Wish you were here……God

The God of the Universe thinks about you. Not just once, not just every now and then, but several times a day. Let that thought stop you in your tracks today. Let it stun you. Let it fill you with wonder.

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. Psalm 139:1-4

And if he could send a postcard from Heaven, it would have your name and below that, “Wish you were here” or one I like even better…..”Can’t wait to see you ____” Fill in your own name there.

Just imagine how excited He must feel when He knows another of His children will get to see everything He has prepared……….It’s like that feeling when you buy someone you care about the perfect gift and you absolutely can’t wait until they open it.

God is ready. But He can’t show you quite yet He’s still preparing it, and you.

When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. Jesus

Consider that today can be the first gift of your new life, open it. And don’t forget to thank Him, even if it’s only a pair of socks, cause socks from God are still a pretty neat gift, especially when you think that everyday from now on it just gets closer to the really Big Gift.

You know the one. Remember Christmas? You had all those little gifts, practical things like pajamas and sweaters? All along you had your eye on that BIG gift in the corner. And really, your parents did too.

They were saving the best for last.

So is He.

When everything is hanging by a thread

When your Dad calls and says, “Can you pray for me? I am having pain in my knee and back, and my good eye is giving me problems……just pray, please.”

Be still……

When there is yet another shake up at work and you wonder if this is the time……time to move back home.

Be still and know…..

When people have haven’t been a part of chaos for two years decide they want to make trouble?

Be still know and know that I am God….

When sore throats just don’t go away and you have a fever blister the size of Texas? (Poor Elaine)

Be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations…..

When a troubled son won’t talk…..

Be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations…..I will be exalted in the earth.

And this, always this:

God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging.

All selections from Psalm 46

Linking up with Sandra for Still Saturday

Calling a Truce

I tugged at my hair and frowned in the mirror. Then I remembered I couldn’t frown because that’s bad for the furrow between my eyes. I lift my eyebrows as if to iron it out. I can’t look too close at the things that are changing more with each passing year.

I apply makeup furiously and with a vendetta against the things I am trying to cover up. I do my usual squint in the mirror, my usual way of addressing mirrors ever since I was in fifth grade when my Mom let me start using pancake makeup to cover up my early acne.

In many ways, I am still the girl behind the curtain of hair on my first visit to the dermatologist office, all these years later. I look for the seat against the window, not facing it. Those visits lasted years and took me to some dark places.

I thought I could make myself disappear if I lost enough weight.

When I finally emerged at 25, by God’s grace and healing and my parent’s prayers, I entered into a foreign and wonderful place I had never been before. It was my own personal Woodstock. I waded in at first, then I plunged in with both feet. I exulted, I danced, I splashed, I reveled in my new-found joy and freedom.

I got my hair cut and looked out at a new and wonderful world. I ran my fingers over my face and down my neck where there were no more lumps. Praise God. For the first time in my life I felt beautiful.

It was a pretty good run from then on. Until lately that is.

At 50 I was all confident and unafraid, ready to take on the next phase of life. At 53 I am entering into a peculiar stage. It’s not so much fun anymore. Gravity and years are tugging at me. Simple tasks result in stupid injuries.

But from today on, I am calling a truce with myself and my body. I will forgive it for aging. I am going to fall in love all over again. With myself. Cause God said I could.

This….day….I….will….remember.

Each time I get angry at the extra pounds pressing at my clothes, I will remember this post. I will not think of it as my body betraying me, but reminding me that I have to work a little bit harder. When I look at my upper arms I won’t pinch angrily at the extra flesh, remembering how firm and muscular my arms used to be.

And when I look at the wrinkles on my skin, which to me are looking more like trenches, I will try not to dream of winning a trip to the plastic surgeon or running to get laser treatments. I will not hate my extra sun spots and think of them as defects but friendly freckles, and I will let my arms go free from sleeves and I will wear shorts and enjoy it.

I will love my legs, knowing that underneath they are the same legs as when I could point a toe and see muscles pop like a ballet dancer. I can still use them to walk fast and even run when my back doesn’t give out.

I will not dread the swimsuit season. I will not allow it to give myself permission to hate my body or berate myself for how lazy I have gotten over the winter, I will use it as extra motivation to improve and make better food choices.

I will remember my re-birth, both of them. And live the truth that God has called me wonderfully made, and good, and yes, beautiful. And when I love myself, I am not only praising what He made, I am praising Him too.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:14

I will from this time forward, look to my beautiful older sisters who dress young and act young. I will see their radiant faces in my mind when I am tempted to pick up the barbed chains of self-flagellation.

