A Journey Log

lichen

2012-01-23T16:55:00.000-08:00

Last week Ruben and I went driving through the woods, through the woods and hills, following streams and lakes, rocks and snow, pine needles and icy breath. I collected bright lichen clinging to branches and pine cones and brought them home to my kitchen window sill. It was the color, the texture, the smell. I reached for it because I wasn't done yet, not enough time to take it all in and keep it there. So I brought it home with me.

What makes something beautiful? Color? Form? Texture? Maybe it's memory. Or dreams. Or longings. Does it excite? Comfort? Soothe? Invigorate? I don't know. I just know that it draws me. Pebbles, drift wood from the ocean, bright lichen from the pine forests, a blue bottle on the window sill.

A friend once told me that when your heart is alive it makes living worthwhile and a heart that is turned off makes for a gray, gray world. The world is not gray to me. It's as bright as neon lichen.

wanting more

2012-01-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

For the last few months I've been getting up in the morning with coffee, swaddling myself in a warm throw, and reading for a half hour before getting ready for work. A bit of this, a chapter of that, this daily reading and then the other daily reading...I am currently dipping into five different books simultaneously and have two stacks of books on the end table by my chair, a stack of three books waiting for me on the floor, and two more stacks of seven others waiting their turn on the ottoman like friends gathered around me.

I can't get enough of Frederick Buechner...the daily readings of Listening to Your Life, the literary sketches and spiritual food offered in Whistling in the Dark and The Alphabet of Grace. So I ordered more...Godric, Brendan, Telling the Truth, and Secrets in the Dark. I devoured Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies for the second time. Several months ago I read Rob Bell's book Velvet Elvis and then read it again, gave it to two of my friends to read (one who said she wept as she read it), and then I bought Love Wins and read that twice as well. Ten years ago I read M. Scott Peck's book A Road Less Traveled and it has remained one of the most profound books I've ever read, so I decided to read it again and it was as profound this time as it was the first time. So I started Further Along the Road Less Traveled, which I'm still taking in slowly so I can digest it and make it part of me. Along with Jesus Calling and Streams in the Desert, I'm also reading the daily meditations of Pema Choddron, a Buddhist nun, who shares simple but transforming thoughts in her book Comfortable With Uncertainty.

I'm impatiently waiting to lose myself in Love In The Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez and my copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass has been waiting on the floor for me for months now, but I told myself that I have to finish some books before I can start on other ones so I've got to hurry up and finish Will Power's Not Enough.

I just really need more time to read.

I wish you well

2012-01-10T05:42:00.000-08:00

With Christmas past and the intensity of the holiday season over, I went into recovery mode and, other than going to work each day, I gave myself time to coast for a little while and to retreat. In the evenings I worked on the puzzle that Danny gave me for Christmas and I took my time putting away the decorations and cleaning up the house. It felt like the necessary antidote and prescription for the toll that the preceding weeks had taken.

After spending one of those very quiet days in the house all day, I did venture out one evening after dark to make a specific purchase being careful to avoid the busiest stores filled with all those people eager to return their Christmas gifts for something better or at least something that fit. My plan was to enter the store, make my purchase, and escape back to the safety of home as quickly as possible, but as I stood in line for the cashier, someone I had been close to more than ten years before appeared and joined the cue. It was good to see him and we caught up briefly. How was your Christmas? Did you get to see your family? Yes, I'm trying to recover now too.

We had run into each other a number of times before over the last ten years but we hadn't really had much conversation beyond the courtesies and as we walked out of the store and prepared to say polite goodbyes, I wondered if I should continue the conversation. Maybe he was in a hurry to get home? I tried to read the cues and then a question was asked that opened the door to more than a polite Goodbye, see you in another decade or two.

It turned out that we stood underneath the parking lot lights and talked for a long time and it seemed impossible that a decade had really gone by. It was one of those conversations that goes beyond words and catching up on the news of each others lives and ends up being something that comforts and reassures and brings the satisfaction that we're almost always longing for in our interactions with other human beings. Things have happened over these past years, do you understand? Do I dare tell you what I really think and feel?

Somehow, despite the years between, I knew again that we were friends. I'm not even sure what indications were actually given that safety and understanding were being offered, but my heart knew. When I arrived home and recounted the experience to Ruben, the safety and understanding spread to him as well and it led to more conversation that brought about even more comfort and reassurance and I told him how I want to be able to offer that to people, to be able to encounter them even after the years have gone by and things have changed and they have changed and just allow them to be who they have become, to say what they have experienced, to feel differently than they did before, and to communicate that It's ok, I accept you as you are and as you have become. It's ok that life has changed what you think and feel. It's good to talk to you and to hear how you are and I wish you well. May you truly have a happy new year.

new year's prayer

2011-12-31T10:37:00.001-08:00

Thou Son of the Most High, Prince of Peace, be born again into our world. Wherever there is war in this world, wherever there is pain, wherever there is loneliness, wherever there is no hope, come, thou long-expected one, with healing in thy wings.

Holy Child, whom the shepherds and the kings and the dumb beasts adored, be born again. Wherever there is boredom, wherever there is fear of failure, wherever there is temptation too strong to resist, wherever there is bitterness of heart, come, thou blessed one, with healing in thy wings.

Saviour, be born in each of us who raises his face to thy face, not knowing fully who he is or who thou art, knowing only that thy love is beyond his knowing and that no other has the power to make him whole. Come, Lord Jesus, to each who longs for thee even though he has forgotten thy name. Come quickly. Amen.

--Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

Christmas

2011-12-19T20:23:00.000-08:00

This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone.

~Taylor Caldwell

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

anywhere and everywhere

2011-11-16T19:17:00.000-08:00

If God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives . . . we sleep and dream. We wake. We work. We remember and forget. We have fun and are depressed. And into the thick of it, or out of the thick of it, at moments of even the most humdrum of our days, God speaks.

--Frederick Buechner

plea

2011-10-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

God, please do for us today what we are unable to do for ourselves. Without you, we can do nothing.

the slightest hint

2011-08-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, I left the house for my morning walk before getting ready for work. While walking through my neighborhood while it's quiet, I get to take in all the sights and quiet morning sounds that often go unnoticed when the noises of the day begin. On one particular emerald and manicured lawn, I noticed five or six curled and golden liquid amber leaves lying underneath a full and leafy green summer tree. It was the slightest hint that the seasons are beginning to change...just the slightest notice that change is on the way. And yesterday while walking through the garden, I noticed that the pumpkin plant that grew so audaciously out of the compost pile this summer and subsequently took over our entire side yard, had begun to change colors as well. Even one of the dozen or so pumpkins had a blush of gold on it's cheeks.

Nothing stays the same. It has taken me a long time to really begin to grasp this. Nothing stays the same. It helps me endure the painful things...I know they will have to end one day, one way or another, because nothing stays the same. And it makes me appreciate and relish the beautiful things...in many ways, they are here for the moment and then they are gone, never to be seen in exactly the same way again. And with the changes come new chances, the old is passing away and the new is coming. Every season has it's time and place.

until the day I die

2011-08-22T06:31:00.000-07:00

Last night I talked at length with my daughter over the phone. She shares her work with me, her struggles, her challenges, her thoughts, the way God uses her neighbor to care and provide for her, her friendships. She comforts me. She's a wonderful listener and a great story teller, she tells her stories and you experience them with her because she shares the emotions of all those moments. And she's honest and vulnerable and let's you see her heart, which is the part that comforts me the most.

I'm in need of comfort right now. There are things going on beyond my control that feel dangerous and perilous and my heart wrestles with fear every day. I also talked with my dad last night. He encouraged me to never give up praying. He said, "Remember the story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge?" I said yes, and he said, "God is not an unjust judge...He hears our prayers." And so I pray. Everyday, every breath. And in between, through my daughter, through my dad, God sends me comfort. Don't give up. Don't be afraid. Trust. And then a ferocity wells up inside of me and I place myself between what I see as destructive and I declare with all that is within me, "So...we meet again. And, just like before, I will stand against you until the day I die. For you to win this battle, you will have to step over my dead body. In the name of Christ, I will fight you with all that is within me and I will never...never...give up."

And then I wipe my face, take a deep breath, and get dressed for work. It's another day and I will not give up.

shackled

2011-07-31T01:19:00.000-07:00

My children are adults now. They are no longer children. They must live their own lives, and they need freedom from me—the one who wanted to meet all their needs and couldn’t. My role has changed from the one who was to give all to the one who must let go of all. Know where they are at every moment for over 25 years and then—stop. Stop and let go and let them live their lives. And reflect on all the things you thought were so right and so important and see now that they weren’t important or that you were flat-out wrong. You were misinformed, you thought you saw things the way they were, but you saw incorrectly. You thought you were loving, but you were only protecting yourself. You thought you knew what would equip them best, but you ended up shackling their souls. You thought they would remember and feel loved, but they remember and feel hurt.

It's not the entire truth. It's not the whole story. But it is part of the truth, and it is part of the story. The part you hoped would never happen.

everyday life

2011-02-21T08:55:00.000-08:00

More and more I am believing that the truly spiritual life is lived out in every moment of every day no matter how commonplace, no matter how ordinary, no matter how mundane. In fact, I think the more commonplace and ordinary and mundane a day becomes to us, the more likely we are to miss the point of it. It takes no effort to recognize a mountaintop experience. It takes spiritual discipline to recognize the significance of the ordinary and to not only see the significance, but to find the joy in it.

"I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living on Rupert Mountain opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly....If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

--Frederick Buechner

tears

2011-02-20T16:58:00.000-08:00

"You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it...You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them..."
--Frederick Buechner

Out of the blue sometimes, emotions swell up from some deep well inside and in seconds can be spilling out of my eyes in tears. Sometimes I know immediately what they mean. Sometimes I have to search through my mental archives to find out what they mean. Sometimes words run through my mind at those same moments, and often they are the clues to what is happening deep inside. If these moments happen in the middle of my work day or while I'm surrounded by busyness and people, they can be easy to overlook and ignore. But if possible, I try to pay attention. I think tears can tell you something about your own heart, and I think often God is trying to speak to us through them.

I think it's also important to pay attention to those moments that bring tears to the eyes of the people around us. Sometimes those can be the most unexpected moments of all.

my reality

2011-02-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

breathe in and out

2011-02-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, while on a retreat near the California coast and close to where my oldest daughter now lives and surrounded by the redwoods, I got up early in the morning before everyone else and walked into the quiet hills behind the cabin. Even though I was following a narrow dirt track made by a vehicle, the area was remote enough for me to know that I was alone and that these woods were rarely disturbed by people.

The woods were old. There was life and decay on all sides, all made by very, very slow changes. Water dripped from leaves and seeped into the soil and collected into threads that slipped over the rocks that became rivulets that--day in and day out--carried the soil from one home to the next or were drawn up into the heights of the redwoods towering over my head. And I thought about how it never stops and how it changes the landscape so slowly that we can hardly perceive it.

The woods were very, very quiet. A bird, the same color as the dark leaves around me and small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, flew into the bushes beside me and proceeded to follow me as I walked. It flew from branch to branch spying on me with his tiny black eyes and then he was gone. And it struck me that, there in the woods where it was possible that no other human being would ever see him, he was doing exactly what God made him to do. He was living. He had no agenda--just breathe in and out, fly and see and eat and be.

It seems like so much of the time I am caught up in getting things done. What would happen if I stopped all my doing and lived like the bird? What if what God really wants from me is that I just really live--breathe in and out, eat and sleep, think and enjoy, be curious, fly, and walk and see?

I know that to really live is the struggle because everyday life demands that certain things be done. But I want my capacity to live to grow so that, in spite of life's demands, it eventually takes over like the trees that sprout and grow and eventually tower over the forest floor.

And when I am too old to do any more, I want to be the most alive I've ever been.

puttering

2011-02-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

Puttering is the act of contentedly doing the everyday things at home and finding satisfaction and joy in it. Pulling out weeds and tilling compost into the soil around your plants until they seem to nestle down into the dirt, mending clothes and feeling satisfied after ironing a shirt until it's crisp and proud, clearing away the clutter and feeling a sense of calm and order because the dining table now stands elegantly in the dining room, fitting the bed with clean sheets and plump pillows and knowing that it awaits you in the evening, sweeping the debris and dirt off the front porch so it can tell the world that this home is cared for, folding the afghans and draping them on the couch arms, ordering the coffee table, clearing off the counters.

Puttering around the house and yard on the weekends is one of my favorite things to do. The other day my boss asked if I had special plans for the weekend...I said yep, I'll be turning my compost and puttering.

aging

2011-01-24T20:08:00.000-08:00

While riding in the car recently, I glanced into the side rear view mirror and saw my mother's face...her mouth, her neck, the shape of her face. For most of my life and through all of my childhood, people exclaimed about how much I looked like my dad. I still definitely have his eyes and I have his personality, but the older I get the more I see my mother's face in the mirror.

