On Christmas trees and such…..

Christmas 2011 011

I walk around flipping switches and lights blaze from every corner. But when I flip that switch and they come on? I smile, because I think of the light of Christ that shines brightly in my heart. Because the truth is, sometimes you just need a little bit extra light to dispel the darkness. When I see those lights, inside and out I remember that no matter what else is going on, the light of Christ always outshines the darkness.

Every……single…..time.

Oh, I have heard all the arguments line by line, telling me how Pagan it is, how there is no basis in Scripture for this celebration, after all, the ancient church didn’t celebrate it. They have tried to shame me into unplugging. But so far, it hasn’t worked. And, yes, the light of Christ is already blazing forth in my heart. I shouldn’t need this extra, and really need doesn’t have anything to do with it. I am still unmoved by all the arguments against it. Personally, I believe that Jesus nailed all that other stuff to the cross along with Himself.

It all goes back to intent of the heart. I say, if you are persuaded that it really is wrong, then not to do so is right. Your conscience is clear and you are doing what you believe God wants you to do then God bless you for it. But if you want to celebrate it, means go buy another tree and another string of lights and blaze on and God bless you for that. God looks at the intent of our hearts my friends.

And His blood and His grace covers us all.

As I go around this house this morning, I smile when I see the lights. I know what they are for and who they represent. I know my Savior and He’s in the world today. Lights or no lights.

Meanwhile today, we have an appointment scheduled that will determine when and where Elaine’s Mom will get placed. It is time, and it was the hardest phone call she ever had to make.

And there is a Christmas trip waiting in the wings of doubt……to go or not to go? I think of how Elaine put up lights outside yesterday when it was the last thing on God’s green earth she felt like doing. She felt the cloud of today’s appointment over her head, looming. And yet she put lights up, and the Nativity……and we laughed because every year we scratch our heads because we have to stop and think how the interlocking pieces fit together. And in the end, she was glad she did it.

And in life, just like Christmas, no matter what ever else is going on….that light keeps on shining in the darkness, and the darkness can do nothing but flee.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5

Just Believe

 

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You have everything you need…..if you just believe………”Believe” from Polar Express

What is it about Christmas that has the power to conjure up our most tender and joyful memories, or deepest regrets of all that we wished for, but never received? What makes us even as grown adults long for it still. What about it evokes such longing in our hearts and brings the faint possibility of hope in mankind when everything we see on the news seems to defy it?

Because deep in our hearts, we know that the hope of Christmas is real.

I don’t have to stick a sign in my yard that tells me Jesus is the reason for the season because I already know it. And the world knows it too. You don’t have to be raised in church to know whose birth we celebrate. 

December 1st is the day I give myself permission to open the floodgates on celebrating. The outside Nativity will go up, and the bare corner awaits the main tree. The cats are happy with the extra things to play in and around and each year they love to roost under the tree. They think  it’s their own personal forest.

And each year hope is kindled anew.

This morning I listened to the Christmas CD I made last year. The second song is “Believe” from the Polar Express. I think of what my Dad told me once….”The kid in that movie is me.” He told me how every year for him Christmas started the same way, full of hopes and dreams, and every year it ended with his Mom and Dad getting drunk and yelling and screaming.

And then I think of Elaine, who had every toy she ever got taken away or broken by her oldest brother. She could never count on it being there, she could always count on it being taken.

And the little girl on her bus yesterday who told her: “I may get to see the Christmas lights, if my Mom and Dad aren’t fighting this year.” Then she went on to describe how every year she goes and visits Santa at the North Pole. She asked Elaine, “Have you ever been?” Like it was the most normal thing in the world. When Elaine asked her how she went, she said, “Well, first we take the car, then we take a plane, then we take the train to meet Santa, and he always gives me a hug.”

Her heart melted, of course.

In light of all that, I was reduced to a puddle of tears when I listened to the song this morning, beautifully sung by “my celebrity boyfriend” Josh Groban. His voice just does things to my heart, and of course it doesn’t hurt that he looks that way.

But here is the true reality of Christmas, and why it never has to disappoint, ever again:  

The scripture says, “Whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.” Romans 10:11

Every deepest longing we ever had can be found in the person of Jesus Christ. He is able to fulfill our every expectation, our every hope, because He is a living hope. You can buy everything under the sun, but if you don’t have Christ, you don’t have Christmas.

It doesn’t have to matter if we never got that red bicycle, if we have Christ, we have it all. So I am going to celebrate with gusto and lift my voice along with the angels…..

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:11

And each and every day, He is born in our hearts anew……

And a very Happy Birthday today to my niece from her Auntie Lori! Ten years ago today you were born and worked your magic on all our hearts. I hope you enjoy your box of purple gifts!  I love you and miss you.

