What I learned in July

One of my new fav bloggers is Emily over at http://www.chattingatthesky.com/.  She enjoys ending her month thinking back and blogging about what she learned.  Recently, she asked her readers to chime in.  Well, I doubt I can come up with as many as Emily, but I'll give it a go.  (I had hoped to post this within her time frame, but middleschool camp delayed me.)

1.  This has been an awesome summer here in the Midwest.  The temps have been tolerable for once and I've been able to spend more time outside.

2.  Hubby CAN pick out awesome colors.  He is color blind to many shades of green and red.  But when he took our rescued porch glider to some guys who cleaned it up and "powder-coated" it, he made an awesome choice in colors.  I love it!

3.  I'm loving me some grandbabies!  Three days a week I watch my 6-year-old and 8-month-old granddaughters.  Then once a week (or so) my youngest daughter-momma brings over her 18- and 2-month-olds to spend most of the day.  Awesome!  I love that my "work", processing One Girl bracelet orders for Tiny Hands International (check them out at www.tinyhandsinternational.org) allows me to be available to my extended family.

4.  I miss the phones from Tiny Hands.  In May I was feeling extremely overwhelmed with all that I was doing, including #3 + coordinating product parties for Tiny Hands and answering their phone.  So I resigned from both.  Now, with school fast approaching, I'm missing some of that work.  Hoping to get the phone back soon.  (Nope, no way do I want the product parties back.  Sorry, Aaron.)

5.  I have enjoyed having a sweet kindred spirit back in the states for 3 months.  Has it been 3 months?  That means that 1/2 her time back is over.  Jodi, we need to get together again! (Plans are in the works for next week.)

6.  My mother turned 93.  What have I learned from that?  I have good genes.  Better take care of this old body God gave me for I'm only slightly over 1/2 way there.

7.  With God's help I can make a quilt in less than a month.  Total shock to me!

8.  I don't think I can learn a foreign language at my age.  I did the tutorial sample from Rosetta Stone.  Hmm, not sure I remember anything from it.  It was all . . . Spanish to me!

9.  Going along with #8, I can't remember much of the blogging course I took through ed2go.com.  Like, how am I going to post that photo of my glider? (I DID it!!!) You can teach this old dog new tricks, but you'll have to keep teaching me over and over.

10.  Fav quote that I just found:  "Legalism says God will love us if we are good, while the gospel tells us God will make us good because HE LOVES US."  (I guess this is a quote of CS Lewis cited in Jesus + Nothing = Everything by Tullian Tchividjian.)  July lessons

A Stranger in a Foreign Country

"You are doing something great with your life – when you’re doing all the small things 

with His Great love...

You aren’t a citizen of here working your way into heaven. 

You’re a citizen of heaven working His Way through here."  

(Ann Voskamp over at www.aholyexperience.com)

My favorite writer posted these words a few days ago.  They stirred in me a reminder that caught something deep in my soul.

"You aren't a citizen of here working your way into heaven."  That is me.  I'm not a citizen of here.  This earth, this house, this city, is not my home.  I am not a citizen of this place, down here, below heaven.

How often have I sighed that very feeling trying to release it from my soul?  How often have I had to  replace my thinking from planning and fixing and striving for the accolades and babbles of this world? Wrong thinking that pulls me away from the truth of God's calling.  For "My citizenship is in heaven, from which I wait oh, so anxiously for my Savior."  (My paraphrase of Philippians 3:20).  

I have physical knowledge of this very feeling of not belonging here.  A feeling of longing for another place, that place I called home.  Uprooted from the safety of the United States of America, and planted, transplanted, recklessly sown in the soil of Deutschland (West Germany 1975).  God who was watching over me and Hubby even then though it would be 4 more years before He grabbed hold of us, seemed to toss us there for a time.

I felt that deep unsettledness.  It's a feeling that things are not quite right.  That I'm not home anymore.

At the time I chalked it up to being in a foreign country, being Americans where Americans weren't wanted, being a soldier's wife with very little income.  Everything then was strange: the one-room apartment with German neighbors, the hospital situation where I delivered my second baby, the transportation system of streetcars, buses and autobahns.

I so longed to go home!
  

But looking at it all from this side of the Cross, I could have felt as much at home in Nuremburg as I do here in Nebraska.  I know now that part of my uneasiness stemmed from that in-born heartsong that has yet to feel its Maker's hold on it.  Part of my unsettledness was how lost I was at that time.  B.C.--before Christ.

