On Christmas Eve I sat on the sofa and watched Ian play an airplane game on the Wii and his effort was cracking me up.  He was flying that plane like he was three sheets to the wind and missing limbs.  He rolled, he dove, he crashed many times and he laughed like a maniac the whole time.  While he played, Mackenzie sat beside me and kept saying, “Just wait until you see me do it, Mom.  I am soooo much better at flying than Ian is.”

Ian finished his game with a score of 10 points, which is great because you get one point for every target you reach.  10 is pretty good.  Kenzie played next, and true to her word, she was a masterful pilot.  She soared with ease between buildings, she skimmed the waters, and she peacefully ignored reaching any target point because, “it was just too dangerous.”  She ended her run with a serene face and 0 points.

This little demonstration in the living room got me to thinking about the spiritual walks I see all around me.  I LOVE the people who walk with God the way Ian flew that plane: crazy, laughing, seemingly without goals, and still meeting most every target set before him.  Those people take the most heat and criticism for their walk because their crashes and mistakes seem bigger and easier to critique from the sofa.  The people who never crash and have safe, serene walks that seem uninterrupted by dirty hands and big crazy leaps of faith may end their lives with serene face and clean fingernails, but that’s not how I want to end my run.

Risking hurt feelings with Truth is messy work.  It is much easier to soar peacefully around the Truth and stay clean.  I’ve had some nasty crashes on this course, but I’ve also hit a lot of targets for my effort.  Seeing this analogy has gotten me to think even more clearly about the “poor pilots” around me who are actually flying aces and the “quality pilots” around me who are pointless.

Don’t end your run clean and pointless.  Be an ace pilot and get some dirt under your nails.

Let’s talk about camping, shall we?  Eric and I have been talking about going camping ever since we got married.  Well, Eric talked about camping and I always nodded and said, “Yeah huh.”

I got dangerously close to being made to go camping in 2007, but saved my neck by having a painfully dramatic wisdom tooth extraction the day we were set to leave and the trip had to be postponed.   Thank the merciful heavens for wicked bad wisdom teeth, huh?

In November of 2010, Eric announced that we were going to bite the bullet and go camping at the very next opportunity.  And so, on a random Thursday morning, we packed up and went to our local lake, paid the entrance fee, set up two little tents, and started a lovely fire.

Within two hours of our arrival, the wind picked up a bit and the nice weather we had enjoyed shifted to much colder weather.  Undeterred and determined to stay the course, we ate our smores warmed our backsides on the fire, sent the kids to bed (with most of the blankets) and then went to bed ourselves (with significantly fewer blankets).  Sleeping that night was pure misery.  I woke up every thirty minutes and checked the time to see if it was over.

When I looked and saw that it was 5:45 am, I sprang up and announced to Eric, “We made it!”.  He mostly sprang up and started the fire.  We got the coffee percolating and had bacon sizzling by the time the sun came up.

The kids slept in, nice and cozy as they were, and we enjoyed a nice breakfast with them when they got up.  Afterwards, Mackenzie took me to a spot on the trail where the light hit the trees in just such a way that you would miss it if you saw it at any other time of day.  We stood and gazed for some time at that light.

My phone rang mid morning and it was my friend Kathy Tope.  She wanted to know how we had fared through the coldest night on record for the year. I told her that sleeping was miserable, but camping was great.  I’m totally prepared to do it again.  In May.

Forgive the tongue in cheek title, but I just couldn’t help myself.  This post is about being a friend to people who have experienced the loss of a close loved one.  I tried to come up with a kinder (and less HILARIOUS) title, but once this one came to mind it just stuck.  I myself am a loser many times over in this sense and you may also be a loser.

Much as I hate to have had the severe education in loss, I feel like I do have some knowledge that could be helpful to those who feel helpless and clueless when it comes to talking to the grieving.  I’m sure that I wrote about this years ago, but why not have a review for those who are new to class?

1) Do not avoid mentioning the deceased for fear of reminding the grieved of the loss.  There is no forgetting the loss of a close loved one.  You will not be reminding the person.  When you deliberately avoid the mention, it feels as though you are trying to sweep the deceased under a rug.  We want to remember.  We want to hear stories we’ve never heard.

