Category Archives: Christian Life

Christian Life, Faith, Friendship, Uncategorized

Everyday Miracles and the “Skinny” on Walt

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I’ll be the first to admit, I have no idea about Walt Whitman’s faith, whether he was a Christian or not.  For all I know he may have been a pantheist, a Universalist, a Buddhist.  He died 120 years ago, so it would be pretty hard to have a conversation with him about it now.

I do hope I meet him in Heaven someday so I can talk to him about his poetry and his process.  I would enjoy gaining some insight into what it’s like to see through his eyes and hear how he crafted his thoughts into such classics.

That said, when I read his poem “Miracles” through my faith grid and spiritual experience, it’s hard for me not to believe that he had some sort of relationship with the Divine.  I read his lovely words about the miracles found in the common and the extraordinary, about the beauty to be found in the streets as well as the fields, and I am inspired to worship.

Somehow, I think that’s what Walt was doing.

Here is his poem, see what you think:

 Miracles

By Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim–the rocks–the motion of the waves–the
ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

If you’re living a “workaround” life like I am (and who among us isn’t, on some level?), recognizing the everyday miracles may often be just what you need to get you through.  For me, they include a sweet friend writing me an email at just the right time to tell me what she appreciates about me; the return of green to the grass after a brutal summer drought; the giant chocolate Lab catching my eye from across the room and thumping his tail in greeting; the discovery of shared faith in the unlikeliest of places.

Will you share one or more of your everyday miracles in the comments below?

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Christian Life, Uncategorized

The Thing About Hands

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“I will not forget you!  See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” Isaiah 49:15b-16a

I can relate to hands, can’t you?  Strong ones, gnarled ones, huge, tiny, soft, capable, calloused, grimy – they come in all varieties.

I have my mother’s hands:  the length of my fingers, the shape of my nails, the skin that is starting to thin.  I notice the similarities more and more as I get older, because it’s her older hands that I recall most clearly.  I find I even fidget with my hands the way she once did, repositioning my rings with my thumb and pinky finger, stiffening and thrumming my fingers when I’m tense.

There’s an extra spark of recognition these days when I look at old photos of her.  She’s rooting through a purse, folding her arms, holding a book.

And she has my hands.

She never learned to play a musical instrument that I know of, but she could type about a jillion words a minute, error-free, whether on a manual typewriter or an IBM Selectric.  When word processing became an option, it was a breeze for her.

She spent hours at the keyboard, fingers flying, typing out the notes she would use to teach her Sunday School class, notes she then printed out in 5 x 8” booklet form.   Sometimes she would even add clip art and decorative embellishments, though no one was going to see her notes but her.

She wasn’t an artist but she was always willing to learn: ceramics, crochet, dress-making – she tried her hand at all.  She was a perfectionist, so smart and yet in many ways so insecure, which meant she always worked harder than most anyone else.

To this day, I treasure the tiny sugar bowl and creamer she shaped and fired in her community center class.  For years I had one of those crocheted doll skirts she made that would fit discreetly over a roll of toilet tissue. (Remember those? The doll stood in the cardboard core).  And I see her clearly in my mind’s eye, bent over the dining room table or kneeling down on the floor, pinning a pattern to fabric.

She penned many a note in the margins of her Bible with those hands and wrote out prayers to her Savior in longhand to tape on the mirror, clip to the refrigerator, or tuck in her purse.  After she died, anything with her handwriting on it became like gold to me, physical evidence of her existence through the words her hands had written.

I love the idea that God wants so much for me to understand the depth of His love for me, He uses human concepts, tangible images I can understand.  Like hands.

Now if I’m fidgeting, if I’m tense, if I nervously ball my fingers into a fist, I think to myself, “Look at me.  I’m turning into Mama.”  And love courses through me like an electric current.  She’s been gone 15 years but she’s really not.  God has given me her hands and I am so thankful.

I think of my mother when I look at my hands and I am reminded of the love I will always have for her.  And I picture Jesus thinking of me when He looks at His hands, with nail scars that bespeak an unfathomable, eternal love.  It undoes me every time.

That’s the thing about hands.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/kwerfeldein/2234720298/”>Martin Gommel</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photo pin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>cc</a>

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Christian Life, Faith, Motherhood

Are You Dreading a Divine Scolding?

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The Hasidim have a tale about a rabbi named Meir
who used to worry that God would reproach him
in his final days and say, “Meir! Why did you not
become Meir?”  

