Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Here, There, and all Points in Between (September Word Celebration)



 Here is where I am. 
There is where all my great plans are.

There is where I am hoping to go; 
yet often when I do, I find myself wishing again for here

Here is waiting. I am not so good at that.  
Here is where God teaches me trust.

Here time stands still. Here is certain.  
There often is a lane in two directions, paved with fear and regret.

Here is where joy can be found if only I could let my mind stay.
Here is oxygen.
Here is contentment.

One of these days I may learn how to appreciate here.
I may even stop worrying about getting there and realize here is not bad at all.

Here counts blessings.
Here exhales.

There can only truly be enjoyed when it is reached by stepping and standing on the rungs of here.





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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Opportunity with a Side Salad (September Word Celebration)









Before I had a cat of my own, I had no idea that they begged for food like dogs. Had no idea that they would eat beef. Or spaghetti. 

My cat will come of hiding at the mere sound of tin foil or plastic bags, certain that food is the usual companion to those sounds.

When I prepare dinner, she waits on the table, sure she is that a place will be set for her.

 I will not lie. Before the baby came, my cat was the baby. So she is no stranger to being spoiled.

Now that you understand her background, you may fully appreciate her crime.

Last Week my husband and I had sat down to a dinner of Pecan Encrusted Trout (mmm!), when the baby began to scream without ceasing. 

Failed attempts at calming her and a call to the Pediatrician's office later, we were abandoning dinner and heading out the door to the ER.

And. that’s. when. I. saw. her.  
*Brazen*
Oblivious to the situation before us, my cat was eating the fish off our plates, drinking the milk out of our glasses, and licking the pan still sitting on the oven.

So opportunity greeted her like an old friend.
She saw it. 
Welcomed it.
And seized it.



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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

What is Love, Then? (September Word Celebration)



I wrote this for my husband, 
who was gracious enough to let me share it here. 
Call it a summary...



 What is Love, then?

It is moments, both quiet and loud. 
Whispers and screams. 
Mountains peaks and endless valleys.
The heartiest of laughter.
The bitterest of grief.
God in my pocket... God in my questions.
Beginnings and endings.
Holidays and everydays.
Bills and blessings.
In and out of control.
The fire of new challenge, the ashes of past hope.
Nose to the grindstone, head to the floor. 
Bounding and falling.
Times of Jesus.
Times of me.
Sprinting, crawling, Exhaling, gasping...
Sacrifice, bounty, projects, car accidents, vacations, cups of tea, mocha highs, career lows...
Trusting God.
Where is God?
Truth.
Shoulder taps from God.
Falling Christmas trees.
Desks as room dividers (my husband's first and last decorating suggestion).
Obsession, neurosis...
Sighing, laughing, breathing, walking, running....
A million moments weaved together by God, to be the most tremendous gift, sharing all of it with you.





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Monday, September 13, 2010

They Leave All Kinds of Prints (September Word Celebration)



These are some of the beautiful shoes my daughter will probably never wear.

Her feet are long enough, but have not yet become fat enough to keep them on. 

So every day she sets a new record for how fast she can kick them off. 

By the time her feet are chunky enough to hold them, they will be too small.

So they stay beautiful but serve no purpose and see no life.


But it will not always be so...

Some day, they will protect her, give people an impression of who she is and where she is going...


Will she live in these like her mother? 
  Or will she climb the corporate ladder in these?

Will she step into someone else’s shoes when their time is over?

Or will she wear her own where nobody has yet tread?

Will she lead or be content to follow?

Will she walk among the sick and the sorrowful? 

Will she prefer to skip, run, or walk? 

Will she walk with grace, and compassion?

Whatever shoes she wears, I pray they will leave behind footprints that are following Jesus.




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Saturday, September 11, 2010

The Running Rx (September Word Celebration)

 

I love to run...

 

It is the place that my mind is the most quiet. 


It is my prayer time. 

 

My grateful time.

 

I run to find God...

 

It is a spiritual metaphor. The mind willing the body into submission, much like the war between the flesh and the spirit. (Galatians 5:17) 

 

Each step, a shedding of the day's griefs and struggles.

 

Every bead of sweat hitting the ground, telling a tale of determination, persistence, and triumph.

 

It is Victory.

 

It is Freedom.

 

It is *Peace*.