And last but not least I will let my inner beauty shine so bright it’s the first thing people notice about me.

And starting today, I will hug myself in the mirror instead of frowning or squinting.

Because I love the me God created.

What looks like wonder on an ordinary day

I pulled the bread out of the cabinet to make toast, and watched the bread slide down with a metallic click. I thought, I need a special plate today. Sometimes you need to feel like each day is worthy of celebration.

I pulled the pink plate from the cupboard and the memory floaded in before I could stop it. My Mom and I had decorated her kitchen table with this glassware complete with goblets and lace tablecloth and flowers at each place setting. I don’t even remember what the occasion was and it doesn’t matter now. I have been missing her.

I cried all through my toast.

I wonder if she knows how my heart is bound up with hers and how often I think of her a hundred little moments every day. She was the first one to teach me about the small wonders. I worry about when I will lose her. I worry that I can’t help her more. I know how long her days are, how they’re filled with serving others, with few moments for herself.

I remember the last time I was home and I fixed her lunch, she was so thankful……for that one small thing.

I went about the day feeling her nearness. You feel the impact someone has had on your life when hard times hit and you realize you’ve silently picked up the baton they’ve passed you without even knowing it.

I was finding peace in the tasks……the folding of the clothes, making up the beds, watering the plants. The peace in going on, living out hope in my actions.

She has never let me forget that we are a people who have passed from death to life, and for that there is always a reason for joy. It’s the grafting into our hearts this one thing that fans the flame of wonder more than any other.

If you suddenly found out you didn’t have the cancer they thought you had it would be easy to find the wonder in all those little things we may even think of as mundane.

All her friends and family have heard her say many times, “If you can’t find anything to laugh about you might as well go out behind the garage and shoot yourself.” That’s assuming the garage is in the back of the house, I am guessing.

Last night I shared with Elaine what I was going to write about today. She was taming down her inflammed throat with a popsicle and vigorously nodded her head. When she could talk, the tears that had yet to come since her Dad’s death filled her eyes.

She told me how one of her co-workers had come up to her and said, “You are a Godly woman, and God is with you. He will never give you more than you can handle.” Sometimes you just need that affirmation.

Personally, I believe that God gives us more than we can handle just so we’ll have to lean on Him.

Earlier in the day, she was sitting in her bus, sick, tired, grieved and weary-worn, when a little cactus wren landed on her side mirror and stared at her and sung his heart out. A little spark of hope just when she needed it most.

He uses common, ordinary, everyday things to speak to us, just like He uses common, ordinary, everyday us to do extraordinary things through Him.

Things like pink plates and silly little birds.

And you and I.

Thank you Margaret Feinberg for this wonderful book, I am sorry to see it end, but I will do my best to keep the wonder alive and tell everyone I know about this book!

When God sounds like a Jewish mother

Days like today it seems like praying amounts to throwing a cup of water into the ocean. All around me, everyone I am close to is in some kind of crisis mode. I don’t mean things like your car wouldn’t start or you didn’t get the grade you thought you deserved on that test. I mean big things. Life altering things. Problems so big they actually swallow everything else up and leave you reeling, trying to catch your breath and recalculate the direction of your life.

Problems that eclipse all the regular normal day-to-day life as you know it.

Right now, if my heart could make a sound, it would be like that dove I hear crying right at this very moment outside this window.

I am in here right now, in my prayer closet. My little shed where so much happens. My back is having some kind of a spasm today and after trying to sit unsuccessfully in this chair, I grasp the table and stagger to my feet.

Suddenly I hear God sounding very much like a Jewish mother in my head. “So quit complaining, already. You just finished saying how great the need was, so you can still kneel right? Is there anything wrong with your knees? Are they broken? Oy vey….these kids I have to deal with.”

This alone proves how much of a healthy sense of humor God has. He had me there.

It’s not that I know much about Jewish mothers mind you, but I have my own Mom who never fails to remind me how good I have it and how others don’t when she catches a whiff of anything close to me feeling sorry for myself.

I glimpse the globe which for a reason that will soon be apparent, didn’t make it to storage. I slid it up to where I was kneeling so I could see it, this world that God so loves. I touched that globe, and then God revealed to me what it was there for in the knot of tears that formed around my throat and threatened to spill over.

Sometimes God uses props. I layed both hands on it then, and I prayed for everyone in my life, and then the world too.

