These Three Remain

BOYS!

2011-08-06T16:24:00.000-04:00

I love boys!

Last weekend when we were working on the house, I heard Michelle's startled "OH, NO....boys, come back here! " holler when she discovered the boys using the 6 ft fence's top cross board to move along the back neighbor's top fence like squirrels. I was up in the snorkel lift with David at the time, placing shingle panels on the gable, and I can tell you, they were close to the far end of the neighbor's garage along the neighbor's side fence when Michelle spotted them. hehehe. By the time she was able to get the camera ready to shoot they had made it back to their own back fence.

And just in case you missed the triumphant display of boyhood...

I remember a college professor sharing a "kids story" with our class to illustrate parental discernment and wisdom in reserving spankings for clear acts of direct parental disobedience, NOT for youthful exuberance or exploration. His elementary son and daughter had been nowhere to be seen in house or yard for awhile, and when they arrived home a little later, they were all dirt and smiles, relating to mom and dad excited stories of exploring underground "tunnels" in the neighborhood.

And I am pretty certain, from all the excitement, adrenalin-loving moments, this young'un has already displayed (see 5th photo down on this link), I'm certain he will have his own as well as shared exploits.

Triathlon Tale

2011-06-20T21:14:00.004-04:00

Isaac participated in his second triathlon for kids this past weekend. You'll find photos and story here.

The waves of racers start with the oldest kids (13-15 year olds) and finishes with the 5-6 year old group. Who can watch small riders pedaling out onto the bike course with training wheels and not smile?

After 5 or 6 of the training wheel riders had passed me, I turned back to see 2 more boys with training wheels, separated by at least 40 feet and going almost exactly the same speed. The second boy remembered the "bike passing etiquette" instructions they'd all been given at the start of the race and called out loudly "PASSING ON YOUR LEFT!"

What good manners...what self-confidence...what total mis-judgement of one's relative speed!

He tried so hard to overtake the rider ahead of him that he took the turn too fast for his training wheels and balance and he lost it.....but quickly hopped back on and headed out. I would love to have heard his version of the story to his parents after the race. :-)

Good times for spectators at Seminole's Tri If You Dare triathlon for kids. A few parents get a little INTENSE in their coaching, but mostly it's kids looking like they're enjoying the challenge and the fun of competition.

Check out The Fitness Torch for a classic runner's duel photo from this race.

Connecting the Dots From Guilt to Freedom

2011-06-14T21:22:00.000-04:00

I've had lots of conversations with various people, over the years, about the life-changing dynamic of forgiveness, but two, in particular, have been on my mind in recent days.

About thirty years ago David and I shared a dinner table with a couple who were strangers to us in a darkened theatre for a community musical production. The older man across the table found a statement I'd just made about being forgiven for my crimes against God hard to believe: "Surely you don't expect me to believe that you have sinned? - a sweet, young woman like yourself can't have done anything bad enough yet to qualify as sin." I insisted that indeed I had, and named a few of my actions which I considered to be transgressions. He remained unconvinced that I had committed anything so seriously wrong to qualify as sin, and I was surprised that he reserved the label of "sinner" for people who committed murder and other "serious offenses". . . Clearly, we had different definitions of sin and guilt.

Flash forward three decades to a conversation with a friend who was preparing to divorce her husband. I asked her a question to gauge her awareness of her own possible contributions to the destruction of their union. She was in her forties, and I figured she was plenty old enough and had been married long enough to have realized how some of her own actions, attitudes, and inadequacies - not just her husband's transgressions - might have also pushed the two of them to move from lovers to adversaries. She seemed shocked that I would ask such a question, replied "I haven't done anything", proceeded to recount "the short list" of her virtues stacked alongside her husband's offenses, then repeated her declaration of personal innocence.

I was stunned into silence. I, too, could have recited a short list of my husband's faults and offenses against me (from my perspective:-), but I could also list plenty of my own faults and offenses against him in our relationship. I'd had opportunity to look and truly see times and ways when I had failed to love and treat my husband the same way God (and even my husband:-) had loved and treated me. I cast about in my memory bank, trying to remember when the recognition of my own faults and offenses within our marriage first began to rival the inner list of offenses I charged to David.

I knew I'd been a VERY slow learner in acknowledging my own contributions to our conflicts, but surely by age forty I'd been able to own some blame for our conflicts - hadn't I? Well, to be honest.....careful scrutiny of my memory bank made me admit and grieve that I had wasted DECADES looking at my actions and and attitudes in our marriage through lenses of self-interest, self-protection and self-righteousness. I had (and alas, still have) an incredibly strong knee-jerk reaction to criticism or correction instead of listening, with an open, teachable heart to the person who is criticizing or correcting me. I'm working on it, I've made some improvement, but still, I have a long way to go.

That conversation with my friend reminded me what a gift it is to be able to see my failures and inadequacies in loving my husband - or any other another person in my life - from their perspective, and what a gift it is to be able to own guilt in wrong-doing. Because having both a clear awareness of my own transgressions and also clear memories of having been forgiven myself, help move me to WANT to forgive my husband's (or another person's) transgressions against me. In fact, the connection between receiving forgiveness myself and offering it to another has been so strong in my own life that I wonder if a person is able to give true, full forgiveness to another person and experience the resulting freedom WITHOUT the awareness of having been forgiven transgressions oneself.

Amber has posted a great article about how to apply this dynamic of forgiveness in your own life. Find it here.

Slowing Time

2011-03-28T09:41:00.000-04:00

Even though I'd heard this since I was a child, I still marvel how much faster time seems to slip by at 55 years old, than when I was a child. But it does seem that one good way of slowing it down is to "look for the joy" in each day, finding, noting, and deliberately holding in our minds and on our tongues and fingertips gifts from every day's moments for which to thank God. I give thanks for:

221. wonderful weather, perfect for painting the house,

222. two weekends in a row,

223. allowing us to finish painting the 2nd story trim, soffit and exterior walls moments before the sun went down Sunday night,

224. on the last day we would have the free scaffolding

225. bucket truck to help us reach trim higher than scaffolding

226. bonus time with Amber and Bennett, who stayed with us while Sam was away

227. quiet walk together and playground exploration

228. the total surprise of heart-pounding adrenalin fear coursing through veins when I try to pull myself onto second level of scaffold without side or cross bars, setting up challenge for both weekends (I LOVED climbing trees as a kid)

229. several more attempts to let rational thought conquer adrenalin history of unsteady balance and swaying head...adrenalin wins again and I am reminded that cilia stiffens and fluid thickens as inner ear ages

230. bucket truck to lift me and husband to talk me through transferring my weight to the rattling "OSHA approved" cotter clipped crossbar of the second level scaffold section with handrails (this picture blurred by bounce of bucket, but perhaps an accurate portrayal of my pounding heart?)

231. deep breathing and eyes focused on roofline and soffit to slow my heart pump and steady my feet on planks to paint

232. second weekend confidence gained through pulling myself up and down numerous times, body and balance adjusting to walks along double and single planks with paint pan and roller in hand

233. daughter-in-law who refused to let her fear limit where she could work and by the end of the second weekend was readily walking on the roof and across single planks without handrails or building to hold for balance security

234. smiles and waves from high in the bucket truck with Grandpa

235. noisy joy of 4 cousins together, the 3 older all vying for the youngest's attention

236. energy enough in tired body to play backyard games of lion-hunt

237. boys learning to climb trees

238. young boy's giggles, learning to skip

239. osprey hovering, its forward progress halted by strong wind over lake

240. for "almost 6" boy dashing inside, bean sprout in hand, excitement over the first growth popping through the dirt, almost more than his body can contain "Look, Grandma, the bean seed is GROWING!"

241. osprey flying to young ones in high nest on pole, carrying mouse or mole in its talons

242. pitter-patter plop of hard oak leaves dropping to ground in back yard

242. 3 standing and gazing at bright, bright moon

244. apogee moon, closest full moon distance in 18 years

245. heading to the beach for the next evening's "big show"

Painting Crew

2011-03-25T19:05:00.001-04:00

These past few few (exhausting) weekends have been filled with painting the exterior of the new family house, and I thought you might enjoy some of the photos as much as me.

After a few hours of real house painting, painting while standing on level ground was simply too tame for Isaac and "I do everything Isaac does" Eli. So discarded forms were put to use as ladders.

Grandpa David taught the kids how to balance their paint tray on the 5 gallon bucket. But I'm guessing he didn't anticipate they'd do it while squatting on a ladder.

Before she started painting each day, Michelle would pack coolers and snack bags AND assemble dinner in the crock pot which she carried to the job site for supper.

Seriously, can a painter get much cuter than this?

The kids really enjoyed painting. I love their concentration...especially the tongue. (Click to enlarge)

Kyle and Michelle have done wonderfully at involving each of the kids in the WORK of the house building so they can have the satisfaction of helping to build it, and hopefully ownership in helping to take care of it as well.

Grandpa David found out just how little individual work the adult who is "supervising" the kids gets done, what with filling paint trays and smoothing out blotches and runs for the half-pint helpers.

CONCENTRATION

Dried on dirt from previous rains had to be brushed off before painting the stucco. If only I approached ALL my work with this much joy and anticipation.

Isaac was so happy to be painting, that most of the weekend he was humming while he worked.

We are proud to be WORKERS!

I have always admired how HARD David pushes himself, but after painting 2 full days in a row of contorting my neck and shoulders to paint the trim under the soffit from the ladder, I have even more respect - He had done it even longer the weekend before. I bought those big butt pants several years ago and have been saving them all this time just to paint in :-)

David keeps the rest of us adults in the family laughing at his attempts to communicate with Prema, but he worked with her for hours both days that particular weekend, and when he told her (through an interpreter :-) that she had done a good job painting that day, she just BEAMED.

I took all the painting photos on the weekend that Kyle was installing electrical on the inside, so this is the best I can do. He's worked many nights after work in addition to the weekends for months and months, and will have plenty more ahead before it is finished, but I'm pretty sure he will say it was worth all the planning, stress and hard work.

Gratitude Dancing

2011-02-09T21:44:00.000-05:00

Thanksgivings have filled my heart but not my blogs in recent days so I return to the happy discipline of public posting of gratitude for ...

171. rhythm of rain remains, dripping from spout, metronome ticking

172. quiet room in quiet house for connection with mate

173. hand-drawn placard from 5 year old hands, cheering his team in Super Bowl contest

174. those eyes all asparkle with pride and delight at the letters and logo which he has penned

175. memories re-visited of his father as child, pencil in hand, focus intent, making his own baseball cards

176. simple pleasure of fixing fun foods for relaxed evening of family together

177. daughter-in-law's furrowed brow and strong will to TACKLE, LEARN, CONQUER certain "adult duty"

178. her husband's shake of knowing head and laughing eyes

179. as both her husband and mine offer specific help with the task

180. gym and elliptical and substantial weights to push this body, heavy with so much recent rest & reflection

181. for the sweaty satisfaaction of pushing myself through to complete the duration of cardio

182. and the remembrance of past gym challenges, dreads and conquerings

183. and the confidence it gives me now that "I CAN DO THIS"

184. for BOISTEROUS boys bursting through door ready to PLAY!

185. that grand-daughter can see, though she can't hear

186. and whose heart and brain has healed enough

187. to sit quietly and turn slowly through pages of magazine, looking, truly looking at each page, not blindly flipping through pages in big clumps just to get to end and grab the next book

188. for ping-pong table alive with a three generation game

189. and paddles given names by boisterous boys to commemorate their past performances in games

190. chalkboard that becomes a "tally board" beneath small fingers with fat chalk penning large numbers

191. for son and daughter-in-law who continue to share joy by their willingness to endure looong protests from tot in infant seat during their drives across the bay to our weekly meal together

192. for grandson who emerges from car with deliberate ten-month-old wave of greeting and loud, practiced "Hi!" that shakes the laughter from brim-full cups of delight

193. for tired body and joy filled heart after day of cleaning and cooking for this hungry appreciative crew of children and grands

194. for daughters-in-law - different in so many ways - who are building their connection with deliberate attention, appreciation and respect

195. and are growing in enjoyment of their husbands' verbal courting :-)

I am thankful:

196. for weeks of days steady with trying and continual returning to my lists of "must-do's"

197. for calm acceptance (finally!) of certain odius tasks outside my desires and skill set

198. for freedom to be flexible and peace to push tasks aside to make room in "my day" for others' needs, and concerns

199. for the hard-won calm of heart that can finally focus (some days:-) on what has been accompished and given and not just what remains to be done

200. for long training to learn to accept my inadequacies as gift, as ever-present proof of creature-li-ness and invitation to delight in others' gifts and accomplishments

201. for training to see my performance mistakes and inadequacies as chances to give the gift of "MODELING IMPERFECTION" with humility, laughter and grace to those around me who push themselves so hard.

202. for the end of a decade-long responsibility which I have at various times resented and stressed over, accepted and stressed over, "seen the good side of" and stressed over, loathed and stressed over, and, finally, turned over to others :-)!!!

I Wonder What Those Changing Lovers Do....

2010-12-26T14:56:00.001-05:00

David and I got to have some quiet hours together, just the two of us, yesterday on Christmas, and we spent some of it in each others arms talking about our 35 years of marriage (our anniversary is today), thinking about how much we've learned from one another and changed because of each other's influence.

We wondered what the percentage would be of American couples of our generation who, at 35 years of marriage, still love AND LIKE each other (though I might have to resort to violence if we spent all our waking hours together :-). I told David I would marry him all over again, even knowing now all the challenges and conflict we would struggle through and David told me, as he has before, that if he had it to do over he would have married me several years sooner - precluding some of our challenges and no doubt substituting others. We emphatically agreed that we were NOT willing to start all over with someone else.

So anyway, I thought I might attempt to use posts on this and The View From Here over the next several weeks to give thanks for my husband, reflect on marriage, and share several poems by others.

Two years before David and I married, before we were even dating, I read a poem for my Oral Interpretation class written by Archibald McLeish, in which he reflected on a photograph of himself and his wife early in marriage and on their many years of sharing life together. I remember telling the class that the poem demonstrated his positive view of life-long marriage and mutual commitments to choose to love. I told them that I liked the poem because it reminded me of the marriage my parents modeled for me, even though they had not traveled the world like the McLeish's. I told them I hoped one day, to look back on my own marriage with the same positive view point.

A portion of the poem was available online. McLeish is looking at the young wife before him in the photograph:

   Do you think of waking in the all-night train,
   The curtains drawn, the Mediterranean
   Blue, blue, and the sellers of oranges
   Holding heapedup morning toward you?

   Do you think of Kumomoto-Ken
   Do you think how Santiago stands at
   Night under its stars, under its Andes:
   Its bells like heavy birds that climb
   Widening circles out of time?

   I saw them too. I know those places.
   There are no mountains - scarcely a face
   Of all the faces you have seen,
   Or a town or a room, but I have seen it.
   Even at dusk in the deep chair
   Letting the long past take you, bear you -
   Even then you never leave me, never can
   Your eyes close, your small hands
   Keep their secrets in your lap;
   Wherever you are we two were happy.

   I wonder what those changing lovers do,
   Watching each other in the darkening room,
   Whose world together is the nights they've shared;
   Whose past is parting: strangers side by side.

I'm very grateful that both David and I had parents who modeled commitment, kindness, fidelity and truly caring for one another in marriage. And I'm so thankful that David and I have both determined over and over again to also choose those life disciplines and to forgive each other as often as we have hurt each other in our 35 years together.

Listen

2010-12-08T07:48:00.002-05:00

The crunch of dried berries, hard, underfoot,

on my walk to the park after days of no rain.

The sharp POP of acorn shot from its cap

by the wind, in the night, on the hood of my car.

The whispering rustle of palm fronds in wind,

greet me during day, croon lullaby at night.

Startled cry of moorhen

when long neck of crane,

motoring submerged, periscopes from water

surveying the shore.

Infant chatter in stroller and car seat,

rolling bright sounds through throat, tongue and teeth.

Raucous shouts and laughter of young boys making chase

on hard tiled floor with wagon and cart.

Snatches of conversation, overheard on the trail,

injecting mystery and story and marvel

that love endures at all.

Quiet chats with daughters-in-law,

across lunch table, in back of car,

punctuated always with children sounds, life noise.

The laughter of Brunit, unfettered, free,

her hope now found in crossbar of tree.

For this Multitude Monday I thank God for sounds of life and joy from my week.

Let the sea resound, and everything in it,

the world, and all who live in it.

Let the rivers clap their hands,

let the mountains sing together for joy;

let them sing before the LORD,

for he comes to judge the earth.

He will judge the world in righteousness

and the peoples with equity.

This hope I hold and celebrate this Christmas:

God, the Lamb,

born in barn,
stretched on tree,

judges all
with love forged
equity.

I will trust His heart.

Blog Flux

2010-11-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

I am a very slow decision maker.

Understatement.

I rue the hours that have mounted up over the years standing in a store aisle trying to decide between gifts for a loved one, or sitting THINKING for way too long about which task on my list has the highest priority NOW! I can see a couple benefits of this personality characteristic, but mostly, in my culture, its a liability I struggle with continually.

I recently started another blog with similar content, in order to escape the box of the "sandystrugglestospeak" URL I chose several years ago, in favor of an URL that is simply my name.

I am still deciding what each blog will grow up to be and how to share and divide content between them, but for now I am posting to both.

