Waiting and Watching

 

There are times we pause life to wait and watch for some expected event.

 

When death gives sufficient warning, we may keep vigil with a loved one, waiting and watching for the final breath.

 

When the last weeks of pregnancy finally arrive, we wait and watch (and nest) for the predictable rhythm of contractions.

 

When the wedding procession starts, the guests wait and watch for the star of the show to appear at the end of the aisle.

 

When the old year nears midnight, we wait and watch for the tick of the clock that declares the birth of the new year.

 

One of my traditions growing up was to attend a watch night service every New Year’s Eve. If you aren’t familiar with those, here’s the idea. Our church family would gather to wait and watch for the new year together in worship and community.  The typical schedule started at 8pm with singing and a sermon. In the middle we would break for an hour or so of food and fellowship. Then in the last hour of the year, we reconvened in the sanctuary for a time of prayer, the Lord’s Supper and some years we had a good old-fashioned time of feet washing. We drove home after midnight, dodging the party goers, with an open heart ready for another fresh start.

 

Another watch and wait situation was discussed between Jesus and his disciples. Mark recorded his instructions for awaiting his second coming like this.

“My coming can be compared with that of a man who went on a trip to another country. He laid out his employees’ work for them to do while he was gone and told the gatekeeper to watch for his return. Keep a sharp lookout! For you do not know when I will come, at evening, at midnight, early dawn or late daybreak. Don’t let me find you sleeping. Watch for my return! This is my message to you and to everyone else.” [Mark 13:34-37, TLB]

 

In 2022 you’ll find me and fellow believers on watch. We won’t be idle while waiting. We’ll set new goals and keep hands busy. We won’t know the hour or the year or even if He will come back in our lifetimes. But we’re expectant. We’ll be waiting and watching.

Church Girl Musings - Part 4 - Open Hands

 

This is the fourth in a short series of blog posts about being raised a church girl and those who influenced me along the way. The “Church Girl” theme of a recent women’s conference at my church acknowledged the stereotype that labels a church girl with a long list of unrealistic expectations. And it clarified the real definition that a church girl is imperfect and accepted and called whatever God calls her.

One of the women that influenced this church girl was Ibby. Her name was Isabel but everyone called her Ibby.  I watched her closely for the ten years I finished growing up attending the same church where she worshipped.

We got a phone call one Sunday morning when I was 13. I could tell from my mom’s reaction that it was terrible news.  “Oh my – that’s heart breaking – we’ll be praying.”  It was Ibby’s husband, Bill.  He was a brakeman for the Illinois Central Railroad and his train had a collision early that morning.

My family had known Ibby for about five years, but that day she took on a new role for me.  She was one of the first women I witnessed experiencing the transition of widowhood. That bridge between unbearable sorrow to complete sufficiency of a partnership with God.

A few months after her husband’s death, we gave her a ride home from church one night. As we turned on to her street, she cried out with a wail that pierced the quietness of the night.  She had suddenly remembered that he wouldn’t be there when she got home. The depth of her grief that night hit me with such force that my memory of it remains visceral almost fifty years later.

Throughout my teenage years I saw Ibby immerse herself in productive busyness.  She began to augment her income by flipping houses.  In the 70’s that term had not been coined yet, but it’s exactly what she did.  Rather than flipping in a few days or weeks, her strategy was to buy a house and move into it and re-do it while living there over a period of months or a couple years.  My parents and I often visited her to see the before and after of her latest investment.  She had an eye for decorating and a vision for how a house could look with a little paint and updated decor. She took creative pleasure in her handiwork and was always in the middle of a project, stripping an old piece of furniture or sewing a new window treatment.

On Friday nights she often hosted our church youth group at her house.  This was long after her own children were grown and long before her grandchildren were in the youth group.  She reached out to a group of kids who would otherwise be driving the main drag from one side of town to the other. She offered her home and food and company and the gift of a safe place to hang out. She was spunky. She held strong opinions on issues of the day and used her living room platform to give us advice about living right.  She was a woman of prayer and many times prayed a powerful prayer over us before we left her house. She had time for us. She MADE time for us.

