Nails of Gratitude

I raced through my first reading of Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, gulping it down,  feeling the sharp pierce of pain that shattered hearts and dulled lives into numb existence, and nodding in agreement, through mouthfuls of words, at the discovery and practice of the life-giving, life-sustaining discipline of gratitude expressed with such aching beauty.

I am reading it slowly this second time, reading, re-reading lines, paragraphs, quotes; copying portions into my journal, thinking about the difference that the deliberate, frequent practice of gratitude has had at various points in my own life.  I am also trying, once again, to be more deliberate about writing down some of the "small" gifts I notice and receive each day, pounding nails of gratitude to displace nails of accusation and scorn.

A few thank you's from my journal this past month:

203.  quiet comraderie with sister and mother

204.  buckwheat crepes filled with ratatouille

205.  in tiny french restaurant, with dark wood walls and bottles

206.  and open door that embraces sun drenched sidewalk and small shops

207.  creeping in traffic past famous shopping circle with car show I had once imagined as a "possible weekend getaway" and realizing the stress the crowds and traffic would have caused us and the utter disappointment I would have struggled with at the unfulfillment of expectation of joy, had we made that excursion

208.  passing many singles, couples, and families on the bike trails of this Gulf coast island

209.  serendipitous happening upon weekend art show with travellers who want to "stop and take a look"

210.  moments of reading stretched on pool deck lounge chair with bright music filling my ears

211.  tiny, eager hands choosing packet of flower seeds to plant

212.  same hands "needing" Grandpa's hammer to pound post on brick patio

213.  scaffolding set up by the stucco crew and loaned to son for us to use for remainder of the rental month, giving us access to the second story roofline trim, soffit and walls to paint before the roofers install edging

214.  Eli's enthusiasm for filling the fountain and mixing peat moss, vermiculite, and compost

215.   Isaac's excitement over planting the seeds

216.  morning songs of birds, calling to day

217.  Eli, just shy of 4, swinging, laughing, "Look, Grandma!  My shadow is following me!...Why is it following me?"

218.  lightning flashing in black of early morning

219.  doors open to all the sounds of first waterfalls, then fountains of rain from the roof and gutters, which eventually slow to a quiet drip and a whisper rain, and the birds begin their morning songs

220.    the prized possession of berry stained face, tongue and fingers

Long Loved Love

Our son and his wife left a "Happy Anniversary voice message the other day when they couldn't reach me in person.  I laughed when I heard the smile in his voice and a laugh from his wife at his side: "We're glad you're still married."

So am I.

During the first decade or two of our marriage when many thunderstorms of conflict seared our souls with pain, David and I frequently reminded ourselves that we had meant our vows of lifetime commitment to each other, and we would not consider divorce as a viable option of "solving" our problems.  At one point we even agreed not to wield it as a verbal weapon in our fights - just as we promised not to storm off angry or hurt in a motorized vehicle, setting ourselves up for vehicular manslaughter or suicide.  

There were a few occasions when each thought the other so disgusted or disappointed on multiple relationship fronts that we wondered aloud if our partner desired divorce ; but always, upon further reflection, the answer was "no - divorce would make more problems than it would solve."

We have been married long enough now for each to have gone through some pretty devastating dashing of hopes, desires and expectations in our relationship.  We have each had, at different times, to very deliberately choose to find ways to live with, love, respect and support each other in the face of (still!) unyielding differences of  values, motivations, and goals.  

When I look back now, I see the first twenty years of our union as necessary training to strengthen our "humilty muscles" to prepare us for complete exposure within the transparency of our relationship.  We needed the humility practice to be willing to allow the skin of self-protective reasoning to be pulled back, to see the tentacles of SELF beneath so many actions and motives we had previously labelled pure. 

It has been our attempts these past 15 years or so to know, communicate and reconcile the deep, unyielding differences between us that have really stripped the scales from our eyes to see our "SELF" motivations and agendas, to empathetically feel, not simply know, just how much we have unintentionally wounded the other - simply by being ourselves, by pursuing our goals, powered by our differing pasts, values, sin patterns, and ego drives.

This truth-telling and stripping, painful as it has been, is one of the treasures to me of our long-term relationship.  Like Eustace's experience in C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it has taken Another, with better eyesight, sharper claws, and a willingness to tear deep to the diseased underlayers, to uncover and strip us of our deepest layers of SELF.  

I'm not saying that the process is done.  Only that the divine claws within the paws of our mate have done what we, by ourself, cannot do, even with the best intentions and disciplines.  

