Like almost all Americans of my generation, I grew up celebrating Halloween. It was a Big Deal, in fact. There was much consideration of costumes, which generally were homemade, not store-bought. I only remember one of mine – my least favorite: green pants, a green gingham blouse and a plastic jack o’ lantern on my head. Bo-ring! One of the best years was when one of my older teen brothers and his friends dressed in drag. (Back then, it was just funny, and didn’t carry the connotations it does today. I must say, Gary made a homely girl!) My elementary school held a big carnival with games, a cake walk, hay rides, and assorted other entertainments, well-attended by the surrounding community. Then it was off to trick-or-treat, hordes of youngsters roaming the streets door to door from dusk till past bedtime. We knew which neighbors were the most generous with their candy, which house gave only one little piece of Bit O’Brickle, who made the best (and worst) popcorn balls.
Once in junior high, of course, I was too old for trick-or-treating. (We had moved by then to Utah, where it was, in fact, normal to continue doing it through junior high, but that just felt too weird to me.) They didn’t have the big school carnivals. The one big celebration was the party held by our church youth group, so at least there was still something to celebrate with lots of candy. (My sweet tooth knows no bounds!)
However, as I was helping to set up for the party in my sophomore year, I had an epiphany. I was putting up the usual decorations in the church basement – black and orange crepe paper and cutouts of orange pumpkins, yellow haystacks, black cats with backs arched and straight-up tails, huge, black, ugly spiders and their webs, and black witches on brooms or at their cauldrons. Suddenly, I was hit by the monstrous incongruity of it all. I was putting up images of WITCHES on the walls of a house of GOD! Oh, sure, it was the basement, not the sanctuary. Oh, sure, the images were comic stereotypes, not something from the occult. Oh, sure, it was all “just in fun”, not something serious. I could hear all the excuses given to justify what I was doing – and they were all meaningless. What has Darkness to do with Light?
That was the last time I had anything to do with celebrating Halloween. I began a journey of discovery to find out what Halloween really is about, both its historical roots and its modern practice. (I won’t go into it here; you can find it yourself easily enough by checking out “Samhain”. The fact that the hallmarks of the celebration of the holiday involve the glorification of everything that is ghoulish, evil, twisted, frightening, and occultic should be a tip-off to its true nature.)
Unfortunately, I became a zealot about the subject. I got more and more upset as the day approached. I’d try to do as little shopping as possible in the month of October so I could avoid the inevitable displays and the “Happy Halloween” of the clerks. I got angry at other Christians for participating in Halloween, condemned churches who tried to “redeem” the holiday by having a “Holy House” instead of a “haunted house” or in some other way holding a “Halloween that we’ll call something else” celebration. I spent the day itself feeling that I could hear Satan laughing at how many Christians he had celebrating HIS holiday.
God finally brought me to see, though, that what I was doing was actually STILL giving that day an importance it didn’t deserve. So what if Satan has his day of celebration? Satan’s lost the war and he knows it. He has no more power that day than any other. I don’t make a big deal of the holidays of any other religion, so why make a big deal of an occultic one? More importantly, God brought me to see that I was letting my hatred for that holiday fuel a self-righteous condemnation of my brothers and sisters who didn’t happen to share my view of it! Because my conscience told me not to celebrate it, I sat in judgment against everyone else’s conscience. Satan’s happy either way, you know, whether we sin by doing what our conscience tells us we shouldn’t, or by condemning others for doing what OUR conscience won’t let US do, but that their conscience is at ease with. In condemning fellow Christians for, as I saw it, playing Satan’s game by celebrating his holiday, I was, myself, playing his game! Wow. Win for the Enemy all around, huh?
I decided to change the focus of the day. Instead of honoring Halloween/Samhain, we started celebrating Reformation Day. It was on October 31st , 1517, that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church challenging all comers to a debate regarding the sale of papal indulgences, in what is generally regarded as the starting point of the Protestant Reformation. That seemed an appropriate thing to commemorate. (We turn off all the lights in the front of the house, ignore the doorbell, rent a movie or two to watch, and feast on many sweet and unwholesome things. I do love my candy!)
Of greatest consequence, I changed my attitude. In Romans 14:4, Paul, addressing the issue of conscience, says “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” I will freely confess that I still don’t understand what other Christians find to celebrate in Halloween, but if I want the freedom to NOT celebrate, I must acknowledge their freedom to do so if their conscience is clear before the Lord about it. I still wish churches would ignore the day, just as they do Ramadan, or Tet, or the holidays of any other religion, but as the saying goes, it’s “no skin off my back” if they do, because I have the freedom not to participate. I no longer feel the need to be confined to that hard, narrow judge’s bench.
The trick to living in freedom is to treat others’ freedom as dearly as your own!
Holey, holey, holey
Posted on: October 14, 2012
My dh is not a “typical” male in many respects. For example, he is very introspective, and has no problems talking about feelings, either his or mine, and he prefers Disney movies and “chick flicks” to shoot-‘em-up-blow-‘em-up action films. He also does dishes, vacuums and cleans the bathroom – AND regularly puts the seat down! On the other hand, he IS “typical” male in other ways. He is an avid football/baseball/basketball fan, following both pro and college teams, and can recite a great many statistics on players such as when they were drafted, which round, and from which school, where they were traded from and who the sending team got in return, etc. He is very familiar with cars and their innards, understanding the difference between differentials and alternators and cam shafts. And he will wear a T-shirt or sweatshirt into a state of profound disrepute, then wear it in public without the slightest embarrassment. (When we go out and he’s wearing one such, I am tempted to wear a button that says, “He dressed himself. I’m not responsible.”) “But it’s COMFORTABLE!” he protests. VERY typical male, yes?