Ibby taught me that staying busy and serving others are good ways to survive life’s grief. And she showed me David’s position of open palms of surrender to Him.

My eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you. [Ps 88:9, NIV]

A few weeks before Ibby died, I got to attend her 100^th birthday party,  the only 100^th celebration I’ve ever attended! By then she was not so busy and was letting others serve her. But her hands were still spread open to Him. I know that was her real secret. Thank you, Ibby, from one spunky church girl to another.

I hope my memories have jogged yours. If you are a church girl, who helped make you one? Think beyond the ‘praying grandmother’ and those whose job was to mold you. What about those with a more distant or brief encounter? Who influenced you? Who are you influencing now?

Musings of a Church Girl – Part 3 - Disappointments

 

This is the third in a short series of blog posts about being raised a church girl and those who influenced me along the way. The “Church Girl” theme of a recent women’s conference at my church acknowledged the stereotype that labels a church girl with a long list of unrealistic expectations. And it clarified the real definition that a church girl is imperfect and accepted and called whatever God calls her.

One of the women that influenced this church girl was Mary. She was a member of the small church my family were a part of. She and my mom became good friends, so we spent a lot of time with her. She probably never knew about the big life lesson I learned from watching her just live her life.

Mary taught me that life doesn’t hold back on disappointments just because you are a church girl. Overhearing conversations between Mary and my mom, I gathered that life was hard for her. She had been through a divorce. She worried about a son in the military. She had bills to pay. Her car broke down. She hadn’t had a vacation in a long time. Her pain wasn’t like people who have the heart wrenching loss of a child or a debilitating health problem. It was a duller ache, the one that comes from a string of disappointments.

I’m sure there were disappointments in my parents’ lives too, but the norm at our house was to keep the problems behind closed doors. It’s probably healthier to let your kids see that everything isn’t perfect all the time. But if you didn’t get that from your parents, maybe you saw that from your Mary. What I saw in my Mary was a contrast. She had worries that left lines in her brow. And she had joy that smacked with the rhythm of the chewing gum in her mouth. She had the joy of the Lord at the same time she felt sadness over life’s disappointments.  Life disappoints church girls too.

Thank you, Mary, from one church girl to another. It turns out that life isn’t ever perfect for church girls. I’ve had some disappointments, but like Mary and Nehemiah “the joy of the Lord is my strength.” [Neh 8:10, CSB] And it turns out that kind of strength is a long distance strength.

I hope my memories have jogged yours. If you are a church girl, who helped make you one? Think beyond the ‘praying grandmother’ and those whose job was to mold you. What about those with a more distant or brief encounter? Who influenced you? Who are you influencing now?

Musings of a Church Girl – (Part 2 - First Sunday School Teacher)

 

This is the second in a short series of blog posts about being raised a church girl and those who influenced me along the way. The “Church Girl” theme of a recent women’s conference at my church acknowledged the stereotype that labels a church girl with a long list of unrealistic expectations. And it clarified the real definition that a church girl is imperfect and accepted and called whatever God calls her.

I don’t know this church girl’s name. I can’t even picture what her face looked like. I was a toddler. And she was my teacher in my very first Sunday School class.

What I do remember are the little wooden chairs we sat in, nailed together from old lumber and painted mint green. I remember the sandbox. Not outside on a playground, but in our classroom on a table at just the right height for us to stand at and drag little trucks through the sand.

Most of all I can see the teacher’s form sitting beside the famous flannelgraph board. Flannelgraph was top1960’s technology for Sunday School.  No big screens or flashing lights there. The board was covered in baby blue flannel. Paper cutouts with stripes of yellow sticky on the back would adhere to the flannel. My teacher placed the visuals to build up the scenery of the story while she began to tell it with drama befitting the two and three year old’s sitting around her.  Then she brought the characters to life as she placed them on the flannelgraph. The character I can see in my mind right now is Joseph, sporting his coat of many colors.