I thought of Moses and his staff, Jeremiah and his linen belt. Me with my forehead now resting on the globe, in this little prayer shed, in this town, on this planet. And then I felt just a little bit like God must feel when He looks down on this earth, knowing He could change it all in an instant, waiting for us to do what we expect Him to. He has given us everything we need to help, to heal the ocean of pain, but too often we look to Him because it’s so much easier to blame someone else.

God is an easy target.

Sometimes I think we read the verse about how He so loved the world and we leave it right there in that past tense. The truth is, He is actively loving it still. He never stopped.

Each and every day when the sun comes up He proves it all over again.

All these things have to play out in each of our lives. Next year it may be something entirely different, but God will still be the same.

He is after all, the God of yesterday, today and forever.

And even if it sometimes feels useless to pray? It never is.

Because He hears every one.

And sometimes He uses props to prove His point.

Evening Benediction

I end the day with a bit of watering…..summer is coming and the desert is already thirsty, almost as if it’s in anticipation of scorching relentless merciless rays it drinks. I watch the ground soak it in and it makes me thirsty too, so I pause to tilt back the Dasani. I drink it in as greedily as the plants. I guess this is what you call puttering in the yard. And it’s a good way to end the day.

I go in and pull shades up to let a bit of the sunset in and turn on the evening lights and then I go back outside and watch the birds do their nightly crisscrossing to and fro across the sky. Silently the sky speaks volumes.

I sit and watch the show and I can’t seem to stop.

A day ends, a life ends, both quietly, both almost without notice.

One last glory in the sky, one breath you’re there, the next you’re gone. I marvel at how quickly the earth swallows up our memory.

Almost as easy as crashing waves washing away the castle you just spent an hour building.

Some go with fanfare, headlines, processions and some go quietly but none go unnoticed by God. Ever.

I watch the sky bleach color, first gray and now one last splash of pink before darkness swallows it up. The birds are silent now. They know the proper way to bring an evening in. I wish I could see them tucked in their boughs. Not for the first time, I wonder if any of them lose their balance and plummet to the ground as they drift off to sleep, like I do sometimes sitting upright.

I close the cover of my Ipad as well as my eyes and say a prayer for all the heartache in the world, for loved ones near and far. It’s what I do when I can’t do enough.

It’s my benediction, my way of honoring a man I knew for twenty-four years. A man who liked to wear cowboy boots and stetson hats once upon a time, and was known to have a temper, but could fix anything as long as he had a can of WD40. And he always had several.

And who also was known to have a soft heart when you least expected it.

Feeling a bit like Jesus

Yesterday, I felt a little bit like Jesus must have felt. I felt an ache for humanity. I’m not sure why I feel this way some days more than others. I think it must be because I am watching someone slip away and it’s not pretty. It’s not slipping away quietly, it’s more like hanging on for dear life. I have never watched something like that before.

Lately every time I turn around, something else stands as a reminder of how quickly this life is passing by. A memorial service on Saturday……and then this week, my Mom lost two more friends. My brother said when he heard, “Well, now he can see his son Royce again.” I had forgotten that his son had passed away at 16, the same age as my brother was. So many years ago now.

As I went about my day yesterday, I somehow felt people instead of just seeing them.

At the car wash, I saw a man checking the trash cans. When he caught my eye, he looked a little sheepish and I looked down, embarrassed for him, saddened. I wondered what led him to this point. When he passed me, he gave me a smile and said, “How many people look at your car and yell Slugbug?” I said, “Many…..” and gave him a smile. There was so much more I wanted to say.

That’s one of the reasons I want to keep my car.

And then I had a wild urge to ask the person next to me pumping gas if he knew Jesus. So what if he thinks I’m crazy?

Maybe being a little bit crazy and saying something is more sane than knowing people are going to hell all around me and acting like it’s no big deal.

My Grandpa used to go up to strangers and ask that all the time. He died when I was 2. Oh how I long to meet him in Heaven. I hope he will be one of the first I see.

At the store I saw a really, really big lady in one of those ride-around carts. I am not happy to say my first thought was tinged with judgment. Then I said a silent prayer of forgiveness and gave her a smile. I have a feeling maybe she doesn’t get many. She gave me a beautiful smile back. My heart panged.

And my heart kept panging all the way home. And I finally cried because of what we are going through right now with Elaine’s Dad. I hadn’t until then.

The truth is, none of us knows when God will call us to hang up our hat for good on this earth, but what I do know is that this life lasts about as long as a daffodil, here today and gone tomorrow, and hopefully with Him.

Let us treasure what we have.