Make God a part of your day

Are you making God a part of your plan today? You are in His plan, and thoughts…….This is what the Bible says:

“Evening and morning and at noon, I will complain and murmur, and He will hear my voice.” Psalm 55:17 NAS

“Thou hast taken account of my wanderings; put my tears in Thy bottle; Are they not in Thy book?” Psalm 56:8 NAS

“You know when I sit and when I rise; you percieve my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down.” Psalm 139:2,3

“See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.” Isaiah 49:16

Get up early, find some time, get alone with the One who wants to know you……I am convinced that the heart that honestly seeks Him, finds Him. Just talk to Him, prayer is just that, talking to Him like you talk to your best friend. Pour everything out in your own words. He likes plain honest talk and He doesn’t care if you leave out the Thee’s and Thou’s, He just wants real honest prayer from your heart. He already knows your innermost thoughts, but it is amazing how much better you feel when you tell Him anyway!

Thank you, Lord for meeting me this morning. Thank you that I am always on Your calendar, even if You are not always on mine.

I love you, God.

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The Gift of Laughter

A joyful heart is good medicine, But a broken spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22

Have you ever seen someone sitting together in a restaurant and they look like they never ever laugh? I was blessed enough to have been raised in a household where laughter was always present. I truly believe it is one of the best gifts a parent can pass onto a child. My Dad and I were notorious for getting in trouble for laughing when we weren’t supposed to. My Mom used to separate us in church. Invariably we would see the same exact thing and that would start an avalanche of uncontrollable laughter. We went to a very somber Baptist church. I think they really thought laughter was a sin, and especially laughing in church.

The church I attend now actually sometimes uses props and videos from comedians…I can appreciate that.

There is plenty to be serious about these days. But there are plenty of things to laugh at as well, just look around! Elaine and I laugh at something just about every day, though sometimes she thinks my slapstick humor is a bit sick. I can’t help it if I think it’s funny when people fall down or trip over carpets. Of course only if someone doesn’t get hurt. I figure if someone is doing a stunt on their own volition, then I have the right to laugh at them. Hey, I laugh when I fall down too. Let’s face it, Charlie Chaplin didn’t get to be a star because he shot out one liners, but because he fell a lot.

Humor is a gift from God, to be sure. To be able to laugh at ourselves means you can shrug off the stuff that you shouldn’t waste time on, so that you can take the really big stuff that happens seriously enough to be able to get through it with grace and God’s help.

My folks have been married for 62 years are still laughing. I called them from work the other day and they were just coming home from having the car fixed. Instead of their Minivan they were in the old Bronco. My Mom had nothing to hold onto to get in the car so my Dad was trying to push her from behind. He was laughing, and I could hear her in the background, “just get your hands off me, I can get in just fine.”  Then I heard her start to laugh.

They both started laughing so hard they had to hang up.

Many people in the Bible laughed, and there are even references about God laughing. I think Jesus must have found humor in many things on this earth. I love to think what His laughter sounded like. Laughter is the best gift…….I challenge you to find something funny today, I can almost guarantee you will.

Reposted from 2010

An Ecclesiastes kind of day

Some days are pretty much good all the way through, but most days are a mixture. Sprinklings of sorrow and hope with splashes of unexpected joy thrown in. A mixed bag. Yesterday was no exception. I started doing some decorating for Christmas which always puts me in a good mood. And every year I say I won’t do as much but I always do anyway. Once I get started I don’t want to stop. I do moving and unpacking the same way, I pull a marathon. I don’t want to stop until it’s done, then I collapse.

We got a call that our former neighbor Estelle passed away. She had just celebrated her 89th Birthday. I had just finished hanging the little lace angels she left me on each side of my bedroom tree earlier that morning…..yes, I do have a bedroom tree. Victorian. So that was sad, and yet she was a believer, so it was also cause for celebration. That, and she won’t have prolonged suffering at a nursing home or hospital. I like to think she saw Jesus first, then her husband Al, whom she missed and talked about so much.

I decorated pretty much the whole day. And in the middle of it all, Elaine’s Mom was doing her usual pacing in and out, but with a twist this time. I kept noticed her going through her purse looking for something, which she does every now and then. She seemed agitated. Some days she doesn’t touch her purse, other days it is a source of consternation and focus for the whole day. Yesterday she grabbed her purse and headed out the door like she was running away from home. I watched her to make sure she brought her purse back, that meant she was only going “around the horn” as she puts it. Around the block. In a gated park, our “blocks” are small.

When Elaine came home she did it again. Grabbed her purse and took off. So Elaine finally made the call to the Doctor that will set in motion her placement at an Alzheimer’s unit. We both have to work, and we can’t leave knowing that she may take off. It is no longer safe. That was a hard call for her to make, but it had to be done.

At 9:00 last night I was still dragging stuff out of storage. Elaine asked if I was ever going to sit down.