 

It is another mile when you think you can’t go on... *Life*

 

It changes the body.

 

And the mind.

 

It reveals what you are made of.

 

And what you can be.

 

It is raw Strength.

 

It is your heart thanking you.


It is...

...the stride pounding the pavement, perfect to the beat of the rhythm, against the will of the body, in the company of the Almighty

 

Bliss!



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Friday, September 10, 2010

The Ten Cow Wife (September Word Celebration)








Years ago my Pastor included in one of his sermons the story of a man negotiating the procurement of a wife. The story originally ran in Readers Digest. Following is an excerpt:










...Five months ago, at festival time, Johnny came to Kiniwata and found himself a wife. He paid her father ten cows!
He spoke the last words with great solemnity and I knew enough about island customs to be thoroughly impressed. Two or three cows would buy a fair-to-middling wife, four or five a highly satisfactory one.
 
“Ten cows!” I said. “She must have been a beauty that takes your breath away.”
“That's why they laugh,” my guest said. “It would be kindness to call her plain. She was little and skinny with no--ah--endowments. She walked with her shoulders hunched and her head ducked, as if she was trying to hide behind herself. Her cheeks had no color, her eyes never opened beyond a slit and her hair was a tangled mop half over her face. She was scared of her own shadow, frightened by her own voice. She was afraid to laugh in public. She never romped with the girls, so how could she attract the boys?”

“But she attracted Johnny?”


“This is the story [told to me,” he said]:

All the way to the council tent the cousins were urging Sam to try for a good settlement. Ask for three cows, they told him, and hold out for two until you're sure he'll pay one. But Sam was in such a stew and so afraid there would be some slip in this marriage chance for Sarita that they knew he wouldn't hold out for anything. So while they waited they resigned themselves to accepting one cow, and thought, instead, of their luck in getting such a good husband for Sarita. Then Johnny came into the tent and, without waiting for a word from any of them, went straight up to Sam Karoo, grasped his hand and said, ‘Father of Sarita, I offer ten cows for your daughter.’ And he delivered the cows.
 
As soon as it was over Johnny took Sarita to the island of Cho for the first week of marriage. Then they went home to Narabundi and we haven't seen them since. Except at festival time, there's not much travel between the islands.

This story interested me so I decided to investigate.

The next day I reached the island where Johnny lived. When I met the slim, serious man, he welcomed me to his home with a grace that made me feel like the owner. I was glad that from his own people he had respect unmingled with mockery.

I told him that his people had told me about him.
 
‘They speak much of me on that island? What do they say?’

They say you are a sharp trader, I said. They also say the marriage settlement that you made for your wife was ten cows. I paused, then went on, coming as close to a direct question as I could. They wonder why.

‘They say that?’ His eyes lighted with pleasure. He seemed not to have noticed the question. ‘Everyone in Kiniwata knows about the ten cows?’

I nodded.

And in Narabundi everyone knows it, too. His chest expanded with satisfaction. Always and forever, when they speak of marriage settlements, it will be remembered that Johnny Lingo paid ten cows for Sarita.

So that's the answer, I thought with disappointment. All this mystery and wonder and the explanation's only vanity. It's not enough for his ego to be known as the smartest, the strongest, the quickest. He had to make himself famous for his way of buying a wife. I was tempted to deflate him by reporting that in Kiniwata he was laughed at for a fool.

And then I saw her. Through the glass-beaded portieres that simmered in the archway, I watched her enter the adjoining room to place a bowl of blossoms on the dining table. She stood still a moment to smile with sweet gravity at the young man beside me. Then she went swiftly out again. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Not with the beauty of the girl who carries fruit. That now seemed cheap, common, earthbound. This girl had an ethereal loveliness that was at the same time from the heart of nature. The dew-fresh flowers with which she'd pinned back her lustrous black hair accented the glow of her cheeks. The lift of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, the sparkle of her eyes all spelled a pride to which no one could deny her the right. And as she turned to leave she moved with the grace that made her look like a queen who might, with enchantment, turn into a kitten.

When she was out of sight I turned back to Johnny Lingo and found him looking at me with eyes that reflected the pride of the girl's.

‘You admire her?’ he murmured.

She--she's glorious. Who is she?


‘My wife.’

