A life built around Him

This was stuck on the bathroom mirror. It was on a card I sent them years ago, I guess my Mom couldn’t part with it……

This is in the corner by the microwave, right by a drawing I made (also years ago). This prayer just about spells out their life. They go from dawn to dusk watching my special needs niece. They are fatigued in body and soul most every day, but their house is still a place of peace and refuge for many of their friends and family and there is always a fresh pot of coffee for whoever drops by.

A reminder on the porch of who they serve……..and what He did for us all.

My Mom’s bookshelf. My Dad has several and spilled to overflowing in several places in their house, but hers is tidy and organized.

I think it is very important to have reminders in your home. I have several pieces of art and knicknacks in my own home, but the ones that give special comfort are the ones that remind me of who He is and that He is near, always.

And the last one, written in my Dad’s own hand……posted on the kitchen cabinet.

It’s always the lone bird that gets me

This message was tacked on the cupboard in my parents’ kitchen, in my Dad’s writing. He is having a hard time right now. Macular degeneration is making reading difficult. He has always found solace in the written page, in books. It’s always been a big topic of our discussions. It’s hard trying to support your family from far away. I walk around with a certain amount of guilt on any given day. I don’t know anymore how it would be to live without it. I guess you can get used to anything, just like my Dad says you can get used to bad eyesight and hearing loss.

Vacation may be over, but I still hear the crashing of the waves, and the sound of those silly seals barking in the sun on that dock. I still feel the cool of the grass my niece insisted I lay in. I hesitated, knowing Tyler poops there, but as children will she insisted that I share the joy of the moment. And I did.

I had forgotten how the grass speaks if you listen. And it’s a language only children and God can hear and some adults who have not let go of the wonder.

I remembered how she clung to my hand during Sesame Street live, and how small my Mom felt when I hugged her, not wanting to let her go, and going to breakfast with her and sharing a plate. And I smiled when I remembered my Dad and I cleaning the fish tank, spilling water and trying to scoop fish that didn’t want to be caught. And feeding my brother ice in the emergency room.

I wonder at the strange twists and turns of life, how all of a sudden the big brother can be the weak one you be the strong one.

It’s hard to fight for your family from a distance. Hard to help when miles stretch out long, between us but I try.

But I thank God that His arms are long and they reach far and wide.

So many times it’s not the grand chorus that does me in, but the solo. The lone bird that sings, that one note ringing out when all else is silent. The one that insists that there is always hope because with God there always is. Everyone has stuff. But the key is knowing God has you and He won’t let you go.

God astounds me, because He knows when I need to know that He still has me.

He speaks in those quiet moments when we kneel in between life and everything else, when the bell tolls the hours that you may not even hear, but you can feel the weight of just the same. When we are feeling weak and crumpled and useless. And helpless.

He will never turn away from humility. “But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.” James 4:6

For just a moment, I wanted to touch the last remaining embers of the time treasured. I wanted to hear the laughter, feel the peace, thank Him for the joy we felt, and how He was there with us all along.

As I sank to my knees, knowing there was not one thing I could do to hold time back, I touched Heaven instead.

It’s good to be home, and it will be good to go back next time. Until then, God keeps me. Keeps us all.

When the unexpected happens

It was supposed to be routine, but what happened wasn’t. My brother went in for a biopsy. The Doctor said some bleeding after the test was normal, not a major concern. We waited for news of how it went, and then I got the text. To come over alone. When I got there he was sitting on the edge of the bed looking for the Doctor’s number. Every number we called led to the medical group but not the office. I even googled it. Still same wrong number.

He said, in between trips to the bathroom….”I think I need to go back in.”

And because he lives close, I said I would run into town and go to the office myself and let them know he was coming back in. I ran home to pick up my Dad and he was already on alert, about to leave for my brother’s house himself. We drove crazy back to the office, where the confused girl at the desk said she would give the Doctor a head’s up that he was coming.

By the time we got back to my brother’s house, he could barely walk. There was no time for an ambulance. He stood up and almost passed out in the driveway. As we frantically adjusted the seats for him to fit in back, he kept calling out for us to hurry and I heard the panic in his voice. I stayed in back with him and Dad drove the short distance. 5 minutes felt like 30. I prayed we had time.

And that we wouldn’t get in an accident on the way.

The Doctor took one look at my brother’s ashen color and said, “I will meet you in the ER.” It was literally on the next street over. By the time we got there we were all scared and shaky, running on adrenaline. The attendant said, “Chair or gurney?”

