So you say you're not making a difference?

The other day at a church meeting I heard a young mother/wife confess that she's not sure she's doing it right...that maybe she's falling so far short. You know, the "staying-at-home-and-feeling-like-you're-not-contributing-much-to-life" young mother thing?

If you've been there, you know just what I'm talking about...the endless pull by little hands...a house that never looks like the one you dreamed of when you were single...the day after day after day dying to self and feeling guilty when you don't. It's hard. And it's so easy to feel like you're failing...God, yourself, your husband, your kids.

I remember all these things way too clearly today...the daily rush of emotion and the heaviness of futility and the just plain ol' exhaustion of keeping so many balls bouncing when really, what would happen if you let them all drop?

I was in my 20's, which means it was a long long time ago. And I was all those things I just wrote and more. I didn't come from a Christian home, so I had no training in wifeing, or mothering, or so many strengths that would have helped me cope during that overwhelming season of life.

But I did have a friend. And her name was Julie. And if ever I thought angels existed, she was proof. Truthfully, I don't even remember how we met. But all of a sudden she was there. And I mean there. Present. With me. By my side. Loving me in spite of all my unloveableness.

I remember her home...and to this day I think a part of me is still trying to recreate it. She lived passionately, colorfully, fully...tables and shelves piled high with books! Flowers...everywhere! And art that stilled my soul and spoke volumes to my dry and empty spirit! Whenever I was with her I felt hopeful and alive...like life was full of exclamation points! Like maybe someday, I could be like her.

And God knows I tried. All the best in her brought out all the best in me...whether it was loving on children...or tenderly speaking of her precious relationship with Jesus...or building a Godly marriage. She gave all of herself to whomever she was with...and she always, always, let you know that she believed in you...that inside that worn out, tired out, fizzled out you, there was a dancer...and a song...and the grace to follow hard after it.

If anyone ever taught me the value of holiness in a family, the home, and the world, it was her.

Now, many many years later and a mite bit wiser, I see it wasn't so much her I wanted to be like...but the Jesus in her...the incredibly alive relationship she had with Christ, that overflowed and poured out into all those she set her heart on. And I was blessed to be one of them.

I just learned that Julie has died. And I feel like a light has gone out that this world desperately needed. I grieve for her family...for all who knew and loved her. She made a heart-shaped hole in all of us and no one will ever fill it. I'm not Julie. And you're not Julie. She was a custom made one-of-a-kind creation that God broke the mold on.

But, dear one, you can be as Julie to someone in your life...someone who's drowning and sinking and finds it hard to go on. All that God has placed within you is tremendously valuable...chances are it's not something earth shattering...something so big that the whole world is noticing...but it's there. And it's needed. Can you listen? Can you sit with someone? Can you encourage? Can you be available?

These are the things that literally saved my life.

Pouring ourselves out for others is costly....and it's so much easier to guard our hearts and our time.  Julie could have. She could have taken one look at me and thought, "This one's gonna take a lot of me, so I'll pass."  But she didn't.

And now I have 4 children and almost 9 grandchildren and an intact marriage all because someone came alongside of me...who danced in front of me so I could catch the dream.

This is my gift to you, dear Julie...a testimony of a life well lived...no, faithfully lived...no, gloriously lived! All that you gave to me, I shall do my best to pass on to others. And someday, when we're together again, you will grab me by the hand and with that twinkle in your eyes and that sparkling laugh...we will dance.

And then we'll hold out our arms to the others we have loved, and invite them to dance with us also.

A great dance festival of praise and worship to the One who made this dance possible...and to those who labored alongside Him.

You are dearly loved, my friend. Enjoy your forever Home. I'm sure I'll recognize it when I get There.

When you're tired of being Satan's punching bag

So here I sit. At my computer. Thinking that Friday is the worst day to post a blog...and of a hundred things that need to be done right now. But this is where I must be...no matter what day it is or how much I have to do. Because you see, I need to remember something. Something very important. And like a woman who finds herself standing like a mindless zombie in the middle of a food store wondering what she is doing there...why didn't she write out a list?...I, too, must write to remember.

If the Israelites were called to remember, so must I.

Let me set the stage...

Last weekend we attended The Big Weekend Away, our church retreat up in the mountains. Our intention was to go and meet people...to see if God had anything to say...to take time to get away together. But having just come back from a tiring trip to a dreary and colorless Connecticut...and nursing a cold...I was less than excited at the prospect of leaving my warm and color drenched home for another round of dreariness and colorlessness...albeit this time in the mountains of North Carolina.

Going was definitely a case of the Spirit being more willing than the flesh. That and wanting to please my husband who had higher hopes for the weekend than I did...bless his heart. So, off we went...