Around my fortieth birthday, I realized that my once impeccable eyesight was changing, the eyesight that made it easy for me to thread a needle, to hand sew tiny stitches, to see well at night. But since then, other things have changed. My skin seems thinner and more fragile and the gray is showing in my hair. I tire more easily and can't seem to do the yard work that I used to do. My right leg aches in the winter and my hip sometimes goes out and makes me limp. I seem to need even more quiet time and I've always needed what seemed like a lot more than most people. I keep wanting to simplify my life. I want less stuff, fewer appointments. And more and more, it's the simple things that make me happy...a fire in the fireplace at night, the soft sheets on our bed, hot coffee early in the morning, a hot shower at night, the doves that sit in the sunshine in our backyard, the dark red rose that blooms outside our front door.

But along with my aching leg and hunting for my glasses, come small fearful moments when it occurs to me that I might be running out of time. That I might not complete the things that seem so important. That I might leave something undone. For the most part, I feel satisfied with my life and I am certainly more at peace with myself than I've ever been. I have no desire to go back to any era of my past. There are freedoms that come with aging that I don't want to give up, but there is always the unknown too. What will the later years of my life hold and what is it going to be like to see the finish line actually come into view? What will it be like when I lose my parents and then start losing my friends? What will it be like to grower weaker and then weaker still?

These years are intriguing to me...I feel more focused, more at peace, more sure of what's really important...and yet am often reminded by the signs along the way that I'm on the other half of the journey.

the beast that lives inside me

2011-01-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

...every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself...This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.
(Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz)

books that change me

2011-01-05T20:42:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed that God has a way of showing us to ourselves through the lives of others? Somehow it’s easier to face if we’re looking in on someone else. At least you can put the book down and catch your breath before swallowing hard and taking another peek at a life that looks suspiciously like your own. I’ve found myself at times gripped by the story of another’s life, unable to put the book down, and barely able to keep going at the same time. This sounds like me! I thought I was the only one who thought like this! I thought I was the only one who had secret struggles like this! And then, if you keep reading and you find out that they have overcome their fears and struggles, then the real wrestling begins! Am I going to confront the same thing in myself? Am I going to pick up the map and make my way through the same journey? Or will I nonchalantly hand off my copy of the book to someone who really needs it just so I can get it out of my house and out of my mind?

gripping and grasping

2011-01-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking lately about letting go of things.

Years ago I heard a song (I can't even remember what song it was) and a phrase from that song has stayed with me ever since, coming to mind in certain situations… “Oh the freedom we find from the things we leave behind.” It has come to mind when I’ve struggled over whether or not to hang on to that old favorite shirt or that item that used to mean a lot to me but doesn’t anymore. It has come to mind when I’ve lost something that was especially meaningful to me, and I’ve had to find the positive side of the loss. I’ve thought of it when I’ve had to make big changes in my life and have had to leave important things behind. Sometimes it has been struggling to let go of old resentments, grudges, bitterness.

Sometimes I find myself grasping God's hand, not in trust, but in an attempt to make Him do the things that I want Him to. It only produces turmoil in me. When I’m in that place where I really am trusting and believing that God is in control, I can feel the calm inside. But it’s a fine line to walk. From moment to moment, my heart can shift across to the other side and become demanding and desperate and grasping.

When I suddenly decide to feel the disappointment and frustration and finally let go, I suddenly feel this pressure lift off of my chest. I find out that I don't have to be driven by that thing anymore. Sometimes I think God, in His mercy, allows things to be taken away from us simply to free us to trust again. My hanging on shows up most with the things…or people…who mean the most to me. When it comes to my husband and family, I have to pry my fingers off on a regular basis.

There are clues that show up when I’ve made that shift across the line. I become irritable, agitated, very anxious. I start trying to make things happen. I try to control or manipulate people or circumstances. The Alcoholics Anonymous exhortation to “let go and let God” may sound cliché ,but it works when you actually do it.

past the stars

2010-12-16T20:52:00.000-08:00

I went on a walk tonight. It's the week before Christmas. My work days have gone by slowly and my evenings at home have gone by too fast. I just needed to get out and away and alone. It's very cold tonight but clear, and I bundled up in layers with a scarf around my neck and a knitted hat to keep my head and ears warm.

I walked under streetlights shining down through the trees like heavenly lights. I walked through crunchy leaves on the sidewalks. I walked past homes quiet and lit up from the inside and homes quiet and lit up on the outside. I walked under a sky clear enough to see stars and even streaks of clouds still visible in the night. My nose was cold and my breath blew out in puffs from my mouth, but my feet were warm. I looked up and looked past the stars, out into space, out and beyond. Sometimes looking out and past the stars, out into the deep, is like looking out to sea, out into the deep. It puts my life into perspective again. One life on one planet in the midst of the depths of space and time. Living and breathing, hearing and seeing, feeling and thinking, longing and hoping, speaking and praying. Sometimes it's good to be alone for a while.

technological meltdown

2010-11-30T21:08:00.000-08:00

So it all started because I never have really learned how to use our high-definition LCD big screen TV. I mean, I could use it if no one changed any settings, but as soon as someone decided to play an old VHS tape then I couldn't find my way back to the DVD settings, and there was essentially no way I would ever find my way to the actual TV settings from which I could watch actual TV channels. Then, to make matters worse, we started having problems with our DVD player so Ruben actually hooked up a second player which you could use if the first one didn't work. But it was all beyond me to figure out which setting went to which player, so I just essentially let Ruben run the TV, which we use mainly for DVDs anyway.

So, on Black Friday, while Rachel and Ruben were standing in line at Best Buy to get free phones, I was watching Asher and Raanan while Bethany went to grab some bargains for herself and someone had changed the settings on the TV or neither DVD player was working or something, and I couldn't even put on the DVD of cartoons for the kids to watch and to make matters worse, Asher seemed to know a whole lot more about it all than I did, which made me feel even more foolish. I told them they would have to wait until Grandpa got back from the store.

Anyway, several hours later, Ruben and Rachel came home with their new phones and started comparing notes and choosing their settings and transferring their contacts...blah...blah..blah...and the whole time I was just thinking...no, thanks! I don't want a new phone or a new DVD player or anything electronic, just let me go dig in the dirt instead. Which I did, and while I was digging in the dirt and getting muddy, Ruben decided it was time to replace the two semi-working DVD players, so he went and bought a new one and brought it home and started setting it up with its new remote (would someone please tell me why remotes have 55 buttons when all you ever use is 5 of them?). By this point, I had already had enough of electronics for one day, but the worst was yet to come.

After my respite digging outside in the dirt, I came in through the garage and decided to just throw all my muddy clothes in the washer right then and there, which I did. It wasn't until I went to put the clothes in the dryer that I found my cell phone in the bottom of the washer with all the wet clothes. My first thought was, "Oh no, what am I going to tell Ruben?" But after I told him and he simply said, "You're going to need a new phone," my first thought was that (1) I'm not going to spend money on a phone and (2) I absolutely hate learning how to use a new phone (why can't they just leave all the buttons where they were before? do they always have to put them somewhere else?). So after I put my wet phone in a bag of rice (Rachel said that was my best bet for drying it out), I thought, "Maybe the damn thing will just stay broken." But I didn't say that out loud. I just hid away in the bedroom and took comfort in reading the latest book on my nightstand.

In the meantime, Ruben was thinking ahead like he does and thinking of me, which he does so often, and thinking of how he could help me, which he does on a regular basis, and so he decided to have my number transferred to his old phone and then he transferred all of my contacts, all so that I would have a phone to use while mine dried out. And when I came out of the bedroom and he told me what he had so lovingly done, that's when I had my meltdown. It was all just too much technology in one day, too many things that had made me feel helpless and overwhelmed and I burst into tears and had visions of myself being an old widow and unable to watch TV or use a phone or find my way around a computer or, for all I know, run a crockpot by then. I told him he was going to end up putting me in a nursing home sooner than he thinks because I just can't keep up. My meltdown caught Ruben by surprise and he gently just let me go back to the bedroom and go to bed. I could just imagine him thinking, "Just go to bed, Emily. Everything will be better in the morning."

And it was. And I'm using his old phone while mine dries out. I'm still hoping mine works after all of this and I can just go back to where I can find the buttons again.

outside my front door

2010-11-26T08:38:00.000-08:00

Every morning now that fall is here I can open my front door and see my neighbor's liquid amber tree as the morning sun lights up its leaves like embers. Actually, our entire street is lined on either side with liquid ambers, flowering pears, redwoods, and towering native cottonwoods. And then, early in the week, the first snow fell on the low mountains around us covering everything like powdered sugar. I love living in a place where you can see the seasons played out all around you.

Thou who hast given so much to me, give one more thing...a grateful heart.

2010-11-19T19:46:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is almost here. Another year gone by. Another year to be grateful for. Another year to remember what I've been given...the great and the small. And oh that I would have a grateful heart...there is nothing like it to bring contentment.

Thou who has given so much to me, give one more thing...a grateful heart... -George Herbert

happy birthday to me

2010-11-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was sunny and clear. This morning I woke up to wind and rain and maybe the first cold front of the new season. With my hot cup of coffee, I stood on the front porch in my pajamas and let the wind swirl around me. Years ago an older lady friend of mine who has lived here most of her life told me that the rains always come in from the south. "You watch," she said, "when the rains begin, its the wind from the south that brings them." And every time I see the trees and leaves blowing in a wind from the south, I think of her and wait for the rain.

It's my birthday weekend and the kids came over for pizza last night. Rach quietly gave me birthday presents (everything in my favorite colors), knowing that I can't take too much attention at once. Jordan and Asher set up outside on the patio and cleaned the eight fish that Asher caught yesterday. After dinner, Raanan danced her most beautiful princess dances for us and wore the couch afghan like a wedding dress for the entire rest of the evening. Asher stood on his head all by himself at least a dozen times while Logan played with the Fisher Price farmhouse that Anna played with over twenty-five years ago. Danny and Bethany made a bet about who could lose the most weight by Thanksgiving, made each other weigh themselves, took measurements, and decided on what the prize would be. Ruben sat on the couch alternately watching cartoons with Asher, holding Raanan so Logan would stop hugging her, and keeping Logan occupied so he would stay out of the kitchen trash. And they each gave me their cards and their words and their hugs.

I don't think the kids are able to know yet what it means to me, but there is little that means as much as their love and appreciation. You do the very best that you can and then you find yourself watching them do the very best that they can. But, along the way, you realize that even your very best is not enough to meet every need and heal every wound and, looking back, your mistakes are oh so evident. So, when, in light of all of that, they come and they want to be with you and they love you and you know that your mistakes have been forgiven, there are no words, just so much gratitude.

If I did nothing else right, I loved them. And I still do. And now I get to love theirs.

Happy 50th birthday to me.

a campaign through mountains

2010-10-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

Just after Christmas last year a friend called me and asked me to have coffee with her. We talked about our jobs and we talked about our families and what’s coming up in the new year. But as our conversation went back and forth, I started to feel like my friend wasn’t into talking about what was really going on with each of us, just the really good stuff. I began to think, “Wow, your family is, like, doing amazingly well and they’re all deliriously happy and there’s no stress or strained relationships, no struggles or financial worries…you’re, like, almost giddy.” Wow.

And it wasn’t that I thought my family wasn’t doing well. I feel proud of my family. I feel proud of who we all are. I see each of us hiking through our lives, stopping sometimes to shift the load, and moving forward in good ways. But part of the journey is facing challenges and my family faces a lot of challenges, each of us has had to tackle some hard things, a few really hard things. And we’ve all faced some real strain that shows up in our faces and voices from time to time and when we’re together those things come up and we feel them and remember them and sometimes, when we have the guts and the right moment, we talk about them.

One of the toughest things to deal with in life, for me anyway, is that it’s mixed…all the time. There are good things going on and reasons to hope in what’s coming down the pike and triumphs, large and small, along the way. And there are tough things going on, challenges large and small that have to be tackled and wrestled with and occasionally they’re dark and threatening enough to make us wonder if we really want to wake up the next day. Life is not always an idyllic afternoon day trip. It’s more like a white water rafting trip or a campaign through mountains and, occasionally, it’s like crawling on your belly through a field of land mines. And there are beauties and joys along the way, but sometimes it’s surviving the challenges that makes the journey so beautiful in the first place. So a good conversation doesn’t ignore the challenges.