And when he came around the back of the car with that chair that looked way too flimsy, I knew it wasn’t going to work. He was not a very big guy and my brother is. As we headed toward the door, me on one side and he on the other, he started to throw up, then he passed out cold.

It was then that everything started to get chaotic. It all felt surreal. I experienced how things can move fast but agonizingly slow at the same time. Nurses were giving orders right and left but no one was moving fast enough for us. I was still trying to hold him on the chair and so was the guy on the other side. I learned something that day though that I had always wondered about myself.

When it comes to someone I care about, I can do what I need to do.

I heard my own voice over and over, “We need help here, we need help here.” I heard one of the nurses say, “We’re losing him.”

I thought, “This is how it happens, just how fast.”

I fished his medical cards out with shaky hands and my legs felt wobbly. Later, as we all sat in the waiting room, my Dad said it.

“Where was my prayer? I prayed for a good outcome with no complications.” He said.

I said, “God isn’t a Genie, sometimes He answers a different way, but He always answers.” Then I thought of parents who pray for sick kids who don’t make it, and then I felt sanctimonious for saying it. “Sometimes, there just are no answers we can make sense of right now.”

I thought of how that morning it had all started so good. I thought of Lauryn as she came in smiling with the cake she made, and then all of a sudden none of us were there except my poor Mom and she was trying to pretend that everything was okay, trying not to scare her. She said later that it was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. And special needs kids have a kind of radar. They know when things are not right.

I thought of Lauryn losing her Daddy and how terrible it would be. She would not understand.

As soon as she could, her Mom came from her appointment and took over. She calmed her and us by sending photos from Funderland, one of her favorite places. But it was tinged with the unease of events that were still rolling by, better but still unsettled.

Family is the glue, that is what I kept thinking that whole day. And really, all of us are held together by our larger family, Gods.

Bind us together Lord, bind us together and bind us in Love. It’s what matters most when everything is going wrong.

My brother is okay, but awaiting results from the biopsy which is scary.

The Ocean sings a love song

I don’t know why, but each time I come here I am moved to tears…..and yesterday when I plopped down in the sand and watched dogs playing and owners losing themselves in the moment it happened again.

Last night as I watched the sun dip into that vast ocean I wished that everyone I cared about could be right there with us. Tears flowed as everyone gathered with cameras and IPhones aimed at the horizon to watch what God does each and every night, and yet here it seems even more Holy.

The events of the last few days replayed again and I called my brother just to tell him I wished he was there to see the beauty. I just really wanted to hear his voice. I am thankful I still can.

This post is short…..WIFI keeps going in and out and really, it’s okay.

I have one more day here and I intend to savor each and every Holy moment.

The ocean has another love song to sing and God is singing too.

With every crash of the wave upon the shore…….

Another Texas Memory

For those of you who didn’t read my last one, you can read it here. I have been capturing some memories for Elaine from when she spent summers in Texas visiting her Grandparents (and other relatives). I thought it would be fun to put myself squarely in the memory myself and write it as she remembers it. I got her Grandparents mixed up last time but this one is historically accurate. So here goes.

When my Grandaddy on my Mama’s side met Granny she already had five kids. Then they had 5 together and one died so that left 9 kids all together. After that he left the family and married another woman named Lou who lived in the same town. Needless to say his leaving the family sparked some very hard feelings all around from his kids, generations on down the line.

Lou had two kids of her own when they met and they had four more after they married. Sounds kinda one of those story problems we used to get in math class.

All this happened before I was born. That’s a lot of emotional drama to be plunked down in the middle of, but the only thing I really remember about it was my Grandma telling me, “You better not be calling Lou, (or that woman) Grandma.”

To her credit, Lou accepted us Grandkids as her own and I always remember feeling welcomed at their house. She had a big square farmhouse kitchen and she really knew her way around it. We had many a meal around that big old table. Lou always fed us well.

Their house wasn’t nearly as important as what lay around it to us kids though. In fact, if they had lived next to the Land of Oz it wouldn’t have been much more impressive to us as that big green vast wonderland that was the football stadium and the adjoining baseball park outside the back door.

My Grandad managed a semi-pro team so they lived right on the stadium grounds. Think, “Field of Dreams.”

To those of you who aren’t familiar with how important sports are in Texas, especially football, let me tell you, it is everything. Small towns like San Angelo were built and centered around football and baseball games. His training methods though, were a little unconventional.

On many a bright summer day, I can still remember him saying, “C’mon Elaine, we are gonna lay some pipe today.” That meant training day for the team. I would ride on the back of the jeep while the guys he coached would run behind it. Then he would throw the pipe down as they went and they would lay it.

