The Welcome Home – Page 72 – The Next Chapter

too many good things…

It seems, far too often, that there are so many good things happening that events or milestones or appointments all start to blend together after awhile. It’s as if each event lately has been a gift and with the passing of each day the previous days’ gift is covered up and it takes days of recollection to take out and examine each event, each memory, to see just what’s happened – to reevaluate and apply the lessons learned.

We experience a similar burying of treasures when we attend the believer’s conference at Deer Lake each Labour Day. Between the good teaching, singing, testimonies, baptisms and table conversations, we’re literally overloaded with good things… good things of the Word, good things of God’s work, good things of answers to prayer, good things of changed lives, good things of God’s blessings and on and on. Each year I’ve wanted to occasionally just put the weekend on “pause” so that I could take time to stop and mull over what’s just been shared or what’s going on so that I can slow it down and store it, as it were, to recall later. But, that not being possible, I attempt to take copious notes —notes I’ve reread many times this week. Note-taking helps me to listen more intently… and and to later recall more specifically what was said.

As the LORD would have it, this past weekend was filled with delightful things… great teaching was only one of the outstanding things. As friends have since discussed the talks we heard, each have had comments or highlights that were especially meaningful -and happily, they heard things I didn’t hear or were impressed with things I’d missed and so the blessing is increased. As I look back, I think one of the things that was most prominent to me was the common thread seen throughout the weekend. A common thread that seemed to both bind the messages and link them together — the thread that seemed to demonstrate the guiding of the LORD. Sometimes in life, when messages are shared, there seems to be a disconnect or a disjointed feel to the time… but then, other times, as was the case this past weekend, the messages just seem to flow… sort of like a book and each talk is simply the next chapter of a very instructive book.

We were blessed to have all our children (well, all that live here at home) together for this year’s conference. This has sadly not been the case over the last few years – something I very much regret! I’ve missed having Timothy with us… so it really was a sweet time this year. The traveling and lodging together was a blessing I’ll always treasure. A particular highlight for me, in addition to Hannah’s baptism, was the time of prayer for the missionaries who would be heading to Ghana in the next few months. I was thankful for that time of prayer as I’ll likely often recall that evening when Timothy is somewhere in Ghana and I’m seeking the comfort of the Lord and the assurance of His presence and protection. It was a blessing to hear the long-time missionary share of the plans for Ghana and then to talk with him and his wife about the plans ahead. I have always known that Timothy has a particular call on his life and God will use him for His glory. As he walks with the Lord, it is evident to me that God has great plans for him. I do know that there is no safer place in the world than in the Hand of the Lord… and nowhere on earth is safe outside the will of God. I don’t fret about all that lies ahead—it’s clear to me that God’s leading; I pray His will be done.

Hannah’s Baptism

This is the first of several posts…

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”
3John 1.4

hannahbaptism

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Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ
were baptized into his death?
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death:
that like as Christ was raised up from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Romans 6.3-4

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… that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,
With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one
another n love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are
called n one hope of our calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
One God and Father of all,
who is above all, nd through all, and in you all.
But unto every one of us is given grace according
to the measure of the gift of Christ.
Ephesians 4.1-7

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Hannah’s baptism… we praise the Lord for the gift of Hannah.

A life profound

True story.

I was shopping today at the restaurant supply store. A checker (who is older than me, by the way) I’ve seen many times over the years asked me if I always wear my hair this way.

(you know… undyed, twisted up in a bun)

I smiled and said, “Yes, I do.”
He said, “It looks so nice. You remind me of my grandmother.”
I smiled. I think I looked down. (wincing and smiling)
He said, “No, no, no. That’s the highest compliment I could give you. Really.”
I tucked my debit card into my wallet… picked up my keys and cellphone.
I thanked him…

Still smiling as I pulled the flatbed cart to the door, then waved and said good bye.

Hmmmmm. A life profound.

A few decades

More or less. That’s what we have on this earth: a few decades, more or less.

And I’m beginning to see that the more or less depends not so much on length of time or number of decades as the use of the days and time in each decade. My friend sent me a song… “A Life Profound” by Mica Lee Williams. I listened. I listened again. Because we’re not really familiar with her music, I’m not sure I, or my friend, would likely recommend all of her music or style or spiritual position… I just don’t know. But there’s something about the song… And I decided to listen to it/read it in light of the LORD – in light of Scripture.