Let us treasure who we have.

Let us bring Heaven to earth by putting aside all our disagreements and hurts, our disappointments and failures to love each other well aside.

Because it’s all just too short.

“I, even I, am he who comforts you.
Who are you that you fear mere mortals,
human beings who are but grass,

Isaiah 51:12

Grace Dispensers

Linking up with Duane Scott and Shelly Miller today, join me there too?

We sat outside on the front porch of the carehome, she, her Mom and I. Another lady in a wheelchair came out for a smoke. E. helped her find her lighter. We were commenting on different cars that came by, talking about nothing in particular. The lady in the wheelchair was punctuating our last words with, “Uh huh…..and Yes.”

A cement truck went by and E. told the lady next to us that she used to drive one, in her words, “When I was young and too stupid to be scared.” Her Mom, ever the harbinger of goodwill and bolsterer of egos says, “Now you’re old and stupid.” I blew out a breath……The verbal assaults and barbs she always had at the ready never failed to shock me. I guess a lifetime of negativity doesn’t die easily, even with Alzheimer’s.

It was the one thing that was most difficult when her Mom lived with us.

Ever the contradiction in terms, this was the same Mom who cried after she read the story I had written about her own daughter’s years driving a cement mixer. How she gained the trust of the men by applying herself to being the best driver there was, even so far as having contractors request her for the most difficult jobs.

I snuck the words out under my breath, “This would be almost bearable after a couple of Coronas.” She snorted a laugh.

After that, we went to see her Dad. As I witnessed her attending to him, I couldn’t help remembering the paranoia and the padlocked doors, the way he threatened his own daughter with violence. Things I won’t even talk about here.

And even though you know it’s the dementia talking, it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

That was also the same man who went with us when we put E’s 18-year-old cat down. He cried harder than any of us.

Day in and day out, for years I have watched her be a dispenser of mercy and grace to parents who were never there for her. And each day she refills her cup from a Holy fountain that never runs dry. She shoulders her grief and sadness courageously and I know she doesn’t tell me everything. Because then the dam would break and run over and she couldn’t continue to do what she does.

This is the kind of living lesson you could never get sitting in church, it’s only in the deep trenches where God meets you at the bottom, when He smiles and hands you a shovel.

One day not too long ago, her Dad said he wanted his beard shaved. (He doesn’t trust the aides to do it). I honestly don’t know if I could have put my Jesus sandals on for that one, but she did. It was as she finished that he said the five words she quite possibly had never heard before.

“You are a good daughter.”

And sometimes when you’re at your weakest, God sends His confirmation that He is paying attention. That He approves.

One day it was love letters in the parking lot of the nursing home. And yesterday it was two snow-white doves that landed on each side of her school bus.

The driver behind her was incredulous. He had never seen anything like it. He told her they landed, one on each side right before they all took off for the morning run.

And if that weren’t enough confirmation?

As she pulled in the driveway yesterday there was another one, also snow-white. We have scads of doves around here, but never have I seen one while one let alone three.

No one can convince me that the Holy Spirit wasn’t masquerading as those white doves. I know it.

Help me Lord to be more like my friend who keeps on refilling her cup and offering it back to the One who is worthy, even if it hurts. Each day looking to You for a fresh supply. Because it isn’t just a one time thing.

Along the way I discovered a facet of faith I never noticed before, the truth that forgiveness is not an action as much as a discipline. A solo acknowledgment of absolution or single act of disentanglement from the situation wasn’t enough. Margaret Feinberg.

All around us there are living lessons to be learned. But we can’t learn the lessons God has for us we are so caught up in rights and wrongs and who is deserving and who is not. We lose sight of the Grace that He continues to pour out on us every day.

Help me be a Grace dispenser Lord.

Fearfully and wonderfully made

As I sit in prayer I listen to birds sing the day in and not for the first time I think, they have it right. I pour my coffee and I wonder how many in the world are doing the same thing right now, but they never taste it. They sip but don’t savor and then on to the next thing.

I suppose I am one of the lucky ones. When you have lost suddenly in your life it tends to change your perspective. You know just how fast it can all be gone so you grab each day with both hands, you grab grace because you know it’s because of grace we’re all here at all.

And you also learn how to see and embrace the wonder in each new day. The fact that God is in it is all the reason you need. Just take one aspect of your body, or one aspect of creation. Just think what a symphony of coordination has to happen between your brain and your legs to get up and cross the room. Or for your eye to work properly. How can this not be enough to agree along with the Psalmist that we are FEARFULLY and WONDERFULLY made?