So even today as I sit at the window in my computer room and look out on my homestead, a small parcel of land with a small brick house and 3 porches and a driveway with my old car, I still feel that unsettledness of not being at home.  Not here.  Not on this side of heaven.

And its that same feeling as I had back in the 70's in Germany.  This is not home.  I'm biding my time, waiting to cross over, hoping to become an Overcomer.

To be an Overcomer I must continue on to live this life that I've been given.  To be an Overcomer I must do and keep doing what God has ordained for me to do, zealous in good works, until the goal is reached.

I know that peace can come even as a foreigner in a strange land.  An Overcomer does not become a resident here in this foreign place.  An Overcomer works out her salvation, doing her Maker's work, keeps at it, turning away from complacency that threatens to suck her heart into wrong workings, wrong thinking, wrong goals.

"He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments;

 and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My father and before His angels.'" (Rev. 3:5)

"'He who overcomes,

 I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, 

and he will not go out from it anymore; 

and I will write on him the name of My God, 

and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.'" (v 12)

"'He who overcomes,

 I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne,

 as I also overcame 

and sat down with My Father on His throne.'" (v 21)

Ah, home.  Back with the Father who created me.  Dressed in my princess clothes.  A pillar of His temple, never to leave again.  Seated as His daughter.

I am a citizen of heaven and I am working out the Maker's plans for me here on this foreign soil. What I do may seem small, even trivial, (diaper changing, sweeping floors, dusting cobwebs) but when done with the expectation that He is coming and He will take me with Him to Paradise, then none of it can be drudgery.

How about you, sister?  Are you a daughter of the King of Kings?  Are you living here and now like a stranger in this foreign land?  Sharing the Good News?  It is my prayer that you are my sister-in-Christ.

"To the only wise God through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever and ever. Amen" 

(Romans 16:27).

Can illness and pain be an idol?

I have heard and read much lately on the idols we North American Christians have.  In fact I've even taught my youth girls about them.

I'm sure you've also heard about them.  You know, those things that in and of themselves are not bad, but if they go unchecked can begin to consume our time, our thoughts, even our hearts.

Living in a college town that seems to worship at the altar of football, I know how sports can become idol-istic.  Foolish fans with faces painted half one color and half another.  (Didn't the Picts paint their faces like that when they went to war?)  The elaborate tailgate parties, you know, the ones with white table clothes and silver chaffing dishes, where the tailgate is nowhere to be seen.

Or there are careers of many kinds, all paying dividends, sucking our lives and our time, requiring more and more of us.

Or eating?  Oh, yes.  I'm going to say it.  Gluttony can be an idol.  I know.  I battle it.

Our families, our bodies, our health, and on and on it goes.

But what about the things that we wouldn't consider to be idols because they aren't good for us?  You might agree with alcohol and drugs.  Sure they can easily become idols. And they are fun--at first.  But then the addiction sets in and our bodies craving makes the worship unbearable.

And then it struck me the other day.  It was a Sunday and my pastor was reviewing his past sermons closing out our study of 1 Corinthians.  And one thing sucked the air out of me.  He asked, "What is the one thing you seem to think about first thing in the morning or last thing at night?"

My answer, plain and simple:  The Pain.

Its not that I dwell on it, nurturing loving thoughts of it.  On the contrary, its usually not nice loving thoughts EVER about The Pain.  Yet, I do think about it first thing in the morning.

You see my fibromyalgia causes muscle and nerve pain most of the time.  I take some meds at night that keep the spasms away so I can sleep.  But as soon as 7:00 am hits, no matter how tired I may still be, The Pain forces me to get up and start moving.  If I don't, I hurt.  If I get up I can take ibuprofen to removes its sting.

And at night it is the same.  Too much pain to sit up any longer, my bed beckons me to come and relax on it.  I toss and turn and wait to fall asleep, trying to appease The Pain for a few hours of peace.

I always measure my response to requests to serve at church through The Pain filter.  Do I think this will cause me stress and thus pain?  And if so, is it worth that suffering?  And how long will it take me to recover from said ministry?  Do I have that time to be "lazy"?

Can you see why I was wondering if The Pain was my idol?

I decided to ask my husband if he thought chronic pain or illness could be an idol?  And in his usual, straight forward, engineering way (which I love about him), he said, "Are you nuts?" (Well, not exactly those words, but definitely the idea.) Even when I explained my thinking he didn't get my point of view.  But that's okay, I love him still.

