There is a Time for Everything August 18, 2009

I have been struggling with this blog for awhile because I’m not posting with the same focus I had when I first started to write here.  When I first started this blog I was in a period of immediate, deep grief over the illness and then loss of my mom to cancer.  Along with that came the wonderful gift of gardening — something she had loved and I had just found — to carry me through some very, very hard days.  All of this poured into and fed the growth of my faith and a period of discovery about both myself and, more importantly, my God.

Solomon (not the Beetles) had his heart set in solid truth when he wrote Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

I think that this is part of why I’ve felt very unfocused in my writing here recently.  I have entered a new season of life.

This is not to say that grief is gone — I can’t think of a day that goes by without some thought or longing to be with my mom in heaven, worshipping our Creator.  Time has a way, though, of softening sharp edges and the Spirit has a way of using Christ’s redeeming power to take every sorrow and draw from it joy.  As this process has happened I have slowly shifted my focus to other needful things:  my marriage, my son, my home…

As a result, the gardening posts will likely be fewer (though I do have a new plot to sink my hands into at this late part of the growing season), my posts about my mother likely farther in between (though my life with her informs every part of life after her going home).  You’ll hear me talking dollars more than any girl who hates even thinking about money ought, and struggling through the fast-paced adventures of raising my little boy.  You’ll likely hear about a lot of apologies made to my husbad, though I hope those become fewer, too (out of peace, clearly, rather than a hardening of heart).  Cooking?  Well, I’ll never stop talking about that.  And my Savior?  As the old hymn tells us, “Lord I need thee every hour.”  And I do.

But yes, my focus has changed.  And having said just that, I feel more free to post the things I’m dealing with now.  I hope it’s interesting and helpful to you — because it’s interesting and helpful to me.  Indeed, there is a time for everything.

Holy Bodies, Renewed Minds August 16, 2009

My boss recently had the opportunity to preach at my church.  He wrote a new series for us focused on Romans 12:1-2:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.^“

I love my boss and his wife anyway but these past two Sundays with him at the pulpit I was reminded how very privileged I am to work under two people who love God so passionately, believe his word so truly, and live their lives accordingly.  That is not to say they try to look perfect — they are real and therefore compassionate and insightful people as well.

You can access the sermons by clicking these links:  Holy Bodies, Transformed Minds.

Seeing and Being Seen July 25, 2009

When she was a senior in high school, my mom was nominated for and then won the Miss Elsinore contest in the little town she grew up in.  She went on to get a runner-up slot in the Miss Riverside contest that same year.  I remember being agog at the fact that my very own, every day, utterly normal (only in a kid’s eyes!) mom was a beauty queen!  I would press her for all sorts of details and was constantly left a little disappointed because she seemed so completely uninterested in it all.  She would say things like, “Well, it wasn’t ME on that stage.  I had on 10 pounds of make-up!” and “Oh I hated that picture…but you know, I DID get to leave class one day for that photo shoot and that was pretty fun.”

The first time what she was saying to me really started to make sense was when I was a teen.  I’d brought the story up again and begged her to drag out the photos and she told me a few details of that week to make me happy.  “Mom, were you SO popular then?”  She laughed.  “Well, I had a date every day that next week!”  The thought of it made my toes positively curl with glee.  “And did any of them end up being your boyfriend?”  “Oh, love, NO.  No.  They didn’t want to go on a date with ME.  They wanted to go out on a date with Miss Elsinore.  To say they’d gone out to dinner with the local beauty queen.”

And there, plainly, was the crux of the matter.  Mom did not feel like, when she won that contest, it was based on real things.  She did not feel that she had been really seen.  She didn’t feel that it really had anything to do with who she really was at all.  Any real piece of her that had been there for judging had been slathered under pounds of stage makeup.