I stared at him blankly. Was this some custom I had not heard about? Do they practice polygamy here? He, for his ten cows, bought both Sarita and this other? Before I could form a question he spoke again.

‘This is only one Sarita.’ His way of saying the words gave them a special significance. ‘Perhaps you wish to say she does not look the way they say she looked in Kiniwata.’

She doesn't. The impact of the girl's appearance made me forget tact. I heard she was homely, or at least nondescript. They all make fun of you because you let yourself by cheated by Sam Karoo.

‘You think he cheated me? You think ten cows were too many?’ A slow smile slid over his lips as I shook my head. ‘She can see her father and her friends again. And they can see her. Do you think anyone will make fun of us then? Much has happened to change her. Much in particular happened the day she went away.’

You mean she married you?

‘That, yes. But most of all, I mean the arrangements for the marriage.’

Arrangements?


‘Do you ever think,’ he asked reflectively, ‘what it does to a woman when she knows that the price her husband has paid is the lowest price for which she can be bought? And then later, when all the women talk, as women do, they boast of what their husbands paid for them. One says four cows, another maybe six. How does she feel--the woman who was sold for one or two? This could not happen to my Sarita.’

Then you paid that unprecedented number of cows just to make your wife happy?


“Happy?’ He seemed to turn the word over on his tongue, as if to test its meaning. ‘I wanted Sarita to be happy, yes, but I wanted more than that. You say she's different from the way they remember her in Kiniwata. This is true. Many things can change a woman. Things that happen inside, things that happen outside. But the thing that matters most is what she thinks about herself. In Kiniwata, Sarita believed she was worth nothing. Now she knows that she is worth more than any other woman on the islands.’

Then you wanted...

‘I wanted to marry Sarita. I loved her and no other woman.’

‘But--’ I was close to understanding.

‘But,’ he finished softly, ‘I wanted a ten-cow wife.’




I was in the midst of major healing in my life at the time of this sermon, so I knew before he even finished the story, the straight line my Pastor was drawing to the Cross. 


“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.




So while we may not be ten cow wives, we are children of God, purchased with the blood of Jesus. There could be no greater worth than that.



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Wednesday, September 8, 2010

September Word Celebration





Joy |joi|
noun
Intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness. 
The expression or manifestation of such feeling.
A source or an object of pleasure or satisfaction.





I have always felt there was a distinct difference between joy and happiness. 
Running after happiness seems to bring anything but.


Happiness is emotional. Fleeting. Temporal.

Joy is a foundation
Joy courses through your veins
Joy is a framework
Joy is eternal

It exists in the midst of suffering and trial

“Weeping may endure for a night, but Joy comes in the morning”

It is free
Found not in the “stuff” of life but rather in it’s moments. 

Often it is simple...
 A fresh breeze
A Baby's smile
A hug from the right person at the right time
The smell of Fall in the air
Coffee (or if you’re me and don’t like coffee, some other ridiculously overpriced beverage) with a trusted friend
Laughing at nothing at all
A steadfast love
*Rain*

Driving with the windows down and a content dog in the back seat 

Watching the movement of life with Classical music as the backdrop (I highly recommend this. I have found even the car wash is beautiful when the machinery appears to be moving with the music) 

The abiding love of God  

What brings you joy? 
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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

30 Days of Words (or 23ish if you are like me and getting a late start..)




I have been inspired by K Mac's Journey of Words, a September blog event where every post centers around a specific word significant to one’s life. Her blog is filled with beautiful, poetic, pithy writings. You know, the kind of writer that makes it seems so easy, you leave thinking you can sit down and write just as brilliantly. (A college literature class also had me convinced I could write like Kerouac...) Anyway, I loved the idea and the wonderful writings that accompanied the idea, so I will attempt to follow suit in my own meager way.

 Call my first one a stream of consciousness....



want |wont, wawnt| 
verb
to wish, need, crave, demand, or desire


I want to be perfect
I want it to be okay that I am not

I want to spend at least one day not beating myself up
I want to remember who I am (Psalms 139:14)

I want to run through the fields of grace (Hebrews 12:1-2; 2 Corinthians 12:9)
I want to feast at the table (Psalms 23:5) 

I want to stand on the knowledge that whatever happens in this life
I. am. still. free. (Romans 8:34-39; Isaiah  53:5)
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