Tough Stuff

Last Tuesday while I was visiting my mom and dad, my dog, Panther, was hit by a truck when he escaped and ran into the highway in front of their house.  He was lucky and his injuries were not fatal—just expensive and requiring high maintenance.  My life and schedule pretty much ceased and were rewritten by the demands of Panther’s care. 

I took him to my vet to have a complete set of x-rays to determine the extent of his injuries and found that there was some internal bleeding in his chest area and urinalysis revealed “stress” to his kidneys—and “stress” was a good word since his stress involved stress for me also since I was the one responsible for clean up from incontinence caused by the stress.  The vet also found that Panther had a bone broken in his paw, so they sedated him twice—once for the x-rays and once to reset the bone then put his leg in a splint.

The lady who was assisting the vet carried my eighty-pound Weimaraner to the car with remarkable poise.  I expressed to her how impressed I was with her ability to carry my big hunk of puppy to the car with such ease.  She suggested to me to have someone ready to help me get him into the house when I got home, so that I didn’t hurt myself. 

My husband came home and helped me get him in the house and things were going okay—I got his five pills down him easily by wrapping them in thin-sliced deli chicken and was feeling pretty competent till he began to exhibit signs of needing to go to the bathroom.  Normally I would just open the back door to the deck and he would go down the stairs to the backyard, do his business then come back and notify me that he was ready to come in—but because of his injuries and the anesthesia, I couldn’t allow him to go down the back steps.  All of this I failed to plan for and now was having to think quickly of a solution.   I put him on his leash and supported him as I took him out the front door.  He made it down the couple of little steps off the porch then Panther just flopped down on the sidewalk.  He was obviously not going to make it to a bush or some really special blade of grass to do his business, so I had to figure out how to get him back in the house.

Now I was really faced with a dilemma—my husband was at church and I couldn’t get Panther to come back in the house despite my every attempt at coaxing even with his favorite treat, I could leave him outside passed out on the sidewalk or make an effort to get him in by myself.  I thought to myself--if that young lady at the vet’s office could carry him—maybe I could carry him if I just positioned myself like she did—maybe there’s a special secret to carrying him the right way that would distribute his weight in such a way that I would be able to lift him like her.  I put my one arm under him behind his front legs and my other arm under him in front of his back legs just like she had then I lifted with all my might and his front paws came about six inches off the ground.

I tried again and this time I actually lifted his hind legs just a little—my confidence was boosted, so I lifted his front legs again and drug his backside as best I could till I got him back on the porch then just dropped with him.  I was only about three feet from the front door, so I decided to try to drag him through the door to the rug just inside the door and then drag the rug with Panther on the hardwood floor to his palette.   It worked—I was successful.  I ran into the kitchen to get another treat to try to coax Panther from the rug on to the palette and when I came back, Panther lay half on the rug and half on the floor in a puddle of urine.

That night I moved Panther’s palette next to my bed and I would get up and lay with him on his palette when I would hear him licking or biting his splint.  I prayed for him and then wondered if praying for my dog in light of all the more serious requests I was acutely aware of was fruitful.  The verse about God being aware of even a small sparrow falling came to my mind and the next morning, I looked up the verse and was surprised at the context with which this verse is written.

It is found in Matthew chapter 10 in the middle of a section titled “Discipleship and Suffering”.   Jesus is preparing the disciples for persecution that is coming and exhorting them to not be afraid.  He's preparing them for the possibility of losing close family relationships because of their stand of faith and admonishing them not to love their fathers or mothers or sons or daughters more than him.  He also says that anyone who does not take up his cross and follow him is not worthy of him.  He reminds His disciples that they are valuable to the Father and that He is aware of everything—He’s even aware of the number of hairs on their head.  I was reminded that God is aware of all we give up to follow Him—every sacrifice, every trial, every painful experience we suffer while trying to obey and do the will of God.