When I fell in love with my husband, I barely remembered how to put makeup on.  It was in 2001 at the tail end of my mother’s first bout with cancer.  It had been a grueling year and I felt stripped of artifice of any kind.  When we met I wasn’t looking for a relationship at all — I was utterly unprepared to be charming or beautiful or socially acceptable.  I was in a stage of my life where I grossed people out inadvertently by just explaining the day-to-day basics of our lives.  What we found funny at home other people in non-cancer world did not find funny.  When people asked, “How are you?” I couldn’t gracefully tell anymore whether they really wanted to know or if they were just asking because that was how conversation was supposed to go and the next line was supposed to be “Oh, fine thank you!  And you?”

I remember walking toward Ryan one night at a little dive we used to go to after coming out of the ladies room and realizing that for the first time of any that I could think of when he looked over and saw me and lit up with a smile, he was smiling at me.  All my cracks and dings and rawness were right there in front of him and he was delighted to have me coming over to slide back into the seat across from him.  As much as I loved him for so many wonderful things, I loved him for that.

There is something, I think, about being laid bare, recognized for who you are, and loved in the face of it all.

This is, in the end, what makes the love of my Savior so intoxicating and breathtaking when I stop in day-to-day business and ponder him.

Think about it:  There are stars in the sky so far away that our very strongest telescopes can only pick them out as specks of light in the vast distance.  Yet our physical beings are determined by 25,000 human genes that were not fully mapped until less than a decade ago and are contained in such microscopic detail that no human eye could ever decipher them without powerful aid.  Romans 1 declares that what can be known of God has been made plain to men and that His eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen in the things that have been made.  What creation tells us is that our God is unfathomable.  He is greater than we can even begin to comprehend.

With the greatest of care and imagination He knit each of us together in our mothers’ wombs.  He named us before we had names.  He knew us before we could be known by any other being and knew us more fully than we even know ourselves.  Every hidden dark place, every decision made wrong, every hatred, every cheat, every selfishness, every slight given was before his eyes when he then chose to love us with a deep, never-ending, fierce, perfect love.  He holds back nothing in that love.  Nothing at all was too great a sacrifice — not even the cross.

If, tonight, you are needing to feel love — ponder on this for awhile.  As unlovable as you may feel you are loved beyond what you can possibly imagine.  If you are God’s and springing to the front of your mind is “Yes but you don’t know what I…” — I can tell you that no matter how you finish that sentence, no matter how dark the ending, God knows and he loves you anyway.  If you acknowledge him, if you love him, if the darkness of the things you keep tight in your heart make you understand your need for the cross and, therefore, thankful for it then I can assure you that He knows and loves you still with a love that makes all things good and new.  He sees you and He has allowed himself to be seen.

I’m just a little bit agog about all of this tonight and so I thought I’d share.  Maybe now my brain will quiet down enough for me to sleep.

Don’t Forget — Crazy Love for free! July 10, 2009

In case anyone went right by this the first time, I want to re-post it:

Thanks to Tim Challies who reminds us every month about the free download program over at Christian Audio.  Every month there is one audio book that they allow you to have for free.  This month it is the book “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God”.

This has been on my radar for awhile and I’ve intended to take a look at it.  Now I can do one better and listen to it on my iPod.

Thanks, Tim!  And thanks Christian Audio, too!

I’ve now had a chance to listen to about half of the book and every time I get to listen to some of it I find myself overwhelmed with how perfectly amazing God is and how every time I begin to think I grasp some aspect of him, I am just only scratching the very surface.  This book is helping me grow in my love for Him and my desire and excitement to be allowed to serve Him.  What better result could I ask for?  And the book is free!  Until the end of the month, anyway.  So go go go!

A Monument to Joy in Loss July 7, 2009

When we knew my mom was dying — really dying and soon — family began to pour in to see her at the hospital as we waited for hospice to be set up so she could come home.  We still thought that perhaps we had a few weeks with her but there was a certain urgency in my heart to say something to her.  To say…what?  I thought a lot about the things that people say in deathbed scenes in books and movies and on TV.  So many people feel the need to plead for forgiveness for that last wrong they thought of, that last hurt that had gone buried all those years, to confess, to clear the air, to leave no potential stone of regret unturned at the end.  I felt no need for any of that with my mom at her deathbed.