Working Man

On this Multitude Monday I give thanks for David, my husband of 35 years, as provider.  
Thank you, David, for working so diligently to provide so well for me, our children, and our grandchildren over all our years together.  I am grateful that you are a man who sees the opportunity to work hard to provide for your family as a blessing and that you simply love to work.
Thank you for being willing to leave the house in the dark of morning all these years of our marriage, to work long days, and then come home to love and play with your family.
I'm grateful that you've been willing to dream, push forward and take calculated risks that have enabled our business to grow and provide for many.
I'm also very grateful for your integrity.  I've seen you tell the truth and do what was right, even when it was costly, time and time again.  
I thank God for the care and compassion you have for the employees (and their families!) who have worked alongside us in the business.
I greatly appreciate your humility in apologizing to me, you sons, and your employees when you have realized your  "bad behavior" toward of us.  So many people refuse to humble themselves publicly when they have been wrong - what a gift to have a strong husband who nevertheless humbles himself before a child, a wife, an employee, a contractor.  Thank you.
Thank you for trusting God to provide work and payment and wisdom during some very challenging seasons of our company.

Advent Wait

One of the first ASL (American Sign Language) signs I learned after Michelle and Kyle brought Prema from Kolkata, India into their home was "wait" - both hands extended, palm up, with all the fingers waving, like an upside down movement on a computer or piano keyboard.  Prema had NO symbolic language and I had very few ASL signs at my command, so I used it a lot in all my interactions with her those first few months.

Venir:  to come.  Advent: 1. an arrival; a start or commencement 2.a. (usu cap), the coming of Christ into the world  2.b. (cap) the penitential season beginning four Sundays before Christmas


It's a season of waiting, looking forward to a Coming.  We celebrate the waiting with candles and colors, with words and song, with groaning hearts that strain to see.

Last Sunday evening, I sat with Eli on my lap and Prema at my side at FBCIR's Christmas program, listening to Grandpa David play his trombone with the orchestra and enjoying all the choral groups and ensembles.  We try to take advantage of local programs that have a chance of communicating Biblical stories visually in the forms of nativity tableaus and re-enactments as well as great music, because Prema's world, even at Christmas time, with all its boisterous activity and noise, is silent.

We sit up front, directly in front of the interpreters for the deaf, close to the manger and hay, three year old Eli looking and listening intently to everything, eleven year old Prema watching with wandering attention the interpreters, the changes in spotlights and choral ensembles.

I watch my grand-daughter move in and out of attentiveness, think about the scarcity of visual story for her in this sound-focused performance and wonder how she will ever understand God's story and offer of life and love for her:  How can she know the choice You give her to know you, God?  Her ability and motivation to take in and learn are so scant, her language so limited .... Kyle and Michelle have, with much purpose and pain, been living a daily definition of love for her this side of the veil....but having once been abandoned by love, can she know it now? Will she recognize it and draw near when she sees in it You?

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

The music is wonderful, the narrative thread simple and cohesive.  Delight sits on my left with Eli, while Sorrow, mourning Prema's loss and alone-ness, squeezes in on my right.

 Children skip down the long aisles waving circlets of streamers, banners of "light" call forth joy.... I love it......but I am waiting for the drummers.

David had informed me earlier that my favorite part of last year's program would be repeated:  a drum corps regiment, pulled from various local high schools marching bands, spread out in the aisles of the mega church sanctuary, each drummer standing erect in uniform with a spread of drums hanging from his shoulders, waiting for the "Drummer Boy" soloist to finish, awaiting the haunting choral descant, "I'll play for you.....play my drum for you".

The sound explodes in the air as sticks hit drum rims, skins and sides, clacking, pounding, reverberating, piercing the night.  We thousands of listeners almost collectively hold our breaths as we experience the cadence performed by the drummers around us, among us.  The sound fills our ears, our bodies, our souls.  I turn away from the drummer four feet to my left to look at Prema on my right to guage from her reactions if she can feel any vibration from the engulfing sound.  No.  She does not.

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him....Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God..."


You became man for me, but what will You do for her?  How can she receive You?  How can she understand and believe in Your name?  Will You take her in Your arms at her passing from earth, open her ears with the breath of Your whisper?  Put language and understanding into her being?  Will you beat a cadence that envelops, enchants, enflames HER with knowing?  Will You?  Will You?

The drumming continues, drummers' bodies erect, hands flashing, pounding rhythm.  My lap still holds and my arms still surround Eli, but my body is shaking with sobs that no one hears over the sound of the drums and tears are coursing down my face.   "I'll play for you....play my drum for you..."