Sometimes I want God to be like a pet owner—a really good one like me.  I want Him to always make sure my food bowl is full and enough water so I won’t have to drink out of the toilet.  I want Him to wrap my pills in deli lunch meat and never stick the pill in my mouth then hold my snout closed till I swallow it.  I want Him to give me treats when I do tricks and behave well and keep me on a leash so I don’t run blindly and stupidly on to the highway while trying to exert my independence or cross boundaries set up for my safety.

I got kind of tickled at verse 27 in this section that says, “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs”.  It was in the dark--actually about 2:18 am that God brought the verse that drew me to this portion of scripture.   It’s kind of funny how God brings us encouragement sometimes.

 There are a lot of times that I feel like quitting and feel frustrated that I can’t see more fruit from my endeavors in the kingdom.  God in His quirky way reminded me that it’s tough to follow Him and I just need to keep speaking what He gives me.  It’s normal to be tough—it’s actually a very good sign.

Mother's Day Turned Thanksgiving Day

Sunday morning on Mother’s Day, I was having a bad morning, feeling pretty sorry for myself and discussing the situation with God.  I got dressed and headed out in the churches big sixteen-passenger 1996 Dodge van which the kids and I refer to as “The Big Green Machine” to pick up the kids on my bus route.  As I was getting into the van, my neighbor yelled, “hello” to me, so I stopped and talked briefly then told him that I had better get going.

As I was getting into the van, I said, “I love to drive this—it’s my favorite thing to do”.  He looked at me blankly—I said, “I’m kidding”.  He said, “I wasn’t sure”.  I thought—what in the world about my personality would cause someone to think that I could possibly not be kidding—I must be really weird.

As I was driving, I ran into a couple of other church vans and waved at the people driving—as is customary for those of us in the elite Sunday-morning van driving club to do, I had the Wind FM playing and was trying to get in a more worshipful mood, but it wasn’t really working.  I told the Holy Spirit that He was going to have to take over because my flesh was interfering with His “Godly” plans and if I was going to minister in any way in children’s church, He was going to have to arise to the occasion or we were sunk.

I got to church and had to go straight in to the computer to put the words of the songs we were going to sing that day into EasyWorship and once again felt sorry for myself because the computer had crashed a couple of weeks before and all of my song library had been lost—every song had to be re-entered into the computer. 

I began putting in the words to “Awesome God”.  I had to listen to the song and then stop and type in the words, so I had to listen really close.  The arrangement was an arrangement for children’s worship and there were readings of scripture by kids about the awesomeness of God interspersed in the song.  I started thinking of the awesomeness of God and how often we fail to recognize His greatness—how often we fail to give Him the thanks that is due Him.  He has a pretty “thankless” job.  I listened as the kid's expressed worship and I just stopped typing and listened to the song.

I went to my concordance and counted the number of times that the Bible mentions to give thanks and it was twenty-five.  Twenty-five times—at least, God instructs me to give thanks.  I know that we pick and choose the things that we decide to be obedient about, but giving thanks should be a priority.  

God is always working in invisible ways to accomplish his good purpose in all of our lives.  He is always at work around us to draw men to Him and sometimes we fail to be attentive because our eyes can only see what is going on in front of our noses.  Our personal circumstances and struggles keep us from looking up to see the greatness of God and hinder our ability to obey in giving thanks.  As Paul says, “my brothers (and sisters), these things should not be”.

Psalm 121—I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.  He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over Israel will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.  The Lord watches over you—the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.  The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

I asked God to help me and He did—He showed up and spoke His truth to me in the midst of my despair and saved the day.  I’m not sure why I was surprised—that’s what He does when we ask and seek.

I don’t want to have any part in God having a “thankless” job.  I want to appreciate and be involved in seeing the minuscule ways that He is showing His love for me.  I want to be able to get my nose out of my problems and look to “where my help comes from”.  I am going to try to do that today and hopefully tomorrow too—I know that my nose will get stuck again, but I’m going to keep trying to give thanks to God because He is good and His love does endure forever.

Making Rain

Saturday we have a mother/daughter tea at our church with a theme of “Weathering the Storms of Motherhood”.  Yesterday my faithful friend, who follows me in all sorts of wacky endeavors to serve together in the kingdom, once again assisted me in another decorating adventure.  This time we endeavored to suspend umbrellas and teardrop-shaped glass pebbles with clear nylon thread from the ceiling tiles in our fellowship hall to give the appearance of rain falling upon umbrellas.