I knew immediately who would understand my thinking.  Jodi.  Sweet Jodi is a kindred spirit.  We met through emails as I prayed and tried to encourage her in her calling a half a world away.  Jodi was a missionary and I had joined our mission's board.  We emailed back and forth and we found a mutual ability to think in the same "nutty" ways.

And she did understand!  (I knew she would.)  She agreed that yes, idols could be bad things as much as good things.

All this to say, well, nothing in particular.  Just was wondering if chronic pain or illness could be a form of a spiritual idol.  What do you think?

Don't forget to remember

"Bless the LORD, O my soul,

And all that is within me,

  bless His holy name."

-Psalm 103:1

I have been praying Psalm 103 back to God for a few weeks.

I know that these are His words.  His words given to me.  But there is so much weight in His words that better conveys my love and worship of Him.

Especially Psalm 103.

Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits.

That is an awesome reminder.  Of late I have been noticing the many times He reminds me to remember.  Hear that again!  He reminds me to remember.  (I know I'm forgetful but to be reminded to remember--wow!)

We are instructed to remember "the word" (John 15:20), remember not to be arrogant (Rom. 11:18),  remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead (2 Timothy 2:8).

Of God it is said that He remembers His covenants with man (Luke 1:72), and the flip side that He remembers NOT my sins (Hebrews 8:12).

Paul must have had a great memory!  I believe that he had an awesome prayer life.  He often repeats and hammers home how much he remembers to pray for others. "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you" or something like this is read in Philippians 1:3, Rom 1:10, Eph 1:16, 1 Thess 1:2)

Now I'm not a great theologian or teacher.  I merely share here what I have been learning.  So grace is much appreciated.

Remember is defined as "to be mindful of, to remember, to call to mind, to hold in memory, keep in mind" (Strong's Edition, www.studylight.org).

I like that definition.  Call to mind.  Pull it up out of the deep file folders of my mind and then keep it in mind, at the ready, handy.

The Israelites were often told that if they remembered the covenant of God, the Law of God, and did what God commanded, that things would go well with them.  But they failed over and over.

So God reminds me.  He reminds all of us.  Remember.

For me it is a heart issue, this need to remember.  My failing is in that I forget.  Often.  I forget oh so quickly how God has graced me with His joy and mercy in past needful times.  I forget that He is unchanging and He will grant me the strength, again, to accomplish the tasks before me.

For "my cup runneth over" (Psalm 23:5c) with His mercies and strengths.

So I am trying to learn to count my blessings as I've read in One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  (I highly recommend this book on recording, and so remembering, the blessings God gives us.  Find more info at www.aholyexperience.com.) I have found that when I dwell on the blessings, good or bad, writing them down and rereading them often, I can remember.  I can hold them before me, handy, ready to be grabbed hold of when I feel unworthy, weak, on the edge.

And so I have been praying back all the wonderful things that God has given me, listed right out for me there in Psalm 103:

• He pardons all my iniquities
• He heals all my diseases
• H redeems my life from the pit
• He crowns me! with lovingkindness and compassion
• He satisfies my years with good things
• His compassion
• His grace
• He is slow to anger
• He has not dealt with ME according to my sins, according to what I deserve

And so I pray, and thank Him.  And I remember.

His Joy Is My Strength

I have learned the secret of having abundant health and living with chronic pain (a paraphrase of Paul's statement of contentment in Philippians 4:12.) At least I thought I had learned this.

That is until last Sunday.  It was Memorial Day weekend.  We had enjoyed a fun Saturday of drama practice, a movie, then dinner out.  All seemed to be promising a wonderful weekend even with the rain predictions.

But on Sunday I woke feeling, well, not myself.  It wasn't my normal tiredness and The Pain brought on by fibromyalgia and the past stress of a week watching 3 kids and welcoming a grandson into the world. It wasn't a cold or flu bug.  It was, literally, all in my head.  Dizziness.

I shrugged if off and we headed out to coffee at Starbucks then to worship our Lord and Savior.  And why would I shrug it off?  Because I have found that the Lord blesses me when I press on and head for that goal trusting Him to get me through it all. It WAS the last Sunday School class with our graduating 8th graders and I wanted badly to hug a few of them.

But into the 2nd or 3rd worship song, I felt that prickly warm feeling that I have experienced only a few times in my life.  It starts at my shoulders then creeps up my neck to my cheeks and into my scalp.  My vision grew tunnel-ly dark on the edges and bright in the center.  And I knew I would soon hit the floor.

So I sank down to my chair.  (I guess I must have really sank hard because later my hubby told me the guy behind me was ready to catch me!  Thanks Dwight!)