So you may also find me at: http://sandycullum.blogspot.com

Take Two on BJ's Protein Muffins

2010-10-08T11:38:00.000-04:00

An intriguing picture from the October 2010 Triathlete magazine of a dumbbell baked into a giant muffin caught my eye, but the recipe from BJ Gumkowski, a five time Ironman, intrigued me even more, since I've been on the lookout for a low fat, high protein, low sugar, high fiber muffin that actually tastes good and doesn't resemble cardboard when you chew it. I've made my own variation of the recipe twice now, and the results have been good enough to call this recipe a definite keeper. I'll post the recipe for the way I made it yesterday. They won't really rise, but thanks to the egg whites, they are surprisingly "light". I will continue to try this recipe with many variations.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray muffin tin with cooking oil (or grease with coconut oil). I used a medium size non-stick muffin tin for 12 muffins using about 1/3 cup mix in each.

Mix together in the order listed:
   1 cup of dry oatmeal (I used quick oats for this recipe, but old fashioned would work also)
   1/4 cup ground flax seed
   1/4 cup wheat germ
   1/3 cup all bran cereal (the twig type)*
   1 cup egg whites
   1 ripe pear, diced or grated (the original recipe called for unsweetened cinnamon applesauce)
   1/2 cup pumpkin (just pumpkin, not the pie mix)
   1/4 cup non-fat plain yogurt (use mashed cottage cheese and/or milk if you don't have yogurt)
   1 Tablespoon almond nut butter (peanut butter is fine)
   1 full banana, sliced, diced, or mushed**
     2 Tablespoons of agave nectar or honey (listed as optional on the original recipe)

Mix ingredients until all are wet and evenly distributed, then add the blueberries.
   1 cup of fresh or frozen blueberries***

Bake 25 minutes at 350. Leave the muffins in the pan for a while after so they can finish cooking - they are very moist. I turned mine in the pan after 5-10 minutes, so the bottoms wouldn't get soggy, and I think I popped them back in the already cooling oven for a big longer before removing.

* I used this combination of grains in place of 1 and 1/2 cup of oat bran called for in the original recipe.

**I like to throw my over-ripe bananas in their skin in the freezer, then I microwave for 1 minute at high power, cut the stalk end off and squeeze the banana like a toothpaste tube, starting at the end opposite the cut. The banana will goosh nicely out of the skin, usually with no mess whatsoever.

***I used frozen blueberries both times I made this recipe. The first time I tossed them in frozen, but this time my berries were tiny and covered in freezer frost, so I thawed enough (drink the juice, don't toss it:-) to make a cup.

The next time I make this version, I'll add some cinnamon and some almond extract.

Gratitude Walk

2010-10-04T15:24:00.008-04:00

133. I had a brief, unanticipated meeting with an old friend as I walked in the park Sunday morning.

134. Though I smiled inwardly at this friend's ready assertion to me of personal attendance at a worship service earlier that morning and wondered if a smile might come to his face if he knew how few corporate worship services I'd taken part in these past few years

136. I greatly appreciated his transparent admission of entering world view quandaries and theological struggles similar to some of mine

137. and the few moments of empathic conversation.

138. I returned to photographing the water lilies before hurrying home to dinner with my husband and son and his always lively family.

139. The intentional "gratitude walk" with camera in hand, had succeeded, as it almost always does, in turning my thoughts to thankfulness to God for the beauty that surrounds me

140. and for the gifts of a safe community in which to walk

141. and the awe and inner relaxing and reordering of thoughts that awaits when I step outside.

141. Thank you, God, for healthy grandsons and a morning at the park staging "zoo animals" for photos

142. and for missing the small "no swimming" logo on a nearby sign even though I searched for it before allowing

143. the boys to play in "the river" fountain for many fun-filled minutes

144. feeling like a community trouble-maker when parents walked past refusing water access to their young'uns

145. and for those boys' quick obedience to end the water play once I spotted the prohibition...sigh...the threat of litigation spoiling fun once again...

146. for noisy, tiring, but happy family meals together

147. where babies can get baths in the kitchen sink

148. and attentive cousins can get a sink-side tutorial

149. and hang together when the bath is done.

150. For generous friends to lay-out and form and family to help pour the footer for the new family house on the old family lot

151. for the blessing of grand-parenting

152. and afternoons of working together

153. while listening to the Rays CLINCH the American League East

My apologies to Ann Voskamp of "Holy Experience". I continue to experience difficulties getting her link button for Multitude Monday to copy and display properly. But clicking on the box below will take you to her blog, even though it appears empty.

Experiencing God's Goodness Through People

2010-09-25T22:27:00.001-04:00

Seven years ago I was preparing to host an open house to celebrate Kyle and Michelle's wedding with all our Florida friends. Kyle had been serving with Word Made Flesh in Kolkata for a couple years, and had met and fallen in love with Michelle when she had volunteered there the previous summer. They'd been courting long distance most of the year and had gotten married in Wisconsin in July. We wanted to host an open house for our many friends in Florida to meet Michelle and visit with Kyle who had been away - at school and then India - for so long. Our house is plenty large enough for David and myself, but rather compact when considering having 100-150 people over.

My friends helped me plan the menu and spent hours helping me prepare a number of the dishes. One made several desserts and spent the hours during the open house plating hors d'oeuvres and cleaning up. One friend ran a food pick-up for me, and one friend with mad scrapbooking skills took an hour or two to lead me through making wedding photo posters - a process that would have taken me days by myself.

One friend even helped me clean out and organize my garage a couple weeks prior to the event (a mountainous task that had been overwhelming to me) to gain much needed storage and prep space for the party supplies and food. On the two nights of the open house, because my friends had been so good to me, sharing their time and expertise, I was able to fully relax and enjoy all our friends and Kyle and Michelle.

I experienced the same kind of goodness in getting set up for Sam and Amber's wedding rehearsal dinner. Family and friends helped us prepare food, set up tables, displays and games and made short work of the clean-up at the end of the evening.

Over the years I've learned to know myself, in part, by noticing how I differ from others...in the motivations that drive us, the ways we work and communicate, our skill sets and preferences for doing things together or by ourselves, etc. Though I've spent waaay too much time moaning about my dismal rate of productivity over the years, I've worked to exchange moaning about my weaknesses for a willingness to ask for help and gratitude for the people in my life with the skills, gifts and willingness to help me bring about the plan I've envisioned.

Counting Blessings

2010-09-20T21:49:00.003-04:00

101. While taking Prema to school in the mornings this fall, I've seen the pastor who served as Kyle and Sam's middle school pastor.

102. He's still at it - caring about kids at one of their most awkward stages, investing in their lives with prayer, fun activities, group Bible studies, and opportunities to serve.

103. One of Kyle's and Sam's high school teachers stopped by the lot where the new house will be going up when he saw David and Kyle working the other day. He too, invested himself in the students way beyond the requirementsof his paycheck...he cared...and it showed.

104. These two have made me think of many other men and women who served as teachers and pastors and coaches during our sons growing up years...who served, who cared, who invested in my children.

105. Amber's posts about people who encouraged/influenced her made me think about all the "everyday folks" who gave of themselves in the small church in which I grew up...

106. the older gentleman who cut out wood parts for our VBS projects

107. and his wife who taught us girls some hand sewing skills

108. who together offered their acreage for the annual sunday school picnic

109. and who served corn picked fresh from their garden and cooked in massive quantities

110. the pastor's wife who always seemed glad to see me no matter how much I was interrupting her day
(she never let on, but now when I look back I shudder at how often I barged in to "parsonage"

111. and who cleaned the church sanctuary every week (did we pay her?)

112. and could keep us kids interested in the flannel graph stories she wove

113. in a voice so quiet we listened intently to hear her

114. and the three pastors who served during my growing up years at that small neighborhood church

115. who knew me personally

116. and visited my family

117. sometimes just to connect

118. and sometimes to comfort

119. who never seeemed to mind my interruptions of their study time to ask them questions

120. who never made much money, but kept caring about people, investing in lives.

121. I'm grateful to live in a neighborhood where I know and like my neighbors

122. and their dogs

123. and a spirit of helpfulness and cooperation is the norm.

124. I'm grateful we got to see the incredible, full rainbow

125. seemingly springing out of the water by the boat ramp at thelake

126. during our casual family bike ride late Sunday that turned into

127. a rainy biking adventure

128. where the shower refreshed us with its drenching

129. and brought cooler temperatures this morning.

130. I'm grateful for my husband who shows his love for his family by acts of service

131. and provision

132. and for two sons who do the same.

Daily Gifts

2010-09-13T15:49:00.002-04:00

This week I give God thanks:

101. for honey bees

102. that have lived within our walls for more than a year

after they first came to visit "the homestead"

103. with their gentle nature

104. and their daily work

104. of harvesting and making (in addition to pollinating plants)

105. honey....its distinct taste.

106. for the hope and inclination to find a skilled beekeeper

107. willing to give instruction and move the hive to a better location in our back yard

108. for sitting on the curb with my 3 year old grandson

109. on a hot sun-drenched morning

110. after he finished explaining the A/C system of the John Deere tractor (riding toy) to me

111. listening together to the squirrels quarrel

112. and the birds sound

113. and seeing three honey bees fall to the ground

114. and two different butterflies dance for us.

115. for brushes and paint

116. for glorious color

117. for little boys who love stories and books

118. and moms and dads who wisely feed that hunger and stoke that fire

119. for the satisfaction of long-distance bike rides that our sons are doing together

120. and the physical and emotional benefits

121. for the privilege of getting to know our sons as adults

122. and watching our daughters in law "build" their lives, their homes, their families

123. for the gift of music

124. and David's pleasure in playing trombone

125. and in the "community" that takes place in band and orchestra rehearsals and performances

126. for "family/community dinner" nights at our house

127. the discipline and joy of planning and preparing house and meals

128. for the connection and conversation and deepening friendships

129. for C.S. Lewis

130. and his "Chronicles of Narnia"

131. and David's enjoyment of the same

132. for Leanne Payne's knowledge and perspective of the writings of Lewis

133. and her sharing her marvelous intellect and insights with us through books and lectures

134. for delicious conversations with good friends

135. and paintings that make my heart sing

Only One Savior

2010-09-10T16:26:00.002-04:00

I had already practiced the much-needed discipline of telling myself, "I am not the junior holy spirit!" regarding insights or changes I thought might benefit my husband, when I discovered Leanne Payne's wonderful intelligence and insight and her passionate knowledge and experience of Jesus. Either Listening Prayer or Restoring the Christian Soul through Healing Prayer introduced me to Leanne's writings, and very quickly I devoured every book by Leanne that I could get my hands on. I have read most of her books at least twice and have given away numerous copies to others. I currently have Listening Prayer, The Broken Image, Real Presence, and Healing Presence on my bookshelf.

I came across Leanne's writings about 15-20 years ago when I had been getting my toes wet in the waters of intercessory prayer, bringing hurting people to God's throne, asking for His grace and mercy for them. Influencing others is one of my strong personality traits and since I had been barred from teaching at my church and I hadn't developed the necessary disciplines and skills to write and publish on a regular basis, I moved toward the next best thing for someone not allowed the use of manipulation tactics or holy spirit status - prayer on behalf of others. I felt like God had done so much renovation work in my own life and I was hungry to see Him use my prayers to help others.

Leanne Payne's understanding of the psychological and spiritual processes at work in our lives, and her teachings about the presence of God in our lives - incarnational reality, the role of forgiveness in healing prayer, the writings of C. S. Lewis, the dangers of inviting gnosticism and Jungian symbolism into our thought lives and Christian communities has been a skillfully sharp sword in my life, and I could quote many passages that have helped me over the years.

I am choosing a passage from Listening Prayer that confronts and exposes a type of "prayer" that has been around for centuries: substitution. A quick scan may not yield its treasure, so I encourage you, if you spend any time at all helping, praying for or mentoring others, to read it again when you have the time and focus to read it fully and use the very specific prayers.

"When we receive the gift of tears and strong crying out to God in intercession, we are not given special merit. Rather it is a gracious "work" of God's Spirit. We should be grateful and thank God for it. Trying to duplicate this grace is folly and gets in the way of intercession. Much of our best work of prayer will be done without sensible knowledge of this grace. When it comes, we simply give thanks for it.

Having said this, there are bona fide ascetic practices that, when absent from our lives, pretty well guarantee that we will not do much interceding. We are powerless when fasting, solitude, silence, and the classic ways of training our bodies to be temples of the Holy Spirit - as we see in our Lord, those He taught, and the early church - are missing in our lives. Dallas Willard's book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, should be read by all who are serious about true ascetics as applied to prayer and the Christian walk.

Besides the matter of false ascetics with its misbegotten ideas about God or ourselves, two other practices that hinder us in prayer are widespread today. One involves the practice of substitution. This occurs when we pray to take someone else's pain, illness, fear, or sorrow into or upon ourselves. In such a case, we do not intercede to God for them,but try to substitute for them. Rather than looking to Christ as the One who died to take their pain, sin, or darkness into Himself, we ask to take it upon and into ourselves. Rather than looking to the Savior, we attempt to be one. Instead of helping someone carry their burden of guilt, pain, sickness, or whatever to God in prayer, we ourselves fail to trust God. We attempt to carry the person's need in our own strength.

Substitution occurs, then, when we blur the distinction between being a savior-redeemer --something only Jesus could ever be and do -- and being His disciple, a sacramental channel through whom His life is to flow. To substitute is to attempt to do the work Christ has already finished, while simultaneously missing our own proper work. To take upon or into ourselves as mediators the darkness of others is at best based in ignorance, at worst based in pride. Either way, we fall into a messiah or savior complex and will have to confess pride to get out of it.

One of the great dangers in substitution lies in the fact that spiritual forces we do not understand or fail to discern can be directly involved in sickness of spirit, soul, and body. In the case of demonic presences, these are quite amenable to "transferring" themselves from the sick person to the one who asks to "substitute." Such a person unwittingly opens his or her soul and body to darkness, saying to the enemy "Come in" while simultaneously sending messages to his or her own mind and body, "Disintegrate, I give you full permission."

This action, of course, is not rooted in looking to and trusting God -- that is, in true prayer. The well-publicized movie The Exorcist did not feature an exorcism at all, but a substitution. A priest, failing to pray to God and exercise the authority of his office, instead took into himself the demonic force afflicting a child. The movie ends with the priest leaping from a window to his death. This illustrates most graphically the price to pay in substitutions. This price is not one connected with legitimate Christian suffering.

An interesting sidelight here: in PCM conferences, we bring the gospel to bear on the healing of souls. Since we are psychomatic unities--body and soul--our bodies begin to heal as a natural course and sometimes even instantly. Near the end of each conference, we are often led to pray for physical healings, especially those connected to the emotional and spiritual healings received by the people. Invariably, however, when people have the opportunity to renounce their substitutions, we see dramatic and instantaneous physical healings--as well as mental and emotional. There have been miraculous healings of cancer, emphysema, and others from these renunciations. Healings, such as those connected to the practice of substitution, do not seem to occur apart from specific teaching and opportunities to pray for them. Our grief is that there is never enough time in these meetings to get all the teaching and healing prayer exercises in.

If after reading the above, you know or even think that "maybe" there has been a substitution of this kind, now is the moment to name it, repent of it, and renounce it. You can look straight up to God and pray as follows:

"Lord, I asked to take on [so and so's] pain, disease, or darkness of [name the spiritual darkness, physical disease such as blindness, crippling condition, or mental and emotional depression or darkness of whatever kind]. I name my foolishness and pride before You right now. You alone are Savior-Redeemer. My faith in you was lacking, and I asked to do what You have already done--You carried our sicknesses, our sins, our sorrows. Forgive me, Lord, even as I renounce this substitution."

The substitution is then renounced, specifically:

"Lord, I have confessed as sin the pride and unbelief that was in this substitution. I now renounce it before You. [Renounce as specifically as possible the substitution you made, for instance, 'Lord, I asked to take on so and so's blindness, I renounce that substitution, confessing as sin the pride and unbelief that was in it.'] I look directly to You for [so and so's] health and wholeness, and thank you for removing from me, as far as the East is from the West, this malady I've suffered due to this wrongful practice.'

This prayer ends in praise and thanksgiving to God for His forgiveness, for His release from the substitution, and for all the healing that accrues from it."
Leanne Payne, Listening Prayer, copyright 1994, pp 58-60, Hamewith Books, a divsion of Baker Book House Co., Grand Rapids, MI 49516

Listening Prayer: Learning to Hear God's Voice and Keep a Prayer Journal

Though I cannot remember wanting to take on another's physical or mental illness, I have definitely, on occasion, fallen into a "savior complex", which really only, in my experience, impedes or delays the true work of God.

I have been able to steer myself away from commitments and entanglements motivated by the "be the savior" temptation many times by reminding myself: There is only one Savior, and I am NOT Him.

Grateful

2010-09-06T13:22:00.006-04:00

I'm grateful:

71. for the discipline and public "accountability" of of multitude monday

72. for the "nuggets of joy" that seem to eventually come to the person looking for them

73. for my husband's faithfulness to love me, day in and day out, over 35 years

74. for gorgeous sunsets

75. that happen over and over and over

76. for living in a place where I get to watch pelicans fish on a regular basis

77. for children who help waken their napping infant cousin with kisses

78. and parents who allow and encourage it

79. for grandchildren bursting in through the front door with hearty greetings and tales of the latest adventure

80. for David's flexibility in welcoming my mom on our trip to Alaska

81. and chauffeuring us all over the place

82. freeing me to drink in the scenery

83. for the joy of reading books for learning and pleasure

84. for the musician at "our beach" playing a xylophone last night just before sunset

85. for Eli's interest and joy as he danced in the water to the jamaican beat

86. that I could see his mom in his dance

87. for the fiercely strong waves

88. so far out, yet still shallow enough for the little ones to make it all the way on foot

89. and have so much fun trying to body surf and withstand the pummeling

90. for ground broken and work begun on preparing the land for the "construction shed" and future home for Kyle and Michelle's family

91. that the children will be able to watch and help throughout the process, building knowledge and good stewardship that comes from helping to build it

92. for my two daughters-in-law

93. who are very different in so many ways

94. but who each contribute so much to who our family is becoming

95. and also to their friends and communities

96. for the many varied ways I get to witness our sons loving their wives

97. and children

98. for all the young adults we've had live with us for a season...and all the new life and perspective they have brought to David and me:

99. Kyle and Michelle, Joanna, Sam and Amber, Amy

100. for abundant health and the ability to work

Where in the World...? Two

2010-09-04T11:30:00.000-04:00

While these posts designed for a game of observation and memory will be geared mostly for my immediate and local family, any others may join in guessing. I live in Pinellas County, Florida and travel between Largo and Tampa for most of my weeks, with occasional trips farther north to Brooksville and Floral City (mothers).