~ Poet David Kirby, “Mr. Dithers Explains It All”

The problem I have – and this is part of leading a “workaround” life – is that I am painfully aware I did not become who I thought I would become.  I mean, seriously, this did not work out the way I envisioned it would, on SO many levels.

I’m pretty sure if I had another chance, I would skip over the pesky derailments and embarrassing failures.  I would try harder to orchestrate things so that my life was more honorable and certainly more significant – in my mind, I would be a “better” person, if I could do it all over.

Does that mean I have not “become Diane” and that I should expect a divine reproach someday?

I was talking to my brother the other day about how as parents we try so hard to protect our children, to keep them from making the same mistakes we made.  We want to spare them the pain and embarrassment we suffered, the setbacks and failures we brought on ourselves.  And if we’re honest, there’s a part of us that wants to correct our own screw-ups through our kids which is of course, impossible.  Maybe it’s a kind of redemption that we are trying to engineer for ourselves: a do-over through our children.

Wow, that is so NOT Biblical, but it is pretty common.  That hovering and overprotecting is where we get the term “helicopter parents”.

I think that desire to protect our sons and daughters comes from a good place, a tender heart-shaped place.  But my brother, wise sage that he is, reminded me that kids have to make their own mistakes and learn from them like we did so they can become who they are supposed to be.  He pointed out the application in my own life, how if I had done things differently, I wouldn’t be who I am now.  And then he observed that my life has turned out pretty well and I’m in a good place, so it’s not all bad.  (Thanks, bro.)

Yes, there are many things I would change if I could, but news flash:  It’s not going to happen.  This is my workaround life and it’s not perfect but, really, is anyone’s?

So about that divine reproach: I don’t think God is going to scold me for not becoming Diane.  I think perhaps He will reveal to me the many ways He creatively redeemed all those blunders and made me exactly who He knew I would become all along.

And I think He’s going to tell me again how wildly He loves me, just the way I am.

Are you living a workaround life?  Is there a part of you that has ever wondered whether God is going to berate you someday for not “turning out” better?  For not using your one and only life a little more wisely?  Your thoughts and comments are invited ~  

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Animal lessons, Christian Life, Pets

Rats with Good PR

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Trespasser in my yard this morning

Sometimes you can get away with being destructive and annoying, as long as you’re cute, have a fluffy tail . . . and good PR.  Squirrels are like that.  They are members of the rodent family, but they are from the better-looking side.

We tend to treat everyone – including wild animals – differently when they’re adorable.  

We see squirrels in our yards and trees, in our parks, on running paths, near our picnic tables, and we don’t freak out.  We’re amused by their lightning-fast antics.  Some people even toss them a scrap of food and encourage them to come closer.

It’s true that given a chance, they’ll raid your bird feeder and dig holes in places you wish they wouldn’t.  They sometimes get in your attic and have families up there, which is generally frowned upon.

But they’re frisky and furtive and they mainly keep their distance.  When they do come close, we’re not particularly threatened (unless your mother has warned you that “wild animals that act docile are probably rabid!”)

But put a rat the same size in the same locations and we’d be screaming our lungs out (and I, for one, would be googling the nearest exterminator).  We wouldn’t be encouraging them with food or thinking they’re precious.

It’s all in the packaging.

People can be like that.  They can look good on the outside and behave according to others’ expectations.  They can be industrious and well-behaved, even entertaining.  But maybe they’re not really like that on the inside.

Maybe we’re all rats; some of us just have better PR.

What do you think? 

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Christian Life, Community, Faith, Grief

How to Create an Oasis When Life is a Desert

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We were somewhere in the Western Caribbean between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands when I first met Erica McNeal.  A group of about 100 of us were considering how to best use the communication gifts God had given us and we were doing it while enjoying the beauty of His creation on a cruise for “Christian Creatives”.  Not a bad gig.

It was formal dinner night and Erica sat down at the same table as me.  She was vivacious and friendly, a genuine “people person” with a winsome smile and that way of focusing on your face when you talk that makes you feel she is truly interested in what you have to say.  That’s a gift I wish I had.

When she told me she was writing a book to help people see the grief process as healthy and natural, I was a little surprised.  I mean, that’s kind of heavy, right?  Then she said she wanted to give people practical ways to respond to their grieving friends and loved ones, and I was skeptical.  After all, that’s a pretty tall order for one so young and lively.  What could she possibly know about pain that cut so deep it required a guidebook to navigate?