Sometimes they would drop from sheer exhaustion in the heat. I would say, “Grandad, he’s lying in the grass lookin’ up at the sky.” He would say, “Don’t worry, he’ll make it.” And we’d go onto the next place and drop the next guy off. On the way back around the field he’d go back and pick them up. By then they would have staggered to their feet and reconvered enough for the next challenge.

All those guys had legs like tree trunks.

In those days athletes weren’t pampered, but we did consider them the celebrities of our town. Provided they survived Granddaddy’s training practices, that is.

Photo from public domain images

Riptide of love

God caught me by surprise me this morning.

That’s how the Holy Spirit works, like the wind, you never know when He might come (it’s part of the mystery)

His Spirit washed over me like a wave. It was unexpected and I almost couldn’t contain it.

Because how can you contain a God that even stones will cry out to?

How can I be anything less than an instrument of His praise from my first breath to my last?

Sometimes He gives me a glimpse…..just one is all it takes and I fall in love. All over again. He knows when I need assuring.

Just the fact that He does reveal Himself to me stuns me with silence but the next moment I want to pull my car over and jump up and down on the side of the road.

Our God is a shockandawe kind of God, powerful enough to calm the sea and taunt death.

He breaths fire from his nostrils and carries lambs on His shoulders and I can scarcely imagine the depths of His love and mercy.

He calms the sea and walks through walls like some kind of Superhero God.

He tames lions and turns people into pillars of salt, stops them in their tracks.

Yet He grips me in His gentle Hand like King Kong might hold a butterfly.

He allows me to feel the glow of His Holy fire from a distance because He knows too close would burn me like the sun.

I am blown away by the fact that He loves me and the timing He uses to let me know.

I was riding a wave, caught in the riptide of His love, I was surfing on a wave of fire.

Consuming fire and gentle whisper hung on a cross.

Satan thought He won that day, He was doing a victory dance over that one.

But he made a huge mistake by underestimating the power of love,

left out of the loop of God’s plan by his own failure to imagine what God might do to save us.

He didn’t think God would go through with it.

But He did.

Oh happy day.

Painting by Duane Scott

Getting away……and how art can move us beyond ourselves.

Last year around this time the calendar looked like this. And those were just the highlights. There was also the new job driving a school bus, and her Dad. Now her Dad is gone and her Mom is doing well in an assisted living community where half the time she thinks she is there to help out. Which probably makes her feel better about being there which is fine. And school is out for the summer.

As she looked at that calendar, she said, “No wonder I felt stressed.” I said, “It’s amazing you didn’t have a nervous breakdown.” She said, “I think maybe I did.”

It’s hard to know what to do when you have had a million things to do all at once and all of a sudden you don’t.

On the way to work this morning, I was surprised by the emotion that surged when the first notes of Ludwig van Beethoven’s – Fur Elise were played. If you don’t know it by the title, don’t worry neither did I. But when I heard the familiar tune I wasn’t prepared for the tears that swam in my eyes as I listened.

It reminded me of the time we went to the art exhibit and I paused in front of El Greco’s St. Peter in Tears, shell-shocked with emotion. I wasn’t prepared for the depth of sorrow I saw depicted in those eyes. From then on, I totally understood that seeing a Masterpiece in person is a form of worship not to the person who painted it, but to God himself for giving a gift of that magnitude.

What is it about true art, true beauty, that brings out emotions you didn’t even know were there? It makes us think of something beyond ourselves, something bigger which is truly and wholly good.

When emotions are held at bay for so long, sometimes you forget how to let them out but they come out anyway.

In five days we will load up the motor home and drive to California, unencumbered by anything. It’s been a long time.

In five days, I will get to see my Mom and hug her and make her feel like for a few days everything will be okay. I will clean up messes for her since no one ever does that, and I will cook and clean a bit for her, and it will make me feel good to do it.

I will hug my Dad and pray for his eyes, and hug him too. And hopefully we will walk the nature trail together.

And I will eat smushed up rainbow cake that Lauryn will more than likely want me to see first thing. I will savor every bite. I will savor every minute with her, swimming, playing, and having a tea party with her babies. I will hug my brother and we will laugh together and hopefully we will all forget our collective stress for a while and just enjoy being together.

And I will, when I get there, dip my feet in the ocean no matter how cold it is and feel sand under my toes and feel ocean waves wash over my soul again. And eat lots of seafood. I will greet all these things as one greets a very old familiar friend. Elaine and I will walk on the beach and savor a victory knowing that because in Him, we have it. In Him, all things are held together.

