Dreams

I have dreams. All kinds of dreams.

Sometimes my dreams are ethereal.  Sometimes they are too real.

Often my dreams are easily forgotten in the light of day.

And then there are dreams from which I don't want to awake.

I also have God-sized dreams, as Holley Gerth calls them.

This was to be my summer of dreams accomplished.  Someone else had other ideas, and those dreams didn't happen.  Someone else is my God.  He has taken me to a place called Patience.  The road hasn't been paved with gold or diamonds.  The surface I've traveled has been filled with potholes and bumps.  I haven't been a happy camper all along this road, battling surgery, pain, other unexpected health issues.

Then last night I was on Facebook for the first time in several days.  I'd been thinking of a young friend in her 30s whom I hadn't heard from in a while.  A couple of years ago she and her husband and now 5-year old daughter moved to The Netherlands to be closer to her husband's parents.  It was for only three years and after the initial shock, my friend accepted it was what God wanted them to do and off they went.  We shed tears of sorrow and joy, and we laughed about memories and times we'd laughed before, and we wished them well.  After all they'd be back in a few years.  We could email, see each other on Facebook, she'd come home for visits.

Finally last night, a post from my friend on Facebook!  No, wait -- it's from her husband.  He's telling us that my friend died suddenly on Sunday.  The tears flowed down my face.  She was just in her 30s, she had a full life ahead, she had this beautiful marriage, and she had this amazingly beautiful little girl to raise.  No details were given.  Just the facts -- she is gone.  I've asked God why her dreams won't come to fruition, and He has told me that He "had other plans."

I think I won't complain any more about the summer I feel I've lost.  I've lost a treasure far more precious than a few weeks or months.  A young, faith-filled spirit who always made me smile is gone.  Her memory will live on forever in my heart and when I think of her, I will think of Patience, a virtue I am learning slowly but can so clearly see now that God has chosen my friend as the next angel in the Heavens.  A perfect angel.

Dreams are to be dreamed. 

If remembered, dreams are beautiful or they can be frightening.

Dreams can't be relied on to come true.

Because often God has other plans.

His Amazing Grace

Recently my MOPS group (http://www.mops.org/) leader asked me to speak on grace, which just happens to be the name of my MOPS table this year.  I received such a good response to my short talk I've decided to share it with you here:

HIS AMAZING GRACE

I enjoy each of the table names our MOPS group has been using the last couple of years, but especially the name "grace."  That isn't just because it's the name of the table I mentor, but because I have a long history with the word "grace."

As a young pupil of piano and music, I learned early on about grace notes.  As I grew older, I began to learn grace could be a favor, consideration, reprieve, or even a pleasing effect in a dance movement or an artistic work.  Grace brings to mind fluid movement and gentleness.

My favorite definition of grace, however, is a theological one -- the gift of God's unmerited favor.  2 Cor. 12:9, as found in The Message, tells us:  "My grace is enough; it's all you need.  My strength comes into its own in your weakness."  His grace is all I need, or you need, no matter the circumstances or situation.  David Reagan, pastor at Antioch Baptist Church in Knoxville, TN, says he likes to call this "God's enoughness."  I like the sound of that too.

In my life, I have experienced God's enoughness.  As children, my two brothers and I experienced abuse, verbal and emotional, at the hands of our mother.  Upon reflection, I truly don't believe she knew exactly what she was doing and how wrong it was.  It took adulthood and specific circumstances for me to realize why she did what she did to each one of us.  Nothing really erases the memories of those painful and hurtful experiences, but I have been given in abundance a way to put my arms around it.

During the year I turned 54, my mom's health began to fail to the extent she eventually needed to live with one of my brothers, both of whom live in TN near where mom was residing.  The younger brother was in the middle of a divorce, so the older brother stepped in and moved mom into his home.  I knew from the beginning this would be volatile but I didn't count on what came next.

My husband and I returned from a Labor Day weekend trip to pick up a voicemail from my brother stating, "You'd probably like to know what I did with your mother."  The answer to my question when I called was that he signed her into a nursing home.  This had been done without power of attorney on his part (I had that) and by signing over her Social Security payments.  To keep my story short, I can tell you that I had to make a decision to move this woman whom I loved because she was my mother and whom I did not like as a person.  I had to extract her from an abusive situation and bring her home with me to Oregon.  At first, I couldn't understand why God would ask this of me, so I prayed for answers.

The answers came through discussions with my doctor, a Christian woman, who asked me about my mom's childhood.  It was easy to sum up -- highly dysfunctional.  Mom had been taken out of school at age 11 to care for two younger siblings.  Fear became the tool she most often used to control them.  What else is a child to do?  And then when she grew up and became a mother, her toolbox contained fear, sarcasm, temper, anger, rage.  All the things she'd grown up using. My heart suddenly expanded with a love I'd never experienced before.

This enormous expansion in my heart and the fact that in my care my mom was a different person, accepting less than perfect circumstances and accepting of my abilities to care for her, was purely a gift of grace from God.  Yes, a grace moment like a grace note in music can bridge a vast divide, and it did so for us.  Mom died 10 months after we moved her, and for the first time in my life I actually began to miss her.  I wanted more time with the woman who came to Oregon and the woman I had cared for.  How different life would have been, but I was blessed to know her as kind and loving for a short period of time.