But after that conversation, I felt so discouraged that I called one of my closest friends. I had a feeling she would understand and she did. Our conversations are always about what’s real. We talked for two hours over lattes and a peach pastry that we split. We shared the struggles we’re facing, the tensions we feel, the joys we’re experiencing, and the surprises we’re dealing with. And we talked about our families and how there is reason to be proud and hopeful in the midst of the hard things. It was a conversation that left me feeling proud and strong again.

My strategy for dealing with life (and we all have a strategy whether we’ve really thought it through or not), is to hang on to every bit of good and to pray through the bad and to not give up. And I don’t mean this in a glib or defeatist way. I mean that my strategy, my plan every day, truly is to find the good and celebrate it and to face the bad head on and engage it with every resource I have, spiritually and otherwise. It’s a campaign through mountains and I intend to find the other side.

a good scrubbing behind the ears

2010-10-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

The rain has finally come. And it’s Saturday and so there is no pressing schedule to order me around, and Ruben and Rachel are still asleep. I can hear the water gurgling in the gutters outside, and the birds are at the feeder even in the rain. Water quenches more than one thirst. Even though I’m inside warm and dry, the rain is washing over me. I feel relief from the heat and lawn mowing and busy sounds of the summer. Now it’s cool and quiet and all sounds are softened in the moisture. Do other people live off of these things like I do?

I worked all week. I like my job. I like the people I work with. I’m thankful for my job. It allows me to live in this house and it allows me to go to the doctor when I need to and it helps keep me cool in the summer and warm in the winter and now, dry in the rain. But I work to live. And this morning is what I call “the living moments.” These are the things that make me feel alive. I work in order to enjoy these moments and savor them and swallow them until they fill the inside of me, my mind and soul.

The rain has suddenly gone from gentle dripping to a steady downpour. It’s as though it decided that what we need is not a little cleaning up, but a good scrubbing behind the ears. And I feel it inside of me again. What a beautiful morning...

thank you

2010-10-06T20:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not always sure what keeps me from writing. But I've been thinking about it again lately...and missing it.

My last blog was right after Logan was born, and here it is sixteen months later and he's walking and saying his first words. We've been in our house just as long and still can't believe how much we love it. I've still got my job, but Ruben lost his seven months ago. Life just marches on and things keep changing and now I'm coming up to my 50th birthday, which I still can't quite get my brain around. 50? Me?

One prayer keeps welling up within me. It's "Thank you." I drive away from the house each morning and think, "Thank you! Thank you for this home and our neighborhood and my job." I open the slider early in the morning and discover it's been raining and I think, "Thank you. I love the smell and the sound and the freshness." I hear Rachel come home and get ready for bed and I think, "Thank you. Thank you for bringing her home each night and keeping her safe and giving me such a wonderful daughter." I get a text message from Cyndi with Eamon's smile...he's lost his first tooth. I see Anna's photo on Facebook, I get an email at work from Ruben, Jordan calls to ask if he can cook dinner at our house, Danny wants to know if he can drop Logan off with us for a while...and I think, "Thank you. Thank you for the blessed life I lead. Thank you for all the love and goodness and beautiful things, for my marriage and my family, for the new trees to plant in the backyard, for the Canada geese on the lawn at work, for the river that runs through my town, for the doves on the back patio, for the seasons...for it all...thank you."

room for everyone

2009-07-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

This weekend we've had family here and we're all still staring at Little Logan who just arrived 10 days ago. Last night with everyone around the dining room table and with the kids playing with toys in the den and then this morning waking up to a peaceful home with places for grandkids to sleep while I drink my coffee and read the morning paper, made me so grateful again for the home God has given us. It's everything we prayed for and what we wanted most was a place for our family--our whole family--and that is what God has given us. I fell asleep last night listening to the 4th of July fireworks going off and enjoying the fact that our family was here with us and that there is room for everyone.

Little Logan Daniel

2009-06-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Well, there's nothing like a new grandson to get me blogging again. Logan Daniel showed up at 7:19 Tuesday morning weighing 7 lbs. 4 oz. I guess our son's response to seeing his newborn son was the highlight for me. To see him holding this tiny infant with tears in his eyes and unable to speak was worth waiting all night to see. Every child should be welcomed into the world like that. Melissa hung in there hour after hour and gave us all this beautiful little boy. So far, I just want to hold him and look at him and soak him up. Over the past years, God has blessed our family again and again. Little Logan Daniel is His latest gift to us.

just be quiet now

2009-04-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

God has moved and answered a million prayers (and crying and pleading), He provided us a home and, at the same time, provided enough to wipe out another debt. I had been losing heart again. I don't know why these past few years have been so difficult for me in regard to these two issues in particular. I have not questioned whether or not God could do it--the doubt came as I wondered whether He would do it--for me.

But, suddenly, like hacking my way through brush for three years and then suddenly falling through the thicket into open space, I'm now on the other side of a struggle that I thought would never end. And the only response that seems appropriate is to lie on my face and say thank you. My first response was to start backpeddling, feeling ashamed for having doubted and struggled. My first words were, "I'm sorry...sorry for not believing you heard me, sorry for...," but I just heard Him say, with a knowing look on His face, "Just be still now and know that I am God. I have been all along." Just be quiet. Don't say anything. No more pleading, no more apologies.

Just be quiet and know that He is God and He proved it once again. Just be grateful. There is nothing else to say. You thought He was too busy with other things to hear you. You thought He wasn't hearing your prayers. Sometimes you thought He didn't care. But He did. All along the way. And now He has answered.

Just be quiet and know and be grateful.

time to linger and be

2009-02-14T18:11:00.000-08:00

Today is Valentine's Day. Ruben and I decided to go to breakfast together and over warm platters of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast, we sat and talked. We talked about the day, we talked about the week, and we talked about things we've been thinking about--how we're feeling about life and about my art and his music and about our need for being. We decided that being can't be done in a hurry, and it can't be forced into a rigid time frame and that it takes time, time to think, time to be quiet, time to let your thoughts wander, time to process thoughts and feelings with each other or a close friend. And we also decided that it's out of the being that any art or music flows and without it, not much flows out at all.

I'm reading a book by Madeleine L'Engle. My musician/artist friend Garrett told me about it. He's reading it for his Master's program and it sounded interesting so I ordered a copy from Amazon and am reading it with him. The whole first chapter is about L'Engle's need for quiet, time to think, time to be. I feel like I found someone who understands.

I think we're losing something in our warp-speed culture. We're not allowing ourselves time to slow down long enough to think deeply or to process thoroughly or to feel completely or even to appreciate fully. We're in too much of a hurry. I can't live like that. Sometimes I feel like my culture is leaving me behind, and I'm not sure I really want to catch up. But living it out from day to day is easier said than done. I'm still trying to figure that part out, maybe it will take me a lifetime to figure it out, maybe it will remain something I pursue and never fully attain.

In the meantime, I'm going to linger over breakfast with my husband when I get that chance, get up early to catch that half hour of silence in the morning, fill the birdfeeder on the back fence and stay long enough to watch the birds, and sit on the couch with a candle burning to just think and feel and be. Maybe out of that the art and music will flow.

"The glory of God is man fully alive."
-St. Iraneus

what happy looks like

2008-11-25T19:30:00.000-08:00

Super happy Elliott!

root canal

2008-10-15T20:16:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow I go in for a root canal. My anxiety level flies off the charts when I have to visit the dentist. When I was eight years old, I had several fillings already in my molars and a new dentist, a big man with a shaved head, decided they were all done incorrectly. He pulled them all out and redid them. I remember lying in the chair by myself with tears running down the sides of my cheeks because he kept threatening to slap me if I cried or flinched. This was in the days before parents went in with their kids and before dentists catered to their patients. I've had a problem with dentists ever since. My regular dentist, Dr. John, is the best dentist in the world. He has taken care of me and my teeth for the last sixteen years and he knows my anxieties. So whenever he has to do anything besides clean my teeth, he puts me on valium. So tonight I take my valium and again in the morning and then Ruben will take me in and bring me home. I hope I don't remember any of it.

I am not God and I do not control the universe

2008-10-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

I have a good friend at work named Ruth. She and I swap updates on how we're doing with life. We each have our struggles. Ruth's are particularly difficult. Her son Dillon is eight years old and autistic and his needs are intense. A few weeks ago I shared with Ruth how a friend had come up to me when I was going through a difficult time and said, "You're just a little bird...so don't go trying to fly around the whole world right now."

This week I got an email from Ruth in the middle of the day. It said:

I remember what you have told me - I am a little bird. I am not God and I do not control the universe or our world for that matter. I will need God's grace and love (through friends) to keep reminding me of that. I think that I will put a note up on the bathroom mirror that says, "I am just a little bird" and "I am not God and I do not control the universe."

I think I need that note on my mirror, too.

small things

2008-10-13T21:13:00.001-07:00

So much of the time it's the small things that are the rich things in day to day living...making time to paint again, talking to my grandson on the phone, being encouraged by a friend at work, coming home from work in the evenings, and feeling the seasonal changes in the air in the mornings.

one chance

2008-09-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

My friend Deb sent me a link to this video on YouTube. I watched it and cried. Then I watched it again and again, moved every time by this incredibly beautiful voice disguised in such an ordinary man. I'm touched by the humility, the lack of self-confidence, the shyness, the emotions and vulnerability of a very common man and then this voice that emanates and soars...and takes the audience's breath away.

Unlike so many other contestants, Paul takes the stage apparently without any thought of becoming a star or an idol (British, American, or otherwise) and simply wants the chance to sing. The power and beauty of his voice catches everyone by surprise. Paul's website tells more of his story, the struggles of growing up and not fitting in, of being bullied in school, of finding comfort in his voice. Every time I hear him sing, I feel like he's singing for everyone who feels deeply and looks for a way to express it. He already has his first album out...it's called One Chance.

So ordinary, so common...so beautiful.

See Paul's final and winning performance on Britain's Got Talent and then again the judge's comments and one last celebratory performance amidst the cheers, smiles, and confetti.

totally worth it

2008-08-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

Over ten years ago a friend of mine who was a rabid (and I mean rabid) shopper talked me into doing something that I've sworn ever since that I would never do again...we went shopping the day after Thanksgiving. You can ask my family...I am not a shopper. My idea of shopping is going into a store, finding what I came for, and leaving as quickly as possible. But about once or twice a year, I do decide to go shopping, usually for clothes or candles or new pillows for the couch. The urge comes over me when certain stars line up in the sky--my basic self-esteem has to be intact, my level of confidence has to be at least in the moderate range, I have to have unhurried time, some extra money, and I have to go alone. So just about everything about shopping on the day after Thanksgiving works against me--I absolutely cannot tolerate crowds, the lines, the jostling, the competing, the hunting down an item I saw in the ads only to find that they sold out five hours ago.

But a couple of years ago, Ruben and Rachel talked me into going out with them on the day after Thanksgiving because they had decided it was time we bought a digital camera. I agreed to go mainly because I would have two of them for support and they assured me that when I couldn't take it any more, they would take me to Starbucks. So off we went and several hours later (we had to compare prices at several different stores), we bought our camera.

Besides not being a shopper, I'm also not a technical person (Rachel would say, "That's the understatement of the year!") so after we got home, it took the rest of the day for me to learn how to use the camera and how to upload the photos to the computer. And soon after that, I discovered snapfish.com where I could upload photos to the web, organize them, edit and crop them, and then share them with my friends and family.

I've loved our digital camera ever since. It provides me with one more creative outlet and being able to post my photos on my blog allows me to share my visual perspective on life as well as my written perspective. Although I swore I would never shop on the day after Thanksgiving again, this time it was totally worth it.

garden in a wheelbarrow

2008-07-29T19:32:00.000-07:00

Eight years ago Rachel, Jordan, and I had to pack up and move across town. A big part of the difficulty in moving was having to leave behind our yard and garden. The barren sideyard had become a thick, green vegetable garden complete with it's compost pile full of worms and "black gold," that rich, pelleted soil that worms generate out of clippings, water, and sunshine. And the borders around the front and back yards were full of hostas, impatiens, foxgloves, coral bells, lamb's ears, and Angel Face roses wherever there was enough sun. The house was surrounded by trees--birches and a pine and mulberry in the front, two giant maples and an apricot and lemon in the back, and underneath in all the shade grew azaleas.

Rachel had helped me with the gardening so much that by the time she was six, she knew the name of just about every plant we ever planted. All three kids had planted giant sunflowers in the garden at one point and were thrilled when the plants grew as tall as the house. Every kid should have the experience of growing a sunflower.

