Taking the Turns Right Alongside Him...

     Poor Phil! :)

     Twenty-seven years ago when we fell in love and decided to get married, we both entered into a major lifestyle change.  However, as I look back over the years, I think he's had more adjustments to make than I.  For example, he likes to joke that when a man marries, all the woman's things eventually find a home around the house while all the man's possessions end up in storage...  Ha!
      Phil's favorite color is brown while mine is yellow....  Right now our kitchen and our bathroom are painted a bright, cheery yellow :)   Phil's not fond of plants all over the house and right now we have Amaryllises blooming on our breakfast bar - five of them to be exact.  (I used to keep them on the kitchen counter and when Phil would enter the kitchen, he would imitate jungle bird calls - and very well, I might add.)  When we started dating, I had a dog and  he had a cat. His whole family are cat lovers.   Right now we have 4 dogs and no cat.
      However, by far and away the biggest adjustment he's ever had to make was when we allowed friends to live with us for a short time.  International students.  The middle school kid next door.  These periods in our married life took Phil so far out of his comfort zone that he basically ended up in the stratosphere before all was said and done!  Wow! What stress he went through as we prepared to move someone into our home!  Why would he even do that?
     Because he loves me.
     Because he loves God.
     Because he made a lifetime commitment when he threw his lot in with me on Nov. 22, 1986.
    When he made that commitment, he knew I was a lot more social than he was and he knew he was signing on for some adjustments. However, in retrospect I think he can honestly say that he had no idea of what it would cost to live with me. Seriously!
      Yet he's never wavered in his commitment to me but  instead  has, as we like to jokingly say, taken all the turns right along with me... (Quote from Driving Miss Daisy)  And there have been a lot of them - trust me on this!
      And this is where I'm going with all this.
      Luke 9:23 personalized:
      "And Jesus is saying to me:  If you, Cathy, wish to come after Me, you will have to deny yourself and carry your cross daily and follow Me..."
      And the key words that struck me today were, "If you, Cathy, wish to come after Me..."
      Do I wish to cast my lot in with Jesus the way Phil cast his lot in with me so many years ago?
      Am I willing to give up some things, not even necessarily bad things - just things that won't fit with loving and living with Jesus (John 15:5) - am I willing to adjust to His lifestyle in order to be with Him?  And since He carried a cross, am I willing to join with Him in that as well?
    As I write this an image comes to mind from the book, Seal of  God.  In it the author, Chad Williams, describes the training he had to endure in order to become a navy seal.  One of the worst exercises that he had to live through was to run back and forth across a wet sandy beach with several other men... while they carried a boat over their heads.  Literally.  For hours. Often In the dead of night. It was brutal and sometimes when the team had been at it for a while and  was beyond exhaustion, one member would try to slack off by acting like he was holding the boat when in reality, he wasn't - his arms would be lifted up but he would no longer be pressing hard against the hull in order to support it, counting on cover of darkness to hide his little respite. At that point, he wasn't a team player; he had lost sight of the goal.  He was no longer carrying his cross and his companions suffered because of it.
      Jesus enjoyed life. He attended weddings and I have no doubt He would be at someone's Thanksgiving feast today.   But He also had a mission which involved carrying a cross.
     If I take the same road that He is taking, if I cast my lot in with Him, if I am so in love with Him that I want to be with Him day by day no matter what I have to do in order to achieve that - then there will be some lifestyle adjustments and there will be some cross-carrying.  There will be times when I have to say no to myself in order to fit in with His plans.  There will be times when I feel pushed to the point of exhaustion as I run in tandem with Him, trying to carry the cross He has for me to carry.
    But, oh, the joy of being with the One I love!
    For me on this  beautiful Thanksgiving morning, it all boils down to one phrase:
    "Cathy, if you wish to come after Me..."
    Do I wish to follow after Him?
     You know, Lord!
    