He has one T-shirt that he’s been working on for years. And years. It has a drawing by the artist Kliban, showing his typical fat cat, this time dressed as a sumo wrestler. (Yes, Rob is a sumo fan, too. NOT typical American male.) The front and back of the shirt have front and rear views of the kitty. However, 11 years of wear left it with every edge frayed – collar, sleeves, hem – an assortment of other holes, and what wasn’t hole-y was so thin you could see through it. For him, it was just getting comfortable; for me, it had long been an eyesore.
So, last Christmas, I got him a new one. The first one was an Value Village accidental find, but this time I went on-line and found a brand new one. 
I figured this one would last at least as long as the first one. It certainly would have. Maybe even longer – because he never wore it! I mentioned it a few times, but no results. I never saw that new shirt again.
So, a few weeks ago, I wrote him a song and put the note with his clean laundry. With apologies to Hank Williams, here’s how it goes: “Please release me, let me go/‘Cuz I don’t look good anymore./I’m tired and old and worn and thin/Release me, and put me in the bin!//You’ve got a brand new shirt to wear/Without a single hole or tear./It longs for life outside the drawer./Release me, and wear me nevermore!” It did the trick. With a chuckle, and a sigh, he agreed to let the ratty kitty go, and start working on getting the new one “broken in”.
In my women’s Bible study group, we’ve been going through a study on Colossians for some months now. As he also does in Ephesians 4, in Colossians 3 Paul speaks of our “putting away” one set of “clothes” and “putting on” another. We are to put away the “old man” with its anger, rage, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying, and so on, putting on the “new man” of compassion, kindness, meekness, patience, forbearance, tender-heartedness, forgiveness, and love.
Now, it’s not that our outward actions or our attitudes are what make us the “new man”. Scripture makes exceedingly clear that only in Christ do we become the “new man”, by dying to Sin, and being raised with Him into newness of life. Paul says that if any man is in Christ, he IS a new creation. The old is out, the new is in. This is all Christ’s doing, from beginning to end, not a matter of our outward actions or our attitudes. As in other aspects of life, clothes do NOT make the man!
However, once we have been made that “new man” in Christ, we are responsible for clothing that “new man”, as God gives grace. Just as most guys might tend to keep wearing old, ratty, holey clothes, not caring how they look, so, too, all of us often would prefer to keep ‘wearing’ the “clothes” of the “old man”. After all, it’s much easier, and feels more natural, to be angry, to gossip, to criticize, to be selfish, to indulge sensuality, and so on, doesn’t it? But, as Katherine Hepburn puts it in one of my favorite lines from The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Olnutt, is what we are put in this life to rise above.” Being improperly dressed doesn’t mean there isn’t a “new man” underneath. We all have occasions when we have done our buttons wrong, put our shirt on inside out, or, ahem, need to XYZ, but as followers of Christ, those things should grow increasingly less and less comfortable for us. We need to be discarding the ratty, degraded things of the “old man”, and be putting on the perfectly-fitting new actions and attitudes that God has prepared for us as suitable for the children of the King. Eventually, those new clothes will feel as comfortable as a microfiber fleece sweater, and the old ones will be as uncomfortable as a burlap shirt. Best of all, no matter how comfortable the new clothes get, they never get worn out, but get stronger and lovelier with the wearing.
Off with the holey and on with the holy!
Don’t be thankful “at least”
Posted on: September 23, 2012
My year of “not my agenda but Thine be done” continues. In July we got our middle daughter moved across the state to live with our oldest son, wife and granddaughter, which is working out delightfully for all concerned. Marie’s situation was stabilized. In August, we prepared to move onto our major summer plans: paint the entire exterior of the house (first time since moving in in ’92!), hopefully taking no more than about 3 weeks other than final touch-ups; replace some of the flooring in the attic storage area, another week or so; then attend to the TON of yard/garden work that needs to be done in the time remaining before the fall rains set in, which could be any time in September. I was healthy and more than ready to get these things DONE. Yessirree, projects, here we come!
So, of course, on Thursday, August 9th, about 5 minutes after starting the very first prep work for the house, I sprained my left ankle and had to spend the next 4 days RICEing it. I worked the next couple of days on more prep work, but that following Friday night, I noticed something wrong with my left arm that by Saturday night landed me in the ER being treated for cellulitis (a very nasty skin infection.) Spent the next 4 days with my arm elevated, moving as little as possible to keep the infection out of the blood stream, where it is potentially life-threatening. (yikes!) During the next week, my 18 yo dd and I managed to get the front of the house entirely painted with two coats, and had started on the trim…. when I bolluxed up my neck. But good. I could hardly turn my head to the side more than about 30 degrees either direction, and even less up and down. That was nearly four weeks, a dozen chiropractor visits, traction table sessions, and massage appointments ago. Needless to say, I’ve been on the disabled list the entire time, and am only now ready to start light physical therapy. So much for plans.
Oh, the painting DID get done. The final touches (at least as far as we’re going to worry about doing this year) got done this past week, about 6 weeks after starting. Our youngest daughter worked hours every week. Hubbie on weekends. Oldest daughter and son-in-love worked two Saturdays. Dh’s bro worked Labor Day. My sis and bro-in-love worked a Saturday. Our niece worked three days. My mom worked a day. I am more grateful to them all than I can express. How could I NOT be? Without all their help, we’d probably have had to just leave the project as the front wall for this year! Would have looked might strange, since it is a complete color change.