We were a comedy of errors in our attempts.  The threads tangled and it was impossible to see the thread to tie knots when we wrapped the thread around the t-pins.  We concluded that there were two things needed to master the skill of this decorating fiasco, one was good eyes and the other was great coordination and both of us had neither.  I said, “I have a whole new appreciation for God.  It’s so hard to mimic what He does so easily”.

I wondered if God put in eight-hour days when He did creation or maybe the “day” means that He put in twenty-four hours or at least twelve.  I would feel a whole lot less incompetent if I knew that it took Him at least twenty-four hours to suspend the stars in space since it took us both three hours to hang only thirty-two raindrops and five umbrellas.   I’m pretty sure He didn’t use nylon thread.

I wondered if God looked down at my friend and me and watched us something like me watching a Lucy show.  I wondered if he laughed out loud or just smiled and shook His head.

I thought of Job’s conversation with God as I drove home.  Job was questioning God concerning the tribulation that had come upon him and God gave Job a response.  I remembered some of the things that God had said because my husband wrote a song about it, but I looked it up when I got home in Job chapters 36-42.  You must go get your Bible and read these chapters to see God’s reminder of His greatness to Job.  You will have a surge of faith.

Elihu says to Job in 36:26-33

            How great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.  He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams, the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind.  Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds, how He thunders from his pavilion?  See how he scatters his lightning about him, this is the way He governs the nations and provides food in abundance.  He fills his hands with lightning and commands it to strike its mark.

His thunder announces the coming storm; even the cattle make known its approach.

I have to go hang some more raindrops today.  I’m a little more skillful today and hope to hang them a bit faster.  I will also do it in a sense of awe of God’s greatness and how He draws me to Him and reminds me of who He is even as I do menial tasks to serve Him in His kingdom.  I am humbled.

Inheritance

My family has some really powerful stories of redemption and since it is the week of Mother’s Day, I thought I would share about my maternal grandma.  Her name was Clella and in my mind she has always been a saint, but yesterday I had a moment of enlightenment that caused me to revere her even more.

I will have start at the beginning telling the story of her husband and my grandpa, James Wilson, to give a full picture of the story.    Grandpa was the son of a single mom during a time when single moms were uncommon.   The story told to me is that my grandfather’s mother became impregnated when she was young and unmarried and the man kept promising to marry her, but just wouldn’t fulfill his promise.  One day he told her that if she would get a disfiguring “mark” on her face removed that he would marry her. 

My great grandma in desperation went to a doctor and had the mark removed, but in the process got blood poisoning and died.  Grandpa was around three years old when his mother passed away.  He grew up in a small community, raised by his grandparents and was continually subjected to derogatory remarks regarding his fatherless status.  It was not a single-mom friendly time.  The practice of grandparents raising their grandkids was uncommon and there was little sensitivity and lack of understanding regarding the situation.

My grandpa worked hard trying always to compensate for his lack of social acceptance and he gained the respect of neighbors and others in the community which allowed him to secure the blessing to marry a young lady of good repute from her father and other family members.  James and Clella married and built a house on the family farm on the beautiful Gasconade River.  Grandpa’s grandparents lived in a house behind them and my grandma cared for them.

Since my mom’s stroke three years ago, I have made it a point to drive a hundred-mile trek to visit them every Tuesday and help with cleaning and cooking.  It has been such a blessing to be able to hear stories they tell me that I might not have heard had I not had the opportunity to visit with them every Tuesday.  Sometimes when I drive home and process our day, I feel overwhelmed with joy that God allows me to have them and serve them in the way that He has provided for me to use my gifts  to bless them.

Sometimes they tell me the same stories that I have already heard many times, but as I listen to them in my station in life now, they have new meaning.  Yesterday, during my drive home, I was thinking about my grandma, Clella, caring for my grandpa’s granparents and it hit me that she was only in her twenties when she was doing what I am doing in my fifties.  I am pretty sure that when I was in my twenties I would have been too self absorbed to be the type of servant my grandma was.  