    "To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.  When he puts forth all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice."  John 15:5-6
      And if they choose to follow Him, His sheep find peace that is not of this world (John 14:27), abiding love (John 15:9),  the Master's own joy (John 15: 11), truth that is freeing (John 8:31-32), and, yes, also  tribulation  - coupled with the power to overcome it. (John 16:33)

      This Thanksgiving, if you haven't done so already - would you consider an outstanding invitation to routinely sit at the table with Jesus?
       Revelation 3:20  "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him , and will dine with him, and he with Me."

 

 

Some days...

      A couple of weeks ago, I was wowed by who God is.  I saw first hand how He could orchestrate things, bringing random people and events together in a way that no human being could ever do.  I've seen that before but I always tend to qualify it or downplay it as in, I really think that was God... or Isn't that nice? God sure does answer prayer...
     What happened two weeks ago, however, was so random and yet so precise that all I could do was marvel, not just at what God does, but at Who He is, how He can move people and events along the chessboard of life in a way that no human being could ever do. How He transcends time and space.  How He can read the human heart, both good and bad, and yet how He, Almighty God, still bends low to hear  our weak cries and bring  His unlimited power to bear on our infinitesimally puny  needs.
     Yesterday was a different story entirely.   I had a ring-side seat at  a funeral and heard things like:  he was recovering well from surgery and then things suddenly started going downhill... He shouldn't have died... I don't know how I'll live without him... This sucks... And those words, just like the ones I heard two weeks ago, sank down deep into my heart and resonated within me long after the funeral crowd had dispersed to go on about their daily stuff.
   Then, last night some different words,  ancient words, echoed through my mind and this morning they are with me still:  Lord, if You had been here, my brother would  not have died... (John 11:21).
     Lord, if You had been here...
    And I wondered how many times human beings have sat at the graveside of a friend, a relative, a loved one and anguished over that very issue:  Lord, if You had just shown up a week ago, ten days ago, a month ago, then... my loved one would not have died...
    And, yes, I know the rest of the story...
    Jesus, the Son of God, answers his grieving friend with a mind-boggling statement and a direct question:
    "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.  Do you believe this?"  (John 11:25-26)
     Do I believe this??
     Yes.  And no.
     I mean, Lord, You should have asked me two weeks ago. Then I knew. Now, I'm not so sure.
     I would like to wrap this blog entry up in a bow, all neat and tidy, complete with snappy moral and pithy words of encouragement.  But I can't.
     Because, for me, faith is a real walk in a real world where we are often blinded by "facts" that just don't fit, by a puzzle that seems to have all the pieces one week and then turns up hopelessly missing the crucial center piece the next.
     We walk by faith and not by sight.
     And sometimes sight, as my niece said, really does "inhale swiftly".  I'm sorry - it just does.
     So today I'm just sort of clutching the hem of Jesus' robe, thumb in mouth, afraid to let go, trailing behind in the faith walk thing.
     Do you believe this, Cathy?
     Honestly, all I can say is, "Lord, I'm trying..."
     Some days all I can do is hang onto the edge of His robe.  Yesterday was one of those days and today looks to be more of the same.
   

Beyond Thanksgiving, All the Way to Joy

      I know what I want to say but I don't know how to say it.
      I suppose I could break out into my own rendition of Julie Andrew's These Are a Few of my Favorite Things... But... I can't sing. Or dance.  And my neighbors aren't always the most stable people on the planet so I don't think I want to do anything to irritate them... So imitating Julie Andrews at 11:30 at night in our front yard is.. just.. not going to happen.
      Jesus said that He came to give us His joy and to make our joy full.
      That full-of-joy feeling is often absent from my life.  Flattened by the earth-shaking machinery of daily life.  Lost somewhere along with the truant socks in the laundry basket of As the World Turns.  (And, seriously, where do all those  missing socks go, both literal and figuratively?)
       And yet, as I've learned from the recent Bible study I  just completed, Wonderstruck by Margaret Feinberg, there is wonder, joy, and cause for celebration all around us.  Because our God is so much greater than we can imagine and He has not only given us joy, He has also provided moments of wonder all around us to fuel that joy.  Yes, even here in the 'hood. Yes, even here at the threshold of old age.  Yes, even on the days when it's cold and dreary and it seems like every bone in my body from knees down  to my toes aches.
      These are some of the things that have caused me to stop and wonder lately, things that God has used to rekindle joy in my heart at odd moments in the autumn of my life.