When I’ve talked about the whole situation to others, especially if I mention how much of a pain in the neck this paint in the neck has been and how much I’ve missed being able to join in the painting, the most common response is an “at least”. I should be thankful that ‘at least” I had all that help. That “at least” my injuries weren’t worse. That “at least” the weather held out. (Here in western WA, in September, that truly is unexpected!). I even catch myself saying the same kinds of things. “At least”, “at least”, “at least”. Sound familiar? For ANY situation we’re in that isn’t what we’d like it to be, that’s the solution we usually turn to make ourselves feel better.
I AM thankful. Deeply and truly. But I’ve decided I don’t want to be thankful “at least”.
We’re not called to comparative thankfulness, being thankful only in comparison to the fact that we might have had less. Saying “thank you that at least life doesn’t suck as bad as it could” is hardly real praise. It feels like accusing God of somehow shorting me in one area, but at least I’ll give Him credit for trying to make up in this other way. Or that I’m denying the reality of what I feel by covering it up with a version of the Pollyanna Glad Game, as if I can’t allow expression of hurt, or anger, or perplexity without negating it with at “at least” that I’m thankful for. And what if the “at least” that we’re thankful for goes away, and our situation becomes like what we’d been thankful it wasn’t? As in, what do I do if my ‘thanks’ is saying “I have cancer, but thank you that at least I’m not in pain”, and then I end up IN pain? Do I just keep finding some other “at least”, some other worse that I can compare my situation to to make myself feel thankful?
Another problem with being comparatively thankful is that we aren’t the best judges of what is “better” or “worse”. Remember that old adage, “I mourned the fact that I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet”? The clear assertion is that I am better off simply because I possess feet. Yet who am I to say but that the man with no feet might, in fact, be experiencing a far richer life than I am, footed though I be? By the same token, you see, we can envy the man with the fancy shoes – because all we see are the shoes, or the feet. We can’t see the heart. We can’t see the whole pattern of a person’s life. When we are thankful that “at least” we’re not as “bad off” as we might be, we speak from ignorance – and perhaps we even question God’s wisdom in assigning us the life He has.
We are told “Give thanks in all things”. Period. “Give thanks in all things”, not “In all things, find something you can at least be thankful for.” Comparative thankfulness focuses our eyes on our circumstances to judge them for what we think they could be. Fixing our eyes on Christ enables us to be thankful for every gift simply because He sent it. In Him we find endless reasons for giving thanks regardless of circumstance. God’s goodness, love and faithfulness never change, nor are they ever second best to what He could have given us. God never gives us “at least”; He always gives us His most!
To give thanks only “at least”, is to give the least thanks of all.
I now have three granddaughters – 2-3/4 years old, and 9 and 7 months. Having grandkids has certainly changed my life. After years of sitting in the “guest toy box”, the toys my own kids played with have gotten to come out and have a second run. I have diapers and changing pads and wipes in a basket under the hearth. Cabinet latches once again have sprouted in almost every toddler-level cabinet… and upper ones are getting theirs, now that the oldest little monkey is climbing. Outlets have plugs. I get to read the old favorite books again….and again…..and again….and….
One of the things I am most enjoying with the oldest one, Beverly, is the opportunity to again enter the world of imagination. Beverly, like her mother before her, is a precocious child, with verbal skills exceeding that of many 4 year olds, and an imagination to match. Listening in on her conversations with her toys can leave me choking with laughter.
Yet, sometimes, what she has to say is compellingly profound.
In the raised garden off our back patio, I have a collection of ceramic birds. They are charicaturish, brightly-colored little things, standing on long stakes. Their wings and feet are attached to the body with little springs. All have unnaturally big, funny faces with beaks almost as big as the rest of their bodies. They make me laugh to see them! Last summer, Beverly would get up on the wall they patrolled and walk along the cottage stones carefully giving each bird a kiss as she went by. Well, in January (as those who read my blog know) we had a doozy of a storm. Snow, ice, wind all combined into one major disaster for our area. We have 26 fir trees on our property, and each of them dropped copious quantities of branches. The yards, front and back, were carpeted with them. When I realized that some of my garden birds had been buried, I rushed out and excavated them from their firry pile. I stacked them all up together against the house, under the eaves where they would be safe. And there I forgot about them.
Forgot, that is, until one late spring day when I went out to get that garden ready to put in this summer’s new crop of annuals. Beverly was with me, happily playing nearby, when she found the pile of birds. Oh, my! Gramsie had to put her friends where they belonged without a second to waste. So, in went the pink one, the turquoise, the green, the blue, the purple, and …. Oh, wait a minute. Alas, the yellow one had not fared well from his winter encounter. One wing had its outer half broken clean off, and both legs were missing, leaving only tiny, rusty holes. A pretty sorry spectacle, compared to his garden-mates.
So, I said to Beverly, “I’m sorry, sweetie, but this one is pretty badly broken. I think we better put him in the trash instead of in the garden.” Her eyes filled with tears, and her little chin shook as she clutched the poor, damaged bird to her chest, and she wailed, “But, Gramsie, he’s still HAPPY!”
And he was! No matter what damage there had been to other parts of his body, his absurdly big yellow beak still held its funny, friendly grin. His goofy little eyes still looked as if they knew a great joke they’d love to tell you. He didn’t care what had happened to the rest of him. He was still smilin’!
My granddaughter was right on about that bird. Just because he looks different than the other birds was no reason to consign him to the trash – not while he still has that ludicrous glee on his ceramic face.
It got me to thinking. Sometimes we’re too quick to consign people to the ‘trash’ category. Maybe part of them is broken. Maybe part of them is missing. Their body may be warped and twisted, and maybe it doesn’t do what bodies are supposed to do. But these people still have value. Every person who God has made is prized by Him, and every one He has made has a function that only that person can fulfill, even if we can’t see what that is. If there’s life, there’s purpose!