Throughout the Old Testament you read about the people of Israel raising monuments as reminders to themselves and all who observed them of the glorious things God had done for them and through them.  In the beginning of the book of Joshua, after 40 years in the wilderness, the people of Israel finally were able to cross the Jordan and enter into their promised land.  The first thing they did after crossing over the Jordan was take 12 stones, one for each tribe of the people, and build a monument with them.  Joshua instructed them to do this so that when their children asked what the stones meant, the people would be reminded to tell the children of God’s mighty work of stopping up the waters of the over-filled Jordan so that his people might pass safely on dry ground.

On the one hand, it’s sort of funny to think that a people would need a monument to remember a story like that.  You know?  HOW could you forget seeing the water piled up on itself as Scripture said it was, waiting for you to cross into the new home you’d been waiting your whole life to reach?  It’s preposterous!  Well, it’s funny and preposterous until you stop and take a good look at the frailty of your own memories and how they can be changed so easily and quickly sometimes.

We’re told later on that the people fell into sin and disarray almost immediately and that it was because they did not teach their children to remember the mighty ways of what God had done to deliver them.  They did not remember themselves.

And can’t you hear it?  Imagine, say, even fifteen years later, how the story might have been twisted at first.  ”Daddy, really did God stop up the water?  Did it really pile up so high while you crossed over that it was taller than your head??” “Oh son, I was so young then and so small!  Why, I was shorter than you are now.  So perhaps the water seemed very high but…”  ”Oh son, it was so long ago.  But the water was very shallow.  Perhaps it had been a dry season that year and we were so releaved to cross over that it seemed as if the very hand of God stopped the water and dried out the sand…”

But no.  No that was not how the story went at all.  And the people all together that first day lay those stones and all acknowedged the supernatural greatness of what had been done by their mighty God.  They acknowledged it together so that later together they could help each other remember how it really happened and so that they could continue to praise their mighty God and teach their children to praise him as well.

And so this is the monument I want to raise — a monument to the joy I was allowed while losing my mother, because of the God she loved and served and who I love and serve as well.  I nearly lost this memory, it very nearly got changed in the telling, and so I want to preserve it here now.

This was the last real conversation I had with my mom:

Sitting and holding her hand while my dear husband looked on, I was able to tell her thank you for her love and for the fact that I did not feel the need to beg forgiveness for anything.  It was not my own perfection that allowed me to feel this.  Rather, I felt no need to beg because I knew that forgiveness had been freely and openly given already and I rested in the peace of that — thankful, so very thankful that because of that forgiveness I could simply bask in her love and my own love for her.

I hurt my mother deeply through the 29 years of my life with her.  Sometimes I hurt her unintentionally and sometimes I did it very intentionally.  Sometimes I did not mean to be ugly and sometimes I was ugly just to feel the power of the effect it had on her.  I was, indeed, sometimes that kind of daughter.  And we did have wonderful, sweet times together — they far outnumbered the bad times.  But they did not make up for the bad times at all.  There was real and deep hurt there.  But Christ went deeper still.

And so sitting there wanting badly to say the right last things, the most important last things, I found that all there was in my heart was love and thanks and more love and more thanks and a whole lot of expectation for the time when, after I spend the whole rest of my earthly life missing her, I would get to see her again as we worshipped at Jesus’ throne.  And so that’s what I told her and she understood me perfectly.

You see, my mom knew herself before a perfectly righteous and just God.  She knew herself to be a sinner.  She didn’t think that, on her own merit, she would someday stand before His throne and hear “You did good, kid.  We’ll call it even.”  In fact she had a sense of her own sin that was so sincere that it seemed sometimes ridiculously out of proportion to the sweetness and the love we all knew from her.  But because she wasn’t comparing herself to the rest of the world but rather to her perfect Savior, she knew keenly that she fell short.  And that made the love and forgiveness she found at the foot of His cross so precious to her.  It was so precious, so powerful, so all-encompassing in its enormity that it changed her utterly and it made her like Him.  And because she was learning to be like Him I found in my mother love and forgiveness and tenderness and self-sacrifice all wrapped in real joy that taught me about Him, too.