Needless to say, I begged to go home and we did.

I was so let down.  Had my faith failed me?  Was I not trusting as I normally do on Wednesday nights when God would bless me with His joy for my strength?  I had the remembrance that He would help me forget The Pain for those few hours I was loving on the middle school kids.

Now I realize that maybe I have not reached the place where I could stand with Paul and proclaim that I had learned the lesson, the lesson of contentment with pain, the lesson of submission to God's plan for me.

Maybe I needed to be humbled.

Wait!  That is exactly what I have been praying about lately.  Humility.

You see there is such a fine line between being gifted and used by God AND remaining humble.  I have been fearing that I was walking by sight lately, and not truly seeing faith. For over 20 years I have tread the path of encouraging young ladies between 6th and 12th grades.  Twenty years.  That's a long time.  Yet it seems to be so short.

And I think I know why it has not felt so long.  When you are in the center of God's will for your life, His joy covers everything.  Twenty years covered in God's joy is but a blink of the eye.

Twenty years doing the same type of thing with His joy CAN become a habit, something I can do without much preparation.  Something I've been trained to do.  And there lies the rub.  That thin line between relying on His joy as my strength verses relying on what I know I can do.

I have been burdened with these thoughts of late.  Am I walking by sight or by faith.  Sight says you've done this before, you can do it again and again.  Faith says I am nothing in light of my holy God and I can do nothing, No Thing without His strength.

Which do I prefer?  The first because it feels good to accomplish things on my own, feeling like I've learned something over these 20 something years.  Yet, doing it in God's strength is even better.  Before hand when I am preparing and praying it may not seem so easy.  And even during it can seem down right painful.  But afterward when I look back and can see that He worked through me!  Used me!  To accomplish this task, well, that is so much more better.

So I have prayed that God would keep me humble.  That He would empty me of me and make it all about Him.  Like the Toby Mac song, Steal My Show, I want it to be about Him and not me.

Was this His answer to my need to be humble, a physical weakness that kept me home?  Did it drive me to my knees?  I have to admit that it did not.  It is hard to admit weakness when your family is relying on you to be strong and help them out.  I did ignore some things, like the mission work I do on-line, but I couldn't let my girls down.  And I had no strength to enjoy my grandgirls any more than to pray.

Ann Voskamp wrote, "Giving thanks is only this:  making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God." (Ann Voskamp's blog www.aholyexperience.com, post How To Live Through the Really Hard Storms.)

So, this morning, I did what she suggested.  I thanked God for even this:  weakness and stillness.  I thanked Him, though deep down I probably didn't really feel thankful.  But I know with the obedience comes feelings.

I guess I'm still learning the lesson.  I plan to see the Doc tomorrow and see what's up.  In the mean time, I have to keep begging for His joy as my strength.  (Sinus infection: Yup.)

"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13).

The Blessing of Forgetfulness

I have a symptom.  I'm not sure what disease or fact this symptom indicates.  It could be a brain tumor.  But then again, maybe its only old age.

Whatever the cause is, I am getting forgetful.  Make that more forgetful for I have been in LaLa Land most of my life.  (I think that's a symptom of creativity.)

Like in elementary school when I did not hear the music teacher say that I needed to learn the Star Spangled Banner for an all-school concert.  Truly, I do not, to this day, remember her saying I needed to know that.  And I was red-faced humbled to be silent as all the other violinists played!

Lately, though, it seems to create not just a humility in me, but a little concern.  Am I getting Alzheimer?

It happened the other day when hubby and I drove downtown to eat bar-b-q.  We finally found a parking spot after circling the block a few times and as we slowly parked, I looked up and saw the back end of a '57 Chevy mounted above the restaurant as if in a Back To The Future scene it flew right into the bricks.

"When did they put that car there?" I asked my hubby as I craned my neck to stare at the fins.  (Do fins make it a '56?  I can't remember.)  I turned to him as he laughed and demanded, "What?"  His words pierced my soul, "You ask me that every time we come for bar-b-q."  I instantly retorted, "No I don't!"  But I can see by his crooked smile and tilt of his head, that, yes, I have asked that question before.

I swear I do not remember EVER seeing that car end before!  Truly!  And that scares me.

I have put the skillet on the stove and began the slow warming of it (a requirement to these new pans and a necessity to glass-top stoves), then walked away forgetting it was there.  (Thank You, Lord, for nudging me back to reality before a disaster occurs. And now I make sure I set the timer, even for boiling water.)