During one of our final moving loads to our new apartment, Rachel insisted that we take the rusted out wheelbarrow with us. She wanted to take it to our new apartment so that we could grow a garden in it. Somehow we made room for it and it has been our garden ever since, sitting in our back patio at the apartment and now sitting under our front window. I get to watch it change with the seasons. Right now it's full of marigolds, blue salvia, phlox, bugle weed, and gazanias, a great summertime mix.

swimming with sharks

2008-07-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

Last month Jordan and Bethany and the kids came down for a friend's wedding and spent several days hanging out with friends and with us. They were able to spend a couple of afternoons swimming in a friend's pool. Asher and Raanan loved it and played for hours wearing their floaties. Jordan could hardly get Asher out of the water at the end of the day.

But at some point, in the middle of playing, Asher suddenly decided to actually hold his breath and really swim. Jordan said he stood on the steps, said, "Hey, Dad, watch me!" and then he jumped in, swam underwater holding his breath, and popped up a few feet later, happy as could be. And that was the end of the floaties.

Later, Asher listened (standing a bit taller than usual), while his dad told us all how amazing he was at the pool and how he suddenly started swimming all by himself. We all exclaimed about how proud we were and then I teasingly told him that he probably learned so fast because of all those books he reads about sharks and fish and the sea. He took me very seriously because
the next day, I overheard him telling someone how he had learned to swim underwater. He was explaining in a very matter-of-fact tone that he learned from reading books about sharks.

down in the rat hole

2008-07-24T19:28:00.000-07:00

My friend Deb emailed me the night before last and asked if I wanted to have lunch with her. She didn't know it, but I had just gotten back from Sacramento the night before, confidently toting my fresh perspective back home with me, only to hit a brick wall by the next day.

When I got to her house, we took a little tour around her yard and the backyard pond to see how her gardening was growing. Then she sat me down at her table set for two and fed me a salad, a big handful of veggie chips as colorful as pot pourri, iced tea, and little ginger-lemon cookies. It was a little different than eating out of my Rubbermaid lunch container with a plastic fork.

Deb likes to know what's going on with her friends. She doesn't like to go too long without catching up and it had been a while since we talked. So, after she thanked God for our food and our friendship, she said, "So what's going on?"

In her book, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes, "This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds."

Deb just listened while it all came tumbling out. She made a few comments and shared a little of how she struggles in similar ways. She just cared. And then it was time for me to go back to work. She didn't fix anything for me, but I sure felt better. She didn't tell me how I should be more thankful or how I should look at the bright side things. She didn't give me any advice.

And today, I woke up remembering the verse from Psalm 139 that says every one of my days is written in God's book and He knows about each one before it happens. I felt hopeful again. I didn't know what the day held, but He did.

God went down into the rat hole with me yesterday; He was dressed up like my friend Deb.

coffee and a fresh perspective

2008-07-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the Starbucks on 9th street in Downtown Sacramento in one of those comfortable chairs that Starbucks has used to create living rooms for us to sit in, drink great coffee, visit with friends, or disappear into our laptops. When I first started hearing about Starbucks (before one came to my town), I resisted giving into what I felt was just more of those faddish waves to come through our culture. But between the great coffee and softly-lit atmospheres as comfortable as home away from home, I find myself searching them out now when I want to be with friends or escape into my laptop without being cooped up at home. In fact, Ruben and I have a standing appointment with our friends, Gerry and Peggy, at Starbucks every Sunday after church. And here I am in Sac with several hours to kill and all I wanted to do was find that chair and coffee so I could sit and blog.

Something has happened to me on this little trip to Sacramento. We came down on an errand and, of course, wanted to see our kids and grandkids, which we did. And because we're really not going to have much of a vacation this year, we keep trying to take advantage of any time we can to create minivacations when we can.

Ruben, as usual, used the internet to find us an awesome hotel room for less than a room at the Motel 6. So last night we slept in a king-sized bed with six pillows and a light-as-air, summer down comforter in a room with a view of the Capitol building and a beautifully-tiled bathroom twice as big as ours at home.

I'm not sure what it is about getting away from home and the routine and the day-to-day rituals that gives us a fresh perspective, but it sure works. I feel like I'm breathing fresher air (and I am, considering our town is still under a blanket of smoke) and suddenly feeling less stuck, like maybe I really can go home and climb out of the rut I've been in.

So we've gotten to visit briefly with Lunar and Cyndi, taken Katie and Eamon out for a Jamba, held Baby Elliott who still smells like a newborn kitten, and had a great night's sleep. And today I'm out of my element, driving around Downtown Sac (a really beautiful city, one of the few urban areas that I really enjoy), away from the usual, and feeling like I could come back to life again even though tomorrow morning I will resume my rituals that make up my typical work week.

I needed this. And I say this just about every time Ruben says its time to get away again. He's usually right.

Elliott

2008-07-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

Cyndi sent pictures of Elliott this week. He's only three and half weeks old and is already changing. He has his own little look, different from his brother and sister. I love his dark eyes. He's already starting to take it all in.

Baby Elliott

2008-06-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday morning our new grandson Elliott MacGowan Lopez-Martin made his debut into the world. He arrived after only two hours of labor on his mother's part and was the talk of the hospital floor because he weighed in at 10 lbs. 15 oz. Ruben and I live 2 1/2 hours away, but we were holding Elliott by the time he was just a few hours old. Cyndi looked beautiful.

Cyndi is my step-daughter, so Elliott is not my grandchild by blood, but I stood there in that hospital room thinking, "This little boy is mine because he's been given to me." Cyndi's mother left her and her brother and my husband a long time ago. It's hard for me to get my mind around the fact that she could just walk away, but she did. From what I understand, her heart had left way ahead of her. Maybe her heart was never in it to begin with. I don't know. But she left and I came along years later and over time, Ruben and Cyndi and Danny invited me into their lives and their hearts.

So last week I stood in another woman's rightful place and held her grandson in my arms and called him my own because she checked out. So he'll call me Grandma even though I didn't earn it, and he'll be my grandson and he'll come to my house to play with puzzles and I'll come to his birthday parties and eat cake and watch him grow. What a wonderful gift.

Happy birthday, Baby Elliott. You're a beautiful, beautiful boy.

leading a blessed life

2008-06-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted something so intensely that managing your longings and the disappointment of not finding what you desire becomes a daily challenge? Have you ever felt thwarted on every side from accomplishing things that should be relatively simple but that, for what ever reason, become prolonged difficulties?

These days I vacillate between dreaming again (mainly about owning our own home and feeling settled) and succumbing to disappointment and discouragement. On several fronts, we just continue to run into walls that keep us from moving forward with things that we long for or feel that we need.

Enjoying and appreciating what I do have is almost all I know to do anymore to combat the discouragement.

Which leads me back to those things that I can be thankful for:

--Small blessings, like the "new" couch that our son gave us this week. Ours was worn, torn, and shabby. Danny gave us the couch he bought four years ago for $20 and it's bigger, softer, and has no holes in the cushions. We even like the color--just a gift we didn't see coming.

--Adult children who still come back to see us. Stepchildren who want to be with us. Grandchildren who love to come to our house. How many people do I know who would give anything to be able to say the same?

--My job. I have a very good job. I work in one of the most beautiful buildings in town. It's a job with a future, with benefits, and in a department with good people. All of this in a time when many are losing their jobs or holding down part-time jobs just to make ends meet. I'm thankful.

--The daylilies in my front door flowerpot that bloomed today....what a blessing to be able to see.

ordinary things

2008-05-18T20:26:00.000-07:00

I guess you could say I've been on a hiatus from blogging. There for a while, I blogged almost daily. But for the last few months, it just hasn't been there. Today I was looking and reading through some artists' blogs and came across one that reminded me to remind myself of the many things that I'm grateful for. Some things are just so ordinary or so easy to take for granted that it takes a nudge from somewhere or someone to remind me how much I enjoy them. So I decided to blog again. So here's the beginning of reminding myself...

--There is nothing as luxurious as hot running water to shower in. Sometimes it feels like the height of luxury to me to simply turn the faucet, make a little adjustment, and have the perfect temperature. Maybe it's the years of growing up without it, I don't know. I just know that at the end of the day or early in the morning, nothing feels better.

--On Saturday mornings I sleep in (which means I get to sleep past 5:30) and then I get up while my family is still sleeping and I sit on the couch in the quiet, drinking my coffee, and reading the morning paper in my pajamas, which feels like such a luxurious thing to do after putting myself through the morning paces of the work week. And I'm reminded that not everyone has that luxury.

--I really love the neighborhood that I live in. I've lived on this street now for eight years. I've always felt safe here, safe to walk at night, safe during the day. I've enjoyed the trees that line the streets, the open field on the east where I've watched the sun come up, and the mountains on the west where I can watch the sun set. I love the smell of freshly mowed grass when the gardener comes on Tuesdays and watching the fireworks from the front lawn on the 4th of July. I may not always live here, but I will always have good memories of living here.

--Also on my list of luxuries, is the delay brewing function on my Mr. Coffee coffeemaker. How crazy is it that I can tell a machine every night to brew my coffee just the way I like it and to have it ready for me at precisely 5:30 every morning? I can tell just how much I enjoy it when I forget to set the delay button and I stumble downstairs and into the kitchen the next morning only to find an empty and cold coffee pot.

--I keep thinking of more things I've grateful for....this list could go on for days. But I don't know if anything makes me happier than being married to Ruben. He makes me feel more at ease than anyone else on the planet. No wonder I always want to be with him.

ordinary day

2008-04-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, in the middle of some ordinary activity, you hear something truly profound. It happened to me early this morning while reading the Sunday paper and drinking coffee. It was a quote in an article announcing the death of actor Charlton Heston. The article mentioned that in 2002 Charlton Heston had revealed that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease and that his response had been, “I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure.”

It was a response borne out of a depth of character and I thought to myself, “It’s the key to living well (and, I suppose, of dying well, too).” To walk that fine line of facing fears and struggles, wrestling with those things in life that deserve being wrestled with…..and, in any given moment, knowing when to let it all go…and surrender.

This has been precisely the struggle for me over the past twelve months with more than one issue. “I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure.” Both, courage and surrender, in equal measure. The tricky part is knowing in each moment which one is called for. I don’t always know for sure. Sometimes I speak out and act and strive only to discover I’m fighting the wind and it’s time to surrender. Other times I hold back, keep quiet, assuming that I’m being patient, when in reality I simply lack the courage and fortitude to tackle what needs to be tackled.

I think this is where reliance on a personal God who not only sees the big picture but is also willing to guide us through it, makes the difference. “God help me know, help me hear…is this a moment for courage or surrender?”

finding peace again

2008-04-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

I'm doing better than I have in a while. Some things are settling down and some problems are getting resolved. But most of all, I'm coming to grips with letting go--letting go of things I can't control anyway--and trusting God to bring it all together.

I can always tell when I'm finding peace again--paintings start coming together in my mind, I pick up that blanket I started crocheting months ago, I start enjoying the simple things again, I begin feeling more gratitude and less fear. Today I enjoyed my job and the people I work with. I got an email from my daughter-in-law which always makes me smile. I watered my plants on the patio and in my wheelbarrow and felt the sunshine and smelled the wet soil. I was reminded of a good friend who I haven't seen in a while.

coming home

2008-03-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

The past twelve months for us have been a series of crises and major changes, by December it had begun to take its toll on us. By December I found myself sitting on my corner of the couch each morning not really knowing what to say to God anymore. When January arrived, depression came with it. And the changes and decisions and challenges kept coming. We've had to look to a few friends for encouragement and prayers and input.

Through some conversations in which tell-tale words came out of my mouth, I began to hear myself. The truth started coming out, and the truth was that I have felt overwhelmingly disappointed by the ongoing troubles that have blocked every effort we’ve made to move forward. And I have felt overwhelmingly disappointed that God has not answered my prayers. The disappointment bred seeds of doubt and the fears overcame the hopes and then, I discovered, that deep down inside I was angry. I began to own up to it. I told God how I felt. I told Him how I thought He made me some promises that He hasn’t kept. I told Him that I trusted Him, that I believed Him, but He hasn’t done what He said He would do.

It wasn’t until the truth started coming out, that I was able to start grieving over the answers I had prayed for and cried for but that hadn't come.

This morning in church we sang a hymn and as I read the words, I knew God was trying to nudge me home. The truth is, He’s seen me through every trial. The truth is, He has delivered me and comforted me and provided for me. All I have to do is look back and I can see again, how much He has blessed me. While we sang, I stood to my feet. It was the least I could do to say, “I believe You again…and I’m choosing to trust.”

Small joys came back to me this weekend…my granddaughter Raanan spent most of Saturday with us, her simple happiness comforted me. The sun was out and the air was wonderfully cool…the flowers are blooming in my wheelbarrow. A good friend called me to say I had been on her mind and that she had been praying for me….

today

2008-02-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

Today I fed the birds on my patio and painted a sprig of Indian Hawthorne that I picked from the bushes that surround our mail box.

mercy

2008-01-13T18:27:00.000-08:00

This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.
(Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies)

prying my fingers off

2008-01-09T19:33:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking lately about letting go of things.