A Life Profound

There is a reason for believing in the seasons
To know that spring will always come around
It’s to begin again though there seems no means to this end
Before one lays a body down
But things that die and wither soon will find new roots and tether
To gather strength beneath the ground
I think that
Far too many soon forget the sound of their own laughter
Far too quickly we move swiftly towards the ever after
But I will stake my claim and I will find the rapture
Of a life profound
I cannot manage to estimate the damage
Of holding deep regret that seeks to pull us down
I see my life as a vessel traveling swift and light
I seek my wrongs to right where I run aground
And the wind that fills these sails speaks metaphors and fairytales
That never fail to set me safely down
I think that
Far too often we forget exactly what we’re after
And far too soon we skip the book to read the final chapter
But I will savor in each moment I can capture
Of a life profound
When fortune wheels spin around it’s good to stay in the middle of it
Cuz yes luck she is a tricky one, but there is joy in the riddle of it
And all that can be lost in another way can be won
And there in lies the meaning.”

I listened again and mull over the message… ” all too soon we forget exactly what we’re after… far too soon we skip the book and read the final chapter… but I will savour in each moment I can capture… of a life profound.”

I quit listening… but the message continues to play in my head. Am I missing the here and now for what was and what I fear lies ahead? Am I skipping the now and am I forgetting what I’m to be after? Is there any deep regret that’s pulling me down? I know… lately (for for a long lately) I’ve been pretty involved with this post-childbearing season. I’ve been pretty preoccupied with the loss… the passage of time. I mean I should’ve seen all this coming… I mean, I did read Gail Sheehy’s Passages in the 70’s and I should’ve seen these seasons coming. But I didn’t. I didn’t see a lot of stuff coming. Not really.

I’ve often asked the LORD to use my life to make a difference. I don’t want to be ordinary and I don’t want to pass silently through life never making foot prints in the sand or heart prints on people’s lives. I don’t want to have had the great gift of life and then wasted it. A I surely don’t want to have wasted the greatest blessing of all: motherhood. I want to have had a life profound.

I don’t want the ‘p’ of my first name to simply be an initial that stands for my given name. No… I want it to be more than that. I want to have been patient. present. pleasant. practical. passionate. private. provocative. peaceful. prolific. poised. prompt. proved. polite. productive. plentiful. prayerful. pardoning. prudent. pondering. playful. persistent. philosophical. pure. and profound. and phunny.

But most of all… I want my life to matter to and for Jesus… for these few decades I have on this earth.

(thank you, Kelli, for the song – I do love you)

It’s interesting to be living long enough to see history

repeat itself.

I heard that sort of thing from my mother growing up. I read about history repeating itself in school, in letters and in magazines in dentist’s offices over the years. I read about it in Ecclesiastes. The more I read the more I see it. The longer I live I see it: History repeating itself.

So I was driving along and a song popped in my head and I must’ve been humming… one of the children said, O, that’s a new ____ song. I thought… no, no… that’s an old song. What? You *know* that song? Yes… it was… Harry Nillson… 1971… I was in the… …drifting off. And then it was affirmed to me once again: there is nothing new under the sun (in addition to: vanity of vanities; all is vanity) and the more things change, the more they stay the same. And children are still surprised at life that happened before they were born. Back before… wow, CD players.

I was talking with a young mom and she was lamenting the length of days and the monotony of repetition. I told her, as is my oft repeated mantra these days: this will pass and you will cry for these days. She sort of glazed over when I continued on telling her that these days will be the past all too quickly and she’ll miss them with a physical ache she cannot comprehend at this point in time – but there will come a time that she will, indeed, cry for these days. A curious blend of regret, longing, missing, hope and love. She cannot see that now. All she can see is the daily-ness of today. And that’s a problem with young mothers… motherhood is so daily. Too daily for some and they think real life is happening somewhere else (but that’s a lie). All she can see is the endless mountains of laundry, valleys of despair and dishes mounting in the sink.

I told her she would, one day, be telling another mother these same things. She will be able to tell that future mother more convincingly if she embraces these days and loves motherhood with unreserved abandon. But if she hates these days and continues rejecting God’s precious gift of motherhood… then… she won’t have much to tell that future mother and will certainly leave no joy in her children’s memories of her. History will repeat itself… the daughters will become mothers and who will encourage them? Who will cheer them on? Will they reject or embrace motherhood? Will they be sweet mothers?

I hope she will live long enough to see history. I pray it’s sweet.

So, I was mindful today as I was reading through some articles and noticing a common thread… what mothers went through yesterday, mothers face anew today— but it’s not new, not really. It’s the next chapter. It’s the same thing only different. Different bcz of history. By this I mean that what we face today we have faced already – just differently. As mothers we’ve waited and waited and waited for, say, the birth of the next baby. Then we waited and waited and waited for this or that milestone. Then we waited and waited and waited for the next and so on — History repeating itself. We watch how God worked in a particular situation and then marvel when yet another situation is miraculously covered — History repeating itself. On our behalf. We wait and wait and wait to see history. And you know… for believers what we really want to see is His – story. We all long to see His way and will played out in the lives of our children… and what a blessing it would be to see history played out in our children’s children.