Most recent vacation trips have been to Alaska, Minneapolis, and Seattle, with older pics from Chicago and maybe even Boston and Baltimore if I get around to loading older photo cd's.

At times I will post pictures already featured on this or other blogs to which I contribute . I will try to post a variety of "easy" and "harder" pics, to encourage the kids in their observation and deduction skills.

Have fun, and be as specific as possible when you post your guesses, please.

God Will

2010-09-03T12:32:00.001-04:00

I don't remember now what the conflict was. But I do remember it was a seemingly unscalable, impassable mountain in my relationship with my husband. I'm guessing that conflict took place somewhere in the 15th-25th year of our marriage. It wasn't even close to being the first conflict of that level, intensity, and insurmountability. It certainly wouldn't be the last. Or the longest. Or the worst. But I was undone -- completely.

I saw no way out, around or through. My husband exited the room -- or the house --and I slid down the wall in a heap on the floor, weeping, flinging my broken heart and intractable husband at the feet of God, crying out for grace.

Quietly, from a still place deep within/beyond me, came words and music, and I began to sing:

"God will make a way where there seems to be no way.
He works in ways we cannot see---He will make a way for me.
He will be my guide, Hold me closely to His side.
With love and strength for each new day
He will make a way, He will make a way."

I sang the lyrics once, twice, four times, then stood to my feet in that spot with a quieted heart. I knew that God had seen, heard, and answered. I would wait with a heart that trusted Him, to see what He would do.
All the rest of that day, and throughout the several days that followed, I sang and hummed that song. No matter what other activity I was involved in, I could hear the words and melody:

"God will make a way where there seems to be no way.
He works in ways we cannot see -- He will make a way for me.."

God did make a way where there seemed to be no way. As He had done many times before and would do many times again in my relationship with my husband.

Thank You, Don Moen and Integrity Music for giving me -- and multitudes of other people over the past three? decades -- so many songs that have taught us how to praise God through song, have ushered us into God's presence and embedded His truths in our heart.

So MANY songs have so greatly enriched my walk with God over the years...bringing hope, healing, thanksgiving, praise, intercession and joy -- more stories to tell later. I am so grateful for the ability to hear and to sing, so grateful for the wonderful gift of music.

Surrender My Demand For Life on My Terms?

2010-09-02T11:58:00.004-04:00

I was a little glad when I got back to civilization/internet access, and saw that I had missed Amber's assignment of writing about surrender. After 45 years of relationship with the God of the universe I had many experiences which I had characterized as surrender, but the last five years held so much skepticism and unbelief on my part that I doubted my ability to remember and separate just one example from my tangled ball of experience. "Whew! I can excuse myself from that assignment", I thought.

But promises I'd made to myself and years of placing my heart's desires before God joined to become a quietly insistent voice that I discipline myself to add another, older perspective to the fresh accounts already told in and attached to Amber's blog. I went to my bookshelves to pull Catherine Marshall'sbooks and find where she had written about relinquishment in a way that had imprinted inself into both my daily experience and long term memory.

You young women have likely heard of Catherine Marshall only, if at all, as the author of Christy, a winsome story of a young teacher's first years living and teaching in a southern Appalachian mountain community which was made into a movie decades ago. Those of you who are enjoying "Redeeming Love" will probably enjoy Christy. Catherine Marshall has written numerous easy to read non-fiction books, which I heartily recommend to you, detailing her "own search for a meaningful life, a practical faith, and a closer relationship with God." I have on my shelves: To Live Again, Beyond Ourselves, Something More, Meeting God at Every Turn, The Helper, and Mr. Jones Meet the Master (this last book was Catherine's first, a written compilation of some of her first husband's sermons, published after his death.)

In Beyond Ourselves, Catherine writes about the Prayer of Relinquishment:

"I got my first glimpse of it in the fall of 1943. The illness that I have mentioned before... had kept me in bed for many months. A bevy of specialists seemed unable to help. Persistent prayer, using all the faith I could muster, had resulted in -- nothing.

One afternoon a pamphlet was put in my hand. It was the story of a missionary who had been an invalid for eight years. Constantly she had prayed that God would make her well, so that she might do His work. Finally, worn out with futile petition, she prayed, 'All right. I give up. If you want me to be an invalid for the rest of my days, that's Your business. Anyway, I've discovered that I want You even more than I want health. You decide.' The pamphlet said that within two weeks the woman was out of bed, completely well.

This made no sense to me. It seemed too pat. Yet I could not forget the story.....I came to the same point of abject acceptance. 'I'm tired of asking' was the burden of my prayer. 'I'm beaten, finished. God You decide what you want for me the rest of my life...' Tears flowed. I had no faith as I understood faith. I expected nothing. The gift of my sick self was made with no trace of graciousness.

The result was as if windows had opened in heaven; as if some dynamo of heavenly power had begun flowing, flowing into me. From that moment my recovery began.

Through this incident and others...God was trying to teach me something important about prayer.... I got only part of the message. I saw that the demanding spirit - 'God, I must have thus and so; God this is what I want you to do for me' - is not real prayer and hence receives no answer. I understood that the reason for this is that God absolutely refuses to violate our free will and ...unless self-will is voluntarily given up, even God cannot move to answer prayer."

Catherine Marshall relates two more accounts of a prayer of relinquishment from the lives of others, then writes:

"Larry's story and Una's have several points in common. In each case, the mother wanted the same thing desperately -- life and health for her child. Each mother commanded God to answer her prayer. While the demanding spirit had the upper hand, God seemed remote, uapproachable

Then, through a combination of the obvious futility of the demanding prayer plus weariness of body and spirit, the mother surrendered to the possibility of what she feared most. At that instant there came a turning point. Suddenly and inexplicably fear left and the feeling of lightness ad joy that had nothing to do with outer circumstances. This marked the turning point. From that moment the prayer began to be answered.

...We know that fear blocks prayer. Fear is a barrier erected between us and God, so that His power cannot get through to us. So -- how does one get rid of fear?

This is not easy when the life of someone dear hangs in the balance, or when what we want most in all the world seems to be slipping away. At such times, every emotion, every passion, is tied up in the dread that what we fear most is about to come upon us. Obviously only strong measures can deal with such a powerful fear. My experience has been that trying to overcome it by turning one's thoughts to the positive or by repeating affirmations is not potent enough.

...Jesus is saying: 'Admit the possibility of what you fear most. And lo, as you stop fleeing, as you force yourself to walk up to the fear, as you look it full in the face, never forgetting that God and His power are still the supreme reality, the fear evaporates.' Drastic? Yes. But effective.

One point about the Prayer of Relinquishment puzzled me for many years. There seemed to be a contradiction between the Prayer of Faith and that of relinquishment. If relinquishment is real, the one praying must be willing to receive or not receive his heart's desire. But that state of mind scarcely seems to exhibit the faith that knows that one's request will be granted...

Now I believe I have the explanation...Once I thought that faith was believing this or that specific thing in my mind with never a doubt. Now I know that faith is nothing more or less than actively trusting God...."

Actively trusting God - and being willing to have my understanding of who He is corrected in the process - is still a curriculum that challenges me greatly even after 45 years. I have, at various times, surrendered my children, my husband, my life, my marriage, my possessions, my lifestyle, my time and our future to the GOD whom I had found to be GOODNESS and LOVE through and through. I have practiced on a regular basis the voluntary surrender of my rights modeled by Jesus and described in Philippians 2. But I have also strongly resisted surrendering MY DEMAND FOR LIFE ON MY TERMS many times - and the older I am the more I recognize the undercover resistance movement in my actions and choices of the past.

Unpacked, Falling Asleep, and Grateful

2010-08-28T20:02:00.001-04:00

David, Mom and I took a red eye flight from Anchorage to Houston to Tampa last night after spending 10 days exploring Alaska, enjoying the scenery and wildlife and COOLNESS and many great meals. As ususal, I took bunches of photos - until I inadvertently smashed our camera against a table and bent the lens. This sunset view is from our lodge, north of Talkeetna.

We took a flight seeing Mt. McKinley tour with Sheldon Air Service and landed on Eldridge or Etheridge glacier for a few minutes of taking it all in. A real treat.

Mom and I stopped to examine so many different kinds of lichen and mushrooms whenever we were out walking. I have no idea what this type is or even if it IS lichen or mushroom...these were like flexible rubber cups.

These guys/gals were really enjoying their lazy afternoon of sunning in Resurrection Bay/Kenai Fjords.

I'll try to post some more photos on the Temple site later. No sleep last night...must turn in soon.

Multitude Monday: Tasting Joy

2010-08-09T08:21:00.024-04:00

The overcast morning with periodic sprinkles, spits, and spasms of rain made me reconsider a solitary bike ride to the beach. While the gray sky and light rain part are perfect for the soul that is drying around the edges and feeling the need for outdoor solitude, the spasms of rain are not only uncomfortable but also downright dangerous to a cyclist on a road where drivers are already often more engrossed with the scenery than the bike lane occupant on their right.

So instead, after a brief survey of the back yard I grabbed garden gloves and branch cutters, climbed the ladder and tackled the overgrown bougainvillea. A few minutes of battling physical thorns should provide the space my mind needed to unkink and stretch....and savor gratitude moments, tasting the joy once again :

36. for the empty, lid-less plastic jar near the front door. signalling much recent bug and lizard catching activity

37. for the 3 year old suddenly dashing out the front door and who, when questioned, announces "I'm going to let the lizard go so he won't die"....

38. for the sunset so wide both in color range and height that I had difficulty keeping my eyes facing forward, eastward on the road in front of me, instead of staring in my rear view mirror

39. for the gift of a morning walk in the park accompanied by sunlight AND a gentle rain

40. for the 5 year old boy so entranced by the stories and people of The Chronicles of Narnia that he peppers his conversation with character exploits and Narnia trivia questions

41. for the severely raw throat I garnered as consequence of screaming in rage at my husband of 35 years (I am all for mining the gold of natural consequences - in my life or others)

42. for a reliable, safe, "kiwi green" car to drive

43. with effective A/C

44. and a bike rack on top

45. and flexible seating and storage

46. and plastic, not carpeted floors,

47. for vacuuming out sand from the beach that stuck to small feet

47. after a morning of play at beach and park

48. for the playground merry-go-round - an "old-time" treasure

49. amidst challenging play structures

50. and climbing rocks

51. on a playground shaded by moss-covered oaks

52. peopled by active day-campers playing capture the flag

53. and kind middle school girls who don't retreat from the "social strange-ness" of P,

54. who invite her to conversation and a moment of inclusion.

55. for sauteed spinach

56. and portobello mushrooms

57. and onions and ham

58. folded into egg and white omelet

59. with swiss and fat-free feta cheese

60. for a "savor every bite" sunday morning breakfast

61. for 4 month old boy who now snuggles up close, wrapping his arms so his hands grip the sides of my chest

62. and who stays quietly content wrapped just so, while I sway on the couch or sit on the chair

63. his eyes open, peacefully gazing at mother and father

64. or eyelids drooping, heavy with sleep

65. the coos, chortles, and quiet "conversation" of this same boy with his mother and father

66. his mimicry of their speech so obvious, so intent

67. for this repeated miracle lesson about the development of speech

68. and how we are all formed and shaped by our relationships, within family

69. for the wonderfully consistent love and provision and nurture my parents gave me

70. and its doorway to healthy personality and trust in a God who Loves

Where in the World...? One

2010-08-04T14:28:00.000-04:00

Hide and seek is a popular game with our grandchildren. Reading - or more accurately "studying" Richard Scarry books (or other books illustrated with a great deal of detail that enhance learning about our world) is a past-time loved as much by Isaac and Eli as it was by their dad. Instead of simply reading the story, the adult reader finds tiny details in the story for the child to search for - like "where's the pickle on this page?" or "who can find someone who is spilling something?"

I thought it might be fun to play another blog game called "Where in the world is Sandy's camera?" I will post several pictures without telling you where they were taken. You post a comment with your guess. If a few guesses come in but they are incorrect, I will give a hint or hints as needed.

Anyone may guess, but I will require more detailed answers from those who live in the area where the photos are taken. If we have fun with the game, perhaps I'll try posting the gps coordinates with the answers so you can find the exact spot on google earth or attach a linky tool for blog readers to post their own photos for us to identify.

I will try to post a variety of photo challenges, with some from other locales and some that have already been identified in this or other blogs. Ok, here are your first three to guess - #s 1-1, 1-2, 1-3. Questions are allowed. Have fun!

Seasons of Service

2010-08-02T11:59:00.007-04:00

Elisabeth Elliott's book, "These Strange Ashes", about her first year of missionary service, has stayed with me for many years after I read it. Elisabeth spent her first term of service living with "an unreached tribe" attempting to codify their spoken language into a written language for purposes of fostering literacy and translation of the Bible into their tongue. After more than a year of working diligently on the project ALL her language work was irretrievably lost.

I was already familiar with the story Elliott told in her most well-known book, "Through Gates of Splendor" about the murder of her husband, Jim Elliott, and several other men, as they attempted to befriend a remote tribe of people, and her subsequent story of remaining for many years, with her children, to continue to get to know that tribe of people and introduce them to Jesus Christ.

It is not difficult to call the loss of the young husbands and fathers a sacrificial service that resulted in great blessing when one looks through the window provided by the results of her subsequent years of friendship with and service to the tribe. But "These Strange Ashes" is Elisabeth's reflection on the meaning and purpose of the loss of her entire year of literacy work.

I can't remember whether a storm or fire or something else destroyed her work, but I do remember that her story and her reflection left me feeling unsettled and dissatisfied. I wanted life to be explainable if not predictable, and to be able to clearly see and name God's movement and purposes in our lives.

Over the past few years I've spent an inordinate amount of time reflecting on the people, motivations, and results of my four decades of service to God and "the bride of Christ", the church, looking for possible purpose and meaning. I have been sifting fragile ashes from one hand to the other, examining what remains.

I began this blog in the middle of that reflective season, and the blog title, "These Three Remain" hints both of my struggle to make meaning of the unknowable and my hope, however faint at that time, that faith, hope, and love are truly cornerstones of life that remain when all else fades away.

So Amber's invitation to reflect on and write about a season of service or influencing people and blessing or benefit that may have come to us through or as a result of that service has really challenged me as I've sifted the ashes of my service through my fingers.

"Personality assessments" I've taken over the years have made me realize that "influencing others" has been a primary motivation most of my life - it's a very strong thread in my personality, and it shows itself in my history of church service activities which focused far more on teaching and mentoring than on preparing meals, cleaning homes, or mowing lawns. I did all those things and more as both a "stay-at-home" and working wife and mother, but I didn't routinely help people outside my family in those ways.

I grew up in small church, so I was put to work at a young age: helping with a weekly children's program, and annual summer vacation bible school, teaching a 3rd grade Sunday School class, singing in the choir, leading youth group activities, counseling at summer church camps, teaching sunday school to a wonderful group of middle schoolers while in college, and participating in community evangelistic campaigns.

Later, immersed in a much larger home church, I found myself discipling women on an informal individual and group basis as I continued in the church-structured activities of teaching sunday school (7th grade girls, then later 4 year old children ), teaching the Bible in vacation bible school each summer and writing and leading interdenominational women's bible studies in the community.

I took an active role in a local women's retreat ministry for about a decade, and though I found myself locked out of the teaching structure of the church (another story for another time) I gave myself to serving in the children's wednesday night program, singing in the choir, chaperoning field and camping trips, counseling at youth camp, and praying on a very regular basis for my church's leaders, people, and programs.

When I was locked out of the teaching leadership structure after 20 years of teaching, I turned to intercessory prayer (praying for and on behalf of others) as an alternate avenue of "using my life to influence others for God and Truth".

At first I prayed mostly for my church, on my knees in the tiny prayer room or face down in the sanctuary on weekdays, and tucked away in a less traveled hallway on Sunday mornings. After awhile, I began meeting regularly with others for the purpose of prayer; sometimes to support interdenominational organizations and efforts in the community, other times to encourage individuals in their prayer life.

I took to "prayer- walking" not only on my mega church and christian school campus but also in neighborhoods and on busy city streets in my community, often bringing partners along to walk and pray with me for God's blessing for the people, neighborhoods, churches and cities through which we walked.

For several years when I did not have to work outside the home, I prayed with someone, morning and afternoon, five days a week. I heartily believed God would intervene in the affairs of men and influence lives as a result of our prayers.

Trying to complete the many "faith assignments" I felt God had for me was usually intuitively and intellectually fulfilling but it was also very challenging emotionally. At times I risked damage to my reputation or rejection and loss of treasured relationships in order to pursue "the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil 3:8).

For as long as I can remember I have had a major pride problem. During the years of intense prayer and mentoring activities, I battled pride on a daily basis, asking God to root it out in me, expose it and help me to confess it to others and turn from it.

So it may be no coincidence that looking back these past few years at the "results" of my decades of service has seemed more an act of "sifting through ashes" than rejoicing over visible results. For quite a few months I felt like my decades of service to "the church" had been a colossal mis-use of my time and resources.

