family

Psalm 139 and 3/4

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“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

He has indeed called us Heavenward. And even as we battle down here we are thinking of that hereafter, that future time where the cares of this world are but a lost memory.

And as I lay awake in the dark tallying up my worries, thinking about all the things I wish I could fix but can’t, I write my own Psalm and call it 139 and three-quarters.

For the umpteenth time, I give Him my laundry list of things, those that He already knows about me and I feel it float Heavenward as He assures me He loves me anyway, again.

When sleep is snatched away by the cares of this world, I pray in the wide awake moments before dawn and I feel the peace of my home surrounding me like a cloak. Though worldly sorrow nips at the edges of my heart, the hope of His peace seeps in and around it like Holy smoke. This is the prayer I pray: 

“Bind us together Lord, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken.”

And then I think of the sock that made its way into my suitcase. Her little sock.

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I don’t know how it got there, but I am glad it came back with me.

I think of all the pictures I didn’t take, and how my camera never left its bag. And how I couldn’t care less because what we had instead was much more beautiful.

I thought of how we hid every possible place in the house and how she covered her eyes and counted and giggled as we crouched together in the dark closet while my Dad looked for us. She still hasn’t got the part where she is supposed to stay quiet while she hides, and that makes it all the more precious somehow.

Years from now, I will remember how we all collapsed on the couch after we were done, and how Mom came in and asked what we had all been doing to look so exhausted.

I thought of how I put swim goggles on along with my wrinkles and flat hair and went all the way under the water because she wanted to see me under there with her. I can still hear her shriek of excitement, “You too, Nori!”

It was also a weekend of some firsts. She sat down beside me on the couch with a book and let me read to her, something I have dreamed of ever since she was born. It was like a mini miracle. And how she wedged herself into the couch close by me, wanting to be right by my side all weekend long.

We went to the store together and she helped me shop. Another first. Store was always a scary place for her before.

No, I didn’t get one photograph of fall, not one red leaf, not one landscape of how the morning mist lay in the vineyards, and not the one of the old barn I saw either. Sometimes life just can’t be freeze framed, it has to be lived. The leaf you see is one I took a year or so ago.

This was not the time to chase the perfect shot. It was the time to savor, and treasure, and corral that which there is never enough of.

Time.

That’s what the sock reminded me of.

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And looking at it now, I’m smiling as big as the face on the sock because when I look at it, I can still hear “You too, Nori!”

Sometimes, Heaven’s a place you can find here. It’s in the love shining out from the eyes you leave and come home too.

God’s way of saying He loves us.

Small Blog Break

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I will be gone for a few days to surprise my niece with a visit……..We will spend time doing things like this…….

I am anticipating her smile and shriek of joy at the airport. (and mine)

I intend to pack a lot into three days, and now that my kitty is better, I can feel better about leaving. He has been sick, and as you all know, when pets or kids or anyone you love is sick, the world kind of stops.

So, with camera in tow, I head off to California this morning with a lighter heart.

I will come back with more memories and hopefully lots of pictures of bright fall leaves, which are pretty much scarce here.

Posts to follow……

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:3

 

Visit to Aunt Mag’s

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Every so often, I post a memory from the life of my best friend, Elaine, (as told to me by her.) A disclaimer for her family members: the events happened, but at times it’s tricky getting inside someone else’s mind, even someone I know as well as I know her. Some things may not be exactly how you remember, but how she remembers once it gets spit out of my mind and gets to the page.

Once a summer we would all pile into the car at the hottest time of the year and drive from California to Texas to see some relative or another. It was always hot and sticky in the back seat and I was always sandwiched between my brothers, one of which I loved, one of which was just plain mean. Invariably, he would do something that would get the wrath of our parents crashing down on all of us. My Mom would grab whatever was nearest her and aimed for anyone she could reach.