      Well-lit rooms and warmth inside our home while outside the world is dark, damp, and cold.  Hot chocolate, warm blankets, and seasonal movies inside juxtaposed against  early nightfall, blustery winds,  and rain that seems to chill right through to the bone outside.
      The occasional laughter of my niece as we home school each morning.   I love to hear her laugh because there is both joy and innocence in it.   I feel privileged to build into her life as she builds into mine.
      The  Amaryllis plants that we "rescue" every year from Walmart's gardening center.  It's a  ritual, filled with anticipation as we watch to see which plants will respond to our care, which ones will go from being half-dead to being alive and laden with lavish blooms in an amazingly short time.


     The joy of watching our son grow into a man.  He's an adult now - not a clone of Phil or I but his own person. One minute he can be talking seriously about his job, the next he can be seen laughing at a Youtube video while his cockatiel sits on his shoulder.  I love that.
      The gentleness and competence of my husband.  Today I was tense over a Bible study of all things - was I doing it right? Should I change how we approached the lessons?  My husband massaged the tense muscles in my neck as he has had to do so many times over our 27 years of marriage and then wisely, quietly said, "Cathy, just let the Bible speak for itself.  Turn the study over to Jesus. It's His anyway."  And I felt wonder at the goodness of God in providing me with such a wise and loving best friend.
     This is the short list. There is a much longer one.
      Because the Creator God planned it that way - giving us multiple opportunities to glimpse His nature and to feel His joy as we journey through life.
      It's November, a time when we find ways to emphasize the giving of thanks.
      I've been challenged by Margaret Feinberg's Bible study to go beyond thanksgiving all the way to praise and  joy.
      I'd like to pass that challenge on to you as well.
      Ask God to show you the wonder around you and as He does, write it down.  If it's a glorious sunset, take a picture and tape it to your work desk. If it's something you've seen a thousand times but suddenly, God enables you to see how precious it is, journal about it.   And, yes, even sing to Him.  (Raindrops and laundry and birds on our shoulders...  Well, not quite Julie Andrews but... close... :)
      There is joy in the journey and this is a great month to look for it, to praise Him for it, and to share the wonder of it with others as well as with Him, the Giver of all good things. (James 1:17)

     
   
     
     
   

Not What but Who...