2) There is nothing you can say that will make it better.  It is not a fixable problem.  The upside is that there is nothing you can say that will make it worse.  The worst has already happened.

3) A friend of ours lost her son some years ago and a mutual friend suggested that she was going to take her out for a girl’s night so she could “forget all her problems for a while.”  I rolled my eyes and snorted when I heard this before I could compose myself and be nice.  This may be related to number one, but it’s worth repeating: When the loss is close, there is no escape from the grief.  It is always there.

4)  When several years have passed it may appear that the grief has subsided and it may be tempting to suggest that your friend has “gotten over it”.  There is no such thing.  I believe that the pain is always there, always deep, always heavy.  Like a body builder develops muscles to make easy work of heavy loads, your friend has learned to carry a heavy weight with greater ease than in the beginning.  There is no getting over it.

5)  While you can’t say anything that will make it worse, there are some things that I personally find annoying that I’d like to mention.  This may be just me in my experience, but it’s easy to assume others might agree.  a) Don’t call me on holidays and tell me that you “know it’s a really hard time”.  Maybe I was actually having a nice time and now I feel guilty for the levity.  b)  Don’t tell me that “Heaven needed my loved one more” than I did.  That makes me think that Heaven is an inconsiderate jerk.  c)  Don’t try to compare scars if you have also experienced loss.  When my brother died, it was nice to hear from others who had also lost a sibling, but hearing hours on end about a dear great grandma who passed unexpectedly at 98 got a little grating.

Feel free to add more in the comments section.  And do keep in mind that this advice is assuming that your friend is mentally stable and spiritually healthy.  Some people believe that they can run away from their grief and that avoiding mention of the deceased is a helpful thing.  Play along to be nice, but know that this is not a healthy way to cope.

I’m not a fan of Christmas.

There.  I said it and I feel a little better for it.

I can’t pretend like I’m virtuous and it’s because I hate the materialism.  I’m all for getting gifts and giving gifts.  I think it’s a lovely gesture and there’s no harm in a little indulgence.  Especially if someone’s love language is giving gifts.  I love those people.

I also can’t pretend that it’s because of all the warring over “Merry Christmas” -v- “Happy Holidays” either.  I think the whole argument is silly and I’ve never understood someone getting red faced about either side.  Instead of keeping Christ in Christmas, how about we insist that we keep Christ in everything?

Maybe I’m a Scrooge.  Maybe this means that I’ll be visited by three life changing ghosts on Christmas Eve that inspire me to have a better attitude.  Or maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to live a life void of the Christmas spirit.

Oddly, I always get a little excited for Groundhog’s Day.  A whole day built around a groundhog’s shadow?  That’s something.

Some time ago I read the complete contract that I signed with the (fabulous) direct sales company that I work with and it said that I was strictly forbidden from using the internet to solicit sales, hostesses, or recruits.

To avoid further invasion on this policy and for the sake of conversation, let’s pretend that I sell adorable puppies; cute, furry, kissable, sweet puppies.  To make my sales, I have hostesses invite me into their homes so I can show their girlfriends all my cute puppies and my hostess then gets a free puppy for her trouble.

When I first started selling puppies a year ago, and before I read the binding contract, I would make the occasional Facebook update looking for hostesses who wanted a puppy.  I made status updates about puppies.  I posted pictures of puppies.  I did everything I could do to market my puppy selling job short of actually selling puppies on the internet.

Six months in, I saw the blurb on my contract.  There was no getting around what it said.  It even called out “social networking sites”.  I decided that the policy was made by old people who weren’t hip to the wonders of the world wide web and made it my new practice to only break the policy sometimes, because doing it “kind of” is a lot different than doing it all the way.  Right?

Here is what I learned after hearing these standards laid out by one of those unhip old people: Those “old people” aren’t so dumb.  If these especially cute puppies can be sold online, what need is there for me to sell puppies in person?  They have the fear of the (well proven) slippery slope and have made their standard high to avoid my lose of income.

Have you ever signed a document that you didn’t fully read because you figured it was all pretty much legal mumbo jumbo and why bother?  According to my husband the most common lie told daily is, “I have read the above terms and conditions”.  I believe he’s on to something.