This is the joy, the purpose held out to us.... to play for You, to offer our best, to live Your love day after day, in desire and discipline, in dream and despair, in delight and drudgery...while we wait.  Wait for the day when eyes and ears will be opened.  Wait for the day when WORD will be known.  Wait.  With arms outstretched, palms turned up, fingers moving.  Wait.  While all creation groans.  


Wait and watch, 
groan and hope.  
for God to become baby, 
baby, 
slaughtered Lamb, 
Lamb, 
triumphant Lion.


I do not want the drumming to stop.  I want to bury my groaning and hope in the crack of the sticks, in the flash of the hands, hide in the beat, hide in the sound.

The drumming stops.  Silence reigns.  Then with collective breath we shout and cheer.

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." 


So we wait. 
We trudge with bags heavy 
with groaning and hope 
to the top of the hill 
in the dark of night 
for a glimpse of a star, 
a stable, a babe,
to remind us LOVE hears, 
LOVE knows, 
and LOVE, also, 
waits.


Emmanuel.  God with us.

What I Really Want For Christmas

Very soon I will need to answer the "what do you want for Christmas?" question.  Hmm....

What I would REALLY like for Christmas, if someone could give it to me, would be the gift of being a good listener.

This morning when I pulled up in her driveway to take my granddaughter to school, my daughter-in-law greeted me with a smile, "There's no school today.....remember.... I told you last week."  I remembered the conversation, but I had been so focused on the piece that was the answer to my immediate  question, that I did not take in or remember the other school schedule details she had given me.

At least twice within the last week, my husband has brought to my attention something he told me earlier  of which I claimed no awareness.  I could remember one of them after he jogged my memory with particulars of the conversation, but the other two were lost somewhere in non-listening or non-hearing land.

To some charges of not listening, I can protest "But I can't hear you when you talk to me from the other room or while you're walking away from me or while I'm working in the kitchen next to running water or appliances - you know I can't hear you over those noises."  Because those things are all true.   I do have some hearing loss, and I have great difficulty discerning conversation correctly in a crowded room with much ambient noise.

But it is also true that I often don't pay enough attention when someone speaks to me.  I don't zone in to his/her words soon enough or stay focused long enough.  I am all too often a lazy listener, moving my focus, without my notice, between the speaker and my thoughts.  I am always thinking, reasoning, figuring something out, connecting ideas.  That can be a good characteristic, but it can also be a major impediment to effective listening.

I remember seeing a picture definition of the character trait of "attentive" when our boys were young:  a line drawing of two children in a small tent, with alert eyes and cocked ears, listening, listening to a coyote howling at the moon.  I've spent decades learning to listen to God.....but how much real practice have I given to the discipline of listening well to His people?

I've wanted to be, tried to be a better people listener for a number of years now....to be able to routinely give whoever is speaking to me the gift of my full attention.  But honestly, some days I don't think I've made any progress.

Perhaps carrying pen and paper to write details of what others say to me would help me focus - I usually took superlative notes during class lectures and sermons in church.   Perhaps I should ask my family members to give me pop quizzes on what they've said to me - maybe repeated poor grades would motivate me.   Perhaps someone else has an idea that can help me learn this discipline.  Because I'm pretty sure its not a gift I'll find under my tree this Christmas.

Character Mirrors on Multitude Monday

A brief conversation with my husband got me thinking about how grateful I am for some of the "Character Mirrors" in my life.  A "character mirror" to me is any person who or circumstance that holds up a mirror to me, so I have the opportunity to see what I look like to them (and very possibly to God, also :-).  


I've been a bit slow and resistant at times to pay attention to those mirrors, especially when the the people who held those mirrors were people whose actions and life choices I didn't  respect, or whose messages were delivered in ways that seemed harsh or hurtful to me.   My loss - I've learned that valuable critiques can come from those character mirrors, too, if I will humble myself and turn my head to gaze into their mirror, then look inside myself and to God for confirmation, clarification and correction.


So, I thought I'd post and give thanks for a few of the memorable "character mirrors" from my life thus far for my Multitude Monday gratitude exercise:


1.  A high school friend who rebuked me sharply for telling someone else something he had told me in confidence.  That was my adult introduction to the importance of guarding confidences - something that was an absolute basic requirement for the prayer and mentoring work I would do decades later.


2.  A young mother who slammed me openly in a small group of women for leading a  Bible study and NOT controlling/disciplining my young sons in the other room to her satisfaction.  I learned I would not be allowed to influence others the way I wanted, if I did not have their respect.  A KEY principle I needed to learn.