I will try my best to put my natural state of anxiety behind me this week and look forward to the journey. Because that’s half the fun.

Stop, look and listen

Oh Lord, as I sat and watched You grab your paintbrush and color the domed ceiling of Heaven once again, I was mesmerized by your beauty. I watched how the clouds caught the light and It happens just the same way every morning and it’s always a miracle because You have placed us here. Apart from Your will we would never draw a single breath.

The birds glory in the light with chorus, each one unique to themselves. Yet we still try to sing another’s tune without mastering our own. You say, “Sing the one I made you to sing and sing it well. That bit of glory is the bit of Heaven you came to earth with.” As the wind blows on a cinder and it glows bright orange, that’s our life when He places His Spirit within us.

I think of my puny worries that rise up along with the sun and I say, Lord, what about this, what about that? You say to each one, “I got that, and yeah, I got that one too.” If I can make this sky each and every day, why do you worry?

Therefore I say unto you, be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment? Matthew 6:25

There is so much unrest in the world today and we all feel it. It’s as if we are all collectively bracing ourselves for the next calamity……..we hold our breath, breathing shallow and rushing here and there and then we let it out when something causes us to stop in our tracks……a sunset….a child playing in a fountain….flowers waving in the breeze.

Those are God’s stop signs. So today Lord, I will try to remember you have it all under control. I will stop, look and listen.

For you.

I dreamed a dream

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go fill in one more blank on my sermon notes. I couldn’t listen to one more sermon. Not this Sunday. I felt full to the brim of being edified, pumped up, praised up. I thought……what if. What if I devoted that hour to going out and asking God who He wanted me to help that day. Who he wanted me to pray for.

What if I gave Him full permission, power, control. What if I gave Him his authority, his Lordship. His rightful place in my life. I wonder how different my walk with Him would look?

I dreamed of what would happen if I stopped doing church and took the church out to the world. I dreamed of thousands of people spilling out onto the streets. Churches set up in parks feeding the homeless, and places where the lost and lonely gather.

I dreamed a dream of empty pews.

And then I dreamed of people streaming back into church with new purpose. Remembering why they were there. I dreamed that churches would look more like hospitals and a place where you could always feel welcomed, loved, accepted.

I remembered how Jesus sent them out two by two. I imagine how excited they all must have been, buoyed up by a fresh dose of Holy Spirit power, looking forward to doing and seeing wondrous things, miracles. I wondered at Jesus’ timing when after he got done instructing them He added this dire footnote:

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

“Wow, Lord…..I can’t wait to go now!” Jesus can be a little scary. And honestly? A bit of a wet blanket at times. But He’s also never boring. Following Jesus is anything but boring. And follow is just what He asks of us. No matter where that road leads.

There’s a time for everything in its season, and sometimes you need to go to church and be built back up after the world has used you for its punching bag, I know, I’ve been there. There is a time for being mended, and I have had holes in my heart mended in church more times than I can count. But then I get comfortable. I get complacent. And I sense Jesus tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Now that I have mended you, go mend someone else.”

Sometimes the best way to stay afloat yourself is by helping someone else.

I think if the gospels and Jesus are not just a little disturbing then I wonder if you have really grasped the full message. If Jesus is not just a little unsettling then I wonder if I really know what he requires of me. Follow Me. Follow me even though you are afraid of where I might take you.

That is scary for a clinging to the side of the pool person like me.

But Jesus is a God of His word. He said He’d never leave me and I believe Him. And in a way, I am thankful for my fear for it keeps me close to Him.

I dreamed a dream. But I think it may happen.

I have been reading about what it really means to follow Jesus in the book Follow Me by David Platt. I highly recommend it. Not very comfortable reading but sometimes we need that.

Here and now

Forgive me, Lord

This is supposed to be our time, but so far the world looms large. I am holding stray thoughts at bay, they crash through like static on the radio. I have scarcely given you a thought. My mind is like a freight train barreling down the tracks at full throttle. I chase every stray thought and follow each one down every possible scenario.

But now, none of that matters. Only your prescence matters. Here and now.

Sometimes the best way to pray is to honor you with my silence so here it is Lord. Fill my empty with You. Right now only one thought breaks through…….. There is none like You.

Sometimes my worship feels like lip syncing for You, Lord. How can I dare to sing about giving my all to you when in fact I am only giving you part,

some. You deserve more than my leftovers.

Thank you Lord, for giving me what I don’t deserve.

Pure grace.

Lori's Prayer Closet

"And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done is secret, will reward you……"Matthew 6:6

Author: lorisprayercloset