So, Christmas has come to our house. Three Nativity scenes, one of which I added cats to, I just know they had to be there.  I like to think one of them crept up to where Jesus lay and kept him warm. Four small trees, assorted wreathes, garland, star lights, animals in the sleigh, big Costco Santa, and squirrel helper, big Costco Snowman, and a big gaping hole where the main tree will go this weekend.

It was a day of hardship, joy, sadness but ultimately we know we will be okay, because we know the Savior.

I will say, not rest in peace Estelle, but enjoy the beginning of the rest of your life in Heaven!

I will see you there when God calls me home.

“But thanks be to God!He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:57,58

When Christmas seems impossible

She said, “I don’t know if I can go through with it.” It was all getting too complicated. “It” was the trip we had planned over Christmas. Saved for and scheduled. One of the most frustrating things about caregiving is you can never quite look forward to anything. Like the mirage of a flowing stream in the desert, plans have a way of vanishing as soon as you get too close. She said, “I didn’t want to mention it today, because I knew it would make you sad.” We were going up the escalator in the mall, and I felt the cloud of it following us. I knew she was overwhelmed. And again, I felt the injustice of it all. The pack on her back is getting heavier and no one is stepping up. Not even for a week.

Just then I remembered what I used to hear my Dad say every Christmas, “All I want is to go to a cabin in the woods.” He used to get a light in his eyes as he said it. I never got that, but I do now. The peace and simplicity of it all beckons like never before.

“Why do they get a choice?” I said, “Where is your choice?”

“It’s not as if you were waving your hand and saying, Pick me, pick me, when all this was decided.”

And still trying to take the blame, to shoulder it all, she says: “Maybe I should have handled it differently in the beginning, made them take part of the responsibility.” But the truth is, they still would have backed away, made excuses as to why not.

We made our way to the children’s section…….we were shopping for Birthday gifts for my niece,  having a day of purple in her honor. It’s her favorite color right now. I found the sweater with the lime green heart I saw in the ad, but we couldn’t pass up the striped top with the matching down vest. Kohl’s yielded a pair of purple boots and we were all set.

Later, as we sat at the food court watching people weave around and through us, all the humanity. All of us in the muck and the mire of being down here living life and I get the feeling that so many of these people have no idea what they are supposed to be celebrating. She said, “If I have to put her in a home over Christmas?” She didn’t finish, but I finished for her. “I know,” I said, “Your Mom hasn’t cared about Christmas for 30 years, but you do.”

Her head nodded affirmative…..sadly.

And last night after the Mall I watched her as she sat at the kitchen counter, separating out the purple sprinkles from the rest so that Lauryn would have a dash of purple on the swirl of pink cupcake that would go in the Birthday box. I thought of the Bible verse that says, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” I thought, how blessed am I to have a friend who would, who does.

But honestly, I wondered. Where is reward for that kind of love, and should it not be rewarded? The outrage of it all flared at my heart. I remembered where she spent last Christmas, alone with her Mom at the hospital, not even knowing if she’d make it through. And all of a sudden, what I want more than anything in the world is for her to be happy, to be able to go on this trip.

And despite all this impossibility……Jesus touches down. In our hearts. And I am so thankful, because He turns impossibilities into possibilities.

Each and every day by His grace.

Note: this was rewritten, my earlier one was deleted. Sorry for any wierd posts today!

New every morning

It always amazes me, that we can feel……have…..know, the power of the resurrection each new morning. I didn’t feel very resurrected this morning at all, when I climbed into my sweats and went out to pray in the half light. But by the time I came out? I was a new creation. And once again I felt Easter. Each day somehow we get the strength to get up and do it all over again.

That’s the power of the resurrection, the power of the cross, the power of the empty tomb! Hallelujah……

I offer this poem to you this morning…….It moved me:

Psalm by Thomas Merton

When no one listens to the quiet trees,

when no one notices the sun in the pool

When no one feels the first drop of rain

Or sees the last star

Or hails the first morning

Of a giant world

Where peace begins and rages end:

One bird sits still

Watching the work of God:

one turning leaf,

two falling blossoms,

Ten circles upon the pond……..

from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander…..full poem available there.

Random Thoughts on a Saturday

 

It’s been a long week. I am still lamenting the absence of turkey leftovers in the fridge. I could just taste it….mayo, big chunks of meat, dressing and a bit of cranberry and a liberal amount of salt piled on bread….Mmmm. I just may have to do a little turkey on my upcoming days off.

Yesterday the day just dragged out mercilessly. I finally crept out to my car at around 11 and put the seat back to catch a cap nap, but I couldn’t get comfortable. I crawled in my small back seat and with bent knees I arranged myself in a somewhat sleepworthy position. There in the back seat a memory of a long ago time came back and I wasn’t expecting it. No one was more surprised that I was when the tears slid down……

When my brother and I were small, a Volkswagen bug was our family mode of transportation. The seat folded down in the back and we loved it. Back then there were no DVDs to watch, just the hum of the 1967 Bug. We were together and it was a good time. We watched cows drift by and slept on and off and played Slugbug.