And so, at the end of that confession of all that was in my heart to her, do you know what my mom said?  She didn’t deny that there were things that had had to be forgiven.  She acknowledged that all of what I’d said and known of her heart was true.  And then she told me that she was proud of me because she could see the fruit of Jesus’ love for me in my life and that other people had shared with her that they could see His work in me, too.  And she told me that she loved me.  And we cried — a lot.

It was the best deathbed confession I could have possibly come up with, only it wasn’t contrived.  It was what was in our hearts and it was real.

You might wonder why I’m writing about this now, almost a year and a half later.

Over the course of a few months this last year my memory of this time with my mom began to change a bit.  What I remembered were the parts of what I’d said to her about having no regrets to come to her with.  Somehow my memory changed and left out the parts that had to do with our mutual knowledge of God’s forgiveness in our lives.  I didn’t remember at all her response to me.  Rather, what remained in my mind became a picture of me blithely and somewhat insensitively refusing to acknowledge the full picture of our relationship together and insisting that it had been good enough for me to have no regrets.  I started to cringe at myself.  I no longer thought of that time with her at the end with peace in my heart and it started to color all of the other memories of that sweet and painful time of loss over the next few days before she went home.  Suddenly, where there had been none before, I had regret.

God is faithful where our memories are not and one day in my kitchen I paused over a counter I was scrubbing and was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to remember what she’d said to me.  WHAT had she said to me when I’d so calously informed her that I had nothing at all to be sorry for?  I paused and closed my eyes and forced myself to think through the hot shame that this partial memory brought and remember what she’d said in response to me…she said…that in me she could see the work of Jesus.

And the rest of it came flooding back.

Oh what relief to see that whole picture again!  Jesus!  He is mighty to save.  He is faithful to forgive.  He lives and pleads for me!  HE was the reason we had no regret.  HE was the reason losing her was suffused with joy.  HE was the reason, He was the topic, He is our mighty God.

When I read the story of Isreal and their monument at the Jordan I though to myself, “I must raise one of my own.”

Here it is.

God brought me over the trecherous river of my faulty memory safely and reminded me of the joy and peace only He could give.

Truly, He is my Rock and He is my salvation.

What is it All About? July 1, 2009

It amazes me how often both inside and outside the church, and inside and outside my own heart, the true message of the Gospel gets piled up under a whole bunch of other things.  We make checklists of things we should and shouldn’t be doing, we take ourselves to task for all the ways in which we fail or we blithely ignore the fact that there is any objective measure by which our actions could be deemed failures or successes.  There are so many myriad ways in which Christianity starts being about things other than Christ and other than the cross.

So, in the midst of my chores today, when I heard this celebration message from Matt Chandler at The Village Church in Highland Village, TX, I took note.

When my son was a bit younger, about 18 months old or so, he loved certain songs and jokes and stories, even if he didn’t get all the special nuances of them.  He’d wait until JUST the very split second past the end and then holler, “AGIN! AGIN!” until you gave in.  That’s how I felt listening to this message this afternoon.

If you’re not a Christian and you’ve heard it all before and you’re about to click on to the next thing, would you stop for one second and consider giving this download a chance?

And if you are a Christian and you’ve heard it all before and you’re about to click on to the next thing, you give it a chance, too.

Because honestly, the beautiful story of Jesus is the greatest one ever told.  And it’s true.  And it’s about Him.  And it’s about what, out of his just outright amazingness and wonderfulness, he’s done for you.  And Matt Chandler does a really, really good job of telling about it here that, even if you’ve heard it every day since you started having days, shines beautiful and fresh and new.

Complete and utter credit to http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/sermons for access to the talk and I hope I’m not breaking any rules or trust in linking directly to the audio for this the way I’ve done on here.