For all of history is HIStory.

family reunions

I never really quite understood ‘family reunions’ and actually never really knew people had them (whatever they were) when I was growing up. I think that’s another of the many casualties of divorce. Broken families don’t have family reunions. I’m not so sure I have grasped the deep seated value of family reunions until this year. O, sure I valued getting together with the family and I’m exceedingly grateful to and for my mother-in-law’s foresight to initiate our annual family reunions — but I’m not sure I have grasped the significance or importance until now. Trouble is… family reunions are by nature one-sided. And in a family with many children, in years to come, our family will be multifaceted and likely very diverse.

So what’s the significance or what’s the great value in family reunions? Well, the significance is identification and remembrance. You gather with people you may or may not have been friends with outside of family and you share a particular history – a commonality that you don’t share with others. Now, I’ve heard it said (and have said so myself) that there’s a closeness with, say, church family that one doesn’t have with family, but there’s something with family that we only have with family. When it all comes down to the basics, it’s family that we all take responsibility for. Family reunions remind us of that. They remind us, too, of where we’ve been — the events that we’ve shared and seasons we’ve passed through (whether together or not). And if you’ve got “picture-takers” or scrapbookers in your family, you’ll have ample opportunity to see where you’ve been. You’ll have opportunity to reminisce (or cringe) over days gone by and you’ll have a thread that you can follow through the years.

Each year, my husband’s side of our family gathers (usually at the Oregon Coast) and we have a bunch of “traditional” things we do. Some traditions I think would be better served if they were left to old memories, but some really love the annual egg toss and water-balloon ~~fight~~ toss. I’m also thinking that if we’re going to get in the van and drive a long distance… I’d sure rather drive a little longer and reach the sunshine! I can have rain most any day and cloudy most every day… the Coast is beautiful… but I’m of a mind that heat would be a delightful ingredient to the beach atmosphere! Over the years our ‘responsibilities’ have ‘evolved’ as family size and abilities change. But, generally, each of the brothers or sisters families take a day for meals and family devotions/singing/activities. Because we’ve increased in number, we now rent two homes on the beach instead of one and so we go back and forth between the homes. There’s lots of visiting, laughter and picture sharing… lots of great food and lots of sandy laundry and as each family grows, more memories are made as more events are shared and recorded. There’s a downside, too, and that is that from year to year the ‘make-up’ of the group has changed… and as we think ahead, there will necessarily be more loss and sorrow. We’ve shared those griefs together and have seen the Hand of the LORD in our midst… we pour over the photos, retell the stories, weep for what was and isn’t – laugh over what was and will be. But that’s also what families do… they sorrow together and share losses — not just the additions and achievements. Sorrow is a necessary part of life… it’s a mix of joy and pain and families face all of these… they’re what make up the photo albums and strengthen the fabric of the family.

It seems that with every reunion, there’s a change… an addition, a loss, a significant milestone, and more. Each family member has welcomed the ~~outcasts~~ “outsiders” and children born into each of the sibling’s families and the family tree grows stronger and, I think, more beautiful with each addition. I think it has taken time for this to be evident, but it’s interesting how each addition rounds out the family and increases the value of each member. I hope this tradition continues long after we’re gone so that our children’s children will have something to carry on — something to build on. Pictures and their own memories will have paved the way.

just popping in to say: hey!

The Welcome Home Blog entries will resume tomorrow… vacationing is such(!) hard work! ;o)

I’ll be looking at the moon…

I have sort of thing going with my children… when they’re away, I tell them that when they go outside and see the moon… I’ll be looking at the moon and I’ll be seeing the same thing they’re seeing. There’s something strangely comforting in all that… something connecting. I guess, in a way, that if I’m able to see the moon at the same time they’re seeing it… well… then they must not be all that far away.

Now, when Kathryn was in Uganda, however, my comfort was simply in knowing that the same God who sees me, loves me, pardons me, protects and provides for me – well, He’s the same God doing all that for her. So, though I couldn’t see the moon at the same time she was seeing it… somehow I had great comfort at the reminder that she did see it… just earlier.

So, Hanny… I’ll be looking at the moon, and I’ll be seeing you.

Re-imaging God

You may be saying… wha…? I know. Incredible. I almost hesitate to write about this bcz of the blasphemous nature of the topic, but I share this, in part, to urge awareness… to urge believers to pray and to urge believers to “wake up” and see the turns of events in the world around us.