You know, until this past weekend I had never noticed that we have a high number of extroverts in our church....but we do. Spending a weekend with a group of talkative, hand-raising, worshipful extroverts (who by the way think a Greatest Show on Earth Talent Show and 20's Dance is the absolute best way to spend an evening) is a bit of a stretch for me. Along with a bad first night's sleep I found myself ready to call it quits by early Saturday morning. All I wanted to do was slink back to my quiet, well ordered, and restful home. I couldn't see any part of this weekend ending well. But instead of running, I sat down on the edge of the bed and with tears rolling down my face, asked my husband to pray with me that somehow God would redeem this weekend and work out His will for our being there.

Or else I am going home, I muttered.  The line was drawn. Silly me, I had given God an ultimatum.

When life is out of focus, check your lens

Have you ever done or said something so totally wrong...so foolish... so uncaring that after it's out you wish you could go back and press the delete button?

I have...at least once a day. Most times it happens in my own head, where no human bears the brunt of my stupidity. In my foolishness I believe that I can think what I want and no one will be the worse for it...until those thoughts overflow and burst forth like a machine gun, spraying their harm over anyone within range and causing great damage.

God knows that I wish it weren't so. He and I have been talking about this "thought thing" and how important it is...for my sake and the good of others...to get a hold of what's going on inside.

Remember last week's blog about Pollyanna? Maybe that blog was a precursor to this one...I don't know. But since I wrote it, I have been asking God to help me see the people and circumstances in my life more positively...more hopefully. Like  I said to my daughter the other day, "Thirty years ago I was positive. But at 60, I'm cynical."

And I don't like it. Not at all.

So, I've been trying to turn things around...to look at life through a different lens. Not rose-colored per se as Pollyanna sought to do, but one that removes the haze and and adds clarity to the picture. Basically, I've been asking God to allow me to see life through His eyes and not my own.

And let me tell you, it is a challenge!

Let's take driving for instance...

I know I'm not Pollyanna, but...

Have you ever seen the movie, Pollyanna? The one about a girl who goes through life playing the glad-game and always seeing things on the sunny-side-of-life? The definition of a Pollyanna? One who is excessively cheerful and optimistic. That's her!

But it sure isn't me!

As a child, I loved that movie. I wanted to be like her...a bright ray of sunshine making the whole world...and everyone in it...happy.  I wanted to dress like her, talk like her, be her. But no matter how hard I tried, I never could. Oh, I could keep up the effort for a time or two...or even a day or so...but in the end, I always ended up me: insecure, never sure of what to say, feeling inadequate in most situations...plain ol' me.

Maybe that's when my gift of encouragement first started peeking out of the shadows...only to be eclipsed by my fleshly attempts to drag it out into the open and make it perform like I thought it should...in just the same way that Pollyanna did.

All I know is that I embraced the challenge that a little girl named Pollyanna could meet someone who was unhappy or in pain...and through her cheerfulness and optimism...turn that person into someone who was lovely, hopeful, and changed! She was like a little bit of yeast that turned a whole lump of sticky, gooey humanity into a loaf of bread fit for a king!

There's a lot of truth to the idea that what you read and see as a child and as an adult, leaves an imprint on you...for better or for worse. I still find myself singing that song from our kid's childhoods, "Input, output, what goes in is what comes out...input, output daily you must choose."

All this came to mind this morning as I was reading in 1 Thessalonians where Paul writes...

dear you, never give up

I have begun this post many times over the past few weeks, but each time I shelved it...knowing it wasn't right...that there was still more to be done in my heart and mind until it was ready to be shared...with you, and believe it or not, with myself. So often I  am amazed at what comes out as I sit down to type, trusting that what He's saying is what I often cannot.

On Sunday I will turn 60. Maybe it should be spelled out...sixty...it looks less intimidating that way. I have been dancing around the acceptance of this for months now, at times dreaming of running away before it could happen...going to some exotic place where no one knows who I am or how ancient I  am...a place where I could at least attempt to outrun the inevitable and all the fears that are wrapped around reaching this milestone age.

But I'm still here. And today I realize that there's no place I would rather be. I have dear family coming in this afternoon to celebrate over the weekend, and other loved ones who will join in the party Sunday after church at Paco's Tacos...my go-to place when I need comfort and good food.

Being sick this week has given me time to be still, to sit and reflect and listen for God's heartbeat and not my own rapidly racing one...to spend time pouring through old photos and breathing in all the grace and goodness that is my life...watching rainbows dance across the room each morning as I hugged cups of lemon tea, and wrapped in the stillness that comes at the end of the day as the birds flutter in for one more meal before darkness blankets the earth.