Beverly looked beyond the brokenness, seeing only the happy friend who she loved. We, too, need to look beyond brokenness. We may not see the smiling face of a friend, but we will certainly see the face of one for whom Christ died – and that should be enough for us.
Unless he gets smashed to bits, I expect that little bird is going to be in my garden for many years. And he’ll still keep on smiling – and reminding me that “out of the mouth of babes” you sometimes hear profound wisdom!
Wow – first post in what seems like forever (though it’s actually only been about three-and-a-half months.) A lot of life has happened. Still is happening! One of the big things that happened last month is that we officially graduated our fifth and youngest child from homeschooling!! I got her transcript and portfolio finished, and now I’m done forever with Declaration of Intent to Homeschool forms, lesson planning, curriculum decisions, tests, evaluations, and transcripts! It’s been a great adventure these last 23 or so years, but …… YIPPEE!!!!! Free at last, free at last…..
For the last couple of years, I’ve been getting asked a lot, “So, what are you going to DO with yourself once you’re done homeschooling?” I’ve usually mentioned writing (preferably for remunerative purposes) and volunteering as two top candidates for my time. I’ve thought about taking courses in grant writing, or maybe just some fun stuff. Never in any of my calculations did I think about the possibility that I would basically have a part-time job caring for my cousin.
Marie has made amazing progress in clearing out, organizing and cleaning her apartment. By God’s grace, we have found a new apartment for her, much closer to us, in a wonderful, beautiful complex. It will be the nicest place she’s ever lived. She is using this opportunity to throw out even more, and allowing herself to buy some new things that will better suit the new apartment’s configuration. Physically she is doing pretty well; as stable as she’s ever been, at any rate (which, with her extreme ups-and-downs of blood sugar with her brittle diabetes isn’t necessarily saying much.) Emotionally, she’s made huge progress in dealing with many issues, thanks to psychotherapy, meds, and grace. But I still have to manage her general financial affairs, her medical bills, and so on. I still drive her to and accompany her on all medical visits so that I can interpret what the docs tell her, and go over any instructions again once home, writing out big notes for her to follow. I take her grocery shopping; her poor eyesight makes it difficult to see products on the shelves. I was the one who dealt with change of address for her pension, Social Security, IRS, drivers license, switching the phone and cable, all that stuff. Moving her was an all-month process so that she wasn’t overwhelmed…. most of the time.
As I was growing up, my parents and my dad’s family left a deep impression on me that you do what needs to be done for those you love. My aunt gave up much – even most – of the last DECADES of her life to care for my grandparents. When my dad retired at 55 while we lived in Utah, instead of moving to WA like they had planned, my parents moved back to Daddy’s home town in Wyoming to take over Grammy’s care. When my mom’s dad grew old and frail, they moved him into their house. What I have done/am doing for Marie isn’t much compared with those sacrifices. The accolades directed my way – “Wow, she is SO LUCKY to have you!” “You’re such a saint for doing this!” “You are just amazing!”- while certainly feeding my already-overfed vanity, also make me raise my eyebrows. What’s the big deal? Yes, it’s been good she has me, and I shudder to think what she’d have done with no one to help, but I lover her, have a great time with her, and learn from her, too, so it’s not like it’s a one-way deal. I’m no saint for doing this; I’m just following my parents’ example. I do have a great deal of ability and expertise, but 1. that’s nothing of my doing, it’s just how God made me, and 2. it’s far more His grace than my ability that has enabled me to do what I’ve done! It honestly has never occurred to me NOT to do it. Right now, I’m the only family member in any position TO do it, so I do it. End of story.
However, that said, the truth is that I do also struggle with this “detour”. In the first rush of the situation with Marie, there was a kind of heady exaltation that carried me along. It was fulfilling to see how God had prepared me to handle the issues that came up. I was truly glad to be able to finally do some things for her that I’d long wanted to. As the reality of the long-haul nature of this caregiving sinks in, though, part of me is dismayed and wants to say, “Forget it!” No matter how cheerful I force myself to appear on the outside, sometimes inside… it’s not a pretty sight. After all, this wasn’t what I had planned to spend these last five months doing, not by a long shot! I had lots of projects on my drawing board. I was really enjoying doing this blog; writing is a tremendous creative release for me, and I’m a much happier Susie when I’m getting a chance to write. I was looking forward to attacking my sewing pile of projects. There’s reorganizing and sorting and painting and gardening and ….. Lots and lots of things I wanted to do. I mean, I’m all for serving God and all that – but I’d prefer to do it on MY timetable. I want to set my own hours, write my own job description, and, above all, I want to be able to quit when I want to if it gets too inconvenient!
THIS is where the rubber meets the road, though. Either I believe that my time belongs to ME to do with as I please, or I believe that my time is HIS time to use as He sees fit. Just as our money and our possessions belong to God, so, too, does our time. When David wrote, “My times are in Your hands” in Ps. 31:15, he was talking about being besieged by his enemies and crying for deliverance, but that line is a truth that applies to all of our life. If we are sincerely praying that God would make us of us, we better be prepared for all that that service might entail. A servant doesn’t get to set his own hours or choose what work he feels like doing. A servant does what his master decides, for as long as required. What I’m going through isn’t, in fact, a “detour”; it’s the road God has always been planning for me. We should always hold our own plans very lightly, in an open hand, because we’re not the ones holding the road map.
And just as there is joy to be found in giving of our money to the Lord and His purposes when we give out of a cheerful heart, so, too, there is joy to be found in willingly giving away our time and our energy to His purposes. When I am feeling resentful of Marie and her needs, doing what I need to do is a nuisance. When I have my heart set right and am keeping God’s perspective – “what you have done for the least of these, you have done for Me” – doing what I need to do for her is a pleasure.