3.  How I wish I had taken a good hard look when my brother-in-law first told me I was a know-it-all at the family dinner table.....was he ever correct!


4.  Luckily, for me, I DID pay attention when he told me, years later, that I always had to be RIGHT (in any disputed matter).  That comment pierced my pride and became God's surgical knife that opened an infected area of my past for careful examination, my choice to forgive, and huge healing to my psyche, which I had been praying about for years. 


5.  A car trip, during which, my husband and sons listened to me rant about a relative, then told me my reactions were quite out-of-proportion to the "offense" she had committed.  I initially strongly denied it, but had the sense later to look long enough in the mirror they held up and to choose to "step back" and "jet down" from my anger.  Not until much later did I realize I had made a scapegoat of the person I'd been so angry with to avoid confronting the woman I was really angry with and risk a close relationship being destroyed.  That SELF-DECEPTION was so powerful and effective, that it has slowed me down in "pronouncing judgement" many times since then.


I've got many others, but you get the idea....:-)


I think listing more of these people mirrors as well as circumstance character mirrors would be a fruitful thanksgiving discipline for me.  How about you?

(This picture was originally for a post idea that was to be titled "What person, in their right mind, would pay good money for these?"  The rhetorical answer was SO obvious...... why waste time writing it?


  

Friends

Amber asked us recently to tell the story of an answered prayer.  You can read her story and 6 others here.  I'm late, but I figured I'd tell my story anyway.

A couple years ago I came across a piece of notebook paper on which I had written a prayer for our sons who are now 30 and almost 32 years old.  I believe I wrote out the scripture prayer when they were about 9-13 years old.

"Best of friends, worst of enemies" flew off my tongue many times when Kyle and Sam were young boys as my answer to people who would ask about how they got along with each other.   They played great together for hours every day, but when they disagreed, they could, with amazing speed, employ shoves and punches to make their point.   One of them, in particular, never considered an argument won when the other one said, "I give up - you win".  The argument is not  over until the one giving up declares full acknowledgement that the victor's argument was TRUE and RIGHT!

My husband, David, has often told how a dispute during a family game of Rack-0 quickly became a boxing match, with the two boys "standing toe to toe, slugging each other".  In addition to a multitude of baseball games and practice sessions at home, our family played a lot of basketball on the front driveway and many games involved bodies slamming into bushes, or the garage wall or to the concrete driveway as a result of self-control gone awol - "FOUL!"  I often feared we would be making a trip to the hospital emergency room.   

When David tried to reassure me that our sons' highly competitive personalities would help them succeed in our very competitive society, I pleaded for him to structure  family games so our sons had to work together on the same team, instead of against each other.  I feared broken hearts more than I feared broken bones.  As the boys got older, I worried that the frequent conflict "resolved" in such physical fashion would result in unforgiveness that lodged in our sons' souls,  destroying their friendship, and infecting all of their relationships with bitterness.

So, at some point during their late elementary and middle school years I began to pray that kindness, compassion,  and forgiveness would reign in their relationship.  I took a passage from Ephesians 4, along with some other passages and prayed that they would use their tongues to encourage and build one another up, that they would get rid of bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander, and that they would be "kind and compassionate, forgiving one another, just as in Christ, God forgave them."  I prayed that God would give them a great love and appreciation for each other.  For a season, I prayed that prayer every day.

Gradually that prayer got replaced by others, and one day when they were in high school, I came across that old "scripture prayer" in my handwriting, with blanks to insert my sons names, tucked away in a journal or book.  I didn't remember exactly WHEN that prayer had been answered...I knew only that our sons seemed to fully enjoy and prefer each other's company, respect each other's wisdom, and root for one another's success.  Somehow, miraculously, they had been able to forgive the many offenses against each other.  They played together on the same high school baseball team, and ended up, eventually at the same college for a year, playing baseball together there also.

Their friendship deepened far beyond the simple thoughts I had when I began praying.  I know they have a friend in their brother that many men long for, and one of my greatest joys is watching them together, whether playing with the children, discussing issues and ideas, or engaging in the raucous humor for which they are known.

A week ago, I tagged along on a brief car trip peppered with laughs and practical jokes, as the two of them drove to the start location of "The Hilly Hundred" - a group bike ride over a course that wound its way for a hundred hilly miles.  They took off together in the early morning light and pedaled back into the parking lot, hours later, still together, still talking and making jokes.  It was a great day.