During this season of my life of withdrawal from "church" activities, I have focused on giving simple life-sustaining gifts to my family: preparing many nourishing meals, caring for children, painting and planting, and offering stressed and weary parents moments of respite and a welcoming home where each person is accepted, respected and loved.

I've returned with new emphasis to this service that is so very physical and largely restricted to my family mostly because we simply needed it to survive and overcome the challenges we faced, and also because it provided a "quiet" backdrop of work for me to address the unanswered questions, heartache and angst about God and the church which occupied such a large portion of my heart and mind.

As I have taken up this towel, I've experienced an unexpected new joy and satisfaction in planning and preparing appealing, wholesome meals as well as surprise that a meal that takes 5 hours or more to prepare will often be dished out and consumed by 8-12 people in less than 15 minutes. I've experienced a body weariness that clamors for rest long before the day is done, and fed my appetite for learning as I've devoured books and lectures about nutrition, fitness, the brain, and personality development.

In order to serve my family in this way, I've exchanged personal activities and goals I'd looked forward to accomplishing during this "empty nest" season for more cooking and cleaning and childcare.

But I've also tasted recurring delight as I experience anew the wondrous world with and through my grandchildren; reading marvelous books, cooking, baking, working and laughing together; exploring the great outdoors and its many inhabitants in yard, park, and beach; getting messy with mud and paint and glue, playing every ball game imaginable, struggling to communicate with my "special needs" granddaughter, and answering 387 questions a day.

I realize that I've been breaking the commonly taught rules for spiritual health by refusing involvement in the "messy Christianity" within the organized church during these recent years.

I realize with a clarity I lacked in my younger years just how far I am from loving others as God loves.

But after 35 years of intensive service to the organized church, investing my energy, gifts and love in that community (and the world through my intercessory prayer and our financial giving), I am content with this towel and this bowl for now.

I do not shy from truthful answers or cringe in guilt when I face the questions and responses from extended family and friends about my lack of involement in the organized church.

For this season, my "family church" has provided more than enough opportunity to practice forgiveness and model imperfection, more than enough pain to stretch my heart, more than enough heartache to keep me on my knees crying out for mercy and grace, and more than enough joy and blessing to keep me lifting my voice in praise to the God who is Love.

A Lifetime of Giving Thanks

2010-07-26T13:25:00.001-04:00

One of the joys (and there are many) of my life in this season as a mother-in-law, has been watching each of my daughters-in-love cultivate the discipline of intentional gratitude in their lives and the lives of their children. I see it in lists on their walls and blogs, in creative yet simple thank you notes with the children, and hear it from their lips. It gives me joy because thanksgiving has made such a huge difference in my life.

Looking back over these past almost 35 years of living, loving, and learning with my husband and family, I think intentional thanksgiving would make my top 3 list of "it-has-changed-my-life-time-and-time-again" disciplines. Deliberately expressing gratitutde for the big and small gifts and challenges in my life has gotten me out of a funk, out of a negative, complaining or self-centered attitude more times than I can rememember. Thanksgiving has broken through at times when all other mental gymnastics proved powerless. Thanksgiving: It does a body good.

I realized when Amber began posting her deliberate thanksgiving on her blog a few weeks ago, that it was probably time for me to move back into the discipline of frequent, deliberate thanksgiving instead of waiting for it to overtake me with joy. So I am beginning today to keep my word to join the Multitude Monday community.

I am so grateful:
1. for life...multitudes of people do not make it to 55. I am thankful for abundant health.

2. for my husband...he has continued to love me through all the seasons of our 35 years of marriage

3. for my two grown sons...they are wonderful men and husbands and fathers...and it is such fun to getting to know them in this season as "friend" in addition to "son"

4. for my two beautiful, intelligent, and loving daughters-in-law....it is such a delight getting to know them, and they are both teaching me things and expanding my view of the world through their unique views, gifts, and skills

5. for my four grandchildren....for the health they (and we) have, for the joy and learning they bring to our lives

I am so grateful:
6. to have been born in this great country, with all its freedoms and promise and people
7. to have been born to incredibly loving and nurturing parents
8. that my parents moved to Florida in my childhood,
9. and for all the opportunity of a new life that came our way with their move
10. for the church family that welcomed and nurtured me and my family all the rest of my childhood and youth, for the strong foundation of belief and trust that was laid

I give thanks:
11. for the safety I had growing up...I never feared that my parents would hurt me or neglect to feed me

12. for living in a place of abundant sunshine
13. and green growing things

14. and tropical plants wearing such glorious foliage of outrageous colors

15. that I live so close to the beach I can be there in 20 minutes by bike

I am grateful:
16. for my bicycles
17. for the Pinellas trail
18. for bike lanes on the beach
19. for padded biking shorts for those long rides
20. for moisture-wicking exercise wear that I come close to wearing 16 hours a day during this menopausal season of life

I am thankful:
21. for the legacy of a gentle heart and contented spirit from my father...somehow he managed to sidestep the alcoholism that had cornered his father and replace it with gentle patience

22. my mother, also, modeled contentment, gentleness and patience with us

22. for the gift of opening our eyes to appreciate beauty from my parents by continually taking us to parks, walking trails with us, pointing out things of wonder in nature

23. that I live now within a half mile from a wonderful park

24. for the amazing abundance and variety of birds in my area...one of these days I will do a post of just bird pictures

25. for the tadpoles that grew to froghood in my front porch fountain this past month

I am so grateful:
26. that I can read...my life has been immeasurably enriched
27. that I have had the chance to read so many amazing books
28. that biographies and memoirs have opened my eyes to see the world from others' eyes
29. for computers and
30. four-in-one printers and
31. digital cameras and
32. amazing software and
33. cell phones (even though my husband insists he can never reach me when he needs me)
34. the world-wide web with all the innovation and staying in touch and sharing of knowledge it has spawned
35. for the blogosphere...so much to learn, so many people to enjoy

Stones of Remembering

2010-07-16T20:35:00.004-04:00

A week ago when Amber invited us to join her on "Journey of Faith Friday"s, to set out memorial stones from the rivers of our lives for others to see and, hopefully, be encouraged and conclude that "God is great, God is good, God is faithful", I began sifting through my memories to see if I came across anything in my life that still, in my estimation, qualified as a "memorial stone to God's faithfulness and power" and which I was willing to, with much effort, lug out of the river and put out on the bank for anyone who happened by to see, walk around, kick, or stub their toe on.

I'd started piling up memorial stones in earnest in my twenties. I married at 20, immersed myself in theological, historical, and christian education studies at Asbury College and in practice of those studies within the Wilmore Free Methodist Church for two years. I gave birth to our first son when I was 23, and our second when I was 25. I thought a lot about setting up memorial stones in my life, which my sons would see or bump against and ask about, and which might remind me of God's faithfulness if ever I lost my way in the dark. I started gratitude lists in my journals while in college, and they spilled over to the walls of our small home when Kyle and Sam were small. For decades I kept recording my struggles with life as well as my pleas for help and the answers and guidance and help I felt God offered.

Perhaps after I have submitted to Amber's proposed discipline of writing testimonies of God's power, love and faithfulness for a few months, the stones from my river will come up easily, anxious to display their witness. But in this season of my life, they are not easily removed from their bed of gravel and rock, so it is probably good for me that Amber is assigning topics, this first being what we see as the beginning of our friendship with God.

Years ago I would have begun my "salvation story" at the point when I was eight years old, sitting in a Salvation Army "vacation bible school" story time one summer, paying close attention to a woman describing the construction that God was offering to do in my heart. If I remember correctly she held up a large heart-shaped black cut-out when she described the hearts of children who lied, or disobeyed their parents, or behaved meanly towards others. She showed us a large red heart cut-out to symbolize God's love for us which had been demonstrated in Jesus' physical death on the cross; and she held up a white heart as a picture of the heart of a person who invited Jesus to live within him and change him. The person who consented to that act and that process would have a changed heart, a clean heart, a white heart.

I wanted a white heart, a clean heart, a good heart. I knew I wasn't good through and through. I knew I had done some of those bad things she talked about, and I wanted a clean heart, a white heart. I wanted a good heart.

Thinking of my story now, within the puzzling context of Paul's words to the Athenians that God "determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17), I would probably begin my story of God's provision sooner.

My parents had love and energy to share with a wider family of foster children when my sister and I were young. As foster parents, they opened their home and arms and hearts to hurting children in the community whose families were fractured or breaking, and offered each child a safe place and space of his or her own, nourishing meals and honest, consistent discipline.

I learned early on that some parents did not keep their children. Our parents likely gave us simple answers meant to protect us from harsh realities as to why these children came to live with us. But what my 5-6 year old brain concluded was that some parents gave their children away to others. And if I wasn't good enough, might my parents give me away? That anguished question tumbled over my lips one day after my mother caught me in a lie. She assured me that she and my father would NEVER give me away. But still, I wondered at times.

It would be many years before I would realize and understand a greater factor in my compelling need to do right and be right, to be good. But when I was 8, listening to that VBS story of God's invitation to change dirty hearts to clean, my mind did not know what my deep heart knew. I knew only that I wanted a clean heart - I wanted to be GOOD.

So I invited Jesus to "come into my heart" and live with me. I believed he did. And for me it truly was the beginning of many choices that set me on a path of cultivating a vibrant inner relationship with "I AM" and making an earnest outward effort to follow God. It was the beginning of learning to look for God's handiwork, provision and power in my life, the beginning of gathering stones of remembering.

Photo #1 of the large boulders and walking stick and photo #2 of the rocks on the shore were both taken on the Homer Spit, Homer, Alaska.

Photo #3 was taken by Michelle at Indian Rocks Beach, Florida (the Gulf Coast) one evening this summer, while the oil was still gushing, capping attempts had failed, and we were grabbing memories of "our beach" before it was gone.

I LOVE our house!

2010-07-05T15:27:00.001-04:00

My daughter-in-law, Michelle, was sharing some humorous videos posted on the "Spirit fm 90.5" web site a few nights ago and one that stayed with me was a short video of a 4-5 year old curly blonde haired girl standing on her bathroom counter, so she could watch herself enthusiastically declare all the things she loved about her life. I assumed she had watched a parent doing daily affirmations in front of the mirror since "Jessica's daily affirmations" was the title of the youtube clip, but it could very well have been her compliance with a parental prescription meant to replace grumbling with gratitude.

Where David and I live now is less than a 5 minute walk from where our old house stood. Years ago, I had been looking for a house close by where we could live while our old home went through extensive (as in the architect and contractor telling us "you need to tear it down") remodeling. I happened upon this one at the end of a cul-de-sac one afternoon when I walked the dog. I asked to see it and within a few days David and I had made an offer to the owners, and within a couple years we had abandoned all serious thought about moving back to our former property. We were simply too content with this house.

There were several other factors in our decision, but the ones I've thought about so often are how much I LOVE is the way it nestles among vine-covered oak trees and palmettos, and the number and placement of windows in the home. Every single room in the house has a view to the outside, and in most places the view is largely comprised of plants and trees.

Watching from our bed as the sunlight pushes back the early morning darkness in our back yard is pure joy.

I do most of my "paper work" at the dining room table, because I only have to lift my eyes for a moment of rest and a reminder that the current project, though keeping me inside, is not keeping me from beauty.

For someone who worked in a windowless office for many years, being able to drink in my oak glade and palmetto "jungle" is a marvelous gift.

When I am cleaning the floors or setting the table or reading to my grandchildren I have only to move my head to let the beauty feed me.

Whenever I clean or share our guest room with another, I give thanks that we are able to share such beauty with those who stay with us. Because beauty is meant for sharing.

These photos were all taken at our home in Largo, Florida.

Kneeling

2010-07-03T18:59:00.007-04:00

I read "The Search for God at Harvard" by Ari L. Goldman at least 10 years ago. Goldman, a "third generation American-born Orthodox Jew, then religion correspondent for The New York Times who wrote this engaging spiritual memoir of his year at Harvard Divinity School in 1985, grabbed me when he wrote:

"The most elusive experience for me in my early days at the Div School was, to my great surprise, the Christian experience. Everybody, it seemed, was trying so hard not to offend the wide diversity of people that were gathered there that Christian spirituality did not emerge.

If, for example, there was a mention in class of the divinity of Jesus, the lecturer would offer an apology to the non-Christians in the room. If there was a Christian prayer offered at a convocation, you could be sure that some Buddhist meditation would follow for balance. Religious truth did not seem to exist at the Div School, only religious relativism....

The Noon Worship, organized and led by students, would include some tepid hymns, an inoffensive reading from Scriture and a short sermon usually on the liberal political topic of the day. The sermons that I grew up with in syagogue exhorted the gathered faithful to change themselves; here in the Div School chapel the plea for change was directed outside, well beyond the church walls....

I often passed the chapel when I was on my way to and from classes. Occasionally, I would see someone sitting there meditating, but in my entire year at Harvard, I never saw anyone on his or her knees.

To my mind, kneeling is the ultimate expression of Christian supplication. It is something so Christian that, as a boy, I was taught never to fall down on both knees, even while playing in the park or retrieving some toy from under the sofa. 'Always keep one knee up,' my counselor said at Camp Kol-Re-Na, an Orthodox all-boys summer sleep-away camp in the Catskills, 'Jews don't kneel.'"

Goldman's words astounded me. At the point in my life when I encountered his memoir, I could not imagine my life lived without frequent kneeling before God. I prayed a lot, about 2-4 hours a day. I knelt in my private worship to express submission of my life to God, I knelt when I pleaded with God to intervene in my life or that of another, and sometimes I knelt in adoration or in simple waiting, quietly "present" with God. I knelt in corporate or solitary prayer for others in churches of various denominations, all over my local area, and in other areas of the country when I traveled.

Although my home church during most of my adult life was generally a sitting or standing church - not a kneeling church, people sitting in the pews were almost always invited to kneel at the altar at the front of the sanctuary at the end of a worship service to demonstrate their desire to trust God, and my last few years there we were regularly invited to kneel at the altar for our corporate prayer time. Kneeling didn't have a prominent place in our corporate worship, but it did have a place.

I often knelt in corporate worship whether anyone around me knelt or not, and whether or not the worship leader invited us to kneel. I knelt to bow my heart and tune my ear to the still small voice. I knelt to be a living symbol to onlookers of God's invitation to man to "come, let us reason together".

So it astounded me to read that "Jews don't kneel." If I'd ever thought about it, I would have assumed they did...for the same reasons I did....to demonstrate personal acknowledgement of God's might and authority.

Apparently so many years of frequent kneeling during prayer had embedded itself so thoroughly in my conversation and relationship with God that kneeling was almost the only traditional expression of Christian worship that remained during my long long season of questioning and doubt. I still tried to live my life in ways that modeled integrity, compassion, and service to others and I still made time for quiet reading and thinking, but my days no longer began and ended with praise and thanksgiving.

After I returned home from Kolkata, I tried to read my Bible but found it had become an ordinary book, subject to my many questions, doubt and skepticism which had begun brewing before my trip to India. The words I read no longer called or sang to me with vibrant love and life. Church worship services also, largely lost their ability to touch me with encouragement or teaching or conviction. I stopped dancing, stopped singing and stopped listening to contemporary Christian music to avoid the critical, cynical thoughts that filled my mind.

The journaling that had been such a strong part of my daily "walk with God" stopped being a daily record of my thriving inner life and conversation with God and instead became reading journals into which I copied meaningful sections of books I read. After several years of my questioning even that fell by the wayside. The ability to form coherent sentences and paragraphs had abandoned me, and each time of trying to write my thoughts ended in complete frustration. I had become a spiritual deaf-mute.

I still tried to choose integrity, compassion, and service to others day by day, and I still followed the wisdom of a weekly day of rest. Thanksgiving broke through on occasion in those first years of my doubt, but generally I was so overcome by the suffering in the world and so skeptical of the beliefs that had shaped me most of my life, that for a season, forgiveness, gratitude and thanksgiving - once key plantings in a thriving, abundantly nourishing garden in my life - became a neglected, patch of dormant plants.

But amazingly, in the midst of all the anger and agnosticism and despair, I still knelt.

At times, when I could not utter a single sentence of prayer, I knelt. Some early mornings I rolled out of my bed where I liked to read and I knelt on the hard tile floor. No words beyond "God.......you know" would escape my lips. Sometimes I slipped out of my rocker or chair onto my knees, letting my posture say what my tongue found so difficult to utter: "I am here, God. Come, reason with me."

The top photo of the surf pounding against the rock was taken on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, photo #2 is a portion of a holocaust memorial at a Jewish synagogue in Clearwater, Florida, photo #3 is Walsingham Park, and the rainbow photo was taken on our cul-de-sac in Largo, FL - it actually was a full double rainbow! My thanks to Amy for diverting her run in the park to run home and tell us, gasping!, that we MUST go out and look.

Note to Self 2: Cups in the Car

2010-05-11T08:45:00.000-04:00

One of the things I love about my newest daughter-in-law is how much she enjoys laughter. Since Amber reminded me afresh about the immense value of laughter in her recent blog post, I thought I'd share a quick EEUUGH! from yesterday.

The day before David and I had shared lunch at Sonny's, our favorite BBQ establishment and carried away large "to-go" cups of drink for later. I drank one Sunday afternoon, then worked on the second cup yesterday, refilling the big foam cup with my own iced tea as I worked at my dining room "desk". I dashed out late in the afternoon, hoping to make a stop at Home Depot for soil and shovels quickly enough to afford me an early arrival time and vacant swim lane when I got to the pool.