Dozens of Bible characters joined Joseph in my mind as my collection of Bible stories grew. They became my heroes and sheroes. Because I was a church girl.

The Sunday School teacher in that class is my shero now. She must have had a million other things to think about that week. Her job. Her family. Her insecurities. Her dreams. Her calling to teach the toddler class. The calling that Christ Himself gave when He said, “Let the little children come to me, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” [Luke 18:16, CSB]

Thank you, faceless Sunday School teacher, from one church girl to another.

I hope my memories have jogged yours. If you are a church girl, who helped make you one? Think beyond the ‘praying grandmother’ and those whose job was to mold you. What about those with a more distant or brief encounter. Who influenced you? Who are you influencing now?

Musings of a Church Girl (Part 1 - Sister Willie Johnson)

 

Church Girl. That was the theme of a recent women’s conference at my church. The theme acknowledged the stereotype that labels a church girl with a long list of unrealistic expectations. And it clarified the real definition that a church girl is imperfect and accepted and called whatever God calls her.

The “church girl” theme has stirred my thinking about my own life as a church girl. Being a church girl doesn’t mean you were raised in a church, but I was. For my parents, church was more than Sunday mornings. Church was our whole life. Our church family became our extended family. If it takes a village, my village was the church. And there were a lot of other church girls in my village who influenced me.

One of my first such influencers was a traveling evangelist named Sister Willie Johnson. I was about five years old when she held a revival at a church in a neighboring town. I remember many evenings after my dad got home from work, my family ate a hurried supper and drove 25 miles to hear her speak at a church in Bay City, Texas.

Sister Willie Johnson was different than other ministers I had seen in my long five years of sitting and sleeping on church pews. She was the first female preacher I had encountered. Sister Johnson broke the stereotype that had already formed in my experience that women were Sunday School teachers and men were preachers. Her words may have been the same as the men, but her delivery was different. She was strong, soft, fierce and gentle all at the same time. She had gravitas. She wore a white dress with a dark cape that dramatically swirled around as she walked from one side of the platform to the other. I did not fall asleep on the pew during any of her sermons. I was captivated!

Sister Johnson also gave me my first experience with a leadership figure who had darker skin than me. She was bi-racial and I realize now that in the mid-1960’s her ministering in mostly white churches must have been a pretty big deal.

What I remember most about her is her singing. She sang before and after her sermon, accompanied by her traveling companion and organist, Charlene Day. Sister Johnson played the tambourine and sang with as much flair as she preached. The song that went on repeat in my mind this week as I thought about her is “We’ve Come This Far by Faith” by Albert A. Goodson.

We’ve come this far by faith,

Leaning on the Lord.

Trusting in his holy word.

He’s never failed us yet.

Oh, Oh, Oh – can’t turn around,

We’ve come this far by faith.

If you know that song, you just sang those Oh Oh Oh’s with your own visceral memory of what you’ve come through in your life. If you haven’t heard it, enjoy this rendition performed by the IGM virtual choir during the 2020 pandemic.  https://youtu.be/ifj0KIhZAdg

I have since learned about some of the things Sister Johnson had come through by the time I sat under her voice. Her story is told in the book “Through the Waters” by author Lori Wagner. Now I better understand how far she had come trusting in the Lord and leaning on His word. audible.com/pd/Through-the-Waters-The-Life-and-Ministry-of-Evangelist-Willie-Johnson-Audiobook/B07SBG7LJB

At five years old I hadn’t lived long enough to have “come this far by faith.” I had a stable childhood in a loving home. Life hadn’t thrown any curve balls my way yet. But I sang with Sister Johnson in the collective church voice because I was a church girl. And later, I would have my own voice of experience about how far I had come. By faith. Leaning on the Lord. Trusting in His holy word. And with a memory verse planted deep enough to take root that “we walk by faith and not sight.” [2 Corinthians 5:7]

I haven’t always been able to see where I was going, but I’ve always been able to walk there by faith. Thank you, Sister Willie Johnson, from one church girl to another.

