I’m not kidding when I say there was a glow in the room. My neighbors had invited my daughter and me over to meet their new grandchild – their long awaited, breathlessly anticipated, deeply adored grandchild. They knew how much we had been looking forward to meeting this little one and it was going to work out perfectly. Their daughter and son-in-law would be there with the baby all afternoon. I could hardly contain my excitement.
She was everything we thought she would be and more. Beautiful, angelic, perfect. That is the absolute truth. But what impressed me even more than the preciousness of this child Continue reading When the Circle Widens→
I came across a Gaelic prayer this week that began: “As the hand is made for holding and the eye for seeing, you have fashioned me for joy.” Have you ever considered that? That you are “fashioned for joy”? Is it really possible God intentionally designed and crafted us for joy?
Sometimes it sure doesn’t seem like it.
If the prayer were true, joy would be as foundational to our daily experience as our hand holding a morning cup of coffee or our eyes seeing the hour on the clock. Joy would be natural … and obvious … and so automatic as to barely require thought.
And yet.
There are people in my life – not just acquaintances but friends – who are battling fear-inducing, seemingly insurmountable challenges: treatment for a life threatening disease, a child’s mental illness spiraling out of control, deep betrayal, job loss, marital breakdown, incarceration. These dear people are experiencing life’s lowest blows and I wonder, how are they to find or exude this joy for which they were created? Continue reading Are You Fashioned for Joy?→
My pastor used that phrase this Fathers’ Day as he prayed for the dads in our congregation and I was floored. The truth and responsibility of that observation was sobering, as it should be. Father. Oh, how wonderful it would be if all fathers aspired to be worthy of sharing that title with God. And thankfully, many do.
But today I read a blog post by a dear woman who was only able to overcome the damaging influence of her own father by recounting the negative lessons she learned from him. She concluded that it was the lesson of stubbornness he modeled that ultimately saved her from him.
Reading the comment string on that post was wrenching. Readers shared about dads who had abused, dads who had died, dads who had left, dads who were just emotionally…missing. So many people have had negative experiences with fathers, and as fathers. Continue reading Sharing A Title With God→
For much of my Christian life, I believed I needed to “pray the answers”. My prayers, I thought, should include suggestions for God, ways He could answer my requests. I’d begin with, “If it could be your will, God, would you please ___________,” and then I’d fill in the blank with ideas for how God might respond.
I don’t think I fell into that pattern because I really thought God needed my input; I think it was a way of giving myself a kind of metric so I could know my prayers had been answered.
If things resolved the way I had prayed they would, then God had met my expectations and I was assured once more that yes, God answers prayer.
Last year I spent a fair amount of time focusing on the concept of harmony. It was my “One Word” for the year, taking the place of a litany of resolutions (which I can never keep) and focusing my attention in a singular direction that would be especially helpful to me personally.
Funny how these things work. 2013 is well past but I find I still focus on harmony and I continue to put into practice many of the things I discovered last year. I do believe that was the point of the whole exercise!
Do you know how much energy I expend trying to figure out why some people do and act the way they do? How hard I try to figure out the best way to relate to certain individuals so they either respond in the way I think is appropriate… or at least don’t insult me?
With some, I struggle just to figure out how I can get them to flat leave me alone.
I’m guessing you spend a fair amount of energy, too, trying to balance your interactions with other people, determining how best to communicate, convince . . . or simply not end up in conflict with them. Continue reading A solid strategy … not a bad word→
For 24 years, I’ve lived about a 7-iron shot from the local high school. (If I were a decent golfer, it might be a chip shot, but hey.) I hear the marching band practicing all summer; in the fall, I hear the announcer on the PA calling the football games. I watch the before and after-school traffic jams throughout the winter. Soon I feel a bittersweet pang as I hear names being read off in that same stadium during graduation.
I love high school kids, always have. There’s something so endearing and vulnerable about them, even when they’re posturing and trying to be cool. They’re all insecure, some just hide it better than others. I get that.
When I first moved here, I would get irritated when kids threw trash from their cars as they sped past my house; now, I’m alarmed to see them texting as they go by, still speeding (some things don’t change). And sadly, there’s a whole bullying drama unfolding in my neighborhood lately that has a dark edge to it. That makes me angry…and sad. Continue reading How the high school track team reminds me of God’s faithfulness→
This past week I was looking for something in a closet and came across a box of old handwritten letters. They were still in their original envelopes, held together with rotted rubber bands. I pulled them out and the next thing I knew, I had lost an entire afternoon.
What a kick to read stories from my then-25 year old sister gushing about the new job she had come to love. To revisit my mother’s fretting over her upcoming nursing board exams and hear again, at the end of every letter, how much she loved me. Priceless.
There was my Dad, telling about a fire in the building next door to the church, so hot it melted the plastic curtains in one of the Sunday School rooms and Continue reading A Costly Lesson About Closed Doors→
Growing up, we always spent our summer vacations with my mother’s extended family in South Carolina. We would head north in our un-airconditioned car from Key West, the three of us kids squabbling in the backseat, my mother constantly trying to keep us from killing each other, and my dad at the wheel, clinching his jaw and patiently pressing on.
After an overnight stay with my paternal grandmother in North Florida, we would roll in to Spartanburg the next day to spend a week or so with aunts, uncles, and cousins – interesting characters that fascinate me even now: the snuff-dipping aunt and her ubiquitous spit cup, the uncle who sang “shaped notes” with the men’s quartet and insisted there was a goat under the house, the eccentric aunt who pretended to read palms, and the gruff uncle who we thought was the luckiest man on the planet because he had a plow horse named Molly.
One of my ancient aunts measured how much we loved her by the volume of food we could stuff in our faces at meal time: “Eat! Eat!” (Those of you from the South will recognize that as a specific love language.) I once ate an entire cantaloupe at lunch just to please her.
I was thrilled when one Sunday, some of the older aunts and second cousins pulled out pictures of my mother as a girl about the age I was at that time. In a flurry of excitement, they declared that I looked “just like her” when she was young and they dubbed me “Little Ernie”. (My mother’s name – which I don’t think she ever liked – was Ernestine.) Continue reading They Called Me “Little Ernie”→
I am part of that group known as “GRITS” – girls raised in the south. I was born in Florida and spent my most formative years there. Well before the various ancestry databases were put on the internet (before there was even an internet), both my parents could trace their histories back multiple generations, even as far as the Revolutionary War.
My southern roots run deep; I was well into adulthood before my career prompted me to move away.
I’m more than one of the GRITS, though.
Where my “people” are from is just one of countless labels that could be used to describe me. I’m sure that’s true of you, too. We all anchor our identities in things like where we’re from, our career choices, sports allegiances, religious affiliations, and political parties, to name just a few. These descriptors become part of our personal narrative that helps us (and others) understand who we are. It’s pleasant to discover shared interests – or establish the basis for some good-natured ribbing – in order to enjoy common ground with other people.
But I wonder if there is a different way to think about our roots?
I’m not kidding when I say there was a glow in the room. My neighbors had invited my daughter and me over to meet their new grandchild – their long awaited, breathlessly anticipated, deeply adored grandchild. They knew how much we had been looking forward to meeting this little one and it was going to work out perfectly. Their daughter and son-in-law would be there with the baby all afternoon. I could hardly contain my excitement.
Follow