I put the car in park, turned and pulled the keys, and grabbed the to-go cup in the holder for a swig. Suck on the straw, feel lemon seed-sized object in mouth followed immediately by YOWWW....that's a STING!
Turn and spit out the open door and see a light gray SPIDER shooting out and scrambling for cover - NOT a lemon seed.

Note to self: Do NOT, under any circumstances, drink from cup left in car overnight, without visually checking the contents first.

As I lay in bed this morning, slowly becoming aware that "yes, it really is 5:25, that was the alarm going off, and I do have begin my day", one body-awareness thought dominated all the "sore muscles? joints?" assessments: Dang, my tongue hurts!

Crossing the Causeway

2010-04-13T17:44:00.000-04:00

I might get tired of the long commute if I had to do it five days a week, but I rarely ever mind driving to Tampa via the Howard Frankland Causeway across the bay between Pinellas County and Tampa. It is one of the gifts of renewable delight of living in this place.

The water and sky display a fresh mood every day: sometimes morning sunshine bounces off the water in rapid-fire-bursts dazzling the eyes, sometimes the hazy clouds and utterly still water whisper an impressionist painting, and sometimes the wind buffets your vehicle and storm clouds dump torrents of rain backlit by earth splitting lightning so fierce you wonder if you'll make it to the other shore alive.

On one trip across I was agog over the dazzling sunlight on the water and the clouds just beginning to stack. So as I drove I groped for paper and pen to blindly scribble and capture the moment:

Crossing the causeway

soldier clouds

line up in formations

many rows deep,

awaiting orders to march across

the sparkling granite bay,

and crunch the waves beneath their boots.

Now, I'm under no delusion that this poem qualifies as "good", but it was the first poem I'd written in many years, I had fun rolling it around on my tongue in the car, and I wanted to capture it. Joanna has been dazzling me with her poetry of late...stirring up great emotion and wonder in me. I realize that poetry which stands alone without melody does absolutely nothing for many people, but reading and chewing on good poetry makes me give thanks to God for the wonder of language and emotion and creativity in the same way that standing before a magnificent painting or sculpture does. "In the image of God, made He them..."

Note 1: Recently, in a conversation about navigational directions I'd given someone, my husband informed me that the Howard Frankland referred to the bridge and that the term "causeway" was reserved for one of the other highways crossing the bay. Give up the alliteration in the first poem I've written in....probably decades... and labor to re-write? Nope.

Note 2: This photo taken 18 months after that drive is a poor substitute for the "granite bay" of that day, but it is at least the same bay. :-)

What think ye?

2010-04-11T16:22:00.000-04:00

I spotted this on one of my recent walks, and just had to capture it. What does it look like to you?

Acquainted With Grief

2010-03-10T15:15:00.025-05:00

It has been six years since I prayed "the dangerous prayer" and hurled my deepest desire for my family to know God fully, into the lap of God. I wanted them to know his complete character and personality experientially through relationship, intuition and intellect.

The lap of God became the threshhold of an open door and we stepped through. Our older son, Kyle and his wife, Michelle, carried a seemingly bottomless bag of suffering and sorrow from the streets of Kolkata, India upon which to build their family. Sixteen months later they brought home from those streets their newly adopted daughter, who has displayed so many consequences of early childhood trauma and neglect in her brain, body, and emotions, and whose nurturance has cost so much energy, money, and sacrifice and has given pain, loss, and wisdom in return.

Our younger son, Sam, walked through waves of physical and relational pain, and David and I drank at our own well of sorrow and grief. We watched as our fathers' strength left them and our mothers exchanged freedom of movement and activity for a new loneliness as they nursed their husbands' bodies and felt their lifelong partnership slip through their fingers. We struggled with the smallness of our service and support for them.

During a two year span in the midst of these sorrows, I experienced the abrupt death or removal of five of the closest friendships, ministry partnerships and mentoring relationships of my life, apart from my family. During this same time David had to adjust to the sudden death of two of his closest friends, who died on an airstrip far from home.

David and I faced "new and improved" versions of old marital conflicts, wounds, and disappointments as we tried to navigate working together on a full-time basis once again. That had always been challenging for the two of us, with our poor communication skills and our opposite approaches to seeing, prioritizing, and tackling challenges. But when we threw in my chaotic hormonal changes with its toll on my sleep and psyche, and the physical and emotional consequences of David's many years of deferred stress into the mix, living and working together with mutual respect and joy in our relationship seemed an impossible dream.

In addition to the sorrow my family experienced first hand, after we returned from Kolkata, I felt strongly compelled to immerse myself in and "borrow" the suffering of the world, through books, documentaries, and movies narrating and portraying biographical accounts of incredible loss and suffering. For months I swam in the river of other's sorrow, read biblical passages of lament, and inwardly disdained an American evangelical narcissistic consumer culture of which I had been an enthusiastic member.

This culture seemed to prefer that the suffering of others stay hidden from view, shut away in institutions or faraway lands, displayed only in brief snatches of print, video and song. Many of us viewed outbreaks of suffering as a condition to be avoided at all costs.

I didn't like suffering. I knew Bible passages that referred to suffering as a normal human condition and spoke of benefits that came from suffering, but I didn't have an ascetic's glorified view. Secretly, I hoped that suffering was not inevitable. For most of my adult life I hoped to avoid "unnecessary" suffering by obedience to principles of living I saw in the Bible and by appealing to God for protection. I didn't want to get too close to people who suffered in ways that seemed so far behond my coping ability. I wanted no part of it. Until I wanted an intimacy with God that couldn't be had without unlocking that door.

So my family's increased experience of suffering after my "heart's desire prayer" didn't take me by surprise, but my increasing inability to trust in and frame it within the Christian story on which I'd built my life did. Thoroughly. Within 18 months of completing the in-depth Bible study which caused me to fling my deepest desire onto God's lap, I was unable to finish a Bible study about believing God because I realized I no longer did.

I could no longer trust that God cared about the details of our lives to intervene and come to our rescue when we cried out in pain, because He had, by my thinking, abandoned millions of children around the globe to exactly that perspective. And if he abandoned those children to conclusions one would come to naturally, how could I come to a supernatural conclusion and think that my vastly different life circumstances came because I and my parents before me trusted in God's goodness; and not because I was born in a country that had abundant natural resources and oceans surrounding it to insulate and protect its members; and not because I had been born to parents who spent their lives providing for, protecting, loving and nurturing their children?

With that trust in God's great willingness to intervene gone, suffering that might serve a redemptive purpose lost its place at my table.   Myriad examples of suffering caused by man's pride, selfishness, covetousness, anger, and injury to one another seemed simply senseless to me.

I fell back into the ancient conundrum of trying to reconcile a God who is all good AND all powerful yet allows suffering on the massive scale we see and experience in our world. That our suffering is caused by sin was no longer enough explanation for me. That God was patient, waiting, while many suffered, so that some could come to new life in him, was no longer enough for me. I wondered if my four decades of certainty about the joy and fruitfulness of an intimate relationship with the God of the Bible had been simply self delusion.

I kept up the process of internal questioning, reading outside the traditional Christian world view and trying to see where reason and logical thinking would take me in my quest even though I felt little hope I would arrive at an answer to the riddle that would satisfy me and other wounded skeptics. After all, centuries of far better thinkers than I had been denied. I strongly suspected that sooner or later I would simply have to choose what I would build my life on, because I didn't read anyone who hadn't at some point in their reasoning, based deductions on some assumption that had to be believed rather than proven.

Eventually I grew tired of fighting, tired of living with more fear and less hope, tired of the nihilism that moves in when faith in a God of love walks out.

Gradually, over a period of several years I've worked my way back to some foundation of belief.    I reduced my stress load by exchanging most of my responsibilities in our family business for increased childcare and cooking responsibilities. I started walking, running and biking regularly again and I began to lift weights for the first time in my life. As a result, my sleeping and my sense of emotional well-being greatly improved. Together, these actions gave me more time, energy and ability to reason effectively, and I began to heal from the outside, in.

Slowly I began to choose to believe, (some days, then many days, then most days) that "GOD IS", then that "GOD IS GOOD", then "GOD IS LOVE" and finally that "JESUS SHOWS ME WHAT GOD IS LIKE", what love would look like if love were a man.

The character of Jesus, as displayed in the gospel accounts, was very compelling to me, but also compelling was the commonly acknowledged prophetic picture of Jesus as the "man of sorrows, acquainted with grief", the one "from whom we hide our faces" described by Isaiah hundred of years before Jesus' birth in Isaiah 53 which I had memorized years before.

During the season in which I had charged God with being unjust, heartless or simply uninvolved, I had been saying things like this: "How can all powerful LOVE continue to allow the harm we people do to one another to continue? How can LOVE continue to allow children to be raped and mutilated and forced to murder their family members? How can LOVE continue to allow mothers to watch multiple babies die in their arms from malnutrition and disease? How can LOVE watch gentle boys who find sanctuary and love in their mother's embrace to grow up and become misogynists who beat their wives into submission or set them aflame generation after generation?"

"GOD, How can you make it so exceedingly difficult for people who suffer greatly from abuse, extreme poverty, oppression and hatred passed from generation to generation to find a way out of fate and into freedom? I cannot bear to think about this suffering for more than a few months. How can you bear this hate and destruction continuing year after year and generation after generation? How can LOVE not move to end it?"

All these agonized questions slowly settled on the picture of Jesus, the suffering servant, the son of God, bearing our sorrows, our sins, our sicknesses, our suffering on the cross.

The crosses generally worn and displayed by Protestants in the U.S. are "empty" crosses, with the body of Jesus removed and the focus of the resurrection: "Christ has won! Christ has power over death! Christ has new life for me!" But the crosses displayed and worn by Catholics often are a crucifix, depicting Jesus' body nailed to the cross, with a focus on the suffering Jesus, the Jesus who bears in his body the sin and sorrow of the world, the sin and suffering of every man, every woman, every child.

"Jesus Christ...the same yesterday, today and forever... bore our sins in his body on the tree....He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering...Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows...Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer...After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities...he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

This Jesus, the one one who was despised and rejected, this Jesus who shows me the heart of the eternally present-tense "I AM", this Jesus who suffers when others suffer...who feels our pain and weeps with us over death and destruction has been sitting shiva with me during these years, sitting beside me, waiting for the quiet space that comes after a paroxysm of mourning, waiting to lift my chin so I might look into his eyes - a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief.

Now, six years after the prayer,  I know this man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, in a way I did not know him before the prayer, before these years....I know him from inside his overwhelming, love-driven sorrow... the sorrow his eyes reflect because he experiences our pain with us.

Note: Pictured above is a wonderful holocaust memorial statue at Temple B'Nai Israel in Clearwater, FL.

Hairy Therapist

2010-01-15T14:34:00.000-05:00

One Saturday almost four months ago Kyle, David, and I cradled, stroked, and said goodbye to our little terrier as he took his last breaths, wrapped in freshly warmed towels on the vet's table. The grief had been more intense than I expected, so to help my heart heal, I reflected about and wrote my thanks for the many gifts of joy and gentleness this little dog had brought to our family over the past 16 years. I know it is a story familiar to most dog owners, and a story I needed to write even if no one read it.

David and the boys had wanted a dog for quite a few years, but I had resisted, loathe to take on the workload that would likely fall on my shoulders in the midst of our family's numerous commitments and responsibilities. The first year of middle school was tough for both our sons, but Sam would have the additional challenge of coming home to an empty house since I had recently begun working longer hours in our family business. As I prayed for Sam, I felt certain it was time to add a dog to our family.

The SPCA would not allow us to adopt, since we lived on a busy street without a fenced in yard. I understood - Kyle had narrowly escaped being hit by a car our first year in the house. Paying hundreds of dollars wasn't a prudent option for us so we waited, and one day we noticed a "free puppies" sign on our way home. We decided to check it out. Only one puppy remained - the runt of the litter. "Li'l bit", as the family called him, had a larger than standard, mixed breed yorkshire terrior for a father and a white cairn type terrior for a mother,and the runt grew to be a pleasant coffee-with-cream colored wiry haired 22 pound terrier.

Thompson burrowed his way into our hearts as quickly as he burrowed behind the pillows of our sofa. With his eagerness for rough and tumble wrestling and tug-of-war as well as snuggling and stroking, he gave the usual puppy gifts of affection and joy to our family. But he gave us another gift as well.

Our family was struggling to manage numerous stresses, David and I were weak in communication and conflict resolution skills, and eruptions of anger, shouting and rage were all too common. We began to realize that whenever we fought or raised our voices in anger, Thompson would disappear, whether he had been sound asleep or happily playing, quickly slipping away from where we aired our anger to a quieter, safer spot.

After the smoke cleared we would find him huddled in a corner behind a bed or under a table, trembling from the conflict. Later we tried calling to him as he ran out of the room in the midst of an argument, trying to reassure him with our voices that things were ok, that he could stay. That never worked. We began sending the person who was the loudest or the angriest to find and fetch Thompson, and return with him to the place of conflict, stroking and soothing him until he was willing to stay with us of his own accord, convinced it was safe. Almost always, this process resulted in better communication as each of us slowed ourselves down and tried to speak to one another in quieter voices, calmer tones. Holding Thompson in our arms made it easier to listen, easier to reconcile with one another.

When hurting women sat on our sofa, quietly pouring out their woes, Thompson would move from my side to theirs, snuggling close, inviting them to stroke him. I marveled at how, so often in a small group of people, he gravitated to the one who seemed to most need his affection. I often gave rides to male employees, students and neighbors, and brought my little therapist along. I would apologize for Thompson's expectation of riding shotgun and invite the passenger to move Thompson to the back seat or allow him to sit on their lap. "Oh, that's alright - he can sit with me" each would answer, and I would smile, knowing Thompson would work his magic by the time the ride was over.

During his first year of life Thompson ran with such unbridled adrenalin and amazing speed in wide loops on the community soccer fields or school baseball field that he became contagious JOY. He pulled every onlooker into an almost involuntary celebration of life. But one day his collar/leash connection failed as he surged forward to chase a bicyclist across the road, a car hit him and broke both his hips. Kyle and Sam's friends and teammates who had cheered him on as he ran the bases, were especially affected, praying for him for many days, one friend even exhorting Thompson to "Rise up and walk!"

Thompson did walk again, and even run, but never again with the fluidity and speed of his first year. Two to three plates had been surgically attached to the hip that was the more crushed, while the other had been allowed to heal on its own. From that point on, Thompson walked with a skewed sideways gait, giving the appearance that his rear legs were trying to move in a different direction from the front legs. He no longer could make those vertical power leaps 30 inches straight up, and he learned to get a running start from a few feet back to climb onto the sofa.

Thompson had the "Napoleon complex" common to small terriers. He barked so fiercely whenever he spotted a larger dog, warning them about his fierceness, that some in our neighborhood nicknamed him "Thompson the Terror". But that fierceness didn't protect him the day an unleashed dalmatian trotted up to us from behind as we walked and without any discernible warning, charged Thompson, tearing into his rear end with his teeth. The owner caught up and managed to pull the dog off.

As the vet stitched Thompson's rear end, he told me that the bite was less than 1/4 inch from puncturing the peritoneum, which would likely have resulted in a fatal infection. Our vet was not surprised by the dalmatian's behavior - he told me dalmatians, because of extensive in-breeding, commonly attack small dogs and children for sport, seeing them as toys, and advised me to carry Thompson whenever larger dogs approached. It became quite a challenge to me to carry and muzzle 22 pounds of canine warrior past the strays we met on our walks.

Our home sits on a cul-de-sac wedge, with a 60-80 foot length of chain link fence, separating Thompson from two jack russell terriers on the other side. The three dogs would dash back and forth along the length of the fence on their respective side, their snouts almost touching the fence, barking the entire time. When they tired of running they would bark each other down in a fixed spot,.

Mostly it was a comical, loud nuisance for their owner and me. But one day I was in a hurry to end the caucauphony and made the mistake of moving close to the trio to coax Thompson inside. He went into hyper "protect your owner" mode, the other two dogs increased their ferocity, and as I attempted to pluck Thompson from the fence, one of the dogs, unbeknownst to me, grabbed hold of Thompson's ear with his teeth and held on with all his strength. The reason why Thompson nipped me sank in when I saw the dog, with Thompson's ear securely in his mouth, being pulled off the ground as I lifted Thompson. The owner convinced her dog to "RELEASE!", I made another trip to the vet, and this time Thompson came home with a neat little "V" cut from the tip of his ear, and his warrior reputation intact.

When Thompson lost his hearing, he lost interest in the game with his friends across the fence, and took no notice of the german shepherd barking ferociously from his screened porch. Gradually his sight diminished so much that he started bumping into walls, and it became obvious that he knew I was with him only by touch and his sense of smell. In Thompson's last couple months I would open the front door slowly when I returned home, because he often would be stretched across the doorway, awaiting my return, but unable to positiion his body fully on his sleeping pad next to the door if his legs gave out.

After his death, it took a couple months to fully stop planning my errands around his bladder ability, and to stop experiencing a moment of anticipation of his greeting when I pulled in the driveway. Even now it is difficult to fully focus on his gentle, affectionate companionship without tears welling up, but it is not difficult to give thanks for his many gifts of love and joy to our family.

The Stories We Choose

2009-02-12T08:07:00.009-05:00

These past four years I have thought about "the stories we choose to live within" in the way that most people eat, drink, and work. We do those things because we must. With a nod to Maslow's "hierachy of needs" and an acknowledgement that I would not be able to indulge this incredible drive within me to ponder the whys and hows of life if I lived within the circumstances of millions of other lives, I find it hard to recall a time when I did NOT ponder the whys and hows and almost impossible to put myself in the skin of a person who lives an unexamined life.