Going deeper into God’s Word has been a strikingly similar experience.  I have found that I signed a contract when I was quite young, agreeing to boundaries and standards that I knew nothing of.  When I learn of these standards, I often try to find short cuts, or ways around them.  I use the logic that Scripture was written for a different time, for a different people and does not apply to me personally.

It is my good fortune to be surrounded by good, sound teachers of the Word and I am often reminded that Scripture was not written to be confusing, it is not mumbo jumbo, and it is specific to me and this time.  God is no respecter of persons; this means that His Word is not more for one people than another.

Just as I finally came to know that it was time to stop carrying on as though I was smarter than people who had been in business almost longer than I’ve been alive, I have had to repeatedly be reminded that I am not smarter than God or His Word.  His grace is sufficient as I learn and His Word is sufficient to teach.

“You’re a great Mom,” I told my friend while her eyes tried to convince me that she believed me.  She was in a dark, sad place and it was some task to try and shore her up for the storms.

As I watched her eyes, I thought of all the times a friend had tried to boost me up by telling me how awesome she thought I was.  I remembered the thoughts that went through my head as she spoke.  I felt compelled to speak those thoughts outloud to my friend.

“You’re a great Mom.  I am telling you that and I want you to know that I know you have flipped out and spoken roughly to your babies.  I know that you have been harsher in your tone than you should, and I know that you have had days where you totally failed at making them feel special.  I know that you are certain that I would be appalled if I walked in on you some days.  I say that because I want you to know that I know all that and I will still tell you that you are a great Mom.”

I concluded my pep talk by showing her my personal flip out face and using my own ear splitting flip out voice, “Do you kids have any idea how tired I am?  Do you even care that I was up half the night cleaning vomit followed by an early morning of making breakfast (gag), scrubbing floors, folding laundry and then making lunch (gag)?  I give and give and all you kids do is ask for more!”  My poor kids have a dramatic Mom.  When I flip out, I totally flip.

If you think you are a perfect Mom, I can’t speak to that.  Good for you.  But if you feel like a pretty big screw up, let me talk to you for a minute.

God will redeem the time (I stole that line from Kathy Tope).  He will redeem those dark moments where you are certain that you have done everything in your power to guarantee your child a spot on the set of “Jerry Springer” in adulthood.  He will redeem the time for His glory.  Your children will not be destroyed to teach you some cosmic lesson.

That last sentence bears repeating in its own paragraph and in bold text.  Read it slowly and own it for its truth.  Your children will not be destroyed to teach you some cosmic lesson.

Your children are on their own journey to truth.  Give them answers when you can, catch them when you must, and make sure they floss the night before a visit to the dentist.  Have mercy on them and have mercy on yourself.  Don’t wallow in the bad days because you will miss the super fantastic ones.

Here we have Abraham who has been promised that he will be the father of countless generations.  In his very old age he has a son – one son.  To Abraham’s understanding, God’s entire promise rests on this boy.

Then one day, the day of Abraham’s proving, God tells Abraham to take his son to a certain mountain and on that mountain he is to offer his son as a burnt offering.

Here’s one of the many parts that gets to me: “Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey.”

He’s just heard the most outrageous, absurd, out of character, no sense orders imaginable and he gets up early the next day to follow through.  Did he tell his wife?  Does she know?  I often assume that she couldn’t have known.

Then he gathers enough wood for the burnt offering.  I recently went camping with my family at a site that encouraged campers to gather fallen wood for campfires.  It was quite surprising to me the volume of wood that was needed for a good fire and it set my mind to wondering about Abraham and what he was thinking while he gathered the wood to sacrifice his son.

He sets out with his son and two servants for the mountain God told him about.  It was a certain mountain and the journey takes three days.  In my research I saw where a few scholars believe that the mountain was the same one that Jesus was crucified on.  I didn’t research this information myself, but I did find the thought very sobering.

Three days journey.  I’ve been on a three minute journey with my kids and they talk the whole time.  I can’t imagine what these three days were like.  Did Isaac comment on all the rocks and count the trees?  Does he talk to his Father about what he wants to be when he grows up?