Then she told me a little of her story:

“By the time I was thirty-two years old, I had already suffered through radiation treatments and nearly died from chemo to beat cancer three times. I had made life and death decisions about my tiny baby girl born at twenty-two-and-a-half weeks gestation and lost her only 80 minutes after she was born.  And after falling in love, I handed a child I believed in my soul was meant to be my son, back to his birth mother when she decided to revoke his adoption plan.”

What she said next really stunned me, but then it made perfect sense:

“The reality is: the worst pain in life doesn’t always come from illness, child-loss, death, or even grief itself. Often, the greatest obstacles to overcome are the unintended hurt caused by painful words spoken and things done or not done by those in our support system that care for us.”

She knew what people said to her and her husband, often in a well-meaning way, that had stunted their recovery process and wanted to spare others that pain.  She wanted to share specific encouragement and  alternative approaches that would be so much more helpful.

It’s a little over a year later now and her book, Good Grief!: How To Create an Oasis When Life is a Desert, is launching today!  She sent me a preview copy and after I read it, my response was, “Wow, she nailed it”.

Erica challenges the way Christians sometimes view 1 Corinthians 10:13 – that God will not give us more than we can handle.  Her experience is that God will allow us to be stretched beyond our human capabilities in order to show us our need for Him.

If you’ve ever wondered what to say (or not say) to someone who is grieving, what tangible ways you can help and support them, how to specifically pray,  even how to recognize warning signs that they may be succumbing to depression, it’s all in this book.  She also outlines a process she calls “breaking it down”, where she gives an example of how to  use the Bible as a road map for lowering anxiety and stress, a simple but very effective exercise that has application to other areas of life.

As Erica says,  “Learn from the triumphs and tragedies of others.  Life is too short to experience everything yourself.”  This book will help you do that.  It is convicting but never condemning, enlightening but never trite.

Giveaways

As part of her launch this week, Erica has some great giveaways.  If you purchase a copy of Good Grief between June 11th – 16th at http://amzn.to/goodgrieflaunch and send your receipt to goodgriefgifts@gmail.com, you’ll have a chance to win free books, gift cards, podcasts, study guides and more.  Go to Erica’s website at www.ericamcneal.com for details.  And be sure to follow Erica on Twitter:  @toddanderica .


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Christian Life, Faith

The Significance of a Single, Well-Lived Life

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While our culture values flash and sizzle and the goal of many continues to be fame and fortune, one trait always equals success in God’s economy:  faithfulness.  I am privileged to have been raised by a father who modeled that trait every day of his life and continues to do so at almost 90 years old.

This remarkable man, Wallace Rivers, is featured today on Jeremy Statton’s blog: www.jeremystatton.com/wallace-rivers.  Won’t you stop by and read about him?  And while you’re there, enjoy all the other great content Jeremy has to offer to help you “live a better story”.

“Children’s children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children.” Proverbs 17:6 (NIV)

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Christian Life, Pets, Prayer, Uncategorized

A Lesson from Smudge the Dog

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Last Sunday I came home from church and Smudge, our 15 ½ year old Jack Russell terrier, was SO glad to see me it was, well, ridiculous.  Dancing around, doing spins, leaping in the air, yipping like a puppy.

I was kind of pleased at first – I mean, who doesn’t want to get that kind of crazy-happy welcome?  (I am pretty awesome.)  But then she just wouldn’t calm down.  She IS a Jack Russell.  I wanted the mayhem to stop so I reprimanded her firmly.

Didn’t work.

Then, you know what I realized?  SHE DIDN’T HAVE ANY WATER.

She was glad to see me because she knew I was the answer to her problem: She was thirsty, I was the source of water, and that made her happy!  She trusted that now that I was home and she had my attention, she was going to get what she needed.

That didn’t initially occur to me because it wasn’t the kind of reaction I might have had if I were dependent on someone else to meet my basic needs.   I would have probably been all whiny and dramatic, maybe trying to elicit guilt or pity to get what I needed.

But not Smudge.

I started thinking about whether that would be a better approach for me as a human.  What if when I am confused or fearful, instead of praying about it in a whining, begging kind of way, I truly believed that prayer would reveal the answer to me and I got excited?  Seriously, that’s not my default response.

How humbling.