My extensive exercise and use of intuitive intelligence has engaged, enriched and challenged many people in my life -so much so that I suspect the nazis of reason would point to that as the cause of my "faith crisis", the first step on my "slippery slope". But as always, I would disagree.

For me, the far greater "trouble", has come from the exercise of my reasoning intelligence, the reading and thinking outside the expected/acceptable boxes that has been an ongoing dance in my life.

I continue to ponder:

How all of us humans - billions around the globe - live our lives within widely differing stories - foundations, frameworks and filters of cultural and familial beliefs, expectations and boundaries
How those foundations, frameworks and filters are driven and shaped by our relationships, our circumstances of need or provision, safety or danger, and our need for meaning and the answering of the "why?" and "how?" questions
How many, if not most of the people who have walked this earth have lived their entire lives without ever consciously examining how the particular cultural story they've lived within has shaped their perception of truth,
How people live their lives unaware that they have "chosen" to stay within their known and comfortable story
What makes people change? What drives them to step outside their story?
How dangerous and enriching it can be to "life as you have always known it" to embrace the examination process.

The photo above was taken at Ko Olina, Island of Oahu, Hawaii

Happy Birthday, KYLE part 1

2008-11-06T13:03:00.011-05:00

WOW! Thirty years of living and loving to celebrate, Kyle. Each year I think about your crazy birth day... making it to the hospital just in time, barely escaping giving birth to you in the car...how my life drastically changed from that moment on...:-) We've barely squeezed in a birthday cake for you these past couple years, so this year I thought I'd go public with some photos and memories just like I did with Sam.
Isaac might be interested in knowing that his dad also played the role of Mary in our family re-enactment of the Christmas story.
What fun you and Sam had chasing each other in and out of the drainage ditch that day!
Surveying your conquered kingdom at the playground....
We simply had to have a picture of your fire truck minus the ladders in one of its imaginative make-overs. Don't know what the stickers were for that day, but I do know they changed it into a different kind of vehicle because you would rearrange them with with much thought and conversation on a regular basis. I wish I had pictures of all the bikes and shoes you painted over the years.
You and Sam in early conversation. Your relationship started off on rough footing, according to David, when you popped Sam in the face when he was a few days old. But before long you were playing together all the time, you leading and Sam following, you setting the imaginative scenario, Sam following your lead to make your vision come to life. Which worked fine until it was no longer simply you and Sam!Since David and I cannot remember what you were saying to Sam in this photo, we invite your family and friends to offer creative captions.

I had to divide these photos between two posts, so keep reading below.

Happy Birthday, KYLE!

2008-11-06T08:57:00.036-05:00

So many of the photos I've sifted through over the last couple days on this memory journey have been pictures of you and Sam, together. For several years the tub walls were covered with Charlie Brown and Snoopy stick on characters, which you used to create an ever changing story....kind of like Isaac's "sunflower valley".
Ah, yes....nothing like helping Dad work on the truck.
Brothers....and great friends...what an awesome gift.
You discovered quite early the joy you could bring to Dad's eyes and the fun you would have when you picked up the bat and ball.
I could post soccer, basketball and cross country pictures, but baseball has always had your heart. What fun it has been to watch you enjoy baseball and the Rays' success this season with your father and your son.
Sporting the broken wrist/arm? you got tagging out a runner at second. Also sporting the uniform with the logo you designed. All those hours spent designing baseball uniforms :-)...
Asbury College baseball with Sam....a bittersweet culmination of your college career.
Last college game together.
Teammates and good friends.
I expect that Michelle now has some pics of you falling asleep after work with your little guys. David has struggled so much to fully express in words to you the intensity of his love for you and his immense joy in the boy you were and admiration and respect for the man you have become. So part of my joy in you and Michelle having sons is that you will feel his fierce devotion for you and Sam coursing through your own veins.
When Thompson was new in our lives...posing with Dylan and Mickey. You've sported quite a few hairstyles over the years...
What a wonderful addition learning to play guitar has been in your life. It has been our joy to see your pleasure as you've led worship singing with your wmf friends, performed impromptu duets with Michelle at home and sung "silly songs" with Isaac. Kyle playing guitar is always a healing, life giving picture to me.
I said good-bye to you at the airport this day in January 2002, then went home and cried my eyes and heart out to God, pleading with Him to bring your future wife to you, because the pain and frustration of Calcutta was too great for you to bear alone.
Then in July, I opened your e-mail that read, "There's a cool girl here now ...."
And beautiful Michelle came into your life and ours, challenging and enriching all of us with her passions, skills and drive.
Your wedding day was a deep fountain of long-awaited joy .
How much living you and Michelle have packed into your five plus years together!
Michelle and Isaac's first Florida Thanksgiving.
Watching you learning to live love as father, husband, son and man during this incredibly busy, challenging, joyous, painful and exhausting season of your life has been amazing and bittersweet. More than once in recent days we have found ourselves discovering anew your intelligence and wisdom, your compassion and your willingness to demonstrate love on a daily basis, sacrificing yourself to provide, care for, build up and love your wife and your children.

We know you're not getting enough sleep these days, but we also know that it helps to stand and gaze at the sleeping child who contributes so much to your exhaustion, feeling all that fierce love rise to the surface, break out into thanksgiving for the privilege of loving and caring for such a precious boy and dream about the wonderful man he will become.
Happy 30th birthday! We love you.

Happy Birthday, SAM!

2008-10-17T13:47:00.016-04:00

Every October 17th I think about the day Sam entered the world and how much joy he has brought to us in the years since then. Today, like most of Sam's birthdays as an adult, we are separated by many miles, and I pull out actual or mental snapshots to reminisce and celebrate.
How to tell you, Sam, how proud we have been of you all these years - the boy you were and the man you have become without inducing the gag reflex in readers? Except for the xeriscaping, I honestly feel you demonstrate the above because you have purposed to honor God by trying to model his character. The lines above definitely describe you, yet there is so much more....
How thrilled we are for the start of your life with Amber. All those years of disciplined waiting and trusting...wow, what a treasure for reward!
Your commitment to seek, appreciate, and build strong men and friends has been a delight to watch for many years.
You've invested your time in family (cousis Alisa and Tyler here) camraderie and encouragaement.
There were days I wasn't sure you'd make it to adulthood with your body whole and your love for your older brother intact. But you did it!
I am so thankful for your adult relationship with Kyle - and all the love, respect, serious conversation and raucous laughter and teasing it contains.
I thought that your many friends should know that the Sam who loves to make comic faces started a long time ago. Here, when asked to model your new Easter outfit for the camera...
and of course, when you are doing George W...ad nauseum.....
This one is from the "Harry Carey season" of your life...I'm guessing Cobe had had enough!
The budding triathlete, warming up for the swim....
and the bike - look at the intensity on that face!
Swim time with no time goals :-)
I wonder just how many people consider you their friend, even after many years? You have collected friends over the years, like a caretaker of prized plants, nurturing, appreciating the variety and beauty and fragrance. You are rich, indeed.
One of the things that David and I have talked often about over the years is your tender, compassionate heart. It seems your experiences of exclusion and ridicule have given you an eye to spot the one who feels excluded or put down and the heart to include and defend them.

We like the way your engage life with GUSTO - trying new experiences and adventures, no matter how much fear. Oh, how I wish I had a picture of you hanging from that tree above the ravine at Croom, pushing quiet "help!"s out your throat...
That love of life is wonderful to behold :-)

So enjoy your birthday weekend with your beautiful bride and your good friends....

and know that we love you and are happy to be your family and friend.

Slipping in a Celebration

2008-09-13T19:13:00.001-04:00

I was just beginning supper preparation a couple days ago when a torrent of rain, compliments of Ike, commanded my attention. Florida thunder storms are marvelous things if you're snug in your home (as I was) and lucky enough to have a covered porch (I do) to sit on and enjoy the show. I love the sound the rain makes streaming off our roof so fast that it spills over the gutters in sheets to the ground.

All the chopping and cooking would have to wait while I grabbed a glass and sat down to toast the splendor and give thanks for the joy. What sights and sounds surprise you with joy?

Whooo? me, Me, ME!

2008-08-22T07:24:00.002-04:00

Like Michelle, who meme'd me, and Sam, I wondered how the phrase "meme'd" originated. I decided that the phrase is simply a repetition of "me", and that the originator of the chain is either spoofing the self-focus of much of the blog world, or has a research interest or financial stake in the blogosphere.

SO....in the spirit of honoring Michelle's effort to inject a little fun into our daily stresses....

1. I am an extremely SERIOUS person - according to the male members of my family. I routinely answer questions that were meant to be a rhetorical joke as if they were a straight question. I prefer to think of myself as a "contemplative intuitive" but the truth is by the average person's measure, I spend waaaay too much time imagining and evaluating potential words, choices and actions.

2. By the standards of today's production-oriented western world, I am incredibly NON productive. Mostly because of fact #1. I currently have two non-working clocks (dead batteries) on my bedside nightstand. I have tried on several occasions to think of anything I can do fast, and the only thing I came up with (after much thought) was JUDGING OTHERS. Now there's a skill you want to be sure to include on your resume.

3. I have written hundreds of notes, letters, e-mails, articles and blog posts in my head over the years while walking, running, sitting in bed that never materialized even in cyber space.

4. The best gag gift I've ever received was from my husband's sister who was my best friend for several years: She gave me a pile of fabric pieces, pinned to pattern pieces and cut out, ready for sewing, which I had given to her several years prior, in exactly the same condition. The perfect statement about my project completion record.

5. I paid good money to see to my first body-building show a couple weeks ago. Truly. To support and encourage a young friend who was competing for the first time in figure and fitness categories. I missed her first appearance on stage and sat through 1.5 hours of male body builders strutting their stuff on stage. I was not bored. They seemed, somehow, vulnerable, almost fragile, to me......how much of their self esteem was wrapped up in the arbitrary assessments of the judges?.....I think I'll ask my mom to go with me to the next show - it'll be a good time.

6. It does me no good to try to lie. I have been told this on more than one occasion. Apparently I have "an open-book face. One time, years ago, I lied to a bank teller in the drive-thru, asserting that my husband, not me, had penned his signature on the back of his pay check which I was depositing. My very loud conscience DEMANDED I confess to the teller the following week. She said she knew I had lied.

This scrupulous attention to truth-telling is my parents' doing. Case in point: Age 5 (or thereabouts) I used my mother's lipstick to doodle and write "tan" on the bathroom mirror. Like any 5 year old trying to evade a spanking, when asked directly if I wrote on the mirror with my mother's lipstick, I directly denied it. I got spanked, not for using the lipstick in said manner, but for lying about it.

For a while I was convinced that my mother did indeed have eyes in the back of her head and would know whenever I transgressed, because I couldn't figure out how she knew it was me, when I had an older sister as well as a foster sister and brother living with us at the time. It took my young brain a while to realize that I had given myself away by writing one of the only two words I knew how to write.

7. It takes me 400 words to say what most people say in about 50-75 words. Or don't say at all. During one period of my life I routinely spent hours -HOURS and sometimes DAYS - writing e-mail missives that would - at the very best - receive a quick scan before deletion by the recipient. David has nicknamed me "the amplified version" and loves to recount how he would watch our teenage/young adult sons pushing the index finger of one hand into the open palm of their other hand while they listened to me talk, waiting for me to GET TO THE POINT.

David has emphasized his need for me to pre-edit my speech so often, that sometimes now when he asks me question, for the good of our relationship, I reply "I can't answer that without free-floating." This has got me thinking about writing an article called "pearls before swine"...

About 8-10 years ago Sam gently instructed me that when talking to the male species, I should preface my comments with one short sentence stating the subject of my remarks to follow - kind of like the subject line of an e-mail. Very good advice. If I could only remember to follow it. Which leads me to #8...my memory....

The Meme'd Rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I hereby tag Robin who is so much younger than me that you probably have lots of little eccentricities I know nothing of (I'll leave Heather for you to meme) and Joanna - as long as responding to the meme doesn't keep you from posting your poetry and prose - perhaps you could just list some of the things you've already told me because you know I've forgotten them.

I would like to meme Mom, Susan & Jim, Bruce & Angie, Amber, Meagan, Jonathan & Kelsey in the interest of hearing some good stories and new-to-me tidbits, but since I don't know your blog URLs (if you have them), I have set up a family blog to which you can all post.

The photo of this owl is one of many photos I've taken at Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, Redington Beach/Shores, Florida

Note to Self

2008-06-24T06:46:00.005-04:00

I live in Florida. I play outside. I go to the dermatologist for skin checks. But NOT, apparently, often enough to remember all the details.

My first couple full body scans in my late 40's were made bearable by the fact that my dermatologist was a woman, and that they are over so quickly that I had to work to convince myself that the trained eye really can spot a budding melanoma that quickly. But, alas, she's been gone from the practice for several years, so when I have a strange thing on my face that doesn't go away, I take the only appointment available that will get me in before our son's wedding, and glibly say "yes" to a "full body scan" to kill two birds with one payment. The resident physician (male) will check me.

I work to convince myself that this doctor-in-training has seen enough strange blemishes to know what to do with the one on my face, and remind myself that the full body scan will be over in less than a minute. Not much in my closet besides workout clothes fits me so I'm wearing comfy yoga pants with thong undies to avoid a rear view appearance of double butt. I'll have to take them off for the exam, anyway, so what does it matter?

Well, it matters a lot as soon as the young, female assistant informs me that I can leave on my undergarments for the body check. Great.

The "barely-out-of-his-teens" resident comes in, finds out that I run and bike while he works on that thing on my face, then squats down as he does the rear view body scan to get a good close look at the backside of the running legs. Unfortunately, he also has a good close look at my thong-clad, almost 53 year old grandma butt. I am certain, that even though words are coming from his mouth that my skin looks fine, his eyes have glazed over in shock, he can't bring himself to look any higher than my thigh and so hasn't even glanced at my back.

Which is where that mole I've had for so long is. The mole my gym friend who has had melanoma worries over when she spots it just days after my exam, and each time she sees it the next couple weeks. Which is why I call to schedule another appointment - and another payment. "No, I do not want to see Dr. _____ again. I want a second opinion."

So now the strange thing on my face and the benign mole on my back have been removed, and I just had my first exam by my new primary physician - a WOMAN- yes! I wore briefs under my yoga pants.

The photo above taken at Appalachicola, Florida (panhandle)

Hovering

2008-05-22T07:10:00.007-04:00

Underneath the surface layer of my life of ever-shifting responsibilities and schedules these past few years, I have been trying to process a tangle of grief and witnessed suffering, asking myself "the big questions" once again about meaning in life, the existence of God, what I believe, where to place destruction and suffering, etc.. One part of that process was a protracted courtroom trial in my mind. I have called witnesses to the stand and put on trial the existence of an "All-Powerful God who is Love and Truth and Who does what is right and Who comes to the aid of the helpless". In this court the witnesses came from current and historical world events as well as various philosophers, teachers, and writers through the various essays, books, movies I had engaged over the course of my life. In this court I played prosecutor, defender and presiding judge.

In the early months, during the first stage of the trial I kept running through events from my own experience which I had previously labelled "God's engagement or intervention", calling each to the stand as a potential witness of God's existence, greatness and goodness. As the presiding judge, I refused to allow Bible passages to be introduced as evidence in this stage of the trial- I determined to see what conclusions my reason would come to without the evangelical Christian framework I had lived within all my life.

Most people, upon examining my memory bank, would say I had a full file of events labelled as examples of God's engagement or intervention. Recent first hand exposure to the culture of poverty in Kolkata, India, shock and cumulative grief from witnessed conflict, loss and trauma, both around the world and in my family had obscured my memory's range of sight and left me with a truncated experience list to call as witnesses in God's defense. During each testimony the prosecutor would object and ask the judge to disallow the testimony on the basis of "coincidence", "personal interpretation" or "man's compelling desire for meaning, coherence and order. Only one experience from that list, one "witness" withstood the agnostic prosecutor's dismissive objections.

It was a chance encounter from several years before "the trial" began. A woman I had never met was the listing realtor of a house I wanted to see, and as she showed me through the beautiful home, she mentioned a personal loss. I murmured empathy, asked a question, and as we sat on a luxurious sofa in a sun-drenched home, her story of pain spilled over the edges of her professional personna like a raging river coursing over a suddenly inadequate dam.

Within a space of three months, she had lost her mother, then her father to death, and her husband of a few years had left their later-in-life marrige. She felt abandoned, alone and completely undone. The foundations of her life had been yanked out from under her, and she had not slept in months. Her unremitting pain had become a full-body garment of lead so heavy that she struggled to breathe.

For one of the few times in my life, I didn't try to fix her with words of explanation, encouragement, or instruction. I simply sat with her, looked at her and listened to her.

I asked her permission to pray aloud for her on that sofa, then bowed my head and listened, waiting for words to come, as had become my custom over years of praying daily with others. Her suffering was so great that it seemed the best I could ask for was for God's Spirit to hover over her as he had hovered over the waters at a time when the earth was formless and empty and darkness reigned over the surface of the deep (Genesis 1:2).

So I lightly touched her head and the back of her neck and her shoulders with my hand and asked God to come to her. I asked Him to hover over her as he had over the empty, dark earth, and to brood over the surface of her deep with his creative Presence, stirring the waters of her emptiness and pain with His love and peace and rest. I asked "I AM" to come and hover over her, to be WITH her; and I sat in silence, waiting and listening as slight gasp and quiet sighs came from the woman beside me.

My internal landscape was absolutely silent, devoid of intuitive words or pictures about what might be happening inside her. I was quite accustomed to "hearing" words breathed or seeing symbolic pictures displayed in the recesses of my mind as I prayed for people, but this time there were no interior markers to indicate that God might be working in the person for whom I prayed.