The more time goes by we’re seeing incredible leaps and departures from the Truth. As if the ‘seeker felt-needs-meet-my-wants’ trend wasn’t extreme enough, and as if the contemplative, mysticism wasn’t enough of a departure, now we have yet another perversion of Truth: the heretical, “re-imaging” of God – “the re-imaging of God by [this, from the “herchurch” website] by claiming her [sic] feminine persona in thealogy [~~sick~~ sic], liturgy, church structure, art, language, practices, leadership, and acts of justice. Challenging the church’s restricted language of the past, we pay special attention to images and metaphors that attempt to embrace divine fullness and that offer a witness of holy nurture and inclusive justice, both to the church and to the world.”

I see a bit of where the departure might have begun (well… in addition to that incident in the garden) – at least, in part, it may have begun with the stretching of the meaning of one of the names of God: El Shaddai. El Shaddai means God Almighty – God All Sufficient. Further, Shad means breastinHebrew; thus, the stretch that God is female – the sustainer, the life-giver as women are and then the broad (pun unintended) assumption that God is actually female — you may sometimes hear: mother God. Or, in a stretch Father-Mother God. The “re-imaging” of God is not new… but it is grievous nonetheless.

In the make-me-feel-good-tell-me-what-I-want-to-hear “church” today, it’s no wonder the “re-imaging” can be taking place. And it may be embraced in surprising places… for, consider that even hairy potter books (misspelling intentional) are tolerated – even lauded by *christians* around the world. Each has a place in the hall of shame. It’s a pathetic situation when “theologians” teachers – preachers – miss the dark side or the forbidden in Scripture: dabbling in occultic practices. Recommending those books is akin to recommending yoga or any other eastern meditation / spiritual formation and /or the new favourite : contemplative or contemplative spirituality.

The re-imaging of God is happening everywhere… consider that pastors are attempting to see how the church can fit into the homosexual “lifestyle.” Consider that pastors are grappling with attempting to make smooth paths for such “alternative” lifestyles. Can you, for even a moment, consider or imagine a pastor attempting to make way or provision for pedophiles or practicing thieves, murderers, liars, adulterers… on and on. See? See the shift in thinking… we’re slowly being trained, ingrained, and indoctrinated to believe the dialectic… that it’s simply a gentle lifestyle choice, not a sin – not an abomination – to ~~be homosexual~~ live a life of a sodomite. See… pedophilia grosses us out, makes us angry, boils our core. But shouldn’t other abominations? Shouldn’t we take a stand against that which stands against God’s natural plan, purpose and design? I take a stand against what violates God’s design. That’s why I say what I say and that’s why all these “lifestyles” that are contrary to God’s design are so grievous. Are the *people* themselves to be condemned? No—the people themselves need salvation (just like me) to know the LORD (as I do) and to serve Him (as I also need/desire/want to/would/should serve Him). The church… following after all the new seductive conversations, drunk on it’s own sensual revelations needs to turn to the God of the Bible, not the godS of this world — and not the godS of other “religions” and not a re-imaged god… but God – the Creator of all things, the Sustainer of all things, our Provider, our LORD and Saviour: God.

Don’t think the slide into the abyss is all that big a deal? Don’t think that all the repackaging of distorted truths is just a bunch of hype? Consider the enormity of the impact these lies are having on “the church” today. I write about this from time to time… not so much to sound an alarm but to say… the alarm is already blaring but the ‘church’ seems so mesmerized and enthralled with itself and is swaying to the beat of repetitive sensual tunes and seems deaf to the alarm and blind to the warning signs.

Curried Chicken Wraps

(courtesy of Ina Garten and The Food Network)
CURRIED CHICKEN WRAPS

3 split (1 1/2 whole) chicken breasts, bone in, skin on
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups good mayonnaise
1/3 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup chutney (recommended: Major Gray’s)
3 tablespoons curry powder
1 cup medium-diced celery (2 large stalks)
1/4 cup chopped scallions, white and green parts (2 scallions)
1/4 cup raisins
1 cup whole roasted, salted cashews, chopped
6 tortillas

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the chicken breasts on a sheet pan and rub the skin with olive oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until the chicken is just cooked. Set aside until cool enough to handle. Remove the meat from the bones, discard the skin, and shred the chicken in pieces. (Time saving tip…you can also just pick up a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store and use that instead!)

For the dressing, combine the mayonnaise, wine, chutney, curry powder, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Process until smooth. Combine the chicken with enough dressing to moisten well. Add the celery, scallions, and raisins, and mix well.

Refrigerate for a few hours to allow the flavors to blend. Add the cashews to the chicken. Fill the center of each tortilla with the chicken mixture. Fold the 2 sides of the tortilla over the filling so that the sides overlap. Roll the tortilla from bottom to top, and cut in half diagonally.