As Margaret Feinberg says so succinctly in her wonder-filled book, Wonderstruck:

God extends endless invitations to encounter him, yet too often we sleep straight through. Unconscious of the life God wants for us, we slumber in the presence of the sacred and snore in the company of the divine. We remain asleep while God roosts in our midst.

Just Saturday, I attended a memorial service for a dear friend’s husband. He was only 6 years older than me. As the pictures flashed on the screen, snippets of his life, it was obvious that he was one of those for whom the world held much wonder, his was a life not wasted. Sad as it was for the ones left behind, they have the comfort of knowing that. And knowing that now, He sits in the presence of wonder we can scarely imagine, at the feet of Jesus. That is the most precious thing we can leave our loved ones.

I want to give others that gift. I want to give God that gift. I want Him to know how grateful I am for every moment He gives me. I think that’s one of the best ways we can honor God and be a blessing to those around us. When we open each other’s eyes to that wonder all around us, we are doing the work of the Kingdom.

Each and every day, God is telling us to look up, look out. Nature is one of the biggests ways He waves His hands to get our attention.

Just now, almost to prove my point, a hummingbird hovers in mid-air, and I see the way he catches the light. That little heart beating at an improbable 1,260 beats per minute I wonder how such a small little creature can teach such a big lesson.

If just we open our eyes long enough to see it.

You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

Psalm 139:1-6

Angels on the Hood

As I was writing my post from this past Wednesday, all that reminiscing put me in mind of the afternoon Elaine got baptized. There is a little state park where the Mokelumne River meanders through in California, and that’s where church members and assorted others drove on a warm summer day in July.

We sang songs on the shore in the glow of the afternoon sun, graced by the slanting shadows of the trees and listened to Pastor Ken’s short message as he stood thigh deep in the water with his big black Bible opened, as the faithful waded in.

Elaine’s folks were there wandering around not sure what to do, clearly out of their comfort zone but there nonetheless and that’s what mattered. Her Mom couldn’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would get “in that nasty dirty water.”

Baptism never fails to move me, especially when adults take that step. You can almost see all the junk in their lives in past tense in their eyes right before they go under. They’ve made the decision and they have counted the cost and put themselves in a pretty vulnerable place. On top of that, everyone else is standing around dry and you are about to get soaking wet in public with clothes on. That seems a bit unnatural all by itself.

The day of her baptism I gave her a little Bible inscribed with the date and her name. And when her truck was stolen a few years ago she was more upset about losing that than anything else.

That little Bible represented a lot.

She likes to rib me about being baptised in a warm baptismal where my Pastor wore fishing waders. She thinks hers is somehow better because that’s the way John the Baptist did it and also because she braved the cold water. He is her favorite Bible character after all.

But when she gets serious and talks about that day you don’t have to wonder about what it meant and still means to her. She gets a certain light in her eyes and a softness in her voice. It was the starting of a life newly filled with hope. Filled with Jesus.

But I digress.

It was getting dark by the time we headed home. I was driving her 1990 Dodge Caravan. She was riding shotgun and my Mom and Dad were in the back. Suddenly I see something that almost looked like a very tall person lying crossways in the lane directly ahead of me. It was, in fact, a large roll of carpet.

With traffic on both sides zooming by there was absolutely nowhere to go.

She must have seen the panic on my face and the desire to slam on the brakes. “Hang onto the wheel and keep going!” She said. So I did. I gripped the wheel and sailed over it. In the rear view mirror I saw my Mom and Dad’s heads pop up simultaneously and hit the ceiling.

Now the carpet was caught in the undercarriage of the van and we were dragging it.

And no one would let me off the freeway.

Elaine said, “Just put your blinker on and get over, they’ll move.” I did and they did.

By the time we pulled off the freeway the carpet was smoldering and we could see flames. Now, my friend is one of those who can assess a situation and know exactly what needs to be done, as well as successfully delegating others, all while remaining calm and in control. Unlike me.

In seconds she had my Dad in the driver’s seat waiting for direction as to when to hit the gas and my Mom and I bouncing the backend of the car while she kept a firm hold on the carpet.

When we finally dislodged it my Dad said, “I can’t believe I just obeyed those orders without question, I’m a Master Sergeant, I am used to giving orders not taking them.”

We all took a few deep breaths, thanked God, and stood around for a few minutes and marveled at how disastrous it could have been.

But I know why it wasn’t.

It was those hood angels riding on top of the van.

photo credit: google images, Caswell State Park

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