After some moments of silence and my whispered "amen", I raised my head and opened my eyes, waiting for her to speak. She looked at me with wondering, incredulous eyes and asked, "What did you do to me? I have never felt like this.....what happened?....what did you do?....I feel so different...like a huge weight has been lifted off me...what is this - what did you do?"

I knew that whatever had happened to her had not been my doing, and told her so. "I simply asked God to come and hover over you and touch you. Whatever happened to you is God's doing, not mine."

In a few moments we parted ways, and I went about my day. She called me the next morning to tell me, with wonder in her voice, that she had slept the night before for the first time in 3 months. She had slept like a secure child for the entire night, without waking once. Even now, a full day after sitting on sofa with me, waiting for - she knew not what - She still felt incredibly peaceful and free of burden. She didn't know the expected procedure for expressing gratitude for an encounter like that but what had happened to her was so amazing that NOT openly acknowledging and giving thanks to that God whom I had beseeched on her behalf, was simply inconceivable. So before starting her workday she set a candle on a table in her home, lit it, bowed her heart and said thank you to God.

A day later a woman appeared at my front door wanting to talk. My brain knew it was the realtor with whom I had sat and prayed, but she looked so completely different I felt I should call her by a different name. She had slept all night again, still had that mysterious sense of peace and lightness of burden and had come to thank me once more. We chatted for a few more moments, most likely prayed together again, had another brief exchange as she helped me with a real estate matter, then, like most chance encounters within two busy, non-overlapping lives, those brief encounters became the entire history of our relationship.

And so this witness, this compact exchange with a stranger whose words and actions seemed to indicate very little, if any, experience with and expectation of a Supernatural Other to engage and intervene became my most compelling witness. So many of the other witnesses I called to the stand during those days inolved only experiences or changes within me, or experiences with "church people" who would, as a natural course, attribute numerous attitudes, experiences and events to God. The prosecutor had labelled those witnesses "biased" and the judge had agreed. So at this stage of my "God on trial" trial, this lone "witness" stood against centuries of suffering and powerfully persuasive philosophers and scientists and writers who severely questioned the existence of a Supernatural Other who is always all knowing, all-powerful, all-good and who, from motives of love and care engages and intervenes in the affairs of men. This lone witness returned to the stand, again and again to whisper, "Yes. But what about me? What about that thing that happened?"

A week ago, I once again found myself in chance encounter, listening to two whose circumstances of loss and pain were overwhelming. Together, we had no answers, no hopeful courses of action, no "silver bullets" to make things right, and it felt almost impossible to envision a future without compounded stress and anguish, loss, pain and destruction.

After a fitful night of moments of sleep interrupted by flashes of heat, cold, and worry, common to this menopausal season of my life, I turned to a writer who could have been one of God's defenders in my courtroom had I allowed others in, and found him describing his struggle to process and order senseless evil, loss, and grief that had invaded his life. He reasoned that all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God allowed evil and destruction and loss to remain as an invitation to people to choose different ways, different paths...an invitation to choose love, and from that choice, to turn evil into good. Sort of an invitation -albeit in unbelievable disguise- to become co-creator with God.
Though my inner trial still continues after all these months, albeit on a lesser scale and with a gentler prosecutor and more lenient judge, I found myself compelled to utter the words of the witness, "Oh, God, come and hover over them, over this darkness, over this vast expanse of formless deep. If You do not help them, they will not survive. If you do not help them they will all be destroyed. They belong to you., these little ones ....hover over them with Your creative power and lift them up. Brood over them and bring them rest and strength. Lift them up out of the darkness, bring them renewed power to hope, to envision, to create, to love."

And in my courtroom the witness whispers, "but what about this?

The Last Human Freedom

2008-03-27T11:20:00.003-04:00

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

These words by Viktor Frankl, Nazi concentration camp survivor, resonated within me like the striking of a huge gong when I first heard them as a college student. The vibrations from that first articulation of the power to choose what rules my mind and how I respond to a person or set of circumstances have stayed with me throughout my adult life, surfacing and ringing again from time to time, activating and urging me to apropriate, during the most difficult circumstances and challenging seasons of my life, the incredible power of the freedom to choose my thoughts and attitude in any situation.

The circumstances of my life have been as far away from the deprivation and genocide of the concentration camps as one can get - I have had a life of loving nurture, provision, safety, health, friendship, acceptance, and encouragement. Any prisons I've been in have been prisons of my own making, my own choices.

I've placed a high value on living a life that honors God in all aspects, a life that models love, truth, integrity, personal responsibility, compassion, life-long vibrant partnership in marriage and stable families who can provide safe and nurturing environments for children. So my choices have often been choices of constraint, choices to turn away from actions that beckon with such beguiling promises of freedom and power.

Those initial and daily choices of constraint have had the effect of closing and locking doors of action and opportunity to myself that many others routinely walk through in order to cope with , bring order to, have power over or escape from the exceedingly difficult people and circumstances of life. Living -truly living - within the spaces created by those closed doors, spaces that somehow become simultaneously pain-filled and empty, has been a challenging and time-consuming curriculum for me.

Given all these deliberate choices I've made to live a life bound by honesty, integrity, faithfulness, responsibility and accountability, it seems strange that so many internal moments of my life have been lived from "the victim" stance - feeling that others were responsible for whatever current misery was pressing on me - other people's boundaries, expectations, criticisms, deprivations of my "God-given rights".

That is why, I think, Viktor Frankl's words about the last human freedom being the power to choose what one thinks has stayed with me so powerfully, and why I have spent so much time sucking the marrow from the New Testament passage in Philippians 2. To the one who feels handcuffed and gagged by powerful circumstances or people, realizing he has the freedom to choose how he views and thinks about that circumstance or person brings empowerment and liberty, even if his hands and feet must remain shackled and his voice gagged.

To the one whose rights are being trampled upon or taken from him, there is no life-sustaining stance within the pain-filled emptiness by adopting an identity of worthlessness or despair. But solid dignity and empowerment and hope comes with adopting the identity of a person created in the image of a God of love and truth, seeing oneself as just a little lower than the angels. The person who sees himself as a beloved child who has been given the rights and inheritance of a son of God can CHOOSE to lay down his God-given rights for a time, can choose to let her freedoms go, can choose self-sacrifice over self-preservation in the power of love and hope.

At key "hinge moments" in my life, simply REALIZING that, unlike the Nazi concentration camp prisoners, I CAN CHOOSE which doors I unlock and walk through, has helped me to remember who I am. Remembering I have the power to make a different choice has led to reflection about those potential choices, what they would cost, what the likely results would be, and what that different choice would say about me - who I am, what I value, what I believe. Remembering I can make a different choice has enabled me to move away from the mindset of seeing myself as "powerless victim" who is paralyzed by despair and unable to do anything other than react in unconscious patterns formed by my past.

Realizing that I can choose what I think and how I respond, is both an awesome gift and an incredible responsibility. That realization has moved me, in key moments of my life, to a position of power and full engagement, to a place of being fully human.

The photo above was taken on the Pinellas Trail, looking out over Bay Pines, St. Petersburg, FL

D Day

2008-02-24T15:35:00.015-05:00

So a 2000 sq. ft. house that takes months and months to build can be demolished in 20 minutes with the right equipment and operator.

Wow. Noisy, but fun to watch the big machine chomp away at the house that was the location for so many fun times and happy memories. David's mom and dad bought and added onto this house for their still large family while David was away at college and in the service. We bought the home from them when Kyle was 5 and lived there until Kyle was living in Kolkata (post college) and Sam was finishing college, so almost all their growing up memories are grounded in the 102nd ave home.

David's friend, Rodney, who runs a demolition and excavation business stayed close to Isaac, explaining the process (over and over again, I'm sure :-) while Michelle and I worked the cameras. The claw operator took one giant bite through the garage door and just kept chomping. The house came apart so quickly.

As the various rooms were spit out of the giant jaw, the memories of the every day life with our two boys in the house flooded past, and I couldn't help but give thanks:

the bedroom where Sam (first grade) "set out his school clothes" for the next day, the shirt, pants, shoes and socks each unfolded and stretched out on the floor as if a phantom child was wearing them while lying on the floor

the back room that hosted ping pong tournaments and suffered numerous broken windows from backyard baseball

the compact kitchen which I had avoided when the "Cullum women" crowded in to help when Mom worked her Sunday dinner magic, but grew to love and appreciate when it became my domain for baking cookies and serving hungry boys

"the brown room" - home to so many fun meals, fun games, and lively discussions

the bathroom to which I would banish the boys (1st-3rd grade) to tell their "bathroom jokes" to one another

the oversize tub that David and I routinely squeezed into together to share the events of our day with one another

"the red room" - scene of more indoor wrestling matches and ball games of all sorts than probably any home in the city - the trim board that went around the room at 8 ft height was "the fence" for home run derby. I don't regret the broken lamps from all the "boy activity" one bit.

"the orange room" which sticks in my mind as the scene of two particularly memorable rages - one by David, one by me

the overhead fluorescent lights in the master bedroom which I continually complained about until my 41st year brought dimming eyesight and I finally understood why my father-in-law had installed four foot fluorescent fixtures above the bed

the entryway windows which invited me every time I passed, to look outside, drink in the strong lines of the thick oak trunk and give thanks for the beauty that surrounded me and a mother and father-in-law who had seen, helped create, and pass along the joy to our family.

I watched the walls crash down and thought of the scene in "Forrest Gump" in which an adult Jenny throws rocks at the house where her father abused her, and the subsequent demoliton of that house by Forrest, and how this house was so very different - full of so many GOOD memories, and that this day was the happy beginning of a third chapter for this home.

A New World

2008-01-23T08:41:00.002-05:00

Four years ago this month, over a period of 4 weeks, I looked within, searching, listening, waiting for my greatest, deepest - below all else - heart's desire to surface and make itself apparent. I did that so I could ask God, my longtime Father, friend and lover for that desire. Finally one rainy night alone in my car traveling towards home on mostly empty streets I shouted/sobbed in an agony/ecstasy of desire, so forceful that speaking it left me utterly spent. "I want them to know You, God - I want them to experience You in your fullness."

The "them" I referred to was my husband and sons and new daughter-in-law. "Them" - though intensely focused on the four already in my family - included the as yet unknown woman who would, hopefully, eventually stand beside our second son as wife, and any children that might come from these unions.

Expressions of desire that powerful do not simply vanish. I knew, as surely as I knew my name, that in the utterance of that desire, I had opened a door to a new world for myself and these ones I loved with such passion. A world that would almost certainly involve more hardship and suffering than we had hitherto experienced. A world that called out "Goodness", "Love", and "Truth" from my stance outside the threshold, but once entered, would bear labels like "Loss", "Grief", and "Suffering" and would likely have me screaming for escape or respite for myself and my loved ones.

That much I could glimpse with my forward looking eyes through a Biblically grounded mindset where wanting to know God fully seems to require knowing Christ in the fellowship of sharing in his suffering - Philippians 3:10-12. Christianity does not have a monopoly on the "suffering required for fullness of life" theme, but the writings in the Bible do seem to highlight the possibility of a fuller relationship with this Supernatural Other in the midst of or as a result of suffering and pain. The New Testament writings, in particular, imply that increased pain and loss will come to those who choose to become Jesus' friends.

What I did not foresee, even in my wildest pre-prayer imaginings, was that, in my 50's I would struggle so mightily with "the existence of God" and "the meaning of life" questions. I did not foresee that I would come to a place where I felt I could trust neither the traditional Christianity played out in the churches I knew or my past interpretations of "hearing God's voice" in my Bible reading and prayer. I did not foresee that within a matter of months I would go from being a woman who rarely started a day without extensive Bible reading, prayer, and journaling to becoming a spiritual deaf/mute, who avoided picking up the Bible and struggled with unbelievable effort to frame and direct my honest questions to a God whose existence I seriously doubted.

I did not foresee that my inability to place the newly encountered suffering comfortably within my past theological/world view boxes would bring about a lengthy retreat, not only from regular church attendance and involvement, but also from my extensive community of friends - all of them evangelical Christians. I knew it would be way too threatening for most of them to see that Sandy, "the strong Christian, the prayer warrior", had moved into an agnostic stance - seriously doubting the existence of God.

I felt that most of my friends, upon hearing my struggle - assuming I could clearly articulate it - which I couldn't - would do what I would have done for so many years - answer quickly and try to "fix" me. Fix me with scripture passages or stock American Evangelical "box" answers that had become too shallow to impact my thinking. I reasoned that if the God I had known and loved for so many years did exist, then he had heard and was in the process of answering my deep heart desire, and if so, I didn't want to be fixxed. I wanted to find out what I could only find out by walking through the struggle. Even if that meant I came out the other side still broken.

I tested the water with one friend I thought had experienced enough suffering and loss to perhaps identify with the "restructuring of belief" in which I found myself immersed. Nope. Listening, really listening to my intellectual struggle was something she was not at all prepared to do. I also figured I might - at some point - move out of depression - if that's where I was - or resolve the questions and move back to a stance of firm belief in traditional Christianity. I had no desire to awaken faith struggles in others and feel responsible for their "loss of faith", so that too, has kept me largely silent and withdrawn. Since then, over these past three years, I have confined trying to speak about my intellectual and faith struggles only to my immediate family and 2 exceptional friends, one in her 20's and one in her 60's, each of whom has cared for me more than I deserved and has listened intently, with her entire being.

This morning I came across this quote I had copied into my journal just over 4 years ago, just two months before "the dangerous prayer". It's an apt description of part of my journey.

"Moving into another culture is often traumatic. In a brief moment, all that we know can be shattered into little pieces. A different landscape, language, values, and worldview leaves us uncomfortable, if not terrified. In response, we quickly erect barriers in an effort to stop, or at least buffer the onslaught of foreign realities.

How difficult it is to summon the courage for breaking through the fear of the unknown. For many people, engaging a new world is an experience of losing the self. When this happens, it is hard to believe that a new self or frame of reference will be found. Anthropologists use terms such as "freezing of boundaries" to describe defense mechanisms employed for battling the perceived enemy - the unknown.

In cross-cultural experiences, the typical stages of fear, denial, anger, and avoidance have been well documented. Some people are able to move through and beyond these stages, while others hang on to the familiar with persistence and passion."

George Beukema, Stories from Below the Poverty Line , pp 30-31

So now I find myself in a vastly different place from where I sat 4 years ago. It is not the place of angry existentialism or despairing agnosticism of 2 years ago. But it is still a place of questioning and waiting, still a place of reading, writing and thinking; still a place of listening more than talking, still a place of laboriously reconstructing, bit by bit, my foundation of belief.

It is still a place of a different kind of prayer.

The photo above was taken on Resurrection Bay, south of the Kenai peninsula, Alaska.

Olive Oil Dog

2008-01-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

Thompson, the terrier, and I have been losing a battle for months against a pernicious staff infection. Thompson is old, his nurse hasn't been regular enough in administering either his twice weekly "leave the medicated shampoo on for 15 minutes" baths or his daily antibiotics, and he greatly aggravates the infection by all the licking, scratching and biting of himself which he does to try to relieve the itching. After a month or two of making Thompson wear a lampshade collar for most hours of the day, I was sick of the lack of progress and discouraged over his visible despondency. So I decided to try a remedy from my childhoood.

After another shorter-than-its-supposed-to-be bath, I slathered him with olive oil from head to toe and dressed him in baby clothes purchased at the thrift store for said purpose. Dressing a dog who doesn't want clothes is hard enough, but dressing an olive oil slick dog WITHOUT getting any oil on oneself is apparently, a feat I'm not capable of performing.

Thompson reminded me of Olivia, the pig, of children's book fame walking around the house with his black bell bottoms and skinny legs. I don't have any good face shots, because he refused to cooperate - every time he saw me coming with the camera he made a hasty retreat.

Even though he didn't cooperate for photos, it seemed like he had relief from itchy skin for the first time in a looooong time, So, the next day I decided to slather him once more, this time reeeaaally rubbing it in till all his nasty crusty scabs came off - pretty close to an hour massage. A clean thrift store outfit, some help from David to dress the reluctant, oily, fashion model, and a couple more circuits of the house with me chasing my photo op. Reminded me of Snowbell, the cat, talking to Stuart Little, the mouse "talk to the butt, talk to the butt".

Finally, to get away from the camera he traveled through our bedroom to the bathroom. He climbed into the shower, stuck his nose in the corner and refused, absolutely REFUSED to turn around until I left the bedroom. I don't know - maybe he was offended by the pink girly outfit. So now its been a couple days, he reeks again, and its time for another treatment. Sigh. Maybe David will do the honors this time....

Worth the Time to Read

2008-01-03T07:48:00.000-05:00

I'm a book person. There are currently over 2 dozen books (most non-fiction) stacked on, in and next to my nightstand - books I've been working through this past year or 2, but not done with enough to have made it to one of the bookshelves in another room - and another stack of a dozen new ones on the dresser waiting to move to the "reading" stack.

Perhaps on a more fundamental level, I'm a word person. Without limits, I would devour magazines and newspapers to the point of exclusion of other activities so I have to limit my contact with them. I can be greatly affected by movies and dramatic productions and I am thrilled that e-mail and blogging has brought written language back into a place of prominence and power in people's lives. I love it when bloggers - family, friends, and strangers - invite me into their lives with their digital words and pictures. But when it comes to sorting through history, knowledge, and experiences to choose blocks to use in building life perspective there is something about a book that has a greater weight in my reasoning mind.

I give minimal time to daily news broadcasts of any variety, but I regularly read a couple news magazines to keep me out of the Neanderthal box on world events. But I really appreciate the research, fact-checking, editing and deepening of perspective that should come with the time, people and money that has traditionally gone into producing a book for market.