Grandma not only took care of her husband’s grandparents, I have also heard the story of how she would walk through the woods to her father’s house to cook and clean for him after her mother passed away.  I had heard these stories and somehow pictured my grandma being "old" when she was doing these things, but I suddenly realized grandma would have been about the age of my daughter at the time when she was overseeing these reponsibilities. 

As I was driving and putting this together, I started crying.  I had always felt a sense of bonding with my grandma, a sense that I was following in her footsteps and a joy of knowing that she would have been proud of me for ministering to her daughter every week, but in that moment, I just felt completely humbled.  My grandma was more of a woman than I will ever be and her daughter was more of a woman than I will ever be and I am just blessed to be a part of their inheritance.

I always thought of inheritance in different terms.  More of the dividing of property and assets, but in that moment I started thinking of inheritance as more of a soul blessing than tangible blessings.  I celebrated my soul blessings.  It had been a hard day, but my soul was full.  I was happy and it wasn’t because of anything tangible.  

Psalm 16: 5 & 6  Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.  The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

I am thankful for the inheritance of Godly women who modeled for me the path that leads to true joy.

Losses

I just got back from breakfast with a friend who shared with me her struggle to understand a situation that involved a pretty serious betrayal of one Christian to another.   My husband had coffee with a man earlier this week who was trying to process a situation involving another Christian leader who failed morally and betrayed many people.

This week on Facebook I learned of the death of David Wilkerson, founder of Teen Challenge, and also of Bev Corbett, missionary with Health Care Ministries.  I also learned of the death of a young lady who was the daughter of a strong Christian couple who were kind to us in one of our former pastorates.  She was killed in a car accident.

These things were running through my mind as I was driving home from the restaurant and listening to the WIND FM (my favorite radio station).  Francesca Battistelli was singing about the "stuff that gets under my skin"—I love Francesca, her songs always make me smile and lift my spirit, but my thoughts were what if the stuff that’s getting to you isn’t just losing your cell phone and keys?  What if the stuff is the upcoming birthday of your child who committed suicide, your friend who is going through three years of chemotherapy, another friend who has a fast-growing mass on his pancreas, the many people who are suffering losses from the severe storms that hit the south, the recent deaths of Christian leaders and a possible future leader?  What about the stuff that doesn’t just get under our skin, but pierces our soul?

My Bible reading yesterday was in Joshua.  I started in chapter 1 with God saying, “Moses my servant is dead.  Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites” Joshua 1:2.  That sounded a little heartless to me, so I checked it out to see how long it had been since Moses had died before God put His people back to work.  I found in Deuteronomy 34:8 that they mourned for thirty days.

THIRTY DAYS—I was still trying to use up and clean out food that had been brought in by friends and we were still receiving oodles of sympathy cards in the mail thirty days after Philip’s death.  The grief process was just starting after thirty days, yet God was getting Joshua ready to go to battle.  Why would God be so hard-hearted?  Then I read on and realized that there was a promise to be fulfilled—the promise given to Moses and their forefathers.  

God used words suggesting Joshua be strong and courageous, to not be terrified or discouraged.  He promised to never leave or forsake Joshua and He promised that He would be with him wherever he went.  He told him to obey the Book of the Law and meditate on it day and night. 

There is a promise.  There is a God who promises to never leave or forsake us and there is a God who wants us to be strong and courageous.  That doesn’t mean we don’t grieve, but we don’t grieve as those who don’t have the hope of a promise.  We grieve as a people of faith in our joys and sorrows, our frustrations and shattered dreams, in our betrayals and rejections, and in our various losses whether it is loss by death or just the loss of our keys.

Severe Weather

Yesterday we drove my mother in law, Barbara, to the airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, so she could fly to Utah to visit her daughter and her daughter’s family.  We drove to Little Rock because my husband, the Scottish man that he is, found a really good price on her ticket and decided it would be nice for us to see new, scenic territory.  It was scenic and the sun was shining all the way to Little Rock and even after we got there, but once we dropped Barbara off, the rains started.