It's not just the physical realm of forgetfulness that I worry about.  There is also the social aspect.

Sure, people understand when you forget a name, especially when there are over 60 middle school students to remember.  But they laugh when I voice my thinking process of trying to add to a conversation.

Like just yesterday as we watched TV, Gene Simmons came on the screen.  I made a comment about his hair (well, it is right up there with The Trump), and my husband asked, "Do you even know who that is?"  The announcer had said his name, so I knew that much.  And in my befuddled brain, I did know some things, but do you think I could pull out a swift answer?

"Sure," I said.  "He's friends with that guy who is married to that Brit on American Idol, no, wait, America's Got Talent.  You know which one I'm talking about."

Okay, there is some logic in all that muddle.  Truly.  I was trying to say that Mr. Simmons was friends with Ozzie, but you have to know me to understand how I was trying to connect the dots.

Finally, hubby said, "Do you even know what band he is from?"

Confidence grew.  "Kiss."  Score one for my old brain!  "And I was trying to say he was friends with Ozzie."  (And just now, as I write this, I've managed to pull out of my bag of brain cells Sharon Osborne, though I'm not sure I spelled it right!)

Now when you try to do this type of remembering with a group of middle schoolers it doesn't work.  I can't remember the name of movies or actors, but I can sing all the verses of "I Got You, Babe."  Needless to say they don't remember the actors I do, and Sonny and Cher??  Well, you get the idea.

I hope that this loss of memory is due to my age (57) and the fact that I have fibromyalgia, together causing an aged fibro fog. At least that is my excuse today.  By tomorrow I'll have forgotten it!

But being forgetful is not all bad.  Really.  I have learned that it has a wonderful blessing, this forgetfulness. When you can't remember what you had for lunch yesterday, then you can't remember if you have heard this sermon before or read that passage in Scripture.

Think of it!  It's like being a brand new baby Christian all over again!

Even my favorite verses have become brand new to me, speaking anew to my soul the truths that are there by grace.  Those tried and true verses, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice!" (Philippians 4:4), a new every morning.  It can be awesome.

I may not be able to recap the sermon I just enjoyed, or remember where that verse is that I'd like to tuck into a note, but in my heart I know that God is working anew, renewing my soul.

Besides, I take notes for I'm a visual learner.  And if I truly need that nugget of gold-truth from last week's lesson, I can find it--eventually.

I have come to realize that all things are indeed brand new in Christ when you are blessed with forgetfulness.

The Spiciness of Life--Change

(Sorry for the delay.  I wrote this a few weeks ago then forgot how to find my drafts!!  Beginning to think I am to old to learn new tricks--or at least to remember them for long.)

Weather Advisories for the First of May.

It's hard to believe that it is the beginning of May.  Oh, sure my tulips are budding ready to pop open with reds and yellows, black eyes like antannae reaching sun-ward.  And the daffodils are already beginning to droop.

But resting atop of both lovelies, like a mound of quilt batting, is a thick, icey white frozen frosting.  Snow.

Nebraska weather is a topic of discussion all across its flat plains.  The saying goes, and I've heard it used by other people in other states that belt the center of the United States, if you don't like the weather today, wait; for tomorrow it will change.

I am very aware of the fickleness of the plains.  It is historically documented in a mosaic in our state capitol building, The Blizzard of 1888.  That day the morning was sunny, bright and warm, and the prairie school  kids enjoyed playing outside.  But the afternoon brought such a howling wind with snow so thick that people lost their way and died. Or became heroes.

But in my 57 years here, well, minus 3 or 4 years spent in other locations, I cannot recall having snow in May!

It started on Tuesday when the summer-like temps climbed into the 70's, beckoning me outside.  Letting me stroll to the elementary school to retrieve my granddaughter.

But Wednesday was grey and so dark that my grandbaby was sleeping in night-like comfort in her cradle.  Lights were needed all day.  The rain dripped, the wind howled, and the tiny ice pellets we call sleet tinkled against the window panes.  (Was it only 1 day ago I opened those windows and allowed Spring breezes to blow?)

But variety and change truly are the spice to life on the plains.  For just when my soul has wearied of the grey days and impending storms, Spring will break forth in the 2-note love song of a bird searching for a mate.

And this is why I live here in Nebraska. Well, that, and this is where God has planted us for this time period. Who knows (God of course), tomorrow we may move!

(Note:  Instead of moving, God threw us some 100 degree temps!  And only 2 weeks past this post!  Crazy weather we're havin'!)