True Romance June 30, 2009

I have this friend who, while I haven’t known him all that long, I know is a very dear man.  Recently he met and then started dating a girl I don’t know first-hand at all.  But I have heard about her through various different trusted sources, and I’ve also heard about her family.  All of it is good news.  By every account this girl and her family are kind, loving and true people.  So it makes me very happy for my friend as I have watched him walk out the door on his first meeting with her and then in subsequent conversations we’ve had about her since then.

I have been honored to have my friend ask me, a married lady, for advice and insight as he’s pondered this relationship, and I am so touched by the care that he’s using as he approaches this whole thing.  I am touched, too, by the careful and respectful boundaries they are setting for one another, within which they hope to continue getting to know each other and finding out God’s will for this budding relationship of thiers.

And you know, it strikes me, that in seeing this happen I sense more out and out romance than just about anything I have ever seen before.  It isn’t lines crossed and passions out of control like we see so much in our culture lauded as true romance.  No, instead I am seeing this man utterly concerned with showing how wonderful he thinks this girl is by handling her as though she is precious and to be protected — and he’s doing it not only out of his admiration for her, but also his desire to honor his Savior.

I won’t go on.  I don’t want to embarrass my friend should he ever run accross this blog.  But really, it’s brought me so much joy considering his good intentions toward this girl today and it has inspired in me a desire to cover and protect them with prayer as they start out on what could be a lifelong journey.

But it brings to mind the quote from Lewis that helped me title this blog:

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

I guess that’s some of what makes this all so deep and lovely.  He isn’t aiming for what the world is telling him would be enough to be labeled “true love.”  He’s hoping according to a different standard and that makes his aim more true.

Poorly written tonight, my friends.  But completely sincere.

My Mom’s Hands June 24, 2009

“Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.”

This year, all of a sudden, my hands have begun to look like my mom’s.  And as they have taken on some of the look of hers, I have seen my hands doing things my mom used to do so skillfully.  She had a particular way of holding a tomato when she diced it in order to keep all the layers from slipping apart.  She was so particular, my mom.  She was an artist in the genes and in training and it came out in everything she did in our home:  the way she sprinkled paprika just so on the tops of deviled eggs (no haphazhard clusters there!), the way she used a crinkly-edged dough cutter for the tops of her mince tarts at Christmas and dusted them so beautifully with cinnamon sugar (was it just my imagination, or did she actually manage to place those sugar crystals in such a way that they’d catch extra light?), and perfectly folded under a wrong-sized table cloth on our dinner table so that every edge hung just right.

I, on the other hand, am a less precise person.  No matter how sincerely I believe that the pieces into which I am cutting a cake are uniform while I’m doing the cutting, they’re all, uh…wonderfully unique in the end.  Yes.  My table is rarely graced with a table cloth, but it’s been dyed lovely shades of eggshell pink, green and blue since Easter and we’re really growing quite fond of the patterns that were made that fateful morning when three separate bowls of egg dye got upset nearly all at once.  And my pie crusts, well, let’s just say my style is “rustic”.

My mom and I used to laugh at my failed attempts at decoration, precision and artistic form.  I just assumed I had no talents in those areas.  But another thing if I’m honest:  A lot of times I was just too scared to try.  I mentioned earlier in the week how I avoid hard things.  I think I just always assumed that, because my mom was naturally talented at so many things, she never had to try.  But in reflection on her, I know that’s not true.  My mom worked hard.  When I try to think of the woman who has come closest to the tireless, faithful, unceasing effort of the woman depicted in Proverbs 31, my mom comes to mind.  I know there are others but she’s the one I know by heart and memory.  If I search back into my memory now with my own understanding as a mother and a homemaker and wife, I see things that I didn’t see when I only had the eyes of a child (or a childish woman, for that matter).

