God is Our Zip Lock Bag

Ok, before you accuse me of irreverence, bear with me.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 talks about being kept blameless by God. Verse 24 says God is faithful and he will do it.

Now I don't know about you, but I like being blameless. Most people don't like accepting blame, it started with Eve who blamed the serpent and Adam who blamed Eve. I try to own up when I am to blame, but I sure like it when I have no blame on my conscience. I enjoy being blameless.

It's a hard state to accomplish. But these verses tell us that God is here to help. We are not doing this alone.

God is like a zip lock bag. We like to backpack, and you put your stuff in zip lock bags to protect it. That keeps it from getting dirty, or ruined by water, or keeps parts from getting lost. Zip lock bags keep things together, and safe, and clean.

That's the kind of help we need from God. We are not good at keeping ourselves together, or safe, or clean. God wants to help us with that.

We can get out of the bag, we can undo the zipper and let the dirt in, or climb out and roll around in it, or get lost far away.

But if we are willing to stay in God, to stay in the zip lock bag, he will protect us. He will keep us clean and safe and blameless. Not to mention the fact that if we do jump out and make a mess of ourselves, he's willing to clean us up and let us climb back in.

Lack of freedom? To quote Kris Kristofferson, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Real freedom is freedom from blame.

So crawl in your zip lock bag and rest, clean and safe.

Lack of Information

Recently my kids have suffered from lack of information. Junia had conversations related to applying to grad school in which someone could have told her she needed to be retested and saved us the last minute nightmare and exorbitant expense we are now facing. Luke had conversations about trying out for baseball in which someone could have told him he needed NCAA certification and saved us the extra money to rush that process.

I have been pondering why these things happen, but to no avail. I guess it is not other people's responsibility to give us information that we need. Yet we don't always know the questions we need to ask.

Max De Pree says leadership is asking the right questions, and the most important is who do we intend to be, not what are we going to do.

So we didn't ask the right questions, we didn't even know what the questions were. As for how they relate to who we intend to be, we'll have to trust that somehow God is using these frustrations to build us into those people.

These are definitely temporary battles, looming large in this moment but shrinking into insignificance in the course of our lifetime.

Lord help me to keep that in perspective when all I can see is the windmill I am fighting.

Goals

This week when our children were all home we talked about goals for this year. Here are some of mine, not in order of priority or importance.

1. Listen to my toothbrush. My electric toothbrush vibrates to tell me when to switch to a new section to brush and when I have completed the recommended four minutes of brushing. I typically am not paying any attention and just quit when I feel like it. It's not that important to obey my toothbrush, but it's a great analogy for listening to the Holy Spirit who would like to send me signals and suggestions if I were paying attention. Slow down. Listen. Learn. Obey.

2. Decide about a degree. I have been contemplating for two years pursuing a PhD. This year I will either apply or decide not to. If I decide not to do the degree, I still in some form want to do the research that is the driving force behind the degree idea.

3. Write more. This will be off to a positive start when I attend a writer's retreat in September. Not to mention blogging. :)

4. Maximize our effectiveness at church. We have an amazing couple, Randall and Destiny to work with our youth and children. While they are with us this school year I want to really nurture this part of our ministry. Also have more adult fellowship opportunities.

5. Listen more. Besides listening to the Holy Spirit, I want to listen to people more. Being alone a lot when a real live human shows up in person or on the phone I easily talk too much.

6. Reach a healthy weight.

7. Spend more time in daily prayer, reestablish some of the spiritual disciplines I enjoy. See #1.

That should keep me busy.

Forgiveness

Roger is reading a book about forgiveness that says in a good relationship people have 5 good interchanges with one bad. That's like batting 833. Impressive.

I found this encouraging. I'm not sure if I bat that well in the relationships that matter most to me, especially my husband and children. I have begun to worry lately that I needed to stop interacting with them at all because I so easily offend, overstep boundaries, hover and harass.

Those numbers give me hope. To keep the baseball analogy going, you can't get a hit if you don't go to bat. So I guess I have to keep going to the plate.

As I do I'll have to count on forgiveness. God has no trouble drowning our sins in his sea of forgetfulness (Micah 7:19), if only we humans could master that skill. It seems we forget what we want to remember, and remember what we would rather forget.

May God give us all the courage to forgive and be forgiven.

A Sign

Our two daughters chose a small Christian college, a physically safe, spiritually safe place. They didn't chose it because they were looking for a safe place, but that was certainly a nice side benefit.

Our son just moved into a major state university. His dad and sisters have all been concerned about that difference.

18000 undergraduates attend Kentucky. And out of all those students, I know one other than Luke, my cousin Kaitlyn.

On Friday we moved Luke into his dorm. We ate dinner together. Then it was time for him to attend a series of student events while we caught a reception for parents and families. We left Luke and walked a circuitous route to the building where our reception was.

And as we walked down the street toward that building, who should we see out of those thousands of students, but my cousin, Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn who is not only a family member and the only person we know there, but Kaitlyn who is connected into one of the campus ministries and was on her way to the event we left Luke at.