I am blessed. And to think I almost missed this truth! Yes, there is now more behind me than before me. And there's a bittersweet sorrow for all the lost opportunities of my past and for all the dreams of the future that I know now will never materialize. Time is slipping through my open hands and I can no more grasp on to it than I can hold on to a sunbeam.

The sacrament of kindness

I wish I knew how to mark up a computer screen...you know, underline things and make side bar notations on articles I read online so I can find the important stuff later? Like I do in books...

I got up early this morning...way earlier than makes me happy. But there comes a time when all the tossing and turning and flipping and flopping like a beached fish only means you need to surrender...drag yourself out of the comfy coziness...and get the coffee brewing.

Because I'm in a semi-conscious state until coffee hits my nervous system, odd things tend to roll around in my brain...things I've had on my mind...things I didn't know I have on my mind.

Such as the word sanguine. It was the first word to push itself into my consciousness this morning. I slowly recalled that it was a word I had used yesterday in a message with my daughter-in-love. We were attempting to encourage one another which is usually hilarious as we are so similar in personality and temperament that it's like the blind leading the blind! But it's fun...and we usually triumph...and if nothing else, I love listening to her!

Anyway, sanguine. I mentioned that we were both of the sanguine (rhymes with penguin) type and that should explain why we are the way we are. But after I said that I thought, 'Gee, I really should look that word up, because just having a word pop into your head does not mean you know it'. So I Googled it, and as they say I was ROFL...hysterically. Us extroverted? Optimistic? If we were, I'm sure we wouldn't be having a conversation on encouragement! And that thought percolated in my head overnight, until it rudely woke me up in the wee hours of this morning.

So with nothing else to do at 5 am, I decided I needed a perusal of The Four Personality Types to set myself straight. Now this is probably where I am going to lose some of you, but hang in there...I promise I'll not go astray or heretical here!

Let me copy a few main points from the article I started with to show you where I'm going with this...

The Four Temperaments personality system attempts to describe a person's overall attitude towards problems, other people, and life in general in a very broad way.

There are four temperaments, which are combined into twelve pairs called 'blends'. Each person has one of these blends that fits how they are most of the time; it is constant throughout life, not a shifting mood. Temperaments don't change according to circumstances; rather, they determine how we react to situations.

The temperaments are a way of classifying peoples' emotional attitudes, the foundations of their personality. They apply in a very broad strokes way - that is, they are vague rather than specific and detailed - and make no attempt to identify every detail of a person's personality.

Temperaments are not passing moods, or phases in our attitudes. They are the foundation of our emotional natures, which stay constant throughout life (barring perhaps severe brain injury), from birth until death, even though every other aspect of our personality may change.

Our views, our beliefs, our tastes, our confidence levels... All these things DO change while staying bound to a fundamental temperament. The temperament affects how these things change.

Got it? I'll put the link at the bottom of the blog if you want to go deeper...or need things clarified. But for now, this should suffice.

Let me start off by saying that for all my life I've had this crazy image of what I should be...what I should do...how I should act. They say that how you are as a child is a precursor to what you will be like as an adult...and by golly, they were right!

When your heart rips open and love pours out

Didn't I just say that blogs always come on days when I have a dozen other things lined up to do? Well, maybe it's a test to see if I'll be obedient to the Spirit or the flesh. That lends a slight spiritual emphasis to the tension, doesn't it?

Today I want to talk about Buddy...the little gray, some-kind-of-mix-of-mutt dog we took in over 10 years ago. He was found wandering in a town many miles from here and first adopted by a man Ted was working for. Unfortunately this match did not work out, so guess who brought the dog home? Let it be written and known that it was not me this time! For once I was in favor of passing him on...we had just returned from Mexico and I was burned out and felt I did not need one more thing to take care of.

But no matter how hard we tried, Buddy just wasn't meant to be anywhere but here. He joined our pack as the littlest, and maybe the not-so-brightest member. He never bonded with our other two dogs who had such a close relationship that when one of them died, the other mourned. Buddy hated walks with a passion, which is one of my criteria for a good match of any dog for us. He had no special attachment or interest in any of us. The only thing he really loved was food...any time of the day or night, Buddy was ready to eat. Well, now that I think of it, maybe he was a good match for us!

Anyway, Buddy wanted us and that was that. He made it known from the beginning that he would do things his way. For that reason, we had no high expectations for Buddy, and he liked it like that...a life of sleeping, eating, doing his duty, and an occasional turn about the yard made Buddy a happy and contented pup.

But time changes all things...