We drove to Conway, Arkansas, and decided to explore this sweet little Arkansas town, we did a little shopping and while we were in one quaint little shop, the salesgirl came up to us and said, "you can continue shopping, but we are going to lock the doors because the owner called and said there are tornado warnings out".  We left the store immediately and sat in the car listening to the emergency broadcasting system tone followed by a listing of the counties under severe weather warnings—including tornadoes—then decided to make a run for it and get ahead of the weather.  I don’t know if that was the smartest decision the two of us ever made, but it was exciting.

We weren’t that familiar with Arkansas and didn’t have an atlas, so we depended on my limited ability to view where we were on the GPS which never showed the little towns being listed nor any counties—at least I wasn’t able to view them with my limited technical abilities with these advanced gadgets.  So we blindly raced in torrential rain to get what we believed to be “ahead of the storm”.

We were not in my car with the broken passenger-side windshield wiper, so I was able to sit on the end of my seat and assist my husband as he strained to drive at speeds that we will not mention for fear there might be an Arkansas State Patrol reading my blog.  I looked in the sky for “twisters” that might be forming and strained to read the signs of the little towns and counties that we were in so we could compare where we were with the listings that kept coming over the radio.

We stopped to get gas and while we were there, the hail came, so we waited it out under the shelter of the gas pumps.  Cars and trucks pulled in to find shelter there also and we all waited while listening intently to the radio to see if we should seek shelter from a tornado, but when the hailed stopped, we decided again to make a dash to get “ahead of the storms”. 

We had no sooner left the gas station when it started hailing again, but not as heavy.  I was praying and straining to read signs and Phil was driving like a race car driver, (an inexperienced race-car driver) and we got “ahead of the storm”. We listened closely to the radio and tried to identify any counties or areas they were advising people to take shelter, but we didn’t have a clue what county we were in and had limited knowledge of where the areas were that were under tornado threats.   

As we drove, I would find signs that identified what county we were in and we realized that the county we were in was not a county being listed on the radio.  Every so often, there would be a break in the weather and we could relax and view the beautiful waterfalls coming down from the bluffs beside the road, the waterfalls were the result of water-soaked ground not being able to absorb the moisture and severe flooding, but they were still pretty.

As we became more aware of where we were in relationship to the storms all around us, I looked at Phil and said—the storms have been to the east, west and south of us this whole trip, Phil nodded and I think we both had a sense that we had been protected.  It had been a pretty intense two-hour drive, but what an adventure.  I felt like Helen Hunt and that other duded in the movie about storm chasers, only we were running away from the storms instead of into them.  I have a whole new appreciation for storm chasers and will pray for their safety whenever I hear of threats of severe weather from now on.

When we made it out of the line of severe storms, lightning was flashing from one end of the sky to the other—it was amazing.  I thought of that song that talked about God lighting up the sky to show that He was with me, so today I looked up the lyrics and wanted to share them with you.  The song is by a group called “The Afters” and the title is “You Light Up the Sky”.

When I'm feeling all alone
With so far to go
The signs are no where on this road
Guiding me home
When the night is closing in
Is falling on my skin
Oh God will You come close?

Light,  light, light up the sky
You light up the sky to show me You are with me
I can't deny
No, I can't deny that You are right here with me
You've opened my eyes
So I can see You all around me
Light, light, light up the sky
You light up the sky to show me
That You are with me

When stars are hiding in the clouds
I don't feel them shining
When I can't see You beyond my doubt
The silver lining
When I've almost reached the end
Like a flood You're rushing in
Your love is rushing in

So I run straight into Your arms
You're the bright and morning sun
To show Your love there's nothing You won't do

I know you skeptics out there are thinking that it was just a coincidence that we drove right down the middle of a severe storm pattern and the tornados were all around us but not in the counties we were in when we were in them, but I got my mother in law a mug that has a quote by Albert Einstein that says, “There are two ways to live your life…One is as though nothing is a miracle, the other as though everything is a miracle”.