Those other things I want to do? I still hope to get around to them. And if I don’t? Oh, well! Those things won’t make it past the grave. The things HE wants me to get done will matter for all eternity!
Hope for what’s broke
Posted on: February 29, 2012
The last month has been busy. I didn’t know it, but starting January 20th, God had my date book blocked out for at least two months with one word: Marie. She’s my cousin who lives here in town. OK, technically, she’s my cousin-in-love, since she’s my husband’s blood-relation, but it doesn’t matter to me; I love her as dearly as any of my own. Her health is failing, but worse, so is her mind, and it has become clear she cannot live alone anymore. After spending a week in the hospital, then 10 days at a rehab center, she has now been living with us for 3 weeks, and will remain so until we can figure out other options. I had no idea I was about to be thrust into such an exhausting, confusing muddle. One of the worst aspects to deal with is that she’s a hoarder. (If you’ve seen the show, think “Hoarders” Lite.) We are having to clean up her apartment, forcing her to part with a great deal. We don’t know yet if she will ever move back home, or will be going into a facility, but either way, this has to be done. Frankly, it feels like spending all day performing vivisection with a rusty razor blade.
It has me thinking a lot about sin. Hoarding is not a sin; it is a mental illness, a form of OCD. But all disease is a result of sin. Sin takes what was good, and twists it to evil. The knowledge of good and evil is a good thing. Adam and Eve possessed it from the very moment of their creation: to obey God was to do good, to disobey would be to do evil. This they knew. Satan convinced them that this knowledge wasn’t enough: they had to experience evil in order to truly “know” it. He lied, of course, in telling them that this would make them like God. God does not know evil by DOING evil; evil has no part in Him whatsoever. Sin – the experiencing of evil – made them UNlike God, forever shattering the image they were created in.
Sin continues to twist things. To admire the nice thing someone else owns, the talent someone else possesses – these are good; love rejoices in seeing the blessings others enjoy. Sin takes that admiration and twists it into covetousness and envy. For a man to admire a woman’s beauty as a creation of God is a good thing. Sin takes that admiration and turns it into lust. To see others walking in darkness and desire to provide light so that they may see is good. Sin, as my pastor, Brian Wiele put it, takes that desire to give light and turns it into a glaring, self-righteous halogen searchlight pointed six inches from their face, so that not only does it not light their way, but actually forces them to shut their eyes and turn away; no wonder Jesus had more and harsher words for the Pharisees than He did for the “sinners”!
Sin has effected Creation. Plants that were meant to feed us now produce thistles. Other plants and animals produce toxic chemicals. What would otherwise be harmless bacteria mutate to become deadly pathogens. Cells grow, but the “off” signal gets lost and we face cancer. Immune systems run amok and we have lupus, diabetes, and Celiac. Brain chemicals become imbalanced, producing all manner of mental illnesses, from my own bipolar to my cousin’s OCD. Defense mechanisms that normally function to protect us become the enemy attacking us from within.
My heart breaks daily as I watch my poor cousin’s struggle. Hoarders cannot distinguish relative value; everything is equally “special”. Hoarders cannot distinguish their “stuff” from their “selves”; to get rid of things is to part with pieces of themselves. The progress we have made has not led to her feeling “freed”. She has no sense of “relief”. No, she mourns the loss of every item she has had to part with. Every unoccupied moment of the day is spent either grieving what has gone, or dreading what is still to be lost. Getting rid of her “stuff” will create a safer environment for her, but it will not rid her of her disease. She remains as trapped as ever in its torturous jaws.
We are now into the season of Lent, that solemn time of reflection and repentance as we consider what Christ did and why He had to do it. As I’ve been going through all this with Marie, and mourning for all that she suffers because of the twisting Satan has done through sin in creating her disease, I’ve been pondering what it must have been like for Jesus to walk on earth among His beloved creations and experience in human form what it is like to live in this world twisted by sin. We are only told two times of His weeping – at Lazarus’ tomb, the symbol of the epitome of sin’s physical consequences, death, and at the entry to Jerusalem where He wept at their rejection of Him, the epitome of sin’s spiritual consequences, the refusal of God’s proffered grace. But although those are the only two times we are told outright that He wept, I am convinced that every moment of Jesus’ life here on earth must have been filled with heartache as He experienced His creation’s brokenness.
But that was why He came: to fix what is broken. Even though in Adam we chose to break our fellowship with God and one another, and to break the very world in which we had been placed, God chose not to turn away and to leave us to the awful consequences of those choices. Instead, He chose to suffer every consequence of sin in Himself on the cross so that this world’s brokenness wouldn’t be the end of the story. Sin doesn’t win. Brokenness won’t last. A Day is coming when all the harmful things we hold on to will be swept away – and we won’t mourn the loss!
