Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

A 78% means...no?

An Oddly Perfect Father's Day

The highlights:

At my parents' church this morning, I introduced myself to one of their elderly friends. I'd met his wife on numerous occasions and loved her for her openness and appreciative qualities, but this was the first I'd actually talked to him.

As she pushed his wheelchair toward the spot where the community bus would pick them up, I extended my hand. She introduced me and made the connection to my parents. He didn't talk at all, but grasped my hand. And he didn't let go.

The bus arrived, and the driver loaded on another elderly friend. Still, BE had me in his grip. His wife and I carried on a conversation, I included him through eye contact, but I was pretty much glued in that position, walking backwards as she wheeled him forward. While slightly awkward, it was delightful.

Hold my hand. If that's the highlight of your day, take as long as you like. I don't know who I remind you of or what I make you think of, but it really doesn't matter. Besides--this is the longest my hand has been held in quite some time!

The other highlight was bonding with a four-month-old at a church event this evening. I am amazed at God's provision--that on a day when, frankly, it would have been nice to have helped make someone a father, He provides an outlet for those counterpart maternal instincts. There is something so perfect about a contented baby's head against your chest.

So odd to be so deeply touched by both ends of the spectrum on the same day. So gracious of God to meet needs--maybe not in my way, but in His.

Pickled Goering?

Thanks, PX, for expanding my horizons!

Note to Self

Dirty Jobs is not good dinnertime entertainment.

In the times
when it's just
the two of us
what do I say?

My response
is just that--
a reaction to
the good that You bring.

But what if all
were carried away
and the only thing left
were You?

Would I still bring You praise--
would my heart still rejoice
if all that I knew
were You?

What is it inside
that makes people praise
from the bowels of
hell on earth?

What part of You
do I not yet know--
the Anchor, the Hope,
the Author of my day?

Star Trek Meets Monty Python

Oh, Dear God...

That's all my heart can breathe.

I just spent an hour with His Highness, going through pictures from the Honduran missions trip he and others just returned from. There were the "These are the ancient ruins" and "This is where we stayed" photos...and then there were the children.

His Highness's eye for aesthetics was gifted as usual, and children in ratty, dirty, outdated clothing were beautiful. His Highness's enthusiasm and value for the kids gave personality and life to two-dimensional images. But God--God worked in my heart.

Just before we sat down with the album, another friend stopped in and talked about her dissatisfaction with her own Christian service.

*I bring two little girls to Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, and I get puffed up about it. I want something more. I want to do something more.*

2 Samuel 24:24 (New King James Version)
24 Then the king said to Araunah,
“No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt
offerings to the LORD my God with that which costs me nothing.” So David bought
the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

Pages of faces... Bright, brown eyes. Chubby cheeks framing downturned lips. Hand-me-down leather jacket in the heat of a Honduran summer. Immaculate white shirt against the deep tan of a wiggling and grinning four-year-old.

Oh, dear God, what do I do? What is the future of these children?

My heart felt like a frog climbing out of my throat. Still does, but at least it's more socially acceptable to let the tears flow now that I'm alone. What do I do?

His Highness mentioned wanting to see if one or more of "his" kids needed sponsorship. That reminded me that I already have a child through World Vision--a little 2nd grader in Colombia. Yes, my monthly payment of $30 goes in...but what's my investment? A dollar a day? Not enough to buy a threshing floor.

Three goals (the setting and following-through of which is also a new venture for me):

• When my next World Vision statement asks if I'd like to sponsor another child, say yes. $2 a day.
• Invest in the life of "my" child(ren) by sending letters and pictures. Being a pen-pal with a 2nd grader from a different language isn't easy--more of a challenge than the financial aspect.
• Tell you. I've always been a cynic toward child sponsorship organizations, but something cracked a year and a half ago at a Women of Faith conference. I knew it was time, and I knew that World Vision was the group to trust. I haven't regretted it. My only frustration was looking through all the faces and choosing only one. That's still a struggle, but it's remedied the way so many things are--by passing it along. Think about it, pray on it, and if you're convicted, check out the link.

Extra credit: buy a goat. 75 bucks for food, fertilizer and fun!

Faith, Hope & Love

Odd; I just realized I've been wrestling with all of these recently.