Today I choose to believe that God watched over Phil and me and kept us safe last night and although there may be more severe weather, I know He will light up my sky.

Noah Built an Arky, Arky

We’ve had a lot of rain and flooding and I’ve been reading a lot of statuses about building an ark and I ‘m thinking that I could probably build one with all the building materials in my basement from unfinished home projects.  I don’t know if I have any gopher barky though.  I might have to make a trip to Lowe’s to pick some of that up.  I know for sure that there’s a bunch of pitch at church because we have THREE flat-roofed buildings and my husband is always patching them and ruining his clothes.

So—I decided to read the story of Noah.  The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.  So God gave Noah instructions to build an ark and verse 22 of Genesis 6 says, “Noah did everything just as God commanded him”.  No questions, no tweaking, no complaining. 

That was a HUGE task—not only building the ark, but packing the food to meet the dietary needs of all the various animals not to mention all the cleaning supplies it would require—I’m talking gallons of Lysol and Febreeze.  I have trouble just packing for a weekend camping trip with my family and one dog. But Noah did all the Lord commanded him to do—it says it two times, Genesis 6:22 and 7:5.  I’m pretty sure Noah had to put in a lot of twelve hour days to get all that done.

What an amazing story and what a great display of faith by Noah, but just a couple of chapters away we find Noah drunk laying “uncovered” inside his tent.  When he comes out of it, he starts barking curses on his grandson, Canaan, because Canaan’s dad, Ham, wasn’t discreet enough in the way he handled finding his dad in his questionable state and blessing Shem and Japheth for handling the situation appropriately.  

I think it odd that Noah didn’t take responsibility for his behavior in overindulging in his homemade wine and failing to keep his robe on, but got nasty mad at his son for not handling the situation right.  Sometimes I scratch my head at these heroes in the hall of faith in Hebrews 10, but then I am acutely aware that I do the same things in different ways.  I fly high in my faith one day and crash drastically the next—sometimes I do it in the same day just like them.

I’m pretty sure there’s more to this story of Noah than I can understand with my limited education in Old Testament Theology, but I think even if I have all the info here, Noah still doesn’t come out as a knight in shining armor.  I’m also sure that if this were my family story and I were writing Genesis, I would probably opt to leave this skeleton in the closet, but I’m so glad the authors of the Bible chose to share both the great moments of faith along with embarrassing moments of weakness in many key characters of faith.

Yesterday, one of my friends posted on her blog that she had a temper tantrum on Easter Sunday.  She shared how she faced a sink full of dirty dishes with a broken dishwasher, the oven catching fire and burning out the heating element, and her computer acting up.  In the midst of the house falling apart, she was aware of how blessed she was to have her two healthy boys sleeping soundly in their clean beds, to have a mother who prepared a great Easter meal for her entire family and that all of them could be there, she expressed how blessed she was to have a hard-working husband, but she still succumbed to despair and with candor described her tantrum.

I was laughing and feeling very humbled by her willingness to share so transparently her episode.  I was laughing because I had also had a temper tantrum the day before Easter with similar things happening to me, but I didn’t write about them on MY blog.  I shared “spiritual” stuff.  But come on—aren’t our struggles “spiritual” stuff?  Don’t we all struggle to some capacity and isn’t God’s grace amazing and doesn’t it make us so aware of how much we needed Jesus, the greatest hero who didn’t have any skeletons in His closet, to be our Savior?

I wish the Christian community could be more like the Bible where we share our testimonies of great things and also share honestly about our mistakes and the sin we struggle with.  I haven’t heard too many stories like this one about Noah during testimony time at church, and I think I would feel uncomfortable if I did, but maybe in appropriate settings with intimate sojourners in the faith, we should be transparent.

James 5:16:  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

My intercessions are usually not filled with prayers for people’s faults that they have asked me to pray about.  I pray for friends with cancer and financial troubles, relational problems and soul wounds, but to pray for each other’s faults as diligently as we pray for cancer, might be a good thing.  I guess first we need to confess them—you go first.