At the end of three days, Abraham looks up and sees the place in the distance.  He takes the wood and places it on his son to carry.  Isaac carries the wood up the mountainside.  Jesus carried His cross up the mountainside. As they walk, we finally see some of the conversation between Father and son.  Isaac makes the observation that they have the wood and the fire for the burnt offering, but, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

I think I may always wonder about Abraham’s answer, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”  Does he say this because he knows that God provided this son and thus, the lamb?  Does he say this because he is hoping that God will provide a last minute substitution?  My Mom’s thought on this is that Abraham is fully vested in the knowledge that death is not final and that God will resurrect what is destroyed.

Without covering the whole story, I’d like to tell you my thoughts on the whole of Abraham’s proving.  God knew exactly how this was going to go down.  He knew that His servant Abraham was going to walk that long trail, climb that mountain, and raise a knife to slay his only son.  God knew all of this about Abraham, but it had to all happen so that Abraham knew what God knew.  Like gold proven with fire, Abraham stood in the flames and had his faith made more defined, more real, more solid.

Go ahead and read Genesis 22 for yourself.

A great deal of what I know about Genesis 1-4 comes from phone calls with my Mom, classes my Mom taught, walks I took with Mom, quick lunches with my Mom, and the occasional long line at the post office with my Mom.  I memorized these chapters at her request and my own desire to assist her in a ladies retreat she was teaching.  I cannot give you my thoughts without sharing with you words that are, on occasion, hers.

Before being under my Mom’s tutorship on these scriptures, I assumed there was nothing new to learn.  God makes the earth, God makes people, people sin, and now here we are.  It’s pretty cut and dry.  Why even read it?  Further study of these verses changed my past assumptions, and memorizing it for the purpose of interpreting it dramatically made it become less a story that I’d heard a million times and more a look at my own history.  I’ll only be going over the first six or so verses of chapter one in this post.

What I heard in my soul when I opened Genesis was, “S-l-o-w down.  Be deliberate as you absorb each word.  This is important.”

“In the beginning.” There was a beginning.  This world has a moment at which it started.  This matters.  Because it began, this means that there was a time before when there was nothing.  Things that have a beginning have an end.  It is not a never ending loop.

“God created”.  He formed, He made, He designed… out of nothing.  There was no artist’s palette to pull from.  He made the palette.

“The earth was without form, an empty void; and darkness was upon the face of the very deep.” Empty.  Void.  Dark.  In this place there is no anchor, no color, no thought.  Even in the dark, I can imagine something of substance.   The floor beneath me stabilizes me and offers some answer to what is in the dark.  But this dark in Genesis 1 is a complete void; something unimaginable in our known reality.

“The Spirit of God was brooding over the face of the waters.” I have a lot of favorite parts of this chapter, and this is one of my very favorites.  What a picture it paints!  We see this God and He is brooding over the waters; this dark nothing.  He is deliberate as He considers these dark waters and what is to be made from them.

He broods.  And then (pause, dear reader, to gasp in awe) He speaks.  The first spoken words recorded in our scripture are from the mouth of God. Can you imagine how very still it was?  What a hush must have fallen as all creation labored before its birth.

“‘Let there be light.’  And there was light.  And God saw that the light was good.” He said it.  It was His Word.  It. Was. So.  He investigated His work and saw that it was good.

“And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” He tells us right here the time frame in which He made this light.  One day.  And He repeats this day by day, verse by verse.  ”There was evening and there was morning…”  How can I get around this statement?  How can I debate this?  How can I deliberately forget that this is indeed how God made the earth?

I used to casually allow for the debate as to whether God made the earth in six days, or did He use evolution to make the earth.  The desire to pick a side on this argument became real and relevant to me when I got to Genesis 3 and met the third character in this story.  The one who says, “Did God really say…?”

I rarely refer to myself as an “artist”; preferring to skirt around it with words like “artsy”, or “artsy fartsy” (if my Mom isn’t around).  ”Artist” has a heavy sound in my ear and begs to be answered with some fantastic piece of tangible, real art.  I tried actually painting once in kindergarten.  My teacher called my work “bland”.  ”Bland” wasn’t in my vocabulary, being only 5, so I translated it to mean “sour”.  Neither one had a good ring so I determined that I was not to be an artist.