Faith and hope are what came to mind as I read this article. Love is probably what made them possible. Perhaps that's why it's greatest?

Oh, God, my heart hurts.
Can You fix it?

Of course I can.

A Bit of Self-Righteous Posturing

Last weekend, I was in a skit about modern-day Pharisees. The sermon followed, with the pastor detailing the fine points about the ten commandments. (For example, "It's nice that you didn't kill someone...but if you were angry with that person, you've committed the same sin that led others to murder.")

That was a bit humbling. Alrightey, a lot of humbling was done. And it's still effective...so I'm not sure how to share the next part.

I'm sure you've read about the TB guy--the one who got on planes, knowing he had an extremely drug-resistant variety of the disease. Today's news ID's him and gives a bit more background. His father-in-law works for the CDC and gave him "fatherly" advice against traveling. So maybe the poor, ill man didn't realize how serious his disease was.

Then I read that he knew the US airports had restrictions against him, so he flew into Canada and drove across the border. He what? I know my students aren't being truthful with me when they make excuses about things I haven't yet asked about. TB Man altered his travel plans as an excuse.

All I can think is "Jerk! You sat on an international flight and exhaled into the recycled air system that how many other people were breathing in? And you knew you were sick?"

New twist on my thinking patterns: how do I deal with something like this? Is it "righteous indignation?" Or am I sitting in judgment?

And then the reminder comes: how much have I prayed about it? Am I mad at the idiot, or am I concerned for the people he exposed? Am I willing to pray for them, or would I rather fume? There lies my answer, and a lighter spirit.

I'll Show _You_ a Mosquito!

JERUSALEM — A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.

Du Mosch's cat was in the bed with him at the time, along with his young daughter who had been frightened by a mosquito in her own room.

More Definitions

Providence is students clustering around your desk and engaging in face-to-face conversation, on a day when you really needed to not be invisible.

Tears are precipitation from your heart when you get a friend's message that she really cares.

Reward is the wind at your back, blowing you toward the beach after you've paddled against the waves.

Perfection is praying that God would show you Himself, then finding wild roses growing above highly artistic, dry tree roots in a cove. There is beauty. There is strength. They are not hidden. They are there.

Worry is hearing the call of nature above the wind, and realizing you've kayaked farther from the landing than you thought you had.

Panic is noting that the wind feels different against your left arm than your right...and, upon looking, remembering that you don't have dark arm hair...and that, regardless, your arm hair certainly did not have a spider growing from it when last you looked.

Lucidity and gratitude are what follow your frantic yelping and flailing as you recall that balance is, indeed, important on the high seas.

Definitions are an oddly cathartic way of blogging.

Playing Marco Polo by Myself

How do you define lonely?

Lonely is sitting at a table with 11 friends, and not being able to explain to them why you ditched your church and visited another one. (The sermon title "Life's Problems: Loneliness" was on the marquee.)

Lonely is telling five friends that your only reason for going to a specific movie is to be social...and then ending up in the one seat left--next to a friend's prepubescent brother.

Lonely is hearing a friend ask how you're doing...and then hearing the "multitasking pause" between your comment and their response.

"I am never less alone than when I am alone." --James Howell

All I want to do is put on my "hooker clothes," to use a concept from Pretty Woman. After Stuckey's crude advances toward Vivian, she lashes out at Edward. *If you were going to treat me like a hooker, why didn't you let me wear my own clothes? Then, I know how to deal with people like that." (Roughly translated.)

Hooker clothes. Isolate myself. Can't be disappointed in any but myself if there's no one else around. (A bit of the Jack Sparrow brogue is coming off my tongue as I write this. It's rather amusing in my head.)

The part of that loneliness sermon that's been running through my mind for a few days is the first point under "Remedies for Loneliness." Friends.

How. How does this work? People are people--human and fallible. How can we be counted on for cheer? And if I'm to be getting my joy from God, what is the importance of people? And if I'm not getting joy from God, then what's the matter with me?

Frustration is not finding a gracious way to say, "Did anyone notice I left my seat an hour into a three hour movie, and never came back?" Lonely is having no one to help you figure it out.