In my Dad’s world, stopping the car for any reason was considered an unsuccessful road trip. His idea of a rest stop was peeing by the side of the road. He thought anything less than straight through constituted failure, and if we were the cause of the stopping, we got the belt, usually the buckle end, and as any self-respecting Texan knows, unless you have  a belt buckle as big as a hubcap, it doesn’t count for much.

There was a motel along Route 66 that had places that looked like real tee pees you could stay in. I was enamored of it and every summer I begged to stay there. I didn’t cry because my Mom had told me that tears and emotion were useless so I knew that would never work.

My memory is foggy at this point because something makes me think we did, but we could have just stopped and looked. A likely scenario was that maybe my Dad relented just once and the experience was so awful he used that ever after as excuse to keep on driving.

This particular trip one of the stops we made was my Mom’s Aunt Mag’s house. It was an old farmhouse just like you’d see in the movies. Aunt Mag prided herself on her cleanliness and her house was always swept clean.

Bobby and I were transfixed by a nest of dirt dobbers near the front porch and we exclaimed out loud, “What are those?” My Mom hissed, “Ssshhhh. Your Aunt Mag would be horrified if she saw that.” Neither she nor my Uncle could see very well. She threatened us within an inch of our lives if we got into any trouble.

That was no problem, we stationed ourselves near the front porch where we sat transfixed for the duration.  We were amazed that each time the door opened, those things flew out of the nest and into the house and when it opened again they came back out. In and out, in and out, we sat and watched. We were easily amused.

Aunt Mag was impressed. She didn’t know what we were watching. She exclaimed, “Well, aren’t these two just the most well-behaved children, where’s the other one?”

That would be our other brother, the one who must not be named. He was most certainly somewhere kicking a dog, pulling wings of a butterfly or stepping on frogs.

Another thing I remember about that farmhouse was that there was an old spigot of water out back. It had been there for years with a constant drip. The water had carved the rock below into a perfect conical shape, like an inverted volcano. No body had disturbed it all those years. Our Mom warned us to leave it where it was. Our brother who must not be named  took it, of course.

Last time I saw it, it was in his possession.

picture credit: Mindy Georges, some rights reserved, flickr creative commons.

Never need an appointment to meet with Jesus

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What do you do when you find yourself at a crossroads? You go to the cross.

It’s so tempting to try to figure everything out with our minds, but what about when you feel you can’t trust your mind? Try as we might, there are times when we can’t take it apart and put it all back together in any kind of order. And when the heart and emotions get involved we might as well throw anything rational out the window.

When the heart gets involved, thought and logic whirl around inside your head and beat the sides of your brain like a tennis shoe in a spin dryer until nothing is clear.

When I entered prayer this past Tuesday, I took no hope of feeling better, no expectation of much of anything.  It was simply all I knew how to do. There are times you enter prayer that way.

I got a call from Mom on Monday evening. My Dad was on his way to the ER for irregular heartbeat. My Mom sounded okay, but I could hear the panic undertow in her voice. She said he hadn’t felt good for a couple of days. They ran some tests and released him, and he was back in his own bed by 2:30 Tuesday morning.

I thought of that old Lewis Grizzard line: “Elvis is dead and I don’t feel so good myself.” Now, my Mom, my Dad and my brother are all on medication for heart issues. And I don’t feel so good myself. Actually, I feel fine, but the stress of all this might kill me.

I want to swoop down and fix it all for them. I want to go take over and do what they can’t.

When it’s hard for me to open a jar, I feel bad because if it is hard for me, how much harder for my Mom? It’s little things like that I think of. I toss and turn in the night and wonder when the next call will come. First, Dad’s eyes and now his heart. I realize I am going through a kind of grief. A grief of knowing someday they really won’t be here.

So Tuesday morning I really needed my prayer time. I even lit three candles instead of one. I needed Father Son and Holy Ghost all hands on deck prayer.