For years a line from a song has stayed with me… “Oh the freedom we find from the things we leave behind.” I’ve thought of it when I’ve struggled over whether or not to hang on to that favorite old shirt or that thing that used to mean a lot to me but doesn’t anymore. It has come to mind when I’ve lost something that meant a lot to me. I’ve thought of it when I’ve had to make big changes in my life and have had to leave important things behind.

Sometimes when I’ve lost something or had to give up some hope or plan, my initial reaction has been disappointment, frustration and hopelessness. What else is going to go wrong? Why can’t I have this that I want so badly? Why is it taking so long? But the circumstances are often beyond my control. Sometimes no amount of striving or bargaining or planning can make any difference. Sometimes you just have to let it go.

What’s interesting is that after getting over the disappointment and frustration (it’s called grieving), I sometimes feel this pressure lift. I feel like I can relax about it. I stop feeling driven. I may even still want whatever it was that I’ve been forced to let go of. But somehow, in all of the striving, I realize that I was hanging on too tightly and that what I was looking forward to God providing for me, had become something I was demanding that He give me.

This has happened to me before, this thing where I start out taking God’s hand trusting Him for something, only to find myself grasping so tightly as if to make Him do it.

When I’m in that place where I am trusting, believing that God is in control, I can feel the peace and rest inside. But it’s a fine line to walk. From moment to moment, my heart can shift to the other side and become demanding and desperate and grasping again. There are clues that show up when I’ve made that shift across the line. I become irritable, agitated, very anxious. I start trying to make things happen. I try to control or manipulate people or circumstances

Sometimes I think God allows things to be taken away from us simply to free us to trust again. My hanging on shows up most with the things…or people…who mean the most to me. When it comes to my husband and children, I have to pry my fingers off on a regular basis.

The Alcoholics Anonymous encouragement to “let go and let God” may sound cliché but it works. Only it does require really trusting.

painting winter

2008-01-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

So now I'm painting winter since the fall leaves are gone. We just came through some very stormy weather this past week so I've painted an ominous sky. I got the idea for this from one of Terry Banderas' paintings that I discovered online last week. I love his landscapes and want to practice some of his techniques.

Maybe I'll just paint all the seasons as they come...

artistic endeavors

2008-01-06T16:27:00.000-08:00

This past week I was home sick for a couple of days and ended up discovering some artists online. One, Terry Banderas, uses his blog to share his pen and ink drawings and watercolors. He's very good. I found his landscapes to be especially beautiful and dramatic. I also discovered Maud Durland whose paintings are absolutely stunning. I would love to see them in person some day.

Visiting these websites inspired me to create my own site just for my art and maybe some of my photos. Creating a site dedicated to my art will allow me to share what I've done with those who don't necessarily want to wade through my other musings, thoughts, and venting (!). I hope those who visit it will enjoy it...artendeavors.blogspot.com.

Happy Day Kindergarten

2008-01-05T20:02:00.000-08:00

In 1965 my family returned to the United States from a five-year missionary term in Zambia, Central Africa. I was five years old. For a short time, we lived in a small brick house in Searcy, Arkansas where my parents reconnected with family and friends having both gone through their college years in Searcy.

What I remember most about my time in Arkansas was wearing a brand new pair of brown penny loafers to my first day of kindergarten and that my teacher, Mrs. Beck, sang These Boots Were Made For Walking on the local radio station. My kindergarten class had two sets of identical twins in it. As a toddler my mother had let my blond hair grow long and she would pull it back into a pony-tail but sometime before my fifth birthday, she cut my hair pixie short. And so, in my kindergarten class photograph, my hair is very short having turned from blond to brown and I am sitting up very straight and proud in the little black dress which I remember with the embroidered flowers across the bodice. I loved kindergarten and I loved Mrs. Beck.

winter thoughts

2008-01-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

I’m home sick today…too much sneezing, dripping, and coughing to go to work. It’s quiet and I’m drinking hot lemon water and thinking about winter. I took pictures of our back patio…brown leaves, potted plants withered by the cold and empty patio chairs, their cushions stashed in the garage because of the weather. Winter slows things down. It gets dark earlier and stays dark later and the cold and wind and rain makes me stay indoors and think about staying warm and dry and making soup. In spite of our technological advances that provide us with lights when it’s dark and heat when it’s cold, winter still has a way of slowing me down and making me hibernate, at least a little bit. It feels like a rest, like letting the ground lay fallow for a while instead of always producing something.

I spent several months painting the colors of fall which are mostly gone now. Now the blander, drier colors of winter have pretty much taken over. Bare branches. Monotone colors. It looks quieter.

Early in the morning when I walk through the courtyard of the building where I work, I like to look up at the trees. They are almost twice as tall as the building and their branches are bare. And near the very top of one of them is a tiny nest made of sticks and twigs and probably spider webs. It sits high up in its tiny twiggy cradle. I doubt if anyone knew it was there until the leaves fell. I don’t know why it makes me smile every morning but it does. It reminds me of how God is working and building things that we know nothing about. It makes me wonder what else He’s doing that I know nothing about.

Brahms' lullaby

2008-01-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

Some Christmas gifts remain in your memory. In 1967 my family was living in a borrowed house in Altadena, California. We were on furlough from Africa and my dad was working on his master's degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. I was seven years old. As far as I remember, we celebrated a single Christmas in that house before moving on and I received a gift that would end up accompanying me back to Africa and then return again with me to the States in 1979. My parents gave me a Raggedy Ann doll with a wind-up music box inside that played Brahms’s Lullaby. I can still remember the sound of winding up the music box with the key and the tin-like tones of Brahms's lullaby almost forty years later.

joining the protest

2007-12-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, while I was still working for my friend Bill, a friend of his sponsored a concert at the Convention Center. Sara Groves was the opening act and when Bill was offered tickets by the sponsor, he talked him into two more tickets for Ruben and me. We all wanted to go just to hear Sara.

I had first heard Sara a couple of years before. Her style is different and didn’t appeal to me at first. It was her lyrics that caught my attention and the more I listened, the more I was drawn to her down-to-earth style and her honesty. I liked her honesty.

The night we heard her in concert, she told the story of a Bosnian man who, in the midst of the war, went and stood in the bottom of one of the gaping craters in his bombed out street and began to play the violin for his neighbors. It was his protest against the war and he protested with music.

Sara began to describe what she has begun to call her “protest of beauty.” With beauty, with music, with what is good…she would protest against the war that surrounds us all everyday. And I decided that night that I would join her. I decided that I would protest against all that discourages and causes fear and dashes hopes and crushes the spirit and hurts the body and causes suffering by finding beauty and holding it up whenever and wherever I could. I decided I would be honest in my writing but I would not exalt the ugly or hateful but would find the good, find the beautiful, find the hope, find God in the midst of it all. And so with words or paint or photographs, in the faces of my grandchildren, the appreciative words of my children, the compassion of my husband, and the everyday glimpses of God and good and beauty, I would protest the war.

the Christmas story in sound and color

2007-12-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

Garrett’s music has continued to stir me. On the way to work again the other morning, I turned the music up so that I could hear each note and sound. I found myself listening to the music and wondering….how do you paint a musical note? How do you put in words the sensation of hearing something so beautiful? Here is the Christmas story in sound, if I were to tell the Christmas story with paint, what would it look like?

So I started thinking about the story of Christmas, its essence. How do you tell the story with color? And an image began forming in my head and all the way to work it grew and each day since then, I’ve been painting the Christmas story in my mind.

Christmas came this morning

2007-12-17T21:32:00.000-08:00

This morning on the way to work, Christmas finally came to my heart. My friend, Garrett, released an album of Christmas music this year played on his dulcimer and I was playing it in the car as I drove. My children tease me every year because I get emotional when I hear The Little Drummer Boy. But so far, I haven’t allowed myself to be moved…too much to do, too much to hold together, too much to plan and pay for. But in the car this morning, Garrett began to play The Little Drummer Boy and the music slipped through all the tautness and brought to mind the words and the words made their way past my defenses.

It’s why the song moves me to tears every year. I’m the little drummer boy.…I have no gift to bring…shall I play for you?

________________________________________

hanging on

2007-12-11T20:05:00.000-08:00

Discouragement. The last few months have been especially difficult with situations that have demanded more and more of our resources—emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial—until it feels like we’re running out. And feeling like there is less and less to pull from to meet the challenges stirs up the anxiety that we may run out…run out of energy, run out of strength, run out of money. Then what do you do?

I’ve been here before, but it never stops being a test of faith. Will God provide? Does He see? Does He care? One thing I can be encouraged about is that because I’ve been here before and because I have experienced God in these times…over and over…I am not as quickly or easily shaken as I used to be.

But what gets me through now is the same thing that got me through any of the other struggles…hanging onto God and good friends. By hanging onto God, I mean wrestling with that doubt and worry and choosing to believe that He is going to come through somehow and hanging in there long enough to see Him provide. And hanging on to good friends means I let those closest to me know what’s going on so that they can offer me those words that we all need from time to time…I’m so sorry, this is really difficult, and don’t give up.

color on paper

2007-12-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

I'm still painting fall. Thanksgiving morning I went out early and took pictures of the leaves and trees on my street (it was so quiet...like Christmas morning or days when it snows...I love it) and then I used one of my photos for a basic layout for this painting. A few years ago when I began experimenting with watercolors, I loved the transparency and most of what I painted was very light and the colors very subtle. But lately I've been mixing up the boldest and richest colors that I can and watching the color spread across the paper.

spitting nails

2007-11-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

I don’t get angry very often and I don’t think I get angry very quickly. But twice in the last few days, I’ve gotten very angry. I got angry enough that I ranted and raved (both times) while Ruben listened patiently (he wasn't the one I was mad at). Later, we talked about it. He told me that sometimes it scares him when I get so angry and it scares him, he said, because I can’t hear him when I’m that angry.

I can’t hear a lot of things when I’m angry. I’m remembering an incident when I was so angry that I couldn’t hear myself. I was with some co-workers and became so angry over something someone else said, that my brain fogged up and I started reeling like a drunkard. In the moment, I remember clearly telling myself to keep my mouth shut and when I didn’t think that was going to work, I told myself even more clearly to get up and leave the room. I didn’t do either. I stayed in the room and I let my mouth fly.

There have been a few times in the past when I’ve felt like I was justifiably angry and expressed it well. A few times. Most of the other times, I’m still regretting.

Understanding why I feel so angry isn’t always clear to me in the moment. And often when I take the time to really think it through, it’s actually reasonable and understandable that I feel it. It’s managing my mouth and emotions in the moment that eludes me.

So this week, after ranting and raving and looking to Ruben to help me figure out why I was ready to spit nails at somebody, it became clear that behind the anger, I felt disrespected, uncared for, and taken advantage of. The intensity of the eruption stemmed from having experienced those feelings over and over again from the same person and not feeling able to do anything about it.

colors

2007-11-19T20:29:00.000-08:00

I can't remember a fall when I enjoyed the colors of the leaves more. Every morning on the way to work, every evening on the way home, along the lane where I work, on the sidewalk outside my office building, lining the streets...a parade of color everywhere I go...I can't wait to paint...

does it make any difference at all?

2007-11-18T20:21:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking about prayer lately. Sometimes I pray for someone or about something and in the same moment find myself thinking to myself, “Does it make any difference?..any difference at all?”

And I do believe that praying to God makes a difference. I’ve seen too many answers to my own prayers to believe that it is just coincidence that things come together as they do, time and time again, over and over again. But sometimes I pray and these thoughts come into my head, “How could me speaking out words that nobody else hears make any difference? Does God really hear? Does He really do something when He hears?”

And then I think about what it would be like if I get to heaven and looked back on time and saw that God heard every time and that He was moved to act…every time? And what if I looked back to a particular moment and realized that if I had only believed and spoken out, it could have changed the course of someone else’s life, or my own life? What if speaking out a simple, sincere prayer is what makes the difference? How could I not pray then?

This is often what keeps me praying when I feel least like praying…the thought that what if this simple act of speaking to God makes the difference? Then…I just can’t risk not praying. Jesus said even if all we have is faith the size of a mustard seed, we can pray and move mountains into the sea. So I pray…

remembering and finding faith

2007-11-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning worship is one of those experiences that most consistently reminds me of the greater picture, that moves me to look to Christ again, that helps me remember what He has already done, and that moves my heart to be receptive again to God. I can come into church on a Sunday morning and be shut down on the inside because of the stresses of the week and it’s most often a line from a song that resuscitates me and I feel again the relief of remembering that God is with me and I’ve not been left on my own. This morning we sang,

And I will fear no evil
For my God is with me
And if my God is with me
Whom then shall I fear?
Whom then shall I fear?