All that said, I've decided that sharing books of my life should be a part of my digital journal. Sometimes they will be recent reads, at other times books I view as having major impact in my thinking and living. Sometimes just a quote and a link, other times more. That is, as soon as I can find an easy way to attach a picture of the book to the Amazon.com link for said book (thereby making it a "button")....

Looking for Joy in All the Right Places

2008-01-01T12:36:00.000-05:00

Deliberate, daily thanksgiving has been a valuable life discipline for me. I have found over and over again that when I list the people, things and happenings for which I am grateful, I am choosing life, choosing happiness, choosing joy.

After many years, I still marvel how practicing thanksgiving helps me replace misery with contentment and move from despair to hope. During a couple seasons of my life I posted my thanksgiving lists on the walls of my home, but most of the time my lists are in my notebook or on my lips.

Looking for things in difficult people and circumstances and surroundings for which to give thanks opens my eyes to see goodness, beauty, and joy I would have otherwise missed. Deliberate gratitude grounds me in the reality of NOW and helps me to be present to those people I can too easily take for granted and shut out.

I have, perhaps, been a bit over-zealous at times in trying to pass along the inheritance of thanksgiving to our sons. I remember one canoe ride when a bad lightning storm rolled in with tons of rain less than an hour into our trip. Nothing to do but ride it out, either huddled in sopping piles in the forest or daring the lightning to strike us in the middle of the river. Both boys were pretty young, but Kyle was old enough to realize the harm that could come our way and he was SCARED. David and I made him say thank you for the rain and the lightning over and over again to try to help him combat his fear.

On another occasion we made him express gratitude for several months for the beat-up bike he owned before we would get him another.

Sam's first year of middle school was difficult for him - this kid who had been happy through all of elementary school, dreaded going out the door to school each day. He chose to fight back by keeping his internal eyes open throughout the day, looking for at least one thing to declare "Good" and feel joy about - a cool looking cloud formation, a good lunch time trade , a goal scored in PE.

For a while, "Look for the joy" were my goodbye words to him each morning, and "What joy did you find today?" was the evening question. I think it helped him get through a tough year, and perhaps helped form the foundation of an emotional resilience that has stood him in good stead through some really tough events and seasons.

Well, guys, I hope, that looking back, you would feel you have more benefit than scars from the many thanksgiving lists we made you compile and recite.

Giving Thanks - its good stuff. Happy New Year

Hark

2007-12-27T07:59:00.001-05:00

If you've been one of the people lucky enough to have an extended conversation with this little guy over the last year you probably came away smiling and impressed with his extensive vocabulary and verbal ability. Two weeks ago, Isaac, now 2 1/2, and I were looking and talking our way through some old Christmas cards as we cut the pictures off for use in a craft project.

When we came to one featuring an angel he asked me the angel's name. As I often do, I turned his question back on him, "well, I don't know, Isaac, what do you think the angel's name is?"

"Hark", he immediately replied.

Makes sense to me.

Isaac is now more than a year older than this picture, but I thought you might enjoy it as much as I do.

Dangerous Prayers

2007-12-18T06:32:00.000-05:00

I'm a wimp. I don't like pain and hardship and I've never gotten a charge out of courting danger or loss - for myself or my family. I like being safe and protected and I routinely make choices to preserve my comfortable life. But there have been times I've prayed prayers that court loss and pain. Why? Because knowing and following Truth/Love has seemed like a higher value to me than safety and comfort, worth almost anything I might have to lose to get it -at least while I'm in a cocoon of safety and comfort.

I've been thinking a lot about a deeply passionate prayer that I shouted, cried, and wrote out several years ago after weeks of trying to discern my deepest desire. I asked that my family might know God in his fullness. I have known from experience and intuition that days and seasons would come when I would regret praying that prayer. But still I did it. All that has happened in my family's life, and my heart and mind since that prayer has got me remembering these two other prayers, originally crafted by others, which I borrowed over the years, saying them so often that they became my own. Here they are:

This first was written by Amy Carmichael, an Irish Christian missionary who lived 53 years in South India, founding an orphanage that cared for children rescued from a religiously sanctioned sex trade. I quote here from "A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael" by Elizabeth Elliot, c. 1987 Fleming H. Revell

From prayer that asks that I may be

Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,

From fearing when I should aspire,

From faltering when I should climb higher,

From silken self, O Captain, free

Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,

From easy choices, weakenings,

(Not thus are spirits fortified,

Not this way went the Crucified,)

From all that dims Thy Calvary,

O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,

the faith that nothing can dismay

The hope no disappointments tire

the passion that will burn like fire,

Let me not sink to be a clod;

Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.

The next comes from Beth Moore, a popular present day Bible teacher. From "Things Pondered" by Beth Moore, c. 1997 Broadman & Holman

Extremities

Satisfy me not with the lesser of you

Find me no solace in shadows of the True

No ordinary measure of extraordinary means

The depth, the length, and breadth of You

and nothing in between.

Etch these words upon my heart knowing all the while

No ordinary roadblocks plague extraordinary miles

Your power as my portion, Your glory as my fare

Take me to extremities, But meet me fully there.

I've prayed both of these prayers, trembling in my boots, and have internally shouted, "I take it back!" plenty of times. I'm aware of some prayers that others have crafted, that I have refused to utter, fearing either submission to a theology that might throw open the door to unhampered evil, or circumstances of suffering that I hope to avoid. Like I said, I'm a wimp.

The Gift of Welcome

2007-09-30T20:40:00.000-04:00

Sometimes he dashes to the driveway naked with arms stretched high, hands signing applause or waving hello while he shouts a greeting, sometimes he races to the front and stands silently watching until the mammoth truck passes out of sight, but always, when he hears the garbage truck coming down the street , Isaac runs outside to watch, admire, and greet the sanitation team that picks up trash. I realized several weeks agot that these men now call him by name with huge hello's, honk the horn for him and wave - more than once - from the cab as well as the back. It is pretty obvious they love being greeted by Isaac, and I realize that even though he is only two years old, Isaac exercises great power when he gives them the wonderful gift of welcome.

For fifteen years now our little terrier, Thompson has been greeting me with great enthusiasm each time I return home - whether I've been gone for 5 days or 5 minutes. Sometimes, when he kept barking for more! more! more! loving, I would think "enough already!" but on a few days I would think, " you're the only one in my life who is always glad to see me."

I am lucky to have had parents who habitually kissed each other good-bye when one left the house without the other and greeted each other in like manner when they returned home. That simple act bestowed a sense of normalcy and stability upon us children that I'm sure we took for granted then, and give thanks for now as married adults. My husband and I decided early in our marriage that we needed to continue that tradition whether we were happy or disgusted with each other, and though our good-bye hugs and welcome kisses have been perfunctory or angry at times, we find that neither of us has out-grown our need of them.

I remember determining as a young mother to help my husband, David, feel loved and appreciated when he came home at night by stopping whatever chore I was doing, calling a hearty "Daddy's home!" to our two boys, and helping them stop their play for a moment to welcome Dad home. David often made his entrance back home extra special by a signature whistle pattern that he reserved for ONLY our sons. He would pull up quietly, get out of his truck, sneak behind something to hide and begin to whistle his "call". The delight in their eyes when they realized Daddy was nearby and ready to play was priceless.

Smiling a welcome seems to come naturally to our two grandsons, largely, I think, because our daughter-in-love, who has been able to be a stay-at-home-mom, has routinely offered them huge smiles of affirmation from their births on, whenever they wake from a nap, finish an activity together, or catch her eye in passing. It's a joy to see even the 4 month old initiate a smile when he catches a family member's eye and take such delight when the smile is returned.

Smiling at others did not come naturally to me - perhaps a common trait of serious intuitives - so I have had to learn it as a married adult under my husband's kind tutelage. I have watched him interact with strangers for years, witnessing the power of his welcoming smile upon others.

Strange, isn't it, that something that costs us so little, can give others so much?

One Face in a Million

2007-08-19T09:11:00.000-04:00

Of the many faces I saw during my week of walking the streets of Calcutta, India 2 1/2 years ago, one pierced deeper and has stayed longer than any other. That week, Kyle and Michelle, our son and new daughter-in-law, were on a mission to expose both sets of their parents to the everyday suffering of the poor of Calcutta, among whom they had been living and serving for several years. So although we parents stayed in a good hotel and ate in upscale restaurants suitable for pampered Americans, we spent several days following them as they threaded through the crowds in the always busy streets, and became acquainted with the people and places that had populated their e-mails and conversations with us over the past few years.

Before our trip to Calcutta, I had worked diligently for a number years to see and treat each person I met as an individual of great worth and promise - created in the image of God and worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. But here, the streets seemed filled with so many people who had no place to sleep other than the street, no posessions to carry with them and no food to eat. Each time we stepped out of our hotel we would be immediately approached and followed by people with outstretched palms and murmuring voices asking for rupees. There were so many that they quickly lost their individuality and their name became Beggar. It took no more than two days walking the streets of this city to feel that I, too, had lost my individuality. My name had become Rich Foreigner and my face had been replaced by a dollar sign.

By the time we got to the ferry next to the Howrah bridge on our walking tour that day, we had walked through so many clusters of men, women, and children calling to us, touching us, and asking, asking, asking for money, that the ones who stood out to me were the silent ones. Some risked being trampled as they sat in the dust with upturned palm among a surging crowd in the market and some huddled along the walkways in the subway stations, inches from a puddle of urine, brown heaps of gaunt, folded limbs with deep set eyes so worn down by disease or hunger that they no longer asked, no longer hoped.

At the ferry, a young man with a small child in his arms approached our tightly clustered group of 6 with beseeching eyes. He said nothing, but persistently sought our eyes with his. His hair was thick and stiff with layers of dust, his dirty clothes had hunks of material torn away, and he gently held the child with splotchy hair close to his chest. Were they father and son? Brothers? Co-workers?

What to do? I had already determined to follow the personal alms-giving policy our son and daughter-in-law had come to after years of anguished living and experimental giving with a tightly knit community of young Americans who lived and volunteered among "the poorest of the poor". They had tried to develop relationships and work on projects that would foster positive, lasting differences in people's lives. In this city where people asked them for money all day long , they had decided to make alms-giving the exception rather than the rule and to do it within the context of a continuing relationship. I rationalized that my time was not long enough nor my heart strong enough to think my way through all the poverty factors and come to a better conclusion, so I borrowed theirs. I averted my eyes from the dry and dusty face of the young man and pulled in my section of the American huddle even tighter.

Without making a sound, the dusty young man in torn and dirty clothes held the pantless, silent child close with one arm, and with upturned palm moved in closer to engage our eyes. His eyes asked of each of us the question he did not speak. Like the other parents, I turned my eyes away from him and toward those of my son. He was the tallest in our group, and had lived here by far the longest. I watched his face to see what he would do as the man stood silently in front of him, asking with his eyes.

Everything else faded away and time slowed down as I focused on the face of my firstborn child, the one in whom I had invested so very much of my life over the years..

Our son's intense struggle was played out in his pain-filled eyes and in small muscles that twitched around his mouth. Over the past several years Kyle had seen and fed thousands of hungry people in dirty clothes without shoes, had spent his days searching the streets and train stations and streets for the weakest and dying to carry each one back to the Missionaries of Charity's Home for the Dying, had held kerosene lamps while cleaning maggoty wounds, and had raged over destitute people ignored in hospital hallways and dead people abandoned on streets and train tracks.

In those slow motion moments the volume of poverty and suffering Kyle had witnessed in this city over the years, coupled with continuing frustration and disappointment over the lack of any lasting difference coming from his efforts, flashed across his face like a war newsreel with mangled bodies, wailing women and dazed children.

A merciful heart is a vulnerable thing and and in the face of continuous onslaughts of pain and suffering, most of us choose to protect our hearts by covering them with anger or contempt or obsessive consumption of food, drink, work, activity, or possessions. Kyle is no different. Though he tried to cover his heart with anger as he gave the mute man enough money for a meal for both him and the child, it was too late - the mercy in him had broken his heart once again and shattered like glass across his face.

That face - the anguished, shattered-heart face of my first born son - is the face from Calcutta I cannot forget, the one that continues to pierce my heart years later.

Photo of the Howrah Bridge, Kolkata, India, by Courtney Cox, copyright 2004; used by permission

Thanksgiving

2007-08-12T13:11:00.000-04:00

Two years ago, in the midst of an extended inner dialogue questioning the existence of God, I was left in charge of our 4 month old grandson for a little while. I sat on our porch, surrounded by fuschia bouganveilla and fragrant jasmine and cradled him in my arms. I studied his face, and zeroed in on feeling the exact points on my skin where his tiny fingers touched.

I rocked and sang him to sleep and thought about mothers in other places of the world: mothers whose cradle is a sidewalk in Calcutta which floods with garbage and human waste during the rainy season, mothers dying of AIDS in a dusty African village wondering who will care for their children when they are gone, mothers with breasts as dried up as the parched land around them, cradling their baby for a few more hours before death steals their hope once again.

Pictures of children filled my mind: children who will grow to adulthood without their parents, children who have witnessed the rape, mutilation and murder of their family members, children who have themselves been forced to do the same horrible things to others, children whose life teachers have fostered only hatred and destruction.

My life had been built on the foundation of an all-powerful God who is love, and principles of reaping the consequences of what is chosen. But now, in the face of the suffering of these other mothers, answers I would have once given about the inequities of life and the long term generational impact of individual choices felt arrogant and empty. Why would, how could all-powerful LOVE choose not to stop multitudes of children living and dying in extreme poverty and war day after day, generation after generation?

Does hope really remain when all else is gone? Where is the choice in these life circumstances? How could anyone say that these mothers and children have the same chance to believe that God is good, that they have a choice to follow or spurn Love as I have had? As this baby in my arms will probably have? He will likely never know the pain of starvation or the horror of being a child soldier.

Along with the baby in my arms had come a weighty awareness I never had as a young mother of the immense, privilege that belongs to a child born in America. What undeserved joy to hold a contented, healthy baby in your arms, to gaze at his face and know that you are welcoming him into a life where his chances of survival to adulthood and of a full and rich life are high.

The invisible butterfly touch of Isaac's hand on my arm broke through all the witnessed suffering and I simply HAD to give thanks for the wonder of the conception and birth of this child. The joy was incomplete without thanksgiving.

If the existentialist conclusions my wounded heart had been whispering were right and there is no supernatural Other who grants that privilege and joy of bringing children into the world, then who do you thank for the new baby in your arms?

All the alternative answers I formulated seemed to suck all the joy and purpose out of giving thanks, and giving thanks seemed to to me to be intrinsically necessary to a well-lived life. A world with no Supernatural Lover is a flat, two dimensional world - a world without enough space to host the exhilarating joy of new life.

Sad Day for Bomma

2007-08-06T19:44:00.000-04:00

Before I became a grandmother, I heard from enough friends and family about the authentic joys of grandparenting to look forward to it as a pleasant experience. And when one friend asked me what I would want my grandchildren to call me, I thought, " a simple, unembellished 'Grandma' will do - no silly 'mimi' or 'mawmaw' for me.

But for quite a few months now, I have been "Bomma" to the blonde tyke on my lap, and never has there been a more glorious name to my ears. Nothing matches the joy of getting out of my car in his driveway as he dashes out of the porch to greet me, wearing nothing but a HUGE smile, shouting, "BOMMA! You are here!"

Yesterday my daughter-in-love asked me if I noticed that he had started to correct his pronounciation of grandma. Yes, I had, in fact. The day before Isaac had called me "Brama" once when asking me for something. And though I am thrilled that his brain/ear/mouth connection is healthy and his speech/language development keeps racing along, it was still a sad day for Bomma.

Probably "Bompa, play your bombone!" has fallen by the wayside, as well. A sad day, indeed.

Breaking Silence

2007-06-03T14:44:00.000-04:00

I simply could not stop looking and listening. While others sat in the warm cabin of the day cruise ship, I stood on the deck for hours, snapping photos, embracing the cold wind that stung my cheeks and laughing aloud at times at the vast Alaskan display before me. The deck filled with watchers as we inched closer to our legislated 1/4 mile distance from the glacier, and talk stilled as the engines went silent. In the cold we stood and listened to the sound of an eons old glacier breaking silence.

I remember waking, years ago, to the sound of my own voice mumbling unintelligible syllables. In that dream I was being pressed upon by a supernatural presence so powerful that I knew my breath and soul was about to be extinguished if I did not succeed in speaking aloud the magic Name that would deliver me. I I tried with extreme effort several times to utter the name, yet no sound came out of my mouth. I marshalled every last ounce of strength in my body to try one more time, and that is when I woke up.

The slowly melting glacier and the dream scenario are the closest images I can think of to describe the struggle I have had these past two plus years to name my thoughts, to capture and describe the questions I have lived with and the trails of reasoning and remembering I have followed. The inner struggle has been so intense that I have found myself unable to speak, unable to articulate or even name to others the inner paths I walked along. I have been mute.

For all my adult life, words, sentences, and paragraphs have been my home territory and frequent journal entries a necessity for my mental and emotional health. Writing and prayer enabled me to sort through gnarly relationship challenges and to see myself and others with different eyes. I was sure of what truth was, and the focus of my life was listening to, with, and on behalf of others, helping them to approach God with words and find truth and hope in the process.

But these past two years I have wondered often if I will ever again feel a comfortable certainty about what is true, what isn't, and how to live in truth. These past two years I have been a woman who has carried on an extensive and at times excruciating inner conversation, struggling, with all my might to find and speak the words that might reveal and frame the truth and meaning .

Several years ago I wanted to post regularly to a blog that others would read because I felt my words might be able to influence and help others to seek and live truth. At this point, I see my posts to this blog more as a promise I need to keep, a means of personal discipline and accountability, and a way of breaking silence.