And kneeling there by my chair in the silence, I felt the weight of importance in each and every moment we have here on earth. This life is but a breath, a vapor. A little while and then we are gone……

Eternity stretches before us like a shimmering cord that reaches to Heaven and it’s tethered to the cross. I know if I cling to Jesus, somehow I can always find my way back home. I just have to trust Him with this little speck of time that is my life.

No matter what the heartache. No matter how bleak the future might have looked 30 minutes ago, I now find that a few moments at the foot of a blood soaked cross, a light switch has been thrown. All of a sudden, just for this moment my future is as bright as the noonday sun. And that one moment is enough.

And oh what relief it is to find at times when the soul has been swept bare and black as night that Jesus has not left, that He’s there holding out a candle to light my way.

I long for the times before vandals, when the churches were open and the light was always on and the pastor or priest was always “In.” I long for the little country parish when the minister made house calls and offered a cup of tea. When you could just show up without an appointment.

I may not have Father Tim, but I have Jesus.

And He is always “In”

The bridge between Heaven and earth

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The sky splashed a brilliant pink and KBAQ was playing a Bach concerto as I rolled to a stop between the white lines in the parking lot at 5:30. The scene in the sky turned my thoughts toward Heaven and I thought of the conversation my Mom and I had when I was back home just recently.

We were scanning the obits, and she was lamenting the latest passing of one of her friends. That got us to talking about people who have passed on, and her Dad, my Grandpa. I told her that he is one of the first people I want to meet in Heaven. Besides Jesus.

He held me in his arms and called me his blond angel in German. I wonder if he was thinking of his little Annie who was only about four when she died. He had left the shotgun out and a foster child who was staying with them shot her dead. He ran away after that and they never found him, though they searched. My Grandmother had to watch her little girl die and my Grandpa had to live with that guilt all his life.

I love him, though I never knew him. He went to see Annie when he was in his sixties after a battle with stomach cancer. Shortly before he died, he said the only thing he wanted to do one more time was see Yosemite. Each year he drove the family there, he watching everything but the road and my Grandmother, terrified of going over the cliff would promptly put herself to sleep in the passenger seat.

My Mom says that when she and my Aunt reached their teens they were secretly mortified because they knew as soon as they set up camp he would be over introducing himself and Jesus to the neighbors. He had no problem sharing His faith. He wanted others to know the reason for his hope and the joy of the Savior.

I wish I could be more like him.

Shortly before my sister-in-law died, also of cancer, she said she saw my Grandfather and that they talked of roses. He told her he liked white ones. I don’t doubt what she said. I believe people close to death see many different things on that fringe of eternity.

This being a blog centered around Christian belief and thought, I guess from time to time I feel a need to explain in a simple way what we actually believe and why for those who may not know.

The thing that makes the Christian faith different from any other religion on earth is that we have a living Savior. It’s God reaching down to us, not us reaching up to Him. It’s Him making the first move.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

God gives us a future and a hope. We never have to worry about death as long as we know Jesus. He only asks us to do one thing, to acknowledge that we can’t save ourselves. That whatever we’ve done on our own is not good enough. God expects perfection, and the only perfect person who ever lived was Jesus.

With three little words, the doorway to Heaven was blown open:

“It is finished.”

Everyone has to die once, then face the consequences. Christ’s death was also a one-time event, but it was a sacrifice that took care of sins forever. And so, when he next appears, the outcome for those eager to greet him is, precisely, salvation. Hebrews 9:27,28 The Message

I don’t know about you, but I am not doing this life again. I am going to meet my Grandpa.

God’s love reaches what you can’t fix

Convicted

I fretted, I worried, I prayed. Then I asked others to pray. Then I flew back with a speech all prepared in my heart, hoping God would hollow out the perfect time. You know, how you wish it would work. At just the right time, the clouds part and the sun would beam down upon my heart and before me on the wall would be brandished the words:

Now is the time.