     This week I "got it"... sort of.
     Not sure if I can hold onto it - at my age holding onto things is harder than you might think :)
     Really, about all I can say is that for the first time in a long time, I lay awake until the wee hours of the morning, unable to sleep not because of stress but because of the wonder of God.
     I lay there pondering a rather remarkable answer to prayer and thinking, "This is not what God does. This is who God is."
     Yes, clearly God orchestrated things in order to answer a heartfelt prayer, many heartfelt prayers.  And He did it in a most unexpected way.  Yes, He did that.
     And really, normally, I stop at the "did that" part as in, "Wow!  Look at how God answered my prayer!"  In other words, I'm really, really thankful, maybe even awed by what I (or someone else) received.  But that is where my thought process stops. A kind of: Look-At-That-Blessing type of deal.
     Then there are other times when I sort of tip my hat to God on a deeper level (is there an oxymoron in there somewhere?) and say, "Wow!  Look at how God answered my prayer!" moving a little further along the learning curve of divine-love-responds-to-helpless-man.
     But the other night, as I contemplated some impossible juxtapositions of divine grace and human need, I suddenly leaped past point A and point B and arrived at point C.  "Wow!  This is Who God is!"
     I just kept thinking about the impossible juxtaposition of man-cries-out-and-impossible-things-happen-in-inexplicable-ways followed by the wide-eyed (mental) exclamation: That's God! That's Who He is!
     It's not so much about what He does as it is about Who He is.
     So who is He?
     He's the One who can transport a Jew named Phillip to meet up with an Ethiopian official who just happens to be reading a passage out of Isaiah that he doesn't understand.  What a coincidence!  Just when this international has a question about Scripture, here comes a Jewish man, a total stranger, who can explain that very  passage. And willingly does so.  And then baptizes him. (Acts 8)
     He's also  the one who can instruct a pagan God-seeker named Cornelius to send his servants to seek out an inferior (rough, crude) member of a subjugated race in order to find out who God is.
    Um, run that by me again?  Is that like a Japanese WWII military commander humbly seeking out a Chinese peasant in order to learn about the one true God? 
    Yeah.  Pretty much.
    But there's more.
    Because while the Roman hot shot is getting ready to contact a lowly fisherman named Peter, that same fisherman is being shocked out of his sandals by a divine directive telling him to reverse all his previous thinking and training about what is clean and unclean, spiritually acceptable and spiritually contaminated. As in, Heads up, Peter!  A despised Roman pagan is about to land on your doorstep (figuratively speaking) and you, Peter, are not only going to associate with him, you are going to welcome him, eat with him, teach him, and lead him to Me.  He's going to become your brother... (Acts 10 - loose interpretation... very loose...)
    And if that last seems a bit complicated to you, it's because... well,  it is. Seriously. That's not a kid's story.
     Two unlikely men whom God brings together; men who  have more barriers between them than say... Jewish Jonah and the bloodthirsty Ninevites?  Or Syrian Naman and his lowly Jewish servant girl? Or maybe Nebuchadnezzar and a captive no-body Jew named, um, Daniel?  Or perhaps a Philippian jailer and a couple of inmates named Paul and Silas?
    And I'm not even talking (yet) about taking a measly bit of bread and a paltry packet of  fish and feeding thousands of people with it.  Right now I'm just talking about how God brings the most unlikely of people together in the most precise timing imaginable in order to meet needs, yes, but also to say, "Woo who!  Did you catch that??  What I just did - um, do you know anybody else who can do that?  No?  Well, that's who I am. And, incidentally, I happen to  love you."
    Wow.
    This week I got that.
     Next week I hope I continue to do the same.
   

   
   
 
       

Please pray...

      Indomitable.
      One of our vocabulary words in home school for this past week.
      Would it be correct to say that my friend has an indomitable spirit?
      Right now she is in surgery.  And surgery under the best of circumstances can make for anxiety.
      But Angie has never lived under the best of circumstances.  When she was young, she was diagnosed with a progressive neuromuscular disease.  Now, at 42, she is frail and spends much of her time drawing one breath after another via a breathing machine.  She's been in a motorized wheel chair for so long that I don't even know if she remembers what it feels like to walk.
     But she knows what it feels like to laugh and she does that almost every day.
     She knows what it feels like to care and she reaches out to others every day, not only through her blog but through countless acts of compassion.  Seriously.  When I started collecting peanut butter for a food bank, Angie was the first to respond and she's been faithful to follow through for a year now.  She takes beautifully decorated cookies to her doctors and uses her blog to share what God is teaching her - and that covers a lot of ground as she is a willing student in God's school of Grace.
     She invites her friends and their children over to her home and loves watching the kids, yet she's never had any of her own. And I've never detected one iota of sour grapes over the things she doesn't have or never has had or has had to relinquish slowly over time although she would be the first to say that when she was younger, she went through some dark days.
     Yet I've only known her as a bearer of light. His light.
     Last year in the pre-holiday madness, about 5 days before Christmas, I went out to see Angie face-to-face for the first time. I was down, distracted  - definitely feeling rushed and a bit overwhelmed.  I intended to spend one hour with her and her caregiver, Karla. I spent two and when I got in the car I felt totally upbeat. I put some music in my CD player and reveled in the world around me.  I felt joy and decided to toss my must-do-Christmas-shopping- list out the window for the rest of the day. It proved to be a wonderful decision, to set aside the world's idea of Christmas and focus on God's. What a novel idea...
    That's the effect Angie has on me.
    Jesus told His followers that He came to reproduce His joy in them and to make their joy full. (John 15)
    Even in a wheel chair, I've seen that He can do that.
    Sometimes the joy comes in hilarious ways, with pithy comments about girl things, our spoiled pets, and/or the world at large.
    But always it comes.
    So I ask again, would it be correct to say that my friend has an indomitable spirit?
    I think it is.
    How her frail body can contain such a spirit, I don't know.  I only know that this morning she is undergoing surgery and for her, this is a huge thing to deal with.
     And so I'm asking: please pray for my friend, Angie.