God’s dayplanner
Posted on: January 22, 2012
Ever notice how God doesn’t check with us before filling out His dayplanner? Last week I wrote of the somewhat harrowing journey to Seattle through the worst snowstorm in years to get a CT angio for my cousin. In the next two days, we had a major ICE storm as well, which knocked our power out for just over a day. Thankfully, we have a good fireplace, a gas water heater (with no electronic ignition!), and a gas stove, so we do very well even without power. We have huge branches from our 26 trees down all over our yard (10-20 feet long, some with a base 8-12 inches across), three that landed on the roof, one of which punched THROUGH. On the second day of that storm, with the weather abating somewhat, my cousin ended up in the ER here as her condition took a serious turn for the worse, and was transferred up to… a hospital in Seattle! I am thankful to say the roads were bare and wet pretty much by then as the temperatures had warmed. I have been there the last two days, coming home late last night to get one night’s sleep in my own bed and get a few things done – like updating this blog – before heading back to Seattle for two or three more days before another home visit, then back up. This may be a long affair! Would you believe our power just went out AGAIN 15 minutes ago? Another tree snapping the power line. (I came down to my mom’s to use her computer, as she hasn’t had ANY power outs.) The effects of this storm are also far from over – and we have more wind predicted. It feels very strange for me to be leaving my husband and daughter to deal with all the mess and insurance and everything, but there’s no way around it. Marie needs me more! None of us saw this coming – but God did. He had his dayplanner all filled out. He already had set things in motion to prepare the way. One example is that last week or so, I did another big batch of cooking freezer meals, and even wrote out a calendar of menus for the next two months, including side dishes. Now I don’t have to give a thought to what my dh and dd will do for feeding themselves. I mean, I know they’d have scrounged and not starved, but now I know they’ll be eating HEALTHY meals, and my dd won’t feel the burden of figuring out just what to fix. Cool way God fixed that up, huh? I’m keeping my eyes peeled for those things in these days of stress and uncertainty. I don’t know when I’ll get to update this blog again, but I hope you all are remembering, whatever you face, that God has already crossed over the Jordan ahead of you to prepare the way. Nothing catches Him by surprise, and He’s ready for the consequences! He is faithful and true, and He will accomplish it!!!
Dash it all, that snow
Posted on: January 18, 2012
I hate snow. Really. The only way I enjoy snow is on a pretty picture post card. I spent 6 years in northern Utah, and 4 years in eastern Washington, and had snow enough to last me a lifetime. One of the things I like about being now in WESTERN Washington, at the bottom of Puget Sound, is that we can go entire winters without getting a single flake. Most years that we do get snow, we get a maybe an inch or two that lasts for a day or two, once or twice the whole winter. Then there are the other years.
We’ve had a bit of snow – a few inches – the last few days. Big, fat, fluffy flakes came down thick yesterday morning for some time, but had turned to rain in the afternoon so most main streets were pretty bare and parking lots were fields of slush puddles. Last night, however, a major storm moved in. We were warned to expect up 11-14 INCHES here in Olympia, with total growing less as you move toward Seattle, about 60 miles north. Travel advisories. School closures. State offices closed, workers telecommuting. Only idiots and the desperate would go out in something like this. (We don’t have as much snow equipment to handle it – plows, de-icers, etc. – like places that regularly get snow do, so it really is more of an issue. Besides the fact that the vast majority of western Washingtonians freak out at the mere thought of driving on s-s-s-s-s-now.) So, naturally, it was THIS morning that I had to have my cousin, Marie, up to Seattle by 9:30 for a crucial medical appointment. Idiot or desperate? Not sure there’s a difference! This is the story of our dash through the snow.
Before leaving, I prayed, “Lord, please get us there.” The drive to the side street to Marie’s apartment complex at 6:45 was a breeze, since main roads and the freeway had been plowed not too long before. The side road, and the drive through the complex, however, had not seen a plow since the whole thing began. Snow was easily already at least 8″ high. I followed a set of tracks someone had already driven through. Got Marie in the car. Tried to back out the way I’d come in…. and was stuck! Tried digging out the wheels, rocking it, etc. All the usual tricks for snow. Nothing. “Lord, you got me this far. Please don’t let it end here. Send someone to help.” In my rearview, I saw a figure, snow shovel in hand approaching down the drive!
I got out to greet him, and explained WHY I was out in that snow. Jay is a maintenance worker with the complex, and he promised he’d get me out, whatever it took. After working for 10 minutes, though, he had made little progress. “Lord, either let this work, or send someone else to help!” Another figure approached, this time a resident who’d heard the noise. Together, it took them another 20 minutes or more, but they did it. God bless them!!!! By 7:30, Marie and I were on the freeway headed north.
For the first nearly 20 miles, it was just snow driving, which is pretty easy. Visibility was good, no one was being stupid, things were fine. Then the snow on the road turned into thick, mushy slush, at least 6″ deep. If you’ve never driven on it, let me tell you that driving in that is MUCH, much harder than on just nice, dry snow. Mostly, you just try to choose one set of tracks and follow them. Sometimes, though, there aren’t any clear tracks through a patch. Then you lose traction, and you can be forced hither and yon following whichever way has the most “give” to it. Hit a place where one set of wheels has traction and the other one suddenly doesn’t…. and you can find yourself in a spin out. You don’t have to be going very fast! You’re in the spin before you know it. Oh, yeah. Spun all the way from the left of the freeway across two other lanes to bump the front left corner of the car into the center barrier, coming to a stop at a 45 degree angle backwards to the oncoming traffic, but with just a bit of the tail sticking into the lane. Amazing what prayers can go up in that time. I don’t coherently remember them, but I know they were going. No one hit us. Everyone went around us, except this one little car that stopped in that near lane. I waited for it to move so I could maneuver more to the side, maybe turn a 360 if aI got a gap, when he flipped on his lights. Oooh, highway patrol, I get it. I got out, took a look at my front end, and shrugged my shoulders. The cop looked back to the road, and there was no more traffic for a MILE behind us. He grinned, told me to just back up in a U-turn and be on my way then! The whole thing took less than a minute. “Thank you, thank you, thank you….” repeat repeat repeat
Roads got even nastier toward Seattle, but we made it. (more “Thank you s”) Got off onto city streets. Had to climb about 7 blocks of a stiff hill to get to the medical building – and had green lights at all the right places, and reds only where it wasn’t a problem to stop. 2 hours drive time, which is pretty good for what would normally have been about an hour fifteen. I dropped Marie off at the patient drop/pick up, got back in the car, had a mini-sob session, and went to park. When we were done with the appointment, I got a suggestion from the doctor for a different way to go when we left that didn’t involve going back DOWN that hill. This time, too, the lights were always with us, all the way to the freeway. (More “Thank you s”. He got a lot of those today.)