In the next few blog posts, I will share stories of a few other church girls who influenced me, hoping that my memories will jog yours. Think beyond the ‘praying grandmother’ and those whose job was to mold you. What about those with a more distant or brief encounter. Who influenced you? Who are you influencing?

Letting Go of the Dirt

 

We receive most of our parents’ teachings in the first few years of our lives, mostly from watching what they do. We adopt and reject their customs, behaviors and beliefs based on what we think they got right or wrong.

There is one lesson I learned from my parents towards the end of their lives. They showed me how to let go of stuff. The pieces of this world that we gather along the way. The dirt in our little part of the garden. The things we cherish.

Mom hung on tightly to life through a long terminal illness. But once her doctor measured her life in weeks, she began to go through the rituals of letting go. She asked me to push her wheelchair to visit each room in the house. Her eyes scrolled over each piece of furniture, pictures, floral arrangements as if to capture a screenshot for a moment and then delete it. Cherishing her stuff one last time and then releasing her grip on them. She said nothing except noting when she was ready to move to the next room.

Dad’s method was different. He started the process years before his death. We watched him get rid of the majority of his possessions when he remarried after mom died. He was moving on and his choices of what to keep were more practical than sentimental. We helped him make several more moves after the death of his second wife, from apartments to independent living to assisted living to memory care bedrooms. With each move he wanted fewer and fewer things to go with him. When he died, except for a few family photos, all his belongings fit into a few donation boxes. He had already given us everything else that had meaning.

The two methods of letting go were vastly different, but both acknowledged the temporal nature of this life and the things in it. Mom’s method carried the tenderness to honor her past. Dad’s method carried the courage to walk into his future each time the present ground underneath him shifted. Both were clear that none of it was theirs in the first place and that none of it had any eternal worth.

Mom’s method held the gratitude of Psalm 16:5 “LORD, you are my portion and my cup of blessing; you hold my future.” Dad’s gradual disrobing of stuff embodied Job 1:21 “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will leave this life. The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Both involved letting the dirt of this earth slip through their hands. One held the rich soil in her palms and let it slowly sift through her fingers back onto the earth’s surface. The other scooped the dirt by the handfuls and pitched it over his shoulder. Neither ever looked back at it.

We all have our stuff with different levels of attachment to it. How do you feel about yours? What will be your way of sifting through life’s accumulation? How do you want to let go of the dirt?

Lessons from Abnormal Times

The abnormal era of 2020/2021 is morphing into something like normal again. Some of us just want to get on with life and forget about it. Some of us faced losses that will never be normal. Some of us want to decide what differences we choose to keep. I have been thinking about my takeaways from this season and they boil down to these four.

I eat better at home than in restaurants. We’ve been working on better nutrition at my house. I have learned that our biggest and baddest calories come from eating out. Meal planning, cooking methods and portion control make all the difference and those are just easier to affect when eating at home. I knew this already, but it took a period of only eating at home to really get it.

I can live very cheaply. At this stage of my life my biggest discretionary budget category is ‘travel’, and that spend went to near zero for several months. The ’dining out’ budget was underspent for a long time.  I discovered I spend waaay less money and time on curb-side grocery shopping than in-store grocery shopping.  Fuel underspent. Clothing underspent. I’ve lived on a shoestring in younger days and I can do it again if I ever need to.

I love the birthday candles on a single serving. What were we thinking, spitting all over everyone’s dessert all those years?

I know the who, when and how of peace.

May the Lord of peace himself give you peace always in every way. [2 Thess 3:16, CSB]

Him. Always. In every way.

The first three are little. The last one is big. I pray you take that one with you into your weird times too.