Sometimes I think about people who discount the value of faith because they see it as a “crutch.” Sometimes I wonder if those same people have ever been up against things in their lives that they can’t control or manage. If they really haven’t faced anything yet that is beyond them, then it won’t be long until they do. If they have faced circumstances that are beyond them and can still declare that they don’t need anything or anyone beyond themselves, then I have a hard time believing that they're facing the truth or telling the truth.

And I will fear no evil…for my God is with me….and if my God is with me….whom shall I fear?....whom shall I fear?

no words

2007-11-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

This past week has been a blur of changes, decisions, stresses, and challenges. I finally picked up my laptop at 8:00 tonight realizing that I haven't blogged in days. Those four months off with plenty of time for writing and painting have ended and the 8-5 work weeks have begun with all of life's challenges, big and little, squeezed in during lunch or after hours. Besides beginning a new job, we've had troubles coming at us from every other direction as well. I sat here staring at my screen not able to put into words what I think or feel.

happy birthday

2007-11-10T18:06:00.000-08:00

Last Monday was my 47^th birthday.

I received a call late on Thursday evening telling me that I had been approved to work and could I begin at 8:00 the next morning? I did and so I am now officially a County employee. After being shown to my new office where my name was already imprinted nicely on a nameplate next to my door, I was shown to my new supervisor’s office where she welcomed me and gave me a summary of my schedule for the day.

In spite of the fact that Ruben and I had had a very intense (and tense) discussion the night before about other pressing issues that we’re facing (a conversation that left us both feeling very stressed) and in spite of the fact that I had woken up feeling incapable, overly emotional, and without a shred of self-confidence, God heard my early morning prayers for help. I was welcomed very warmly by everyone I was introduced to, I felt capable as the pieces of my new job were described to me, and I was even able foresee the possibility of new friendships on the horizon.

Some of the greatest changes and challenges in my life have come to me in this fourth decade but each time my birthday comes around I think of these years as my happiest.

thank you

2007-11-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

God has given me a job, the job I most wanted. I received the call on Wednesday just as I had sat down on the couch to blog...again, about how hard it is to keep waiting. I was so caught off guard that before I really realized what had happened, I had accepted the job and received instructions for the next steps. It took me calling Ruben and my closest friends to tell them the news before it began to sink in that this long, long waiting period I’ve been in is actually over now. What I feel the most is enormous relief….the searching is over, the tests and interviews are over, the financial crunch is going to end soon, the hold on buying a house can end, the worry can end, and life can move forward again.

I had lunch with Ruben after I received the call. He wanted to celebrate with me and while we ate our celebration lunch he (very gently) reminded me of how God was working behind the scenes all the time and how He provided just like He said He would and how, maybe…just maybe, all that worrying and fretting and anxiety wasn’t really necessary. And maybe, next time, I could rest a little bit more and trust.

God has been so good to me. He is good to me even though I complain and worry and try to manipulate, control, manage, and orchestrate life; even though I doubt and question whether He’s going to come through this time or not. I finally get on the other side of a trial and I see what He has done and I go to Him and don’t know what to say. I just stand there looking at Him embarrassed by all my thrashing around and I just have to sigh and say, “Thank you. Thank you for loving me in spite of me.”

Trust in the LORD with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge him,

and he will make your paths straight.

(Proverbs 3.5-6)

latest painting

2007-10-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

I can't stop painting...the weather changing, the colors of the leaves, the Canada geese flying overhead, the creek is full again, and I'm loving all of it. Every time I go out, I get inspired by something. Today it was the idea of light streaming through a birch grove whose leaves are beginning to change...

on being an obsessive-neurotic

2007-10-23T16:42:00.000-07:00

I am no longer surprised at how easily and quickly I can go from feeling hopeful and inspired to feeling hopeless and depressed. This facet of my personality is one reason why I depend so completely on my faith to keep me centered, appropriately responsible, and to keep me from going crazy. If I depended on my emotions, I’m sure I would have done myself in by now. In my search for a new job, I can wake up to a new day, think about the fact that there isn’t as much money coming in as before and immediately succumb to frustration and depression (Christmas is coming!). But then, I remind myself that today may be the day when that phone call comes as the answer to my prayers and then I’ll feel better again and then we can buy a house and... But then I get dressed and face the fact that I’ve gained weight during my down time between jobs and a cloud settles over me and I think about having to either wear clothes that are tight (I hate tight clothes!)or go buy new ones (I refuse!)and then I remind myself that I’ve got to back on a diet and I guess I’ll always be fat and this will never end….and woe is me, I’m in the pits again. But, I pull myself together, get myself out of the house, drive downtown to Starbucks to comfort myself with a latte, find a sunny chair to sit in and read my book, get all inspired, feel a rush of inspiration, drive back home in a hurry so I can pull out my trusty laptop and write all the things that are suddenly rushing through my head…and well, life is so good!

It just doesn’t take much for me to go from one extreme to the other. And in light of this, my husband Ruben is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. He is very, very emotional (which I absolutely love) and so he can relate and he understands, never making me feel like the obsessive-neurotic that I act like sometimes. But while I’m busy thrashing around emotionally and going off the charts, he just stays steady and true, listening and then reminding me that everything’s going to be ok, and the world really hasn’t ended yet, and then he’ll throw in his trusting assertion that he’s sure that God has good things planned for us…. “You just never know, Emily. You just never know.”

Before Ruben and I got married, I had a friend ask me why I wanted to marry him. Without a second thought, I said, “Because I’ll be able to finish out my journey better with him than without him. He’ll help me be a better person.” And he does—every day.

fall leaves

2007-10-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

Whenever I drive around these days I soak up the colors of the leaves. It's my favorite thing about fall and I'm so thankful that I live in a place where I can experience the changing of the seasons. As much as I can resist changes in my life, I can see through the changing seasons how refreshing it can be. It's because the summer was so hot that I can fully appreciate the brisk air now. And next spring, it will be because of the months of cold and rain of winter that I will be able to fully appreciate the warmth and changes of spring. I have to believe that the same good things will come out of the changes in my life this year. It's God's way and He shows it to me everyday in one way or another. I just don't want to miss it.

inner rumblings

2007-10-19T21:33:00.000-07:00

For much of my life I’ve found consolation and relief from my inner rumblings by writing out my personal experiences and feelings. It has only been recently that I’ve felt challenged to let others in on those inner rumblings. I read a poem once that was the cry of a fellow pilgrim for encouragement and comfort and the repetitive cry was for others on life’s journey to call back to him and reassure him that the journey was possible and that God was with them in it. So…blogging is my venture out of my personal journals hidden away in a box. It's my attempt at an often fearful thing for me and that is to expose my inner walk in the hope that at least a few others might take courage in walking out their own journeys and that they might see fresh glimpses of God in hearing of the tender ways in which He has persistently invaded my life.

rain

2007-10-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

It’s raining today and has been for most of the week. God has slowed my life down…there is no word on a job and so each day is a blank slate and today I woke to the rain. I’ve been painting today, something I’ve done very little of for years. And I’m thinking that God has brought me to this point where life has slowed down enough and for long enough that I’m regaining things lost. Instead of putting on music this morning, I’ve been painting to the sound of the rain. I don’t know which I love most…the colors of the paint or the sound of rain or maybe it’s the quiet that surrounds them. I just have a feeling that I wouldn't be here if God hadn't stripped some things away. He is good and all that He does is good. I still believe it.

food for the soul

2007-10-09T14:41:00.000-07:00

Sunday night Ruben and I went to an amazing and mesmerizing concert and feasted our souls on music. Today I fed myself on art—painting colored leaves that I collected from a tree in my neighborhood. What is it about music and color and beauty that feeds the soul?

permission

2007-10-08T17:12:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday night we had dinner with some new friends we have been getting to know. After dinner and in the course of conversation, I was asked a question, a question I’ve been asked before, and it evoked in me a passionate response. I was not surprised by the emotion since the subject matter is one that consistently brings up much for me in terms of memories and feelings; what surprised me was my response. Revealing passion or pain is not something I resort to very quickly, especially with people I’ve only recently met. But I revealed enough through my words and tone that when our evening ended, I was excited to the point of worry. Had I said too much? Whenever I reveal more about myself than usual, I question whether I’ve said too much. But something about the evening left me very stirred up, a mix of fear and excitement, and all the way home I searched inside myself to try to understand why. And then it came to me. The excitement, the thrill mixed with apprehension that filled me, was not a result of what was asked, but because even with new friends, I felt the permission to tell the truth.

It is a freeing experience to find yourself in relationship with people with whom you do not have to weigh words and thoughts for fear of revealing your points of vulnerability. I did not have to conjure up words and fake my tone in order to serve up a disguised and socially-acceptable response. What an enormous relief to simply be able to tell the truth.

out in the wide world

2007-09-27T17:59:00.000-07:00

All summer I've thought about taking long walks beyond my neighborhood to take a look at things that I normally pass by in my car. So this morning I did. I've avoided walking outside my neighborhood because I live near a busy highway and side road and I've thought that I wouldn't like the noise of the traffic. But I took off and began to look around and take in all of the sounds and sensations--even of the traffic. After a few minutes I found myself thinking how good it feels to be "out in the wide world." The sky seemed much bigger and the road looks much wider when you cross it on your feet. I saw cattails along a fence, I heard crickets even with the traffic going by, I crunched gravel and rocks under my feet, I saw the road up close, and felt the force of cars driving past. I saw things from a new angle.

Earlier this week I was feeling like there wasn't room for me anymore--I was feeling again the loss of my job and contact with my friends. Today--out in the wide world--I began to think that maybe there is more room for me than I've ever realized. Maybe this is what this season in my life is all about.

I walked for an hour and saw and heard and felt things that you just can't see, hear, or feel while you're driving in your car with your destination on your mind. It was very freeing.

I think I'll take another walk tomorrow.

uncertainty

2007-09-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

The fact that each new day is so uncertain for me right now is making it difficult for me to function. I’m having to discipline myself to trust that God has good things planned and that He is working. I know better—in my head. But my heart gets up every morning, watches Ruben and Rachel go off to school and work and then wonders what I’m supposed to do with myself today. I call to check in with the temp agencies not knowing if I'll get a call to work or if it will be nothing again today. With the constant uncertainty, how do I go about doing anything that takes more than a day to complete? Every tomorrow is an unknown.

In having left my job, I’m feeling the loss of those day-to-day encounters and hallway conversations that kept me in touch with my friends and made me feel like I belonged. My years with that team are the only years in my life when I’ve felt like I was really part of a team and that I belonged. And without a new line of work or new circle of co-workers right now, I feel like I’ve lost my spot and I find myself feeling like there’s no place for me anymore.

In looking for a home to buy, I keep wanting so much to find a house with a little den or extra bedroom so that I can have some space that is my own. Rachel pointed out to me this week that losing my office at work meant losing the only space that was truly just mine. I do have my claim on the one corner of the couch in the living room but it doesn't always feel like enough.

Yesterday’s sermon was about being open to God doing new things and being willing to let go of yesterday’s structures and ways of doing things in order to accommodate the new. So I’m asking God, “What do You want me to change? How do You want me to change? How do I do things differently now?”

My friends keep encouraging me to enjoy my time off and I am trying. Last Friday I took the afternoon and painted--morning glories and my cyclamen plant that Deb gave me.

blind and hog-tied

2007-09-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

I’m not doing very well right now. I received my second rejection letter this week in my search for a job. I also received an invitation to test for a position I applied for last week. It will be my seventh test and part of me just wants to say, “Damn it, just give me a job.”

I feel very unspiritual and undisciplined and directionless. Since I quit my job two and a half months ago, I’ve been resting and catching up on things I had neglected but, all of a sudden, I’m feeling lonely and aimless and disconnected from people and from God. I paid the bills last night and looked at what was left and I felt my stomach turn into knots and I found myself thinking, “God, are You really going to help out? Do You really have a plan or am I out here on my own….because I’m having a hard time feeling like You’re here.”

I got up this morning and just wanted to read the paper but I thought I would at least try to be spiritually disciplined so I made myself read my devotional reading for today (as though that was what God really wanted from me). And what I read only made me feel even more inadequate and unspiritual and so I gave up and went ahead and read the paper.

