voice.
After I handed her the fourteen dollars for the cookie dough and then shut and locked the door, Mike chuckled from his chair. “Think we’ll ever see that cookie dough?”
I was silent, still kind of in awe at what had pulled me from my spot on the sofa in the first place. Somehow I knew it wasn’t really about the cookie dough at all. We sat in total silence for about five minutes. And then Mike spoke.
“Do you ever get the feeling that we’re here for more than just the reasons we think we’re here?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
September 2, 2009 @ 6:35 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock, Uniquely Me
One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it’s very complex, it’s very profound.” - Dennis Prager
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(originally journaled in early April 2009.)
The past few weeks have been surreal.
I can scarcely believe we are actually doing this. I keep waiting for the REAL me to rise up and say something along the lines of “what the…?” But there is nothing except certainty that is flowing smooth and easy inside of me.
Even as I pack the house in the late night hours when I’m all alone, moving through the rooms and hallways, I have no qualms about this decision. It’s the nighttime that is usually the breeding ground for fear and trepidation and - some nights - I keep waiting on it. But it’s a visitor that never knocks.
My logic tells me that surely I must have been konked on the head and awakened with some other woman’s rationale and emotions. This is NOT me. I worry. I fret. I resist change.
I’m emotional.
But the reality is that I’m calm and certain, in a way that I just can’t explain. In less than two weeks I will walk out of this house - this style of living - and I will walk into an apartment over an hour away. We will know no one. I will stay many, many nights by myself while Mike is on the road. I am leaving behind the concept that “bigger is better” and the theory that as I get older, my “things” should become bigger, nicer, finer…
I sit here tonight and wonder what happened to the woman I was. When I look in the mirror as I brush my teeth, I look the same. But I no longer recognize the inner woman. I don’t know her. I think I should be afraid.
But I’m not.
I go to bed with peace and awaken with a quiet excitement.
I don’t know what to expect, but I do know that I should be expectant.
(Two weeks later…)
Tomorrow the movers will come.
By this time tomorrow night, I will be preparing to spend my first night in Commerce. In an apartment. In a community that is so unlike any I’ve lived in before.
Boxes are packed and labeled. Many will go with us into our new home, but even more will go into storage. We are losing over 1400 square feet of living space with this move, so - in ways even we had not anticipated - simplicity is truly finding us.
It’s a funny thing. Sometimes the very thing we ask for, pray for, finds us and takes us by surprise. Very seldom is it packaged the way we’d imagined, or presented in a way we’d recognize.
But it is a gift, nonetheless, presented by Him, simply because we requested it.
There have been so many mini-miracles (is there such a thing? are they all huge, and that is why they are miracles…?) to transpire over the past couple of weeks that we have almost been amused. I’m pretty certain that I have both, laughed out loud and broken down and cried, because it further solidifies that this move is the one thing that needs to be done.
Even in the moments when my logic kicks in and I run through the mental list of just why this is a crazy move, and just who probably now thinks we’ve lost our minds, and where I’m headed…even in those moments I can’t ignore the obvious.
Too many things have aligned in short order. Too many people have unknowingly been a part of this plan. Too many past prayers and nights and days spent in restlessness -knowing that I was in the big middle of the deep, learning to swim and tread water, and yet not being able to see the other shore. In a crazy, crazy, definitely unforeseen way, I’ve reached the banks and I’m crawling ashore. It’s certainly not where I’d pictured myself washing up. The beach is not white and sandy like I prefer. The water is not crystal clear and cool to the touch. It’s not paradise. It’s not my dream.
But for some reason that I am still helpless to explain, it has become…home.
Tomorrow I go there.
life lessons, living simply, walk with God
September 1, 2009 @ 6:44 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock, The Writing Life
Sometimes our lives can resemble a book.
There is a little romance. A little drama. A little humor. And a little (or a lot) of conflict. Of course every story needs conflict. That’s what keeps us interested. We enjoy seeing the characters of our books get into - and then out of - trouble.
Of course, in reality not every situation has a happy ending in 30 minutes or less. Real life is different, but it’s also better.
Every day there are words coming out of our mouths.
They can either build people up. Or they can tear them down. In the United States we having a saying, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Truth: words hurt. They maime, they wound. Every word that comes out of our mouths will either hurt or help. It will either bring loved ones closer or push them away. This is something we need to consider when we are speaking—to our children, to our spouse, to other family members. To friends.
But this is not the only dialogue happening in our lives. Whether we know it or not, there is another continual dialogue going through our minds. It’s our internal dialogue. The dialogue occurs in two ways. “Thorough and organized” dialogue or dialogue that “bounces around like a little rubber ball in your mind.”
“Thorough and organized” thinking is similar to a great novel plot or movie script. A script is something the writer uses to put the movie on paper. It provides direction for the producer, the actors, and even the set directions.
The script isn’t the movie. The script is direction for the action. The script guides everything. Without the script there is no order and the action has no meaning. would jump around. Nothing would make sense.
Sometimes we don’t organize our thoughts in our mind, and our actions are the same. Our actions, our lives, seem to be without meaning and order.
Those times when I find my thoughts just running around in my mind, with no plan or purpose, I know I am in the big middle of chaos. I’m not talking about organizing daily activities. We all somehow manage to organize our days, some better than others.
But the BIGGER thinking, such as: Where do I want to be in the future? Where would I like to see my family in the future? What would I like my marriage to look at five years from now?What kind of adults do I want my children to be?
Sometimes we let our minds get carried away with concerns. We think about things that happened ten years ago. Or maybe we consider worries we have about tomorrow.
We also find our thoughts are full of emotions. Happy thoughts, sad thoughts, excited thoughts, or scared thoughts. Our thoughts are focus on whatever is going on that moment. One day things are good. The next day things are not so good. Our actions then follow our emotions, which we know can lead to all types of trouble and issues.
I don’t want to allow my thoughts, or what is happening around me, to be in control. I want Him to write the script of my life and then I want to allow my thoughts to follow that script and no other.
Why is that so hard at times?