Over this last year, finally, I have spent some serious time considering my roles as a wife, a mother, and a homemaker.  What I have realized is that my jobs will never be done.  They are not the types of jobs that should ever be done.  Just like the process of being sanctified, changed into the person God wants me to be, it won’t be done until I go home to be with Him.  In fact, my roles are a part of that process that He has so graciously provided for me.  Carolyn Mahaney over at Girl Talk wrote something quite awhile ago.  It struck me then and it’s coming to mind now as something my mom could have written, too:

“I got out of bed each morning so that I could do everything I did the day before.
I washed the dishes so they could be dirtied again.
I ironed the clothes so they could be worn and wrinkled again
I wiped noses so they could run again.
I picked up toys so they could be played with again.
I mopped the floor so mud could be tracked on it again.
I cooked meals so that I could go to the grocery store again.
I made beds so they could be slept in again.

Some days I wondered: if I do all I do, only to have it undone, am I really doing anything?”

Carolyn knew, and I know my mom knew, too, that the resounding answer to that question is, “Yes!”  And while she, with our dad, built our home and relationships and foundations for us she was being refined into something beautiful.

Tonight, in between paragraphs, my hands are caked in flour from rolling out pita bread dough. It’s what really made me think to write about this today in the first place.  I am wearing my mom’s ring on my right hand (it was my dad’s mother’s before that) and my hands have caloused and there are lines where flour has marked and highlighted their roughness.  It is my prayer that these rough hands of mine are a sign that I, too, am being refined, smoothed and shaped by my Redeemer into something beautiful.  Just like my mother was before me.

Can I Have a Pinch? June 22, 2009

The hub took a nap yesterday afternoon so to kill a few hours with E, now 3, we made cookies.  A note about cookies which probably isn’t novel to anyone but I was flat thrilled about when I thought to do it:

Double the recipe and then while half of them bake, scoop out the rest onto a cookie sheet and freeze them.  Once they are solid, pop them off the sheet and keep them in a freezer safe container for another fast batch you can have ready in no time.

Also, for those of you who like chocolate covered pretzles or extra buttery caramel:

I add extra salt, but a bit, to my recipe.  I also use kosher so it’s in slightly larger hunks than regular salt.  This way, when you’re eating your cookies you get these nice little tingles of salty flavor highlighted throughout the cookie.  Oh-so-delicious.

But in spite of the loveliness of these two things I’ll tell you what really took the cake (or cookie) for me yesterday:

E kept asking me as we worked up our batch of dough, “Mom, can I have a little pinch?”  We probably ate four whole cookies worth of dough this way.  Finally I gave him the paddle out of the stand mixer and as he stood on his chair in his orange apron in the sunshine through the window he got a huge smile of delight and exclaimed to me, “Mom, didn’t God make a WONDERFUL world for us to enjoy?!”

Oh boy.  Yes, son.  He did.  Immediately, hands down, my day made.

Wes June 21, 2009

Yesterday my husband and I had the opportunity to go to a memorial service for a man named Wes.  Wes was a deacon at the church in which I grew up and that I attended until just a few months ago.  He was good friends to my little brother even when my little brother was just a squirt kid in Jr. High school with a fascination for guns.  I remember hearing all the time about this cool guy, Wes.

I never got to know Wes well but he was a part of the comfortable and strong foundation of men and women at New Life who was always there quietly serving with an open heart and a big smile.  He and his wife, who were married for 54 years, are just dear, dear people and it’s hard to think of Pat without him.

As has happened at all of the memorial services that I’ve attended recently (three in as many months), I found myself leaving with a wish to have known Wes better before he was gone.  He was a remarkable and funny and dear man and he will leave a big hole in the heart of New Life and the community.

This is what I remember most clearly about Wes:  He rarely spoke but he always had the warmest smile and this fierce sparkle in his eye that let you know that all sorts of things were happening under that calm surface and it’d be a lot of fun to get a peek inside.  My husband, who knew Wes even less than I did said the same.

At the memorial service several people commented about how, when called upon to give the story of his life at a recent men’s retreat 3 months ago, Wes gave an emotional 6-word response, “For I know my Redeemer lives.”

And so, with hope, we ache and mourn the passing of Wes —  but he has left to dwell in utter joy.