When I made it to the sixth grade I sat lonely in that cafetorium at lunch time and gazed dreamily at the tiny stage set off to the side.  It had thick gold curtains and I would fantasize about those curtains slowly and dramatically opening to reveal… ME! The audience, massive audience, would cheer and toss roses on the stage.  And then one of the guys from NKOTB, whose touring bus had broken down out front, would come up on the stage and declare that he was mesmerized.  In the spring semester of that year I was able to perform in a 20 minute play about spies.  My dream was realized, on a slightly smaller scale.  And the die was cast.  I had found my art.

I love acting.  It is a rather unsung hero of the performing arts (when you’re an amateur).  Musicians can swagger with a guitar slung over their shoulder and draw a crowd anytime they may desire, dancers can go to a dance hall and get a circled audience (as per Grease).  Acting, though, acting can only be done in very precise and well timed events.  Were I to break out in a monologue on a street corner, I would be carted off to a nuthouse.  It must be properly framed.

So I soothed myself with writing.  Crafting known words into new and fantastic essays and prose is a nice outlet for me.  It allows for some drama and, with blogging, an audience.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ve had a nice break from reading.  (You’re welcome.)  I have spent the last year burying myself back into acting because I have finally found the perfect medium for my art and the perfect script.   If you’ve known me for more than 5 minutes, I hope you know that I take the Bible very seriously and adore it for every word.  I know and fully believe that scripture is God breathed and is His divine Word for us.  No other thought of man can be taken as fact if it does not measure up to God’s Word.  What a light bulb, jump on the sofa like Tom Cruise kind of moment it was for me when I realized that God was the perfect script writer!

Memorizing bulk scripture and presenting it dramatically is far more complex and rewarding a task than I imagined.  One cannot simply commit the lines to memory and regurgitate them without first studying the whole of its background, because a good actor always wants to know the unwritten back story.  To present Jonah, I studied Ninevah and its relation to Israel.  I learned about the people, the time, their gods, how they worshiped, how they lived and what they sacrificed.  I learned about Jonah and his home.  I studied about the northern kingdom of Israel and its history.  I learned much that I don’t share in word when presenting Jonah, as it is not in scripture, but I find that I can present it in movement and expression.

I have partnered with a good friend in this work and we have spent countless hours hammering out these scriptures and debating how to best craft the presentations.  This has indeed been a case of “iron sharpening iron” as we wrestle and study and pray together.  What a joy.  What an exhausting joy.

I have a couple of posts rumbling around in my head about the specific scriptures I have memorized and what I have gained from having spent so much intimate time with them.  I hope this post here does a good job of introducing the next few posts.

Do your kids ever find themselves at some function or event at which they end up with a name tag sticker on the back of their shirt (thankyouverymuch, highsecuritychildrenswing@mychurch)?  And then you thoughtlessly toss the shirt or super cute dress into the washing machine?  Suddenly, the tiny homemaker joy of a clean load of laundry – fresh from the dryer – is turned into a petite homemaker panic attack because the laundry has reproduced in a span of one load.  Now you’ll have to take care of it, and it’s not going to be any easy task because the gooey sticky stuff is almost impossible to remove.

This happened to me just last week.  It was on a piece of nice Sunday finery and I only noticed it after I had taken the item from the laundry room and was about to hang it in the kids’ closet.  Deciding that I’d remember to tend to it, I hung it up any way.  And left it.  It nagged me anytime I looked in the direction of the closet door, because even I know that I’ll never get to it.

But last week was different.  Last week I took that cute little vest out of the closet and actually got the mess cleaned off with almost no real effort.  I stood there in the laundry room and had a real moment of joy, pride, and sincere elation.  My deep sigh of satisfaction was met with the hum of the dryer and the kids fighting in the next room.

It made me think of all those moments of honest to goodness triumph that us homemakers have in a day and I wanted to take a minute to give you all a shout out for the stuff that goes unnoticed and unappreciated.  Hat’s off to you girls who clean that area behind the toilet, who gather all the unused hangers from the closet, who keep a running list of socks without mates,  who know the trick to using hand dish soap in the dishwasher, who have an inner clock that alerts you to the rinse cycle.   It is a tough job and our biggest triumphs are often tiny.  Cheers to you and I hope you have a FANTASTIC day at work!