At first we thought she could never find Luke in that crowd, then we remembered he was sporting his Cincinnati Reds attire, a red shirt in a sea of blue, wearing his cap turned backward with Howell printed there. (Kaitlyn had not seen Luke since they were both small). No trouble recognizing him. She found him and was able to direct him to another Christian event following that first one.

Because I was so blown away by that, I called my aunt, who told me we could meet Kaitlyn at her house on Saturday. I had an email about that, but wasn't online and would not have received it in time.

So we would have missed connecting with Kaitlyn all together, prearranged or otherwise, if God had not sent her down Rose Street at just the right moment on Friday.

So what? So the same God who arranged all that in that huge place swarming with thousands of students will continue to look after Luke.

I am reassured.

Give Thanks for All?

My sermon last week was based on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, which says, "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."

On Monday while contemplating giving thanks in all circumstances, I thought about Emily. Her spinal column thinks she has a brain tumor, which she doesn’t, and is sending fluid to her brain. This of course causes tremendous pressure.The pressure became so unbearable that Emily could not eat or sleep. She had pain and nausea. Sleep is often the only release from great pain and discomfort, but even that release was not given to her. At one point she felt like dying, not that she was suicidal, just that death seemed the only release from her suffering. Thankfully a spinal tap has provided some relief, although the medication she is on leaves her drained and needing abundant sleep.

I was thinking about her on Monday in regard to these verses. Then for some reason I got sick myself. I had an extreme headache and nausea, and ended up vomiting twice. I hate to vomit. I know no one loves to, but someone like Roger looks at it like a relief to make you feel better. I resist it until it is unavoidable. So the next day, I was trying to figure out how you give thanks for vomiting. I lost some weight, which is welcome, but I still wasn’t excited about vomiting. I prayed a lot for Emily, feeling in sympathy for her, although her suffering has been much worse, which was a good thing that I was reminded to pray for her and for Don who has also been in great pain, and also vomited this week trying to take pain medication.

Then I remembered that horses can’t vomit. They have no regurgitation reflex. Most animals have a survival instinct that causes them to eat whenever possible, just in case they don’t get fed again. A dog will overeat when it finds a treasure of food, and if it is too much, it vomits it up. Our dog Sunny got some chocolate lately, and she vomited it up, because chocolate is poison to dogs. So that reflex got the poison out of her system. Horses cannot vomit, so if they get into the feed storage and eat a whole can of food, instead of vomiting, they become terribly uncomfortable, often roll on the ground in their attempt to feel better, twist their intestines, and die. Yes, horses can die from overeating because they cannot vomit.

Besides the regurgitation reflex when we are physically sick, sometimes we need to excise some spiritual poison. Sometimes that poison is a grief we are carrying, and the only way to be delivered is to grieve, cry, yell, whatever it takes to allow the grief to escape, instead of allowing it to fester and poison our whole system. Certainly sin needs to be vomited, as well as guilt or shame. Whatever we are holding on to needs to come out.

One method of ridding our systems of poison is to praise. When we give thanks in all circumstances, and begin to pray continually, we will soon found ourselves being joyful always.

So give it up!

One Less

When my dad left my mother in 1973 there was a popular song called One Less Bell to Answer. The song tried to extol the advantages of a man leaving a woman, but the results were melancholy, as seen in the first verse:
One less bell to answer
One less egg to fry
One less man to pick up after
I should be happy
But all I do is cry.

I can still remember the emotions surrounding that song for my abandoned mother. Thankfully, I still have a man to pick up after, and actually Roger picks up more after me that I do him. But by the end of the month, our household will be at half mast.

Having four children, six people at home, and reducing that to just one child and a total of three people, means:
Half the laundry
Half the dirty dishes
Half the stuff left around...or even less
Only one child so we know who left the (fill in the blank) where it doesn't belong (this is where you feel sorry for Wesley)

And as the old song said, I should be happy, but well, I'm working hard to do more than cry, but for sure as I contemplate our diminished household, I can't help but count other things:
Half the hugs and smiles
No other females for girl movies
No one left who enjoys cooking sometimes
No one left who enjoys art museums or shopping
No siblings left for Wesley to divert the focus of parents solely on him
Way less than half the synergy and laughter that spontaneously erupts between our four children

My favorite role is life is mother, and losing your favorite job is heartbreaking. Yet I know God has new horizons, so stay tuned for those developments. Blogging is a start! Certainly writing is an outlet for me, and I even have a writer's retreat planned for September.

More to come!

Starting a Blog

Why? Would you believe because this weekend I watched Julie and Julia? Or because many of my pastor friends do this? Or because I have the audacity to think I might have something to say? Or maybe because I am home alone a lot and need someone to talk to, even if it's in cyberspace?

All true. Yet I pray even more that my journey might comfort, inspire or encourage a fellow traveler. We'll see who comes along for the ride.