Truly, He is...

        Friendship.
        This past weekend I went to a retreat with a friend whom I first met back in 1997, when we both lived on the same street and had young children.
        Looking back, I can see that our friendship was born out of  shared sorrow.  And it started with me reading the obituaries.
       Let me explain:  I lost my parents in Dec. 1995 and then about 11 months later had my own brush with mortality when the doctor thought I might have uterine cancer.  (Fortunately I didn't.)  However, about the same time that I was dealing with my own health issues, my neighbor and surrogate dad went on to be with the Lord.
      So 1995 through 1997 were, for me, filled with medical stuff, loss, and not a little trauma.
      I think all of this, in the providence of God, gave me a sort of "antennae" for others who were going through loss and/or medical woes.
      I don't normally read the obituaries but one day I did and I saw that someone on our street had died.  I didn't know the family but decided to take some food to them.  My next-door neighbor - the one who had just lost her husband - said that  she wanted to do something too so we both conjured up some food and then I took it down our street to the residence that had been listed in the paper.
    I remember to this day feeling a bit nervous, wondering how my unexpected presence on a strange doorstep would be received, etc.   I also remember vividly the door opening and two women standing there, one behind the other.  My yet-to-be-friend was the one standing behind; another relative was the one who had opened the door.  Grief was deeply etched on my  future friend's face and I instantly felt a kinship with her -  I could sooo identify!
     Fast forward to this past weekend - sixteen years later!  We got to be  roomies at a Christian retreat and during that time we laughed, cried, questioned, debated, and reminisced with each other and it was all - all-  a blessing.  Our kids are grown now, our hair is a little greyer now, and we are both acutely aware of how much time has swept under the bridge since we first met.
   At one point during the retreat, I thought, "Wow! Isn't it lucky that I happened to read the obituaries on the very day when the  article about my friend's mom was in it!  Look what came out of it - a lifelong friendship!"
   And then I  thought, "No,wait a minute!  Who am I kidding?  That was most definitely a God thing..."
   And then my heart lifted in praise. "Wow, God!  You orchestrated this whole thing!  Amazing!"
   Truly, He is...
 
   

No Small Thing...

      Little things, small decisions, spur of the moment impulses.  I don't know about you but my life is made up of these things. As a friend of mine used to say, "It's not the big things that get me down, it's that life is so daily..."  Indeed...

      Several years ago I was at the River Market, buying (ahem) chocolate - what else?  And as the people behind the counter waited on me, I looked at their countenances, listened to their erudite banter, and absorbed  the pithy, yet worldly messages on their tee-shirts and then thought about my own Christian tee-shirt.  Honestly, I was a little embarrassed. The young people at the bakery just had that "I'm a sophisticated intellectual" look about them while I... well, I was wearing an oversize tee-shirt (to camoflauge just how oversize I am) that said something like, "Jesus loves you!!"  Whew... glad I wasn't wearing my bright orange tee-shirt that said, "LIve so that the preacher won't have to lie at your funeral!"

     Really, as I stood there waiting for my chocolate chip scones to be sacked up, I felt... old.  Dumpy.  Banal.  Out of place.