Things That Do Not Exist

 

A few years ago, I became a big fan of a series of books written by Stormie Omartian, beginning with The Power of a Praying Wife. She provided a list of 30 things to pray for in my marriage and challenged me to cycle through those topics every single month. I sat back and watched as the power of prayer strengthened our marriage.

Then I read her next book The Power of a Praying Parent and wished I would have had it while my little ones were growing up. She solved that by publishing The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children. Even if I had missed praying for my children as faithfully as I wished, I had the second chance of praying for them all the way through adulthood. I suggested to a class of older adults at church that they pray for their grandchildren this way, using the Praying Parent version until Stormie published the Grandparent version.

Each day as I prayed for my husband and adult children from a little cheat sheet I had made from her books, I skipped over the ‘praying grandparent’ column. Because I didn’t have grandchildren. Then on a sunny April morning in 2015 as I took my daily walk, the thought occurred to me that I could start praying that column too, because nothing expresses more faith than praying like something that isn’t actually is. Abraham had that kind of faith.

(as it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations”) in the presence of Him whom he believed – God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; [Romans 4:17, NKJV]

What if I prayed for my grandchildren as though they already existed? What if I prayed for what was not, as though it were? Then if grandchildren did arrive someday, there would already be a balance of prayer deposits on their behalf. On that very day, what I did not know was that my first grandchild was in the making. He had 118 days left in the womb of his birth mother who did not yet know she would make the courageous decision to place him into the arms of his parents on the day he was born!

I continue to pray this list daily over each of the grandchildren I now have. I am still amazed at the surprise God had up his sleeve that day when He prompted me to pray for what wasn’t as though it were! It wasn’t the first time I’ve prayed as though a non-existent thing existed. It won’t be the last. But it will always be my favorite!

If you have a secret desire of your heart that seems like a distant possibility, pray as though it’s already done. Resist the fear that you will be even more disappointed if you pray that way and it doesn’t happen. Rather relax in the knowledge that just because you can’t see it, doesn’t make it not so. He might already have it on His divine project plan. A milestone waiting to happen. A miracle in the making. Treat it as though it is. God is a spectacular maker of things that are not yet things.

Nothing New Here

 

The phrase “nothing new” takes on different meanings at different times in life.

 

In childhood, it represents boredom on a lazy summer day.

As in “There is nothing new to do.”

 

In early adulthood, it often represents scarcity.

As in “I can’t afford it. I have bought nothing new for months.”

 

In the middle years, it can represent depletion.

As in “Life is consumed with work and family and adult problems. There is nothing new in my life anymore.”

 

At all ages, it comes to represent the mundane. As in “nothing is new for long.” The new car gets dinged. International travel falls from exciting to tiring.

 

In later years, it spans the canyon from futility to wisdom.

As in “There is nothing new under the sun.”

 

For the author of Ecclesiastes, it was about futility. He opened his writings pondering that everything in life is futile. What do we gain for all of our efforts anyway? The sun rises and sets, generations come and go, yet the earth remains the same and we are never satisfied.

 

All things are wearisome, more than anyone can say. The eye is not satisfied by seeing or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Can one say about anything, “Look, this is new?” It has already existed in the ages before us. [Ec 1:8-10, CSB]

 

The futility view of “nothing new” can be a discouraging yet useful reality check that few things on earth really matter that much in the end.

 

But I do not want to miss the wisdom of the “nothing new” philosophy of life.

 

It can help us strive less and enjoy more.

It can assure us that someone else has been through our same problems before, so we are not alone.

It can lower our shock value, knowing humankind has always been capable of great evil.

It can increase our hope, knowing humankind has always been capable of great good.

It can tone down our pride, reminding us that we will never appear in the book of Firsts.

It can keep our focus on heaven more than earth.

 

He was so right. The sun will see nothing new today. Nothing new here at all.

It Matters Where We Look

 

It matters where we look. Whether we fix our gaze on the lovely or the ugly. But lately there has been a lot of ugly. Ok, there has been ugly since the beginning of time. But now we can see ugly faster and from further away and in larger doses than ever before.