Maybe it happened and maybe I missed it. But God taught me something anyway. You can’t fix everything or even anything but you can always love. Things happen, life gets in the way, sometimes people get sick or they’re not emotionally available. Or maybe you aren’t. But that doesn’t mean God isn’t in it. Love is still present. God is still working behind the scenes. He is just that big.  And maybe sometimes just loving and being there is all God wants us to do. Maybe it’s the most important thing any of us can do.

Love is patient, love is kind. But sometimes it hurts like hell. 

In the Doctor’s office with my Dad, I gave just as big a sigh of relief as he did when he learned that he had a reprieve from a shot in his eye. It seems the treatments are doing what they are supposed to so it was a good appointment. I was thankful I could be there.

Tyler, the dog everyone shares is getting older too. He has his playful moments and his bark is fearsome if you don’t know him, but he no longer hops into the car. His hips are stiff and he hesitates at the door. He’s my walking buddy in the mornings at my brother’s house. He still bounds ahead of me, and if I cross the street to the orchard, he waits at the end of the driveway faithfully until I get back.

One morning my Mom opened the paper and found that another friend and school-mate had died. That led to talking of others who had gone on before. In your eighties Heaven must seem close. We talked of who we wanted to see there first, besides Jesus of course.

And always, time to leave presses up against the present.

The day before I left, a little girl was already worried about when “Nori goes home.” She is ten but she still struggles with “L’s.” And when we left her at school, we didn’t mention it. They dealt with the emotion when they picked her up at school. Separation anxiety.

I think we all have it.

Deep down, we know we’ve all been separated from our forever home, the one we were meant to have. We know something is not quite right. And we spend all our lives trying to get back there.

Thank you Jesus, for being that one way.

No more goodbyes ever again. And though it takes the sting out of the goodbyes here and now, I still felt it as I looked back once more through tears as they drove off dabbing their own eyes.

In all of our comings and goings, and behind the hope and dream of every trip home and every trip back, He remains.  And more importantly, He is big enough to fix what I never could anyway.

Prayer this morning: “Lord I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Amen

The Traveler’s Prayer

Home

Thank you Lord for going before me.

Thank you for being there through security, and all the hassle that brings.

Thank you for being there as I sit on the plane, as I close my eyes right before that time my heart quickens just for a moment when I think of all the things that might possibly go wrong when I am high up in the air.

Thank you for being there when the squeak of the tires hit the tarmac and everyone scrambles to get bags……..

to be the first off the plane……to rush to the next thing.

Help me to cherish every single moment when I first see their faces.

Because it’s never just another trip.

It is a chance to love them again, while we are all still here.

Fill in the gaps Lord, with your Holy Spirit and let peace fill all places in between.

Bind us all together and help us let go of all the small irritants that sometimes get in the way like unwelcome static on the radio.

Help this time be valuable.

Open lines of communication as only You can do.

And help me to remember above all, love.

And that sometimes love means action,

sometimes it means the right words.

Sometimes it just means being there.

Give me the courage and wisdom to know what to do when.

Because, as you know, I am good at getting them all mixed up and out of order.

Thank you God,

Your girl down here.

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

Letting Go

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It’s been about 49 years and I can tell it is still one of his most cherished memories of our time together. It’s one of mine too.

As I called him last night, his Birthday night, he told me he loved the post I wrote and then he paused, thoughtful and said, “There is so much more…..” I said, “Yes, you could never fit all those memories into one post.”

And sounding younger even as he said it, “I still have that picture…..of you climbing Half Dome, and the other one, of me running behind you when I was teaching you how to ride a bike.”

And just like that……

All the years between now and then vanished and I was 6 again. I was hearing me say, “Dad……are you still holding on?”  Gripping the bars, fighting my fear, afraid to fall, and doubting he had me.

And all these years later I heard “Yes, I am……I’ve got you Lori, you’re doing great!”

And this morning as I remembered, I fled to the bathroom squeezing my eyes shut, trying to staunch the tears that threatened to overflow. The whole memory has left me an emotional mess.