And yet, isn’t God the source of all that I need?  Maybe not always what I want in the moment, but truly what I need?  What if I really came to grips with that and with the fact that when I pray, I have God’s attention, and He is far more faithful to give me what’s best for me than I am to give Smudge what’s best for her?

I’m going to try that.  I’m going to pray and focus on the fact that God knows and wants what’s best for me and I’m going to choose to be excited for that.  I may not dance around and spin.  I certainly won’t yip like a puppy (how undignified), but I’m going to trust that He’s the Giver of all good gifts and He wants to give His best to me.

It worked for Smudge.  She got a full bowl of clean, cool water and lapped it up appreciatively.

How do you approach God – exuberant and expectant like Smudge, knowing you’re going to get what you need?  Or tentative and apologetic, like me?  Have you ever learned a lesson about God from your pet(s)?  Please share in the comments!

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Christian Life, Uncategorized

Is This An Alien Footprint?

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Maybe.  I’ve wondered and imagined and told random children it was.  But the truth is, before I bought my house 22 years ago, my neighbors tell me there was a fish pond in the backyard.  It had a sidewalk leading up to it and a little bridge going over it.

Sounds lovely.

When they decided they were done with the annoying upkeep, though, apparently they broke up the sidewalk and took out the bridge, then just filled the fish pond with dirt and planted grass on top of it.  Now every time the temperature goes above 80 or two days pass without rain, the grass dies in this shape.

Ugh.

I didn’t know this before I bought the house because I closed on it in the middle of winter, when there was snow covering the grass.

I once talked to a landscaping service about digging the darn thing up and it was just too expensive, so I live with this ugly eyesore in my backyard.  It’s a good reminder of a couple of things:

  1. Deep roots are critical for real growth.  That’s such an in-your-face object lesson it almost doesn’t even need to be said.  But I sometimes need to be reminded that I can be as shallow as that grass if I don’t cultivate some depth in my life.
  2. What’s buried never really goes away.  My lawn looks great as long as the conditions are ideal.  But that fish pond is still there, heavy and useless, just under the surface.  If I want a perfect backyard (is there such a thing?), I’m going to have to get that thing taken out.  It’s going to cost me and it’s going to be involved.   What’s buried in my life that needs to be removed for me to be healthy?
  3. I settle for less than perfection a lot.   That’s not really a bad thing, as long as I don’t get all frustrated and weird when things aren’t perfect.  If I don’t want to have to explain the dead patch to guests, I either have to get it fixed or I have to not care.  But I can’t get mad at the grass for not growing.

What do you see in this patch of dead grass?  Are there any other lessons to be learned (or are there any bored landscapers out there who find it offensive and want to come help me out?)

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Christian Life, Faith

The Best Kind of Copycat

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Dreams are weird; I think we can all agree on that.  They rarely make sense and they can be disturbing, especially if there’s spicy food involved.  Sometimes, though, a dream can be thought-provoking, even thrilling, and you don’t want it to end.  Have you ever had one of those?

Not long ago, I dreamed I was running on a flat, rock-strewn desert trail.  I was all alone and I don’t know why I was there.  It was hot and unappealing and I was struggling to keep going.

As I slogged along, a man appeared seemingly out of nowhere up ahead of me who was gliding along effortlessly.  It was mesmerizing to watch him.  It was obvious he was enjoying himself and rather than becoming fatigued, he seemed energized by the effort he was expending. 

I decided to imitate him.  I began to measure my stride so that it matched up with his.  I swung my arms the same way he did and bounced in unison with his steps.

He began to deviate from the path so I did the same and found myself below a huge canopy of trees, still only a few yards behind him.  It was cool and refreshing even though we were increasing our pace and the trees were melting into a blur around us.

Then he adopted a strange skip-like step that made it look like he was floating between footfalls.  Again, I did the same, springing along with the same rhythm and almost immediately, I was looking down on the trees while willing myself upward with my mind.  When I touched the ground, I would catapult back up, higher and higher with each stride.  I kept my eyes on this unusual apparition of a man and did everything he did.  I had the clear sense I could go on forever just by imitating him.  It was invigorating and effortless – I squealed with delight.

And woke myself up.

The dream probably lasted less than a minute in real time but I awoke feeling, of all things, hopeful.  Now isn’t than an unusual thing, to wake up feeling hopeful after a dream that had me floating over rough terrain and bouncing above trees at blinding speed?  I should have been exhausted.

But I think the key in that short dream sequence had been the presence of that man ahead of me and recognizing that if I carefully mirrored his actions and did what he did, I could go far beyond my own natural capabilities.