It was the nostalgia of it all that brought forth tears, that, and realizing how much time has gone by and how fast. The sorrow we have both already lived through, the death of both our spouses, what are the odds of that? And I prayed for my brother right there in that back seat, because he needs a touch from the Lord right now.

Don’t we all?

I got through the day and realized I had to brave Wal-Mart and it was still Black Friday. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. It wasn’t, but I still couldn’t wait to get out of there. After that I stopped by Panda to get  Joyce some food and she informed me when I came in the door that she needed a map to the house. And that it was after 6:30. I didn’t want to ask what prompted the map thing. I think she was glad to see me though.

I made her plate and told her it was on the table, and because the house was sealed up like a tomb, I ran around opening windows. It was around 80 in the house. After dashing in and out with groceries, and working up a sweat, I noticed her fixing herself another plate. Then she struggled with the tea because we usually make it for her and set it by her plate. Finally she was settled at her place and I did my other jobs.

The cats were still safely inside and I was thankful. She let Briggs out one day and my cats never go out of the house. He was dirty and a bit scared I think, but he came running when Elaine called. So that was making me nervous all day. One hop over the fence and out in the road and they would be goners.

I thought for the thousandth time, how in the world Elaine has done this for two years. Only God’s grace is how.

I settled in front of the computer for a while, and talked to dear friends via FB. And talked to my Mom on the phone and Elaine from Las Vegas. I got some texts from Heather about Christmas plans.

And God touched down once again through His people. I am blessed.

 

A post about nothing

This is a post about nothing. Kind of like when you go to pray and you feel you have nothing to pray about and you end up pouring your heart out to God anyway. Even the picture has nothing to do with this nothing post, I just like it. I can do that because it’s my blog.

I am gradually switching over from my Blogger format to WordPress, and so far I like it. I don’t know what I am doing but I like it. No doubt it will change….right now it is not very fancy. There are no tabs at the top to describe anything. Eventually there will be an “About Me” tab and an “About This Blog” tab and maybe a few more.

There will also be buttons for Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter. Maybe I will even get really, really brave and do a Facebook Writer’s Page, but so far I haven’t given myself permission to call myself that yet.

I am working on it.

So please give me suggestions and ideas, and thank you in advance for being patient. Sometimes I would like to just scrawl on a piece of paper what I write and post it to Face book that way. Sometimes I get stray thoughts like: If John the Baptist had a blog what would it be like.

Out here on the edge of the desert, I feel him close somehow. There are places here that are lonely and desolate, and sometimes when I am hiking (watching out for rattlesnakes) I almost think I can hear his voice carried across the wind.

Warning the world. He must look different now in Heaven, not like a wildman wearing camel’s hair. But sometimes I would like to get a glimpse of the original version just for a moment.

The fever pitch of Christmas is upon us. Soon the Saguaros will be decked out with white lights, and I do love to see that. And the crazier everyone gets, the more I will want to slow down and make it last.

One moment at a time.

And be ye thankful…..

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful……..

Today is a day to celebrate our blessings and lift our thanks to the Lord. Some of us will be gathered with loved ones around a beautiful table laden with all kinds of wonderful food. There will be laughter and noise and activity, and all the anticipation that accompanies a great meal. Others will be gathered where they really don’t want to be, eating someone else’s cooking when they would rather be eating their own. Let’s just be honest here.

I am very picky about my stuffing. I don’t want grey paste, I want something resembling the cornbread it once was, light and fluffy. And I don’t want giblets in it, thank you very much. And my turkey must be moist, not like the one in Christmas Vacation.

As much as we would all love to have that Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving Day, for most of us it won’t be a reality. And that’s okay. The thankfulness that beats in my heart today has nothing to do with a meal. It has to do with everything He has given me. Has given me, all my life.

I am spending the day at work because I opted for Christmas off.  

As much as I don’t want to admit it, there is always sadness attached to any holiday where I can’t have everyone I love in the same place at the same time. But there will be a dinner served here and I will enjoy it with some dear co-workers. All of us in the same boat. But all of us thankful.

My prayers will be with all those I love today. I pray that there will be peace and harmony and the Holy Spirit will do what He does best and bind together what has been broken in the past.

One thing that warms my heart today is that when my Mom was talking to my niece yesterday, she asked her what she remembers about Thanksgiving since she is not with them every year. I can see her expression and how she must have looked  when she said, “Eat…….” pause……and then she folded her hands and said thoughtfully,

“Pray” that’s when my heart seized up. She remembered.

Best answer she could have given.