I went to church with Ruben and after we sat down on the back row, a man who has been attending our church for years and years walked by and greeted us and we exchanged a bit of conversation. As he walked away Ruben said how he sees this man year after year and is impressed by the fact that after all he has been through in his life, he continues to attend church faithfully and by himself even though he is married. And suddenly I felt myself choke up and I thought to myself how this man is extremely quiet and reserved, he doesn’t serve in any ministry of the church that I know of, but he faithfully shows up Sunday after Sunday and sits by himself. And his consistency speaks of his faith. I don’t know what he thinks about or what he struggles with or what his relationship with God is like, but I do know that something, or Someone, keeps him coming to church year after year even if it means coming by himself. And I thought, “Then maybe there’s room for me too.”

Sometimes the only prayer I can relate to is “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I want with all my heart to find God and to follow Him. I want to live my life on a higher plane. I want to see beyond the surface of circumstances and beyond people's facades and my own facades…but a good amount of the time, I feel incapable, inadequate, weak and afraid, blind and hog-tied.

stuff

2007-09-11T16:27:00.000-07:00

It’s September and since last April, we have been planning to have a garage sale. Every weekend that I scribbled it onto the calendar somehow came up with reasons why we couldn’t or shouldn’t. More than once we put off the sale simply because facing the garage with its piles of boxes and stuff was just too overwhelming. Not to mention the closets, bookshelves, and cupboards in the house.

But last week I finally felt up to the task and so several days before the weekend, I opened the garage door and excavated out of the mountain of stuff a space big enough for me to stand and start sorting. I sorted through garbage bags of clothes marked Yard Sale, brown paper grocery bags filled with old shoes, cardboard boxes of books, and Rubbermaid tubs filled with old duffle bags, purses, floor mats for a car we’ve never owned, extra strings of Christmas lights, a snowman candle, picture frames, two tired silk-flower arrangements, a Tupperware bowl without a lid, stuffed animals, and old notepaper binders. And the list went on.

I can’t be the only person who has looked at all their stuff and thought, “Where does all this come from?” The thing is, I’m appalled at how much stuff we have and the fact that we hardly use it and can’t find it when we need it anyway. Now, I know that some things you just keep because they mean something and might mean a lot to your kids one day. I’m not talking about that kind of stuff. I’m talking about the millions of household knick-knacks that do nothing but collect dust and make you feel like scum because you clearly don’t clean your house enough. And I’m talking about shoes that have not been worn in three years, tee shirts still hanging in the closet with armpit stains, and the two-foot high, purple stuffed monkey won by one of our daughter’s admirers at the carnival in the seventh grade.

We Americans are inundated with stuff. And when you add the fact that we have entered the Information Age in which we are being bombarded from every direction with images, emails, websites, junk mail, magazines—access to more information than we can possibly manage or take in—it’s no wonder most of us feel like we’re drowning.

Yesterday I found an article on the internet called Outta here! Professional purgers’ organizing tips…An entire profession and industry has been created from our need to manage, organize, store, sort, and file all of our stuff and all of that information coming at us. I printed out the article and highlighted the tips. The author states that “You should own nothing that is not useful, beautiful, or loved.” Somehow I’m going to pare things down to where I actually know what I own and where I keep it. And I’m going to make sure it’s useful, beautiful, or loved. I’m going to simplify because the water just keeps rising and it stresses me out and squelches my creativity and stifles my sense of well-being in my own home.

Besides, the stuff that’s driving me crazy might be a treasure found for someone else. Believe it or not, the monkey sold—for fifty cents and I overheard the lady who bought it say to her friend as they walked away, how much she loves purple.

seasons

2007-09-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

Last week as I drove home early in the morning from working out, I noticed that the light is changing and that the sunrise has moved further south along the Lassen range. As I crossed the creek a mile from our house, I heard Canada geese honking in the softening light and then I caught sight of them as they flew northeast toward our house. There were over twenty of them flying in their customary pattern and I thought to myself, "The geese are on the move...the seasons are changing." I could see it in the changing light patterns, I could smell it in the air. Something is stirring.

I love this feeling. It makes me think of how God is always working...subtly, quietly, sometimes imperceptibly. He works so slowly sometimes that you think nothing is happening at all until you wake up one day and notice that things have shifted. The light is coming from a different direction and you can't remember seeing it move. There's a scent in the air that wasn't there the last time you noticed.

Last week was a difficult week for me. My fears caught up with me again. Hearing the geese and picking up on the new scent in the air this morning reminded me that He is working. God is always working. And at any moment I may be able to see it. That moment might be as near as tomorrow morning.

Be all at rest, so shalt thou be an answer
To those who question, "Who is God and where?"
For God is rest, and where He dwells is stillness,
And they who dwell in Him, His rest shall share.
And what shall meet the deep unrest around thee,
But the calm peace of God that filled His breast?
For still a living Voice calls to the weary,
From Him who said, "Come unto Me and rest."
(Freda Hanbury Allen)

more on telling secrets

2007-09-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

Last week I blogged about telling secrets and telling the truth. I quoted Frederick Buechner:

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing...

All week I've been thinking about what I wrote and about my own secrets and about that tendency to let others only see that "highly edited version [of ourselves] which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing." I've been struggling this week with the real thing. I'm going through some circumstances right now but, as my pastor often says, the circumstances only cause what is already inside to percolate to the top. Circumstances, pressures, trials don't cause our reactions and behaviors...they expose the things that are already inside of us.

I was very aware last week when I blogged about secrets and telling the truth that I still did not take the next step and actually tell any secrets about myself. I just admitted that I had them and that I prefer to keep them hidden. I'll let Anne Lamott do it and I'll stay covert. And all week I've struggled with the one issue that most plagues my life...fear.

Last April I journaled about it...

Some things have happened lately that have made me feel vulnerable and threatened. A conversation about a subject that taps into some of my worst fears….running into a person who has hurt me in the past and whom I do not trust even now after time has gone by…reading parts of a book that addresses issues that threaten me and awaken my insecurities…feeling misunderstood at home over some little thing…

I feel afraid. I often feel afraid. It sometimes doesn’t take much at all for me to get sucked into what my husband calls a “vortex of fear.” I feel ashamed that I feel afraid so often. I have faced some enormous threats in my life…sometimes I feel that I’ve been very brave. And yet I can hear something, catch a glimpse of something, run into someone and that fear that tastes like metal runs through my veins and clouds my brain.

It’s almost like someone or something set my default mode to Panic or Fear the Worst or Expect Pain and Loss and I can’t seem to reset myself.

And since I gave up depression nearly ten years ago now, it’s been worse. Maybe depressing was a way of sedating the fear so that it wasn’t so volatile and impulsive. Depression kept it foggy and less pointed. Now it unexpectedly and impulsively tries to jump in front of moving vehicles or it grabs me by the nape of the neck and tries to drag me away to it’s lair where it whispers to me that I’ll never amount to much, that I can’t stand the least bit of suffering, that terrible things could happen to my children, that I could lose everything precious to me in a moment, that financial ruin is only a paycheck away, and those I trust most could betray me tomorrow.

This is where the real me lives more often than I would like people to know.

telling secrets and telling the truth

2007-08-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

I took myself to our new city library today, one of the things I’ve been wanting to do for months. The building itself is beautiful and I picked up a colorful brochure in the lobby that contained maps of both floors and so I went on a brief exploration to get my bearings. I found the children’s library and storytelling room and the teen center next to the rows of computer stations. I also wandered through a large conference room where an art exhibit was displayed whose theme was the sun. I then made my way upstairs to find what I had read about in the newspaper and which has been the main attraction to me, the north wall of windows that look out over the first floor roof on which is planted rows of grasses, creeping plants, and ground-hugging flowers. It’s called a green roof. When I topped the stairs and turned right there it was and the light completely filled the entire second floor. I was very happy to see rows of reading chairs and small tables with chairs all along the north wall of glass. I could sit up against the window and feel the light and see the life. It was beautiful. And so I sat by the window and read the rest of Anne Lamott’s latest book, Grace (Eventually).

Anne Lamott’s writing intrigues me, makes me laugh out loud, challenges me, and often makes me cringe. She can be incredibly funny and maybe what keeps my attention the most, is that she tells the truth about herself and how she sees life. And it’s refreshing for me (and here’s where the challenge often comes in) because she couldn’t come from a more opposite background than me (liberal and atheistic) and yet she has found her way to Christ, loves Him, is committed to serving Him and yet sees certain life issues from a very different angle than I do. I value the honesty. I don’t always agree with the opinions or views, but I value the honesty and the wrestling.

Another one of my favorite authors is Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled. And a thought that he expresses in his book that has stayed with me for years has to do with wrestling. In discussing parenting and how to really love your children, he states that often what is most important to children is not that we're always right in our decisions but that we are willing to wrestle and struggle to make the right decisions. The fact that we are willing to struggle means we care and that our children matter to us. And this is what I hear in Anne’s writing—she wrestles with the issues because it matters what we choose to believe and she knows that life is just not black and white. And I think the Bible makes it clear that the most important issue to Jesus is our hearts not whether we know all the right answers. So I believe that loving Jesus often comes down to whether or not we’re willing to wrestle with the issues and the questions and the doubts and the struggles of life.

I had brought another book along with me to the library and I had actually been glancing through it before I decided to finish Anne’s book. It was one of Frederick Buechner’s autobiographical books called Telling Secrets and in the introduction he explains why he decided to write autobiographically (and why he calls his book Telling Secrets). He says,

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it m ore acceptable than the real thing...It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.

Buechner goes on to suggest that the most important reason for telling our secrets is that it ultimately brings us closer to God. And I believe that because I have experienced it. What I believe God wants most from us is honesty, face the truth. When I’ve been the most truthful about myself is when I’ve experienced His presence most.

So when Anne tells the truth about herself, I feel challenged to do the same. The very reason that I am drawn to Anne Lamott’s writing and Frederick Buechner’s is precisely because they are truthful about themselves and they dare to say what I am often only willing to think and keep hidden.

waiting

2007-08-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

¹pa·tient

1 : bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint
2 : manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain
3 : not hasty or impetuous
4 : steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity

Over the past few months when I have gone to God to ask for direction and help and reassurances about the future, I have consistently heard one thing—wait. So I have been trying to wait. It’s not always easy, especially if you’re waiting for something you really want. Waiting involves a degree of helplessness when you’re waiting for something that you cannot make happen. I can apply for jobs and look for homes but I cannot make a job offer happen and I can’t make the right home appear on the market. And it’s not just about a job and a home right now. I pray for my children and try to support them and encourage them in ways that I can but I can’t live their lives for them or make things happen for them. I have to wait and let God do it.

This morning I was thinking about what it means to be patient. Patience involves waiting otherwise it wouldn’t be patience. But waiting doesn’t always involve patience—sometimes it involves striving and worrying and fretting and running around trying to make things happen (I know this from experience). Being patient means bearing, being steadfast, exhibiting forbearance in the face of pains, trials, provocation, strain, opposition, difficulty, or adversity. So, I realized this morning that what that amounts to for me, is managing my emotions. Something I’m longing for has not come to me and so I have to manage my longing and my disappointment and my wondering if it will ever come. Something pains me that I have no control over and I have no indication of when that pain will stop. So I have to manage the pain (not let it control how I live) and I have to resist giving up hope that it will someday end. I am faced with a difficulty or opposition and I have to manage the fear or the dread or wrestle with insecurity about the outcome. To be patient means I bear the trial willingly and calmly.

Sometimes looking around at the trials of others helps me put mine in perspective. Others are enduring trials of other sorts— financial needs, health issues, opposition from family members or co-workers, loneliness and longing for a life companion, the longing for children who don’t come, fears that won’t stop, painful marriages.

Gratitude helps too—looking around and naming the good things in my life helps calm the longings and fears and wrestlings on the inside. I may not have a job yet but God has provided all that I need for today. I may not have my own home yet but He has given me a comfortable and safe apartment to live in.

I will wait...and I will wait patiently believing that God is involved and not aloof and indifferent.

cough drops and Mahatma Ghandi

2007-08-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

Last week I came down with a sore throat and a cold. Five days into it, I felt like I was getting worse instead of better and by the eighth day, I hadn’t been able to sleep at night for the coughing and then I lost my voice. I finally went to the doctor who told me I probably had another week to go and that an antibiotic was unlikely to make any difference and so I came home and took another dose of cough medicine. My biggest concern was that the following morning (yesterday) I was scheduled for testing for a position I had applied for in my ongoing job search and I wanted to do my best and did not want to risk a coughing fit in a room full of people trying to concentrate. But that night the coughing began again as soon as I went to bed and so I spent the night in the easy chair downstairs, telling God that I was really going to need His help tomorrow to do my best.

After crawling out of the chair the next morning and trying to ease the congestion and sore throat with hot coffee, I pulled myself together and got myself to the testing location. Since I had no voice, I croaked to the receptionist that I was there for testing and she promptly gave me several directions and waved me down the hallway. I started down the hallway and realized immediately that I couldn’t remember what she had told me and not wanting to admit that I had already forgotten what she said, I kept going until I was thoroughly lost and was forced to go back and face her. She kindly told me again and this time I listened and soon was in a room with at least 20 other women ready to take my test and reminding God that I was not having a good day and that I was really going to need His help. I was also remembering the website instructions that had said they often only grant interviews to the top five scorers. Great.