     Then a little girl who clearly belonged to the River Market - as it turned out, her mom worked there in one of the kiosks - bounced up to the counter singing, "Jesus loves you..." in her high-pitched little voice.  The young people behind the counter obviously knew and liked her.  They teased her good-naturedly - how do you know He loves me?  Undaunted, she proceeded to give them the whole Gospel - not the PC version. They bantered back and forth a bit in what seemed to be a well-rehearsed routine that they all enjoyed.  She got a cookie  for her trouble as well as an admonition to be careful.  She smiled and told them she would be and then the little evangelist left, her curly long hair bouncing behind her.

   Out of that brief snippet of life came a much needed change of persepective.  I realized that instead of focusing on my own insecurities I should be focused on those around me -  wonderful human beings for whom Christ Jesus died.  In addition to that, I was reminded that I should be like Paul (no mean intellectual himself!) who was unashamed of the simple, unsophisticated Gospel message that  all Christ followers are called to share, regardless of age, size, or sophistication... Or even of whether we say it or, as the little evangelist did, treble it in the open market!

   So I decided to go to the River Market once a week (it's a tough life but someone has to do it!) and prayerfully do my shopping, asking God to give me opportunities to witness for Him if that was His will. If no opportunities arose, then would He at least guide my prayers so that I could effectively interceed for the strangers bustling around me..

   And then I was ready.  David went with me the first time and as we drove towards the market, I prayed outloud for guidance and wisdom, divine appointments if you will, and then qualified my prayers by telling David we might just end up silently interceeding and not see any sign of answers - in other words, we might just pray, shop, and come home with no evidence that God heard us.  But still, I assured my child, God would hear us and someday we would see the results, if not here then in Heaven.

     A hedge-your-bets type of instruction in faith from mother to son... ;)

     Right after we parked and entered the market, I saw a neighbor standing a few feet away from us.  Miss Sue was someone we delighted to know but I could see her any time - she just lived a few houses down from me.  Besides that, she was a devout Christian and I was on a mission to save the lost, right?  Plus I was supposed to meet another friend in about an hour and a half so time was at a premium.

  There is something else you need to know about Miss Sue - she is blind.  So there she was, cane in hand, standing with another lady, and it came to me that I could silently walk right past them and Miss Sue would never know. Seriously.  I  pondered on that and then decided to act on it. Since the other lady was a stranger, no one would ever know, no harm would be done. And I could talk to Miss Sue later.

   As I started to move past them, something inside reminded me that this was, um, actually a pretty tacky thing to do. Sigh...  So I stopped and greeted her; she smiled and introduced her friend to me. And then her friend said, "Do you have a car?"  I said that I did and the next words out of her mouth were basically:  "Sue is staying with me for the weekend; I have an apartment about six blocks from here.  The weather has been so unseasonably mild these past few days that Sue and I decided to walk to the market this morning.  It was so beautiful and neither of us realized  how hot it would be this afternoon.  Sue can't physically tolerate extreme heat and so we can't walk back to the apartment.  And we don't know of any busses running that way today.  Would it be possible for you to take us to my apartment?"

   This wasn't what I wanted to hear. I had just paid to park and taking someone to their apartment was not on my agenda.  However, what else could I do?  I told her that I was willing to take them home but that I had just arrived and really wasn't ready to leave yet.  They assured  me that was fine, that they were in no hurry, that they would just sit down and drink a coke,  and that I should take my time.

   Great...

   And then she said, "We just prayed together a  few minutes ago and asked God to send someone who could give us a ride home.  And then He sent you.  We're so grateful!   Isn't He good?"

   Ouch...

   Um...Gee.  I hadn't actually been thinking about Him at that moment in time.

   But, well.....yes, as a matter of fact, I had to agree.  God is good!

   Occasionally I set out to save the world. But it hasn't happened yet.

   The truth is: life is so daily.

   And daily He answers prayer.

   Daily He shows up in the small things.

   And when He does, it's no small thing....