Because I know that even as he said he had me?

He had let go……even though he was afraid too.

The hardest thing about loving is letting go. And letting someone let go.

I think of the times my Father has told me the same thing……..”I’ve got you Lori, you’re doing great.” And the tears don’t seem to want to stop flowing here at my desk today.

His love is deep, His love is wide, and it covers us,  His love is fierce, His love is strong, and it is furious………”Furious” lyrics by Jeremy Riddle

 

photo by carfreedays, flickr some rights reserved: carfreedays.com

When God says the story isn’t quite finished

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This story started with someone who dared to do something brave. Something for himself but mostly something for Him because sometimes we need more than words to express our love, our devotion to the One who has given us life. When I hung the painting I could see it from the kitchen and it always made me smile because I remember the conversation (via text) we had about what verse to put on it. Read the account “here.”

Over and over again, my eye would travel back to that yellow in the corner, and somehow I knew I wanted to bring that out. I had seen a floating frame, one specifically used for framed canvases that I really loved. It made a canvas stand out, almost like 3D and I loved the depth of that. I wanted it. Elaine was getting nervous because she knows once I get something in her head, I never let it go. After a few visits to frame shops she said, “I will make it, how hard could it be?”

She had never made a frame before, but anyone who knows my best friend knows that not ever having done something only spurs her on to further action. She’s a problem solver, a fixer of the broken, a restorer. She is one who never likes to see anything wasted.

In the meantime, last weekend I decided to clean out my dressers. I emptied every drawer……I sifted, I cleaned, I vacuumed out. And it was then that I found it. An old painting my Dad had done when he decided to paint again after a long dry spell. I found it in one of his tablets on one of my visits back home. It had paint marks all along the side of it, like he was testing colors……brush strokes. I don’t even remember asking him if I could have it, I just took it. I was afraid he would throw it away.

The final painting, the one he deemed good enough, was presented to my Sister-in-law one Christmas, back before she went to Heaven.

It was only after I had lifted it out of the pile of papers, that I noticed. I took it over and held it next to the painting that Duane did. I gasped and called Elaine over. “Look,” I said excitedly, “The yellow he used, it’s the very same one!” How could that happen? That two artists, years and miles apart would use that same shade of yellow? But they did. And then I started to think that maybe God was at work here.

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And when I called my Dad last night, he was depressed. But then I told him the whole story and I could hear him smile across the phone lines. “So you took my “mistake” and hung it on the wall?”

“Yes,” I said, “I did.” He paused thoughtfully and then said, “That’s just the kind of thing God does, but you must have your eyes open enough to see it.” What he saw as flawed, I saw as perfection, because he did it.

So now, on my wall I see more than art, more than paintings. I see friendship, and a father. I see love.

I see God bringing people together through what they create. I see something like the Trinity during Creation.

Now when I look at my wall, I see more than just art.

I see a person who refuses to say, “It can’t be done.”

I see another who tried something new and God blessed it.

I see another who overcame fear to resurrect a talent long after they thought it was dead and gone.

And I see someone who brought new life to something left in the scrap heap.

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I see what God has done for each one of us………brought us all out of the reject pile and made us into something new.

A Provision Story

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She’d moved the thing for years, and when it finally teetered to place on its graceful clawed feet she vowed never again. Then she cried. It was the last thing of her Mom’s to move over and the most stressful.

Like an unwelcome but distinguished guest it stood innocently in one corner while the contemporary one stood on the other side as if they were fighting for space; a face off in the dining room. We mourned the loss of our empty wall. It went with nothing else in the room.

Because her parents had moved everywhere she did, the china cabinet came too. It was her Mom’s most prized possession. For years Elaine has had the emotional and physical stress of moving it, and with each move it had become more of a millstone around her neck. She had horrific visions of the thing crashing to the ground like a redwood, the irreplaceable glass in shards on the ground.