I’m not saying my dreams always make sense or that I glean any kind of lesson from most of them.  In fact, if I remember them at all, sometimes they just make me sad.  But this one seemed to have a message for me:

How often do I spend my waking hours with my eyes glued in defeat to the craggy trail ahead of me?  How often have I let other people influence my opinion of myself and tell me what I’m capable of?  How many times have I missed seeing “Someone” right in front of me who would show me my real potential, if I just followed the example He set?

My hopefulness came from recognizing that God, through his Holy Spirit, is on this life journey with me.  He wants to lead me and has made it possible for me to hear from Him through prayer and His word.  He has put others on this same desert path with me who have received wisdom from Him that they will gladly share.   I know by letting Him show the way and set the pace, I can bring glory to Him in ways I could never even imagine on my own.

And I was encouraged.

I think the next night I dreamed about a wild-eyed guy at the Secretary of State’s office who had 7-foot dreadlocks and told me his name was Verdunk Isthmus.  I don’t know WHAT that was about.

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Christian Life, Community

I Used the Right Tool the Wrong Way. Again.

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Let’s be honest.  If I wanted to hide, I wouldn’t stick a hundred hedge clippers in the ground and crouch behind them, I’d find a cave or a big rock and hunker down.  If I wanted to protect my skull from fracture, I wouldn’t duct tape a bunch of putty knives to my scalp, I’d get a helmet.

Just like it makes no sense to use hedge clippers as a wall or putty knives as a hat, it makes no sense to reduce my prayers to a defensive tactic – a flurry of words to ward off doom – when they  are intended to be a powerful connection with an Almighty God.

Sadly, I do this regularly.

Here’s an example:  My daughter was having surgery one day last week and I asked everyone I could think of to pray for her.  Neither her life nor her long term health was in danger, but you wouldn’t have known it by the way I was storming the gates of Heaven with my petitions.  I was cowering before God, asking Him to protect her, calm her, make her recovery swift and complete.  And I guess I was hoping that if enough people joined in and echoed my concerns, the numbers might impress Him and He might decide to act. Have you ever done that?

After the surgery, she was in pain for days and the only time I felt I could relax and not worry about her was NOT when I was praying – which would have been the good Christian approach – but when the doctor was with her and reassuring me she was healing just fine.  I had faith that she was safe in the hands of the doctor but apparently I didn’t rest in the knowledge that she was even safer in the arms of the Great Physician.

I pray and pray about things, fearing that if I stop, things will get worse.  It’s as if deep down, I don’t think I’m really going to get a positive answer from God; I’m just trying to hold disaster at bay.  Do I think my volley of words-words-words can do that?

I frantically keep it up, repeating the same requests over and over.  If I were of another faith tradition, I might be lighting candles, chanting mantras, or flailing myself with a stick.   And I would be no more successful in personally controlling the outcome than if I said or did nothing.

My lack of faith astounds me.  And even worse is the way my actions insult God by implying He isn’t good; that He can’t be trusted.

We use the term “prayer warrior”, because our prayers are an offensive weapon – against evil, apathy, and pain.  Our prayers can DO something, not just KEEP something from happening.

I want to be humble in my prayers, accepting that the outcome of all I pray for is ultimately in God’s hands and that He is good.  But I don’t want to be shrinking and sobbing, fearing the worst.  I devalue my own prayers when I do that; I want to be confident that God is trustworthy.

I don’t think I’m alone in this dilemma, am I?

Every Friday I have a standing phone “date” with my Dad, always my go-to spiritual resource and mentor.  I asked him what he thought about this . . . this apparent lack of faith, this weakness of mine.  You know what he told me?

“Honey, the Devil can’t take away your eternal salvation- that is assured – but he can mess with your witness and make you miserable.  He can make you doubt and worry and take your focus off God.  That’s when you run into problems like this.  Just keep your eyes on God.  He’s always glad to hear from you, even when you’re wringing your hands.  I’m sure He just wishes you wouldn’t worry about things He already has under control.”

That’s the key.  Stop letting the Enemy get me in a ditch with his foot on my neck.  Keep my focus on God, not on myself or my need to control things.  Remember that my prayers are a strong connection to the One who has already won the battle and longs to comfort me, not a desperate deflecting tactic from a position of weakness.  I have no reason to be fatalistic when I have all of Heaven on my side.

Can you relate to this?  Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.       

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