Roads outbound were even worse than they’d been, for the first 15 miles, with the last being about terrifying, with not one, but TWO, misses-by-inches of big pick-up trucks barreling past us, slewing this way and that in the slush. (I kept a smile on my face for Marie’s sake and was inwardly, um, “crying out” to the Lord, shall we say? Something like a white-eyed, pee your pants “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”) Then, for about 30 miles, we had bare, wet pavement with slush only down the middle and between lanes. Glorious! What a relief! Then the last 15 miles of the trip… Ever sit in one of those vibrating massage chairs at the fair? The kind that sorta make your teeth feel like they’re going to rattle out? Well, we hit slush again, but this time over FROZEN, chain-chewed-up ice! It wasn’t slick, but oh, my goodness, was it rough – and say goodbye to any sense of real control of where you were going! You just followed the ruts, no matter where they wandered. (I wonder if my prayers vibrated as much as our voices did if we tried to talk?) But we made it back to Olympia in about the same time it took the other way! I stopped at our house and picked up Rob and a snow shovel, unsure what we’d find back at Marie’s apartment complex, but Rob was able to pull in and back right out. (Yet another “Thank you!”) Got poor Marie back to her apartment and us back home. I think none of us are budging again until this snow is GONE!
Now, the fact that God got me to Marie’s didn’t mean He was obligated to get me back out. Even the fact that He sent people to HELP didn’t obligate Him to let it be successful. The fact that He got me out didn’t mean He was obligated to keep us from spinning out on the way. The fact that He kept us safe in that spin out didn’t mean He was obligated to get us to Seattle. The fact that He got us to Seattle didn’t mean He was obligated to get us to the medical building. The fact that He got us there, didn’t mean He had to …. You get the idea.
I know a lot of people who would talk about this trip and say something like, “It was just so obvious that God was with you!” But I can’t say that. That is, yes, He WAS with us – but He would have been just as much with us if at any of those points, things had gone another way! Some would say, “Wow! God really answered our prayers!” But I can’t say that. That is, yes, He DID answer our prayers – but He would have been answering our prayers just as much if had things gone differently, for, at heart, our prayers are essentially all “Thy will be done”, aren’t they? And it always is! I admit it’s easier to be thankful when things go all “cool” like they did this trip, but we should always be just as ready to accept the difficult as the easy from His hand.
All day I’ve had a rhyme going through my head that a friend taught me years ago. “Has He taught us to love Him and call on His name/And thus far has brought us – but to put us to shame?” It’s a rhetorical question, of course. No matter what happens to us, whether the trip goes well or we spin out, we get hit or we escape, His purposes are always good. He will never put us to shame.
Now (my snow-loving friends, forgive me) I hope He’ll take away this dashed snow….
“Pay” to pray? No way!
Posted on: January 13, 2012
- In: Christianity | freedom | prayer
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We get some odd ideas about God, don’t we?
My first pregnancy was pretty easy. My second was not. From early on in that pregnancy, I resented that fact. I was so mad at God about it that I basically sat and pouted about it for nine months, refusing to look at Him. When it came time for delivery, things got really, really bad. It was an induced labor done way too soon, and was terrible, awful, horrible, horrendous…. You get the idea. Worse than all the physical pain, though, was that I had this idea that because I’d spent the previous nine months in a tantrum, I had no “right” to ask God to help me through it. So I went it alone.
It was several months after the birth before I finally dared to look at Him. Honestly, I expected Him to be mad at me. I expected Him to resent my tantrum, my lack of trust. I pictured Him standing there with His arms crossed, one toe tapping impatiently, lips pursed to the side, eyebrows raised…… just waiting to chew me out as soon as I came crawling back. I figured He’d tell me the birth experience was payback for not walking right during the pregnancy. “It’s just as well you didn’t pray, kid. I sure wouldn’t have been listening, not after what you pulled!”
Of course, that’s not what happened. While I was sitting pouting, thinking I had my back to Him as He stood somewhere aways away, He was sitting right in front of me. Instead of arms crossed, His arms were held out to me wide open, just waiting for me to fall into His lap. His face was lit with a warm, sympathetic smile, and His eyes glowed with a loving gaze that still held a trace of a tear – and I realized that while He had been sad about my tantrum, it had never – NEVER – “offended” Him. He had never been mad back at me. And I saw that I had never been alone. I had cut myself off from FEELING His presence, yes, but nothing I could do could ever cut me off from His presence. He had still been the One carrying me through that awful time. Had I cried out to Him during that delivery, He wouldn’t have held His love hostage to a confession of my sin; He would have immediately rushed to reassure me of His love.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week after reading a prayer request that left me so, so sad. It’s not the first time that I’ve run across the sentiment, of course, but to see it in this particular situation just grieved me. It was written by a dad requesting prayer for his little girl who is very, very ill. The blog post basically stated that because God is holy and righteous, unless we have our act together, hands all clean and hearts all repentant, before we pray, He won’t listen to us. If we have unconfessed sin in our life, our prayers won’t work. This poor, sweet father whose heart is so burdened for his little one was worried that unless those praying for her were coming to God repentantly, confessing their sins, their prayers wouldn’t really ring “loud and clear” in His ears. So, so sad. What a misperception of God!
Imagine the most loving parent you possibly can – one who would do (and has done) absolutely anything for his child. Suppose the parent has told the child not to eat a cookie, but the child “sneaks” one anyway. Before the parent has chosen to scold the child about it, or the child’s conscience has moved him to confess it, suppose the child falls from a tree and breaks his leg. Imagine that parent listening to that child scream in pain and standing there saying, “Well, I’ll help you, of course, but FIRST there’s that matter of the cookie to take care of.”