After her Mom went into assisted living she thought surely someone in the family would want it. No one did. It went on eBay. One woman actually laughed in her face when she told her the price. And believe me, the price was very fair considering what it was.

This past Monday, we decided to try our hand at antique dealing. We were committed to an all day mission; to finding it, in addition to around 500 assorted glass pieces a home.

The first guy was friendly and talkative, but not very interested in anything else.

When we walked in the second place, there were three women at the counter and all three heads swiveled in our direction.  One of them looked at us stony-faced from behind her computer the whole time we were there.  The only time she actually cracked a smile and chortled was when Elaine said, “I have been stuck with all this crap all these years now, 25 boxes worth.”

The second woman, the spokeswoman of the group, almost threw up the sign of the cross with her fingers at the mention of glassware. “We only do furniture.” She must have said it 4 times. It was obvious she didn’t know an Occupied Japan Toby from a Matchbox car. Don’t worry if you don’t either.

Ms. “Only do furniture” wasn’t interested in the China Cabinet.

Our next stop took us 15 miles away to downtown. We refused to be discouraged.

We entered through the alley, starting to feel a little like beat-down used car salesmen, but still holding out hope. A man looking like a cross between Garrison Keillor and Norman Bates sat hunched over and peering intently into his computer screen, very loudly crunching on Sun Chips.

I couldn’t even catch her eye. I know my friend, and one of her pet peeves is people eating loud foods in her ear and clacking loudly on the keyboard and this guy was doing both. I wondered how long she would last. It was a test.

We thought maybe he would stop eating as he bent closer to look at the pictures she held out via her phone, but as he paused with one chip poised in the air, he leaned even closer and took the whole thing in his mouth and crunched even louder. I almost laughed out loud.

I saw his eyes flicker with interest as he got up from the chair, wiping Sun Chip dust on his slightly smudgy jeans as they talked. “Well,” he said, “will you be home tonight? I would like to see what you have, and my friend might be interested in the cabinet.”

He came around 5:15 and looked at everything she had for sale, including things which were not. He seemed to be making himself at home but it was educational, he seemed to know his stuff. He then called his buddy and gave him directions to our house.

His buddy pulled up later in a 2012 Super Sport black corvette. After inspection, he said he did in fact, want the China cabinet. He said he had 6 others at home by the same maker. He took a few other things as well, including a gun that had belonged to her Dad. “The safety is faulty,” she told him, but he didn’t seem to mind as he pointed it in my general direction. Elaine told me it might be good if I stepped to the side. I agreed.

He couldn’t hear a thing, and his voice boomed throughout the house. The cats hid under the beds. He regaled us with stories, this good old boy who did two tours in Vietnam and came home with a purple heart, and who just happened to collect antiques. Who would have thought?

The next day he and his buddy backed up a trailer while I herded cats.

He came in laughing and booming out instructions to his friend, who repeated everything he said under his breath in a very raspy voice sounding much like Red Green, that goofy Canadian guy who fixes everything with duct tape. It was like a comedy routine.

I watched from the window with a blow-by-blow description for Elaine who was pacing nervously from room to room. I gasped as they tipped it end over end and slid it into the trailer.  And we both let out a breath when we watched the tail lights receding down the street.

It wasn’t just the end of a piece of furniture it was another step closer to freedom for her.  One step closer toward her own life again.

Later that night we drank a toast in celebration, but not before we said a prayer of thanks for a God who provides in some very creative and humorous ways. “When I heard that guy crunching those chips,” she said, “It was like God was telling me that He was gonna do this for me, but that I was going to have to jump through a couple of hoops first.”

Before he left our new friend left his business and cell number. When Elaine showed him some projects she has done, he said: “If you need anything for any project, just call me. I have a whole workshop at your disposal.”

We smiled when we remembered how we prayed, asking God for success, for a sale. And I am always amazed at who and how He comes through. A chip crunching antique dealer and a purple hearted vet who said yes to his wife’s request for a house filled with antiques.

God is so good.