But I disciplined myself to work through the test steadily and thoroughly and I decided I would stay for the whole hour and that when I finished, I would make my way back through the test and check my answers. I had to control my impulse to compete when the first person stood up to turn her test in. As it turned out, I completed the test and made my way through it a second time before time ran out. And then I took myself home to recover.

At home again, I changed back into my pajamas, put on a movie my daughter left on the kitchen table, and crawled back into my easy chair with my cough drops. The movie was Ghandi. For the next few hours, I forgot about my cold. My eyes were glued to the screen. I was captivated by the incredible power wielded by this small, insignificant man committed to turning the other cheek. And I watched him change a nation and change history. A remarkable story. There were several especially gripping scenes. In one, Ghandi is being led into a courtroom for trial before a British judge. The room is filled with onlookers, British and Indian, those for and against. But as Ghandi is brought into the room in his loincloth and shackles between guards who appear three times larger than he is, something remarkable happens. The presiding British judge silently stands to his feet in respect. A room full of people caught off guard, quietly follow suit, and the small, thin man merely nods his head. And suddenly it was the judge’s expression of honor that affected the room and wielded the power and brought the people, for and against, to their feet in the deserving act of paying homage to a man worthy of honor. The power of attitude. The judge dared to express outwardly what he felt on the inside and it changed the people around him. We have all experienced the chronic complainer, the disagreeable, the negative, the gossip who brings out the worst in all of us. And then there are those rare ones who draw the best out of us by simply taking their own stand for what is right and good and honorable. I found the entire movie to be an inspiration.

And last night I was able to sleep and today I received a call inviting me to an interview on Monday. I never know in just how many ways God is going to answer my prayers.

personalities

2007-07-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

Asher and Raanan...someone's little personality is starting to show....

struggles

2007-07-23T21:02:00.000-07:00

In church yesterday we sang the song Blessed Be Your Name. I reminded myself that in the bigger picture my current struggles are not the end. I have so much to be thankful for and I remembered those things. I wrote on my hand….Blessed be the name of the Lord. It’s a difficult place for me to live…being thankful and content with what we have (which I really am happy with) and being diligent to look for the things we don’t have…a home, a car and a new job. Being content with what is, while diligently looking for what isn’t (yet). Not easy for me. In one moment I find myself ready to give up; in the next moment I'm striving again. These particular needs tap into my insecurities...and security is one of those things that I long for most.

But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. (Job 23.10)

Asher and Raanan...so fun, so beautiful

2007-07-16T20:25:00.001-07:00

crumbs

2007-07-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, it just seems like there isn’t enough kindness to go around and that we’re all wanting more. I look around and see so many people who seem so scarred from a lack of love, so hardened by a lack of kindness. Recently, on a flight back from Texas where I had been visiting my parents, I offered to trade seats with a teenage girl so that she could sit by her mom. The mom lit up and thanked me, looking at me like I was the Good Samaritan. What I considered a small act of common courtesy seemed to mean a whole lot more than that to this woman. It was as if she gets so little, she’s grateful when she gets crumbs.

My life has been filled with kindness. After I read a book called The Awakened Heart, I became even more aware of how much kindness was in my life because the author spent the whole book making his point that God is always loving us all the time and that much of that love comes to us through the kindnesses, sometimes the very small kindnesses, of the people around us—our families, our friends, and often through strangers. The author also makes the point that God has lots of other ways of communicating His love to us if we will only awaken our hearts and learn to recognize it when it comes. This is when I realized just how much God had been loving me even through a painful twenty-year marriage when I thought He had abandoned me. The author says that we miss it most of the time because we get caught up in our agendas and our defenses and our trying to manage life and then when God’s love comes to us in an unexpected moment we miss it for what it really is.

Sometimes when I run into people who are unkind, mean, or even cruel, I’m reminded that people have a choice and that the people who offer kindness don’t have to be kind. They choose to be kind. I’m reminded of the emergency room nurse who took care of my mother one night in the ER recently. We were so grateful for her efficiency performed with gentleness and the careful way she tended to my mother. When my sister and I thanked her, she said, “Well, I didn’t do a whole lot, just took her vitals.” And we said, “Yes, but you were kind. Thank you.”

There really is a shortage of kindness in the world. Most of us have never gotten enough, some of us have been so deprived that it’s warped our minds and hearts. I’m grateful for all of those people in my life—many of them don’t even know they touched me—who opted at whatever grand or menial moment to be a part of God’s unrelenting efforts to love a world so short on love. Those acts have changed me.

fog

2007-06-11T17:43:00.000-07:00

I don’t handle change very well. I’m devoted to my routines…sacred little rituals that calm my mind and keep my nerves whole. Disruptions and interruptions throw me off my rhythm, make me anxious, make me feel out of control. And so I’ll finish up this month the job I’ve done for eight years and I’ll have no deadline to meet the next morning. And I ride the heights and depths of the emotional roller coaster… sadness one minute, relief the next, back to grieving, and then to sighing again.

In some ways it seems like the perfect time, in some ways it seems like the worst. We’ve been trying to buy a home for nine months…just can’t find the one. The cars are old and we’ve been trying to find a replacement for at least one of them…just can’t find the right car for the right price. I feel in limbo…waiting. Can’t pack just yet, no house to go to. Can’t sell the car yet…don’t have a replacement. Scared to spend much money…might not have a job next month. Can’t rest…shouldn’t I be doing something?

I’ve been through worse…I’ve known God’s faithfulness, lived off of His generosity, rested in His provision and yet with a new set of circumstances I still struggle to trust. What if? What if I don’t get a job in time? What if the car breaks down before we find a new one? What if prices start going up again before we can find a house? What if we buy a house and then can’t make the payment? What if? What if? What if?

I get to where I can’t see…I can’t see for the fog in my brain…the fear fog. Just can’t see beyond right now. Just can’t imagine the good and better for the bad and the worse clouding my heart. Just can’t see and can’t let go.

Are some of us just born more insecure than others?

My husband has faith and peace and he just keeps going each day. He keeps saying, “You just never know…things can change in a moment.” And in his mind he’s thinking “change for the better.” In my mind, I’m thinking, “Oh no! What next?!” He believes God wants to give us good things, even the things that we want. He believes that opportunity will present itself, that it’s not all up to us to figure out. He believes that things could be even better. He prays simple prayers and believes that God hears him. When he doesn’t see the answer in front of him, he says, “Let’s just wait.” And he’s fine with that…waiting. Right now we have a comfortable place to live and the cars are running and we have jobs and plenty to eat so he’s fine with just waiting.

What do I do with this restless, anxious heart? Just can’t rest till all those ducks are in a row…just can’t let go and let God take care of it all.

room for me too

2007-05-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

There is a song we sing at church...

Blessed be your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where the streams of abundance flow
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name

We sing and thank God for His blessings when things are going well. And we sing and thank God for His blessings when we are suffering. When I look around at my church I see broken people and I see broken people thanking God for all that is good in their lives. And I feel encouraged and often my problems are put into perspective just by looking around at others. And I'm also given the freedom to be broken....with a church made up of broken people, I feel like there is room for me too. And so we sing...

Blessed be your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

And because Christ has met us all in so many ways...we have hope and we are encouraged and we are reminded Who we are really living for and what we are really living for. This is why I go to church, this is why I sing with my friends...

Every blessing you pour out,
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

2007-05-01T21:17:00.000-07:00

Earth’s fairest flowers grow not on sunny plain,
But where some vast upheaval rent in twain
The smiling land….
After the whirlwind’s devastating blast,
Father the molten fire and ashen pall,
God’s still small voice breathes healing over all.
From riven rocks and fern-clad chasms deep,
Flow living waters as from hearts that weep,
There in the afterglow soft dews distill
And angels tend God’s plants when night falls still,
And the Beloved passing by the way
Will gather lilies at the break of day.

J.H.D., Streams in the Desert

Do not be anxious then, saying, “What shall we eat? Or “What shall we drink?” or “With what shall we clothe ourselves?”. For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But first seek His Kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. " (Matt. 7:31-34)

2007-04-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

The news says that tomorrow is Earth Day. On the internet today there were beautiful photos of earth taken from space and this quote:

“I think you can’t go to space and not be changed in many ways,” said Jeff Williams, who spent six months on the international space station. “All of the teachings of the Bible that talk about the Creator and his creation take on new meaning when you can view the details of Earth from that perspective. … It didn’t change my faith, per se, but it just enhanced it, it made it even more real.”

my girls encourage me

2007-04-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

My girls inspire me and encourage me to write. I’ve often wondered over the past few years how I will ever find the time to write but Anna recently gave me Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird and it gives me hope and some ideas of how to do it. And then, a couple of weeks ago, Rachel bought herself a car (I am very proud) and as I watched her drive away in it, I thought to myself, “My little bird is flying away.” I’m realizing that a new era is upon me, the empty nest era is knocking on my door and soon, very soon, there will be more evenings to myself than I’ve had in at least 25 years. I have mixed emotions as I think about it. New eras are like that...mixed. Exciting because the new and different is coming, painful because the familiar and treasured is going away.

So even though my emotions are mixed about the new era, maybe more time is coming for writing. Anne Lamott tells the story of her brother sitting at the kitchen table when he was about ten, distraught over a report on birds that he had put off for too long and was now due the next day. In his distress over where to begin, their father put his arm around his shoulder and said, "Just take it bird by bird, son."

So when it comes to writing, Anne Lamott says, “Take it bird by bird…,” little pieces at a time; begin with what will fit into a one-inch picture frame. I think I can do that. And in the background I'll have my girls cheering me on.

more thoughts on beauty

2007-04-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got up very early and got my coffee, wrapped myself up in an afghan that I made last year and went outside to sit on the patio in the cold and quiet morning. It's my favorite part of the day. It was Saturday but too early for people to be stirring yet and so it was so beautifully quiet that I could hear the birds waking up and the leaves of the trees rustling. I also found in my flower pots a tiny frog resting inside the new green leaves of my hostas. I sat in my chair with my knees pulled up, drinking my coffee, and feeling the wonderful relief of experiencing life the way I think it was meant to be...peaceful, alive, beautiful, and vulnerable.

It was a relief and a joy because on several different fronts this week, I experienced or witnessed the pain and destruction of life the way that it is...contrary to what God intended. I listened to a friend tell me about his brother's marriage which because of sins and terrible woundings in the past is hanging by a thread. I ran into a person who has hurt me in the past and I found myself wrestling inside myself, feeling conflicting emotions and having to discipline myself to be loving and kind. Something came up unexpectedly on my computer while I was on the internet, something so vile, so destructive, so evil that I felt a wave of nausea and a black cloud followed me for the rest of the day.

And then I get a glimpse of life the way God intended it to be and I am reminded that in the end the good and beautiful and right are going to win the day.

music

2007-03-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I sat on my living room couch and crocheted and listened to music. A number of years ago, while going through the most painful time of my life, a friend introduced me to the voices of Andrea Bochelli and Sarah Brightman. Later, I discovered Josh Groban. Their operatic voices and music were not anything I had ever listened to before but they struck a chord in me. Because of the intense pain and difficulties that I was experiencing at the time, I was often unable to express myself. I journaled profusely. Writing was my outlet. Writing kept me sane. But music became my comfort. And somehow the intensity and passion of Andrea Bochelli and Sarah Brightman enabled me to vicariously express the intensity and passion locked up inside of me. When I couldn't express the pain or the sorrow or the comfort or the joy that often accompanies deep sorrow, I would listen to the passionate voices and music and vicariously sing through them. They gave my heart a voice. And because so many of the songs were in languages that I don't understand, even the words could become my own. It didn't matter what I needed to say, my heart had a voice. And so I love listening to classically sung music, the orchestra behind the voices, the strings and the bass and the drums and the intensity of it all. Its a language of the heart and I love it.

Baby Raanan is already over a month old...

2007-03-07T19:22:00.000-08:00

I love these beautiful eyes...

Spring is here...

2007-03-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

I love the changing of the seasons and spring has begun in Redding. It often shows up first on the ornamental plum trees in our back yard...

We have a new addition to our family!

2007-01-31T18:35:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday Jordan and Bethany called to say the baby was on her way, so Ruben and Rachel and I packed our bags and headed to Santa Rosa. We arrived at the hospital a few hours after Raanan Shalev was born at 3:45 pm. She weighed 7 lb. 12 oz and she's beautiful! Big brother Asher is so proud!