Seems ludicrous to even think of it, yet that’s exactly how we picture God if we lay ourselves under the expectation that unless we have gotten ourselves all straightened out first, He’s going to put His fingers in His ears and sing “La la la Can’t hear you!” when we cry to Him in time of need. What bondage to believe that we have to essentially EARN the “right” to have our Father pay attention to us.
Christ died for us while we were sinners. God gave us His Son when we couldn’t have cared less. He extended His grace to us while we still hated Him. So, now that we have become His dearly beloved children, fellow heirs with His Son, indwelt by His Spirit – NOW we think He’s going to stand in a huff at us when we trip and fall short? NOW we think He holds it against us that we’re not perfect? Do we really think that in a time of dire need, He is going to withhold His help until we get our act all together, or use just the right words, or whatever? The God Who sends rain on the just and the unjust, Who instructed us to bless those who curse us, and do good to those who do us evil – now that we’re His children, He’s going to take an “I’ll only be nice to you if you do everything like you’re supposed to” position?
There is no sin which we have to take care of before He can hear our prayers because the things that we need to repent of and confess have already been covered by the Blood of the Lamb. God’s holiness and righteousness have been satisfied on the cross. Our acceptance by God is not conditional on how clean our hands are or how repentant we are. We are His children, beloved, warts and all. NOTHING – not even our failures, our not-yet-repentant hearts, or our not-yet-confessed sins – can separate us from His love. If we have “cookie” issues, He’ll deal with those because they aren’t good for us and distract us from the right path, but they’ll never be something He’ll hold against us and use as an excuse to withhold His love or His attention from us.
No matter what other issues we may have in our life, God will NEVER turn a deaf ear to the heart-cry of the children He gave His Son’s life for.
Name dropping
Posted on: January 5, 2012
I heard a sermon recently by a young pastor on the subject of waiting on the Lord. He had a lot of good things to say about how hard it can be to wait. He illustrated the theme by telling of a visit to the doctor some years back that had involved cooling his heels in the waiting room for an hour and a half. He then went on to describe in vivid, scathing detail what ensued in the visit – a disagreement with the doctor as to whether or not his elevated blood pressure was due to a medical condition or simply to his extreme anger at having had to wait so long. The pastor named the doctor, the city where he practiced, and stated that he was still practicing, “though I don’t know how”.
For a long time now, God has been “tenderizing” me over my own loose tongue when it comes to such name-dropping. Although name-dropping by public speakers bothers me because of the wider audience they have, it is no different than what most of us do with all too great a frequency in our own conversations. There is something in us that seems to delight in airing not just how we “done been wronged” but who in particular “done it”.
My high school years were hellish. For most of those years, I was under the leadership of a particular pastor, with occasional contact with a student ministry director at the college my siblings attended. Both, through commission and omission, influenced my life for the worse, missing what (to ME) seemed like obvious opportunities to have helped me. By God’s grace, I survived those years without killing myself or getting involved with the drugs my friends used. Once in college (in another state!), He turned my life around and set my feet on a new path. But the hurt from those earlier years didn’t just disappear. For many years after, when I told my story of God’s redemption, I included a full description of just what poor leaders those two men had been, and I named names.
Over time, however, God gave me some different perspective. He pointed out that I was still looking at those men’s actions as I had as a confused, hurting, immature teen – not as the adult I had become. I had accused both men of not caring, but on re-examining the issue, I realized that they did care, but were untrained and inexperienced in dealing with my type of situation. Did they make some really poor decisions, give some lame responses, take some inappropriate actions? Absolutely – just as I have myself in my own ministry and parenting. God showed me that what I was doing was, in fact, slander – speech for the purpose of defaming or unjustifiably attacking a person’s reputation. Yes, they did what they did – but those were not the ONLY things they did. On the whole, both men had successful ministries in their respective spheres. My stories unfairly ignored all the good they did for the sake of the particular “failures” involving me – and I wanted the rest of the world to condemn them for my sake. (Sounds ugly, but it’s the truth.) My slander of these men was just as wrong as the actions that I held against them!
[I wrote to both men and asked forgiveness for having spoken so, which may or may not have been the wisest thing to do, since, as far as I know, they had had no idea I held such a grudge against them in the first place. Writing made me feel better, but it may have been easier for them if I hadn’t! Anyway, I told them that they didn’t have to respond, I just wanted to get it off my chest, as it were. One wrote back anyway, and his gracious words of forgiveness, and humble request for the same for anything he had done to give rise to that hurt, are among the most treasured letters I’ve ever received. ]
Because of this experience from my own life, I do think about some questions now that I didn’t used to, whether the story is told for illumination, comparison, or just entertainment. Are you absolutely sure you have a godly perspective on this? If you’re honest, would you have to admit that you’re telling the story less for the benefit of the hearers and more to satisfy a sense of revenge, or just to make yourself look good by comparison? Are you sure you are judging justly? Do you truly believe that all of that person’s character or career should stand condemned because of what you hold against him? That is, if your story is all someone ever knows about Mr. X, will it be a fair representation? What if, unknown to you, the person now regrets what she did? How would you feel about having spread the story then? How do you think the person (or their family or friends) would feel to hear that story told about him? Even if the story isn’t slanderous, but simply puts the subject in an unflattering light, would you want to be talked about in that way? Could you tell the same story using a fictitious name, or “a friend of mine”, or “someone in our family”, instead?
I still trip up on this point far too often, but I’m trying to remember that if the name isn’t germane to the point of my story, rather than name-drop, I should just drop the name!
the susie solution 