 

Sometimes the ugliness inspires us to rise and fight against it.

Sometimes the ugliness shuts us down into a hole of silence.

Sometimes the ugliness unsettles us, not quite knowing how to respond.

 

Most of us have experienced all three this year, but those unsettled moments are often triggered when people like us do ugly things. The “like us” could be gender, age, race, or faith. When it is our faith, as Christians, we carry the same name, so our name gets tarnished when any of us act ugly. When we snap at the store clerk while wearing a Jesus T-shirt. When we carry signs with His name while being destructive and violent. When we interchange earthly kingdoms with His kingdom.

 

If you have never believed in Jesus Christ, I pray you will still consider giving him a look, even if you have seen some of His followers act ugly. Know that not everyone professing His name is a perfect follower. In fact, none of us are. He loves us no matter how bad we have been. And while bad behavior is never justified, Jesus’ grace is the very core of what we believe.

 

Maybe you have once believed in Jesus Christ but have stopped following Him because you’ve been hurt by His people or have been disgusted with the hypocrisy. I pray you will reconsider allowing Him to be King of your life even in this imperfect family by looking at Him more than the family.

 

And if you are a believer accepting His grace when you mess up, but feeling embarrassed when others do, may I encourage you to shift your focus. An old hymn recently revived says to turn your eyes on Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. Then the things of this world will grow strangely dim.

…let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, … [Heb12:1-2, NKJV]

 

Looking towards Jesus does not mean we have to put our heads in the sand or ignore the news, although you may feel you need to for a season. We are called to live in this world, lovely and ugly, by dimming down the ugliness. And we can dim it by looking at Him and the loveliness of His light. It matters where we look.

5 Ways to Move This Year

At the dawn of a new year we make our resolutions or we set goals or we pick our one word to guide us. Whatever your method, this is your new chance for better choices, for doing hard things, for cutting yourself some slack, for intentionally not doing some things.

If I were going to have a word this year – and I’m not, because I love words so much I cannot pick just one – but if I were, my word would be MOVE. 

Here are five ways you can MOVE this year.

MOVE your body - I want to keep moving physically. Walking, my exercise of choice, was curtailed last year by a sprained ankle that required months to full healing. Now I am better and fired up to move more again. And just between us, during last year’s staying at home adventure, I was known to turn up the music and do a little dancing. No one needs to watch you move for it to really happen.

MOVE your relationships - Create new ones, nourish old ones. My pandemic caution messed with my plan to make new friends in a new city, neighborhood and church family. Without throwing caution to the wind, I will move toward new social circles this year. You do not need to be a social butterfly to move your relationships. You can be a caterpillar and still have friends.

MOVE your space - Your furniture. Your house. Your day trips. Your vacations. Move your spaces around enough to experience the new and different. Travel is a big piece of my life pie in this phase of life. Last year we cancelled six trips that carried more risk than we were willing to take. This year we will get our vaccines and travel more again.

MOVE your mind - Funny that I once thought I would get another degree or two when I retired, worried that the absence of career would mean atrophy of the brain. I might still go back to school someday, but so far I have not felt one inkling of inspiration to work that hard yet! However, I have become a big fan of podcasts, documentaries, and virtual courses. So I will keep moving my brain to broaden knowledge and moving my mind to see things from a different perspective.

MOVE your Spirit - I never want to stop moving spiritually.  I believe there is much virtue in the old church adage ‘just keep on keeping on.’ Sometimes our walk with God is about just staying faithful in our spiritual practices and habits. But it’s easy to stagnate there. I want to grow further in Christ.

So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude. [Col 2:6-7, CSB]

This scripture seems to get the balance about right with ‘being rooted AND built up.’ Be rooted, yes. Be established, yes. Continue doing what we’ve done before, yes. But do not stay in the same place. Build your spiritual self. Find new truths. Trust anew in old promises. Serve in new ways. Love more.

Keep moving! In spirit, body, mind, relationships, and spaces.