In a plea for identity
I return my Savior's probe to Him:
Who do You say I am?
The Quiet Voice
that comes quicker than my thoughts
rejoins,
Who do you say I am?

Odd

I have oodles of pictures stored on my laptop, and, as with things in the house, I'm learning to get rid of some. Time this evening was spent cropping, shrinking and deleting. It was good. How many slightly different poses of the same person does one need? PICK ONE! And keep it. Dash the rest.

A week ago, my father was standing outside as he awaited an upcoming meeting. I flitted about with my digicam, and his expressions were a mix of business (to go with his attire) and paternal patience.

Cropping those pictures this evening, I found myself thinking, "What would they want for an obituary pic? Better not shrink that one too much..."

When I finally realized my thoughts, I quickly closed the photo editing program.

What?

My dad's 65, a bit pudgy but trimming down in his retirement years, and has a few unidentifiable lesions on his arms. Hopefully, he's got a number of good years left in him. I'd like him to meet my husband and children (of course, I'd like to meet them, too).

When he goes kayaking alone, I tell him to be careful. He shrugs and smiles. We've had this conversation before. He doesn't want a hospital death, like he watched his mother endure. If he has a heart attack in his kayak, I'm sure he'll be happiest going that way.

Personally, I'd like the chance to say goodbye. However, I see merit in his mindset. To just be gone; to go while the going is good...

A Little Yak, a Little Sun, and a Little Plastic Bag for My DigiCam

They're not fantastic quality, but I am amazed that they turned out as they did. When you consider that I was bobbing along in the waves and the geese, in particular, were defying gravity...wow... My camera rocks, my parents are wonderful for purchasing it for me, and God has a fantastic eye for design! It was a glorious day.

A Little Dating Advice...Or Not...

I Was Born in a Small Town

Do y'ever just have those times of perfection? Contentedly happy. I think the last time I felt like this was the night Stan and I used each other as backrests.

There has _got_ to be a God thing here.

It's nice I'm taking a personal day tomorrow and may get to go kayaking. It was good to be part of a meeting with other adults tonight and feel that I was heard.

Afterward, I plopped myself down at the church's drumset and plugged my headphones into my computer. I youtubed up some Def Leppard and tried to combine what Stan had told me on Easter Sunday with what I was hearing in the music. And that was interesting. There are only so many times, however, that one can listen to "Hysteria," "Photograph" and "Animal" before wanting to turn the sticks toward one's computer.

I pulled up some of my music files and grooved with Jars of Clay, Caedmon's Call and the David Crowder Band. It was very good no one was around. I looked rather silly. My left heel actually fell asleep.

Sitting there, I realized how much like my random drives in the country that was. Music loud. Drumsticks instead of pens on the steering wheel. Physical exertion, no matter how slight. Time to breathe. Alone enough to feel the presence of God. Alone enough to realize I am accountable to Him. Alone enough to realize He does fulfill me.

I left, tired and...perhaps not "empty," but "open." Relaxed, except for the dark church hallways I navigated alone. (Even that wasn't so bad.) About to exit the building, I noticed HA spending some quality time in a cushy chair. We chatted, and Stan called back.

*I want sugar.*

*Wanna run to the store?*

*Sure. But you're gonna have to come pick me up.*

I did, and let him drive since my body is better designed for sitting on the cupholder tray. (My kayak takes up the majority of my passenger seat...and the rest of my car.) And it was nice. I am so blessed to have safe guy friends who at times provide the physical touch I crave. How funny that this came after I had spent time worshipping God.

Stan waited patiently as I extricated myself from the car, and we walked into the store.

*Go ahead,* I nudged him. *Find your stuff.*

*You're not getting anything? I thought you had stuff to get.*

*I thought you wanted to get stuff! That's why I asked if you wanted to go to the store!*

We still managed to wander and make fairly respectable purchases before loading ourselves into the car again, getting platonically cozy in a small space as only exes-turned-friends can, with God's miraculous restoration.

Pulling up at Stan's house, we saw that his sister Ley was there. She drug out a flashlight and we scouted for the worms she and Stan had seen mating the night before. There were nightcrawlers and grubs and a millipede or two--nothing exciting until we ventured to the side of the house and she yelped. The flashlight beam barely caught two nightcrawlers at a moment obviously intended for just themselves. They separated and disappeared faster than two high schoolers on a couch when one's parents come home.