"My grace is enough; it's all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness."

2 Cor. 12:9 (The Message)

Then Why Do You Do It?

Ever notice how something you're doing today can trigger memories of some years ago.  This happened to me as I made our Sunday dinner few weeks ago.  My husband has a fondness for pies, and I was preparing one of his favorites -- gooseberry!   Suddenly, it was as if it was yesterday but some 20 plus years ago.

It was Christmas, and my stepchildren were visiting for the holidays. We had done all the usual kid things -- baking cookies and decorating them, making fudge, shopping for their daddy and each other, and settled our share of disagreements, especially my stepdaughter and me.

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To read the rest, visit me today at (in)courage, where I’m the daily guest.  Click here to continue reading…

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

As we approach the day of feasts, football and thanksgiving, gratitude for many things is uppermost in my mind.  I suppose part of that is being grateful for having finally come through a respiratory infection with only a cough remaining.  It was a long battle and hopefully one that is over.  Yes, I'm thankful for returning and good health.

I'm sure there are many things that we are all grateful for -- family, home, jobs, health, freedom of religion to mention just a few.  However, gratitude and thanksgiving has a lot to do with circumstances.  Many years ago when I was teaching a Sunday School class of kindergartners we were fast approaching Thanksgiving.  In fact, it was the Sunday just prior to the big day.  As part of my teaching, I had decided to ask the children to each one tell me something they were going to give thanks for on Thanksgiving.  I had many hands waving in the air, and some voices asking to be picked first.  Responses included many thanks being given for mommy and daddy, family, the dog or the cat, toys, books, cartoons -- they ran the gamut of things that come to the mind of a 4- or 5-year old.  However, I came to the 5-year old daughter of close friends.  I asked Nicole what she was most thankful for, and she replied in her sweet, tiny voice, "I'm thankful for 'restorants'!"  It was all I could do not to laugh, but Nicole likely was thankful for places to go for a meal.  You see Nicole's mommy didn't like to cook and often didn't.  Nicole spent many mealtimes in a "restorant" eating food which filled her tummy and kept her healthy.  Her circumstances definitely dictated her gratitude that day!

In Thessalonians 5:16-18, we are told to "[r]ejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."  The homeless are most likely thankful for a Thanksgiving dinner and a place to lay their head that night provided by a shelter.  There may be those who have a home but no money to buy food, and so they are thankful for a meal of any kind.  The mother with a sick child is probably not focused on preparing a meal, but on getting that child medical help and is therefore thankful for the nurses and doctors in an urgent care center or emergency room.  The lonely senior citizens of our country are thankful to see a smiling face at their door bringing a meal from Meals on Wheels.  Perhaps a lonely neighbor would be grateful for your call to see if he or she is staying warm or just to say hello.  Or perhaps a lovely piece of pumpkin pie delivered by you or members of your family would be the thing that person says thanks for that night.  Our military and their families will be happy to be able to speak to each other and through today's technology maybe see each other.

The iconic painting by Norman Rockwell, Thanksgiving, is what we are all most familiar with when it comes to Thanksgiving memories and celebrations.  Not all of us have experienced that kind of Thanksgiving celebration.  Those of us who have indeed have something to be grateful for and we should be lifting our hearts and voices to God with an abundance of joy and in thanksgiving.

As you gather around your table, pause not only to say thanks for the meal laid before you, but to give thanks for all those things you take for granted each day.  Think of the people struggling through circumstances you perhaps have never even thought about and realize that their circumstances create their level and kind of gratitude.  Gratitude in all things means expressing thanks for whatever comes our way.

To each of you reading this, may your Thanksgiving be filled with family, food and creation of memories for the generations coming up behind you.

Little Ones

We were out today, husband and I, doing some errands here and there.  One place we stopped to do some shopping was replete with young moms with their kiddos of varying ages.  Some were toddlers, some were school age, and some were those always cute babies.  I commented several times, "Oh, look at that cutie!"  Or perhaps I'd smile and say hello to one of them.  Eventually, my husband commented that he bet I'd never seen an ugly infant or toddler before in my life.  I said I hadn't.

Well, this got me to thinking about babies in general.  How could something God created be anything but sweet, cute and cuddly when created in this amazingly tiny human form?  Granted some infants in the animal kingdom aren't all that cute.  But let's remember that we're talking our babies, the ones we women carry around for nine months and breath life into, and then swaddle, bathe, and change diaper, after diaper, after diaper!  OK, so they're not always cute, sweet and cuddly.  I'll admit that.

I was remembering the only child I had, a son now 38.  I'll never forget looking into those sky blue eyes the first time with that shock of black hair going in all directons.  I knew instantly I'd never seen and would never see again a more beatiful baby.  Did this child really come from me?  Could he be so perfect when I'm not?  And then I remembered that everything touched by God during creation is perfect at that moment.  It's the human part of us that takes it from perfect to imperfect in a variety of ways. 

For today let's think on the perfection of infants, their sweetness, their cuteness and their cuddlieness (is that a word?).  Enjoy your memories!