Ley chased her boyfriend Chi with a slower-moving single worm. The chicken Rottweiler dared to sniff my hand...and leg... Ley and I joked about further worm-scouting a few hours into the future, particularly under Stan's window and including loud exclamations for each discovery.

And that was it. It was short. It was sweet. And it was God's almighty hand that transformed small-town moments into precious tidbits for my mind, heart and spirit.

So Stan, if you've been praying through my recent tribulations, thank you. God is good. All the time!

A Changing of the Guard

It feels as though I've been sitting in a little, mental hole for the past few days. I left a friend's birthday gathering because I didn't feel like competing for attention, and I didn't feel like giving it, either.

Friends would call, and I would ignore the buzzing phone. Didn't feel like responding chipperly, and couldn't explain why not. Really didn't care to listen.

For as small-town as things are around here, I find it ironic that perhaps I'm lacking continuity. Maybe that's why I'm so in love with Stan's big, Irish family. Odds are that if you really need someone, one of them can be found and will help with what's needed--even if just a hug and adoration from a 10-year-old. Even if you ask something and get a loud and negative response, you still know you belong.

The thing is, I'm not part of a family like that. My friends here have become my family, and I've been incredibly blessed through them. But with much blessing can come much loss. Stan and his brother Ed are moving. So is one of my B best friends. HA is moving to China. Ra is moving half the country away to be courted by the fiancee she met on E-harmony. D has her first grandson, who rightfully should take up most of her spare time. I miss my people, already.

Reminiscent of a little Job complex here--to be blessed with so much, then question God as to why the blessings are being removed. The thing is, Job didn't--even when sorely tempted--"curse God and die." I realized I've been mad at God during the past few days, but I still found myself worshipping Him at church yesterday morning and last night. He's still there; He's still here.

Driving my little 90-something-year-old friend to church yesterday morning, I listened as she out-of-the-blue told me about a man who had lost his wife and four children. He went on to write hymns, she said. At the corner of Orchard and 17th, she looked over at me. *Praise hymns!* How ironic that I should remember that as I sit here tonight, incredibly grateful for Puffs Plus.

Praise hymns. I don't know that I'm that far yet, but the Psalmist's words are running through my mind: "I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

Psalm 42
As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, O God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and meet with God?

3 My tears have been my food

day and night,

while men say to me all day long,

"Where is your God?"

4 These things I remember

as I pour out my soul:

how I used to go with the multitude,

leading the procession to the house of God,

with shouts of joy and thanksgiving

among the festive throng.

5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and 6 my God.

My soul is downcast within me;

therefore I will remember you

from the land of the Jordan,

the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep

in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers

have swept over me.

8 By day the LORD directs his love,

at night his song is with me—

a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I say to God my Rock,

"Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning,

oppressed by the enemy?"

10 My bones suffer mortal agony

as my foes taunt me,

saying to me all day long,

"Where is your God?"

11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and my God.

St. Augustine: "The church is a whore, but she's my mother."

Hmm and ouch to Tony Campolo's "Letters to a Young Evangelical" excerpt. And oddly, all those ouches were inspiring. Take, for instance, this one:

"There is little doubt that the tentacles of Western technology, and the social changes that come with it, sooner or later will reach out and affect every tribe and nation on earth. Given that expectation, I would prefer that preliterate societies first encounter the West via missionaries, who have the best interests and salvation of indigenous people at heart." --TC

The preceding paragraph strikes motivational fear into me. I have a blog friend who is connected to someone (who is connected to someone) who lives outside the U.S. People in that country base their assessment of Americans upon what they see on television news. And what makes the news in our country? Mmm-hmm. Send the missionaries. If God has called them, be sure to support them. Share our nation's best people rather than our worst reputation.

The next section is a good humility check and grace-extension reminder. Who am I to complain?

"Young people often tell me that they are wary of the institutional church because they believe it is filled with hypocrites. Well, it is. What these people fail to understand, however, is that it is because the church is filled with hypocrites that they'll be right at home in it. If they don't think their own lives are filled with hypocrisies, then they are blind to the truth." --TC