Cruising Chronicles

     I have previously blogged about my addiction to homiletics (see Homiletics Junkie), so my personal Bible studies for the past two summers while BSF is not in session has been doing homiletics on a chapter a day.  When BSF left us at the entrance to the promised land, I continued from there through Judges and Israel's early kingdom.  Last year I was frustrated to run out of summer before finishing 2 Kings, but it was great segue into Isaiah, last year's new and meaty study.  This summer's homiletics began with Chronicles, and Chronicles begins with geneologies.  That is usually the place that loses people reading straight through the Bible. I have read through the Bible many times, always skimming those chapters, and I have studied Chronicles but not when afflicted with homiletics.  My question was, would I find meaning and application in those name dropping, tongue twisting early chapters?  Surprisingly, I did.  I might have learned more if I had looked at a commentary or studied the meanings of the names but that seemed hard.  I avoid hard.
     Here are some of the truths I gleaned without bending over too far: 
     Ch. 1  God has a plan for individuals, places and promises.
     Favorite Application:  How do I recognize God working with people and nations not prophesied?
     Ch. 2  God cares about families and individuals.
     F. A.  What would God's one line synopsis be of me?
     Ch. 3  Even during punishment God is working out His plan.
     F.A.  Where do I feel like God's plan is stagnant?
     Ch. 4  History is not events and places, it is families and individuals.
     F.A.  How/where am I preserving our family records/history?
     Ch. 5  Lineage and might do not win God's favor.
     F.A.  What are my firstborn obligations? (I'm actually 2nd but my brother abdicated)
     Ch. 6, 9  God has a role and place for all His people.
     F.A.  How can I serve God in the place He's given me?
     Ch. 7  Know your resources for battle.
     F.A.  Am I ready for spiritual battle?
     Ch.8  Men of God's choosing are not always men of God.
     F. A.  How often do I pray for the leader of my country?

     After the geneologies Chronicles gets interesting again, with stories, I like stories, stories are easy.  But it's nice to know my beloved homiletics can shrink wrap the truth even in geneologies and that I can easily identify the passage in my subject sentence by using the words . . . are chronicled.  (Seems like cheating.)

    

    
   

New Gig

     It took me a while to realize that when God delayed answering my prayers it was because He was working on an upgrade.  When our family had grown to the point that we needed to look for another house, I had just a few requests: 1) a second bathroom  2) windows I could open and close by myself--Reed traveled frequently and our old sliders were sometimes stuck open or closed for weeks at a time 3) a view so I could see far--it helped me cope with the closed in feeling of white, winter skies.  We looked at houses.  We looked for a year.  I started reminding God that our unsaved friends were finding houses and we were the Christians.  Where was our house?  Fortunately we had one of the good realtors who stuck with us and didn't try to talk us into something we didn't want.  I wondered if I would recognize the house when I saw it or if I would just grow to love it gradually--like I did my husband. 
     Then one August day I got a phone call about a house on Leisure Drive.  When I pulled in the driveway I knew, it was the house.  I made two offers on it before Reed even got to see it.  Not only did it have two bathrooms, but the second one was in our bedroom, our own private bath.  Not only could I open the windows, but they were high quality and had a beautiful view.  Not only a view, but a beautiful, quiet place to walk, the feel of being in the country but the convenience of being in town.  Our house far exceeded anything we ever expected to have.  The reason it took so long was because the owner got divorced, remarried, moved, and desperate enough to sell it for a price we could afford.  God had been preparing it for us all the while I had been whining at Him.
    Another upgrade was when we were looking for a replacement car.  I wanted one with less than 100k miles.  Most of ours were over 100k by the time we could afford them.  As an added whim I told God I liked Olds or Buick, but anything would do.  A couple in our church sold us their Olds Cutlass.  It had 43,900 miles on it.  I was beginning to understand the upgrade principle.  Just as we as parents don't just grudgingly give our children necessities of life, but delight to give them things we know would please them, God doesn't just give us what we need, He cares about our dreams too.  Everything God has wanted for me is better than what I wanted for myself.  The trick is remembering that during the wait.
     That explains why we began this trip in a small room at an older Comfort Inn and are now in an executive suite in Gig Harbor.  It has a walk in closet, gas fireplace, wet bar, and vaulted ceilings.  Instead of eating free hard boiled eggs and instant oatmeal for breakfast, I'm ordering free crab cakes and seafood omelets.  God gives free upgrades and He knows better than we do what will make us truly happy.  I am sure I will still whine when prayers don't get answered according to my plans or time schedules, but hopefully not for long.  Trust has become my new gig.

Sins of the Fathers

     When I first read the passage in the Bible that says "the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons unto the fourth generation", I thought it was terribly unfair of God to impose such conditions.  Now that I have had an additional four decades to observe life, I realize that sins being passed on to the following generations is a natural consequence.  God no more has to intervene to impact descendants with familial sins than He has to perform a miracle for rain to make things wet.  The miracle is that God intervenes to break the sin cycle in ways that change families for the good for many generations.  The grace is that He will be faithful to many because of the obedience of one.
     I learned that mostly from the books of Kings and Chronicles where God would bless a disobedient king and country because of a predecessor's faithfulness or even their own previous obedience. I am comforted by that when I think of the faith of our founding fathers and the tolerance of every ideology but Christianity in our own time.
     Few illustrations of the generational impact of sin have been as poignant for me as the broken boys and girls with whom I interacted in our home, whose parents' examples taught them such low expectations for life, responsibility and happiness. They surfed from couch to couch looking for a home and from one set of arms to another looking for love.  Babies were born as souvenirs of various relationships and forgotten almost as easily. I believe one of the reasons tattooes have become so popular with young people is because they are the only thing that can't be taken away from them.  They lose relationships, jobs, possessions, freedom, even children; all they are able to keep is their skin.  Their desire to make their mark in the world is fulfilled through the marks on their body 
     As bad as the damage was from the sins of their fathers, the common factor seemed to be the absence of fathers.  Bad parents might be forgiven, might even change, absence gives neither of those comforts.  It is very difficult to erase the message "you weren't important enough to stick around for".  Neither Reed nor I will leave great Christian examples for our children, they have witnessed many of our failures, but they know our weaknesses so well because of all the time we spent together.  I would rather be a flawed parent up close than an idealized one far away.  I would rather have them laughing at me than not laughing at all.

Weather Vein

     This spring has been a season of devastating tornadoes, heat and floods.  But God must own real estate in western Montana because He has gone to a lot of trouble to delay flooding in our area by keeping the winter snowpack from melting too quickly.  It has been too cool for the snowpack to melt, in fact, the snowpack is still building.  The Logan Pass visitor center at Glacier Park looks like an abandoned cabin in a arctic wasteland.  I don't know why we have been singled out for this special favor or the favor of watering our lawns for us, you would think God would have more important things to do.  Needless to say, this would be a poor time to talk to us about global warming, we would welcome it.
     There are what are now called "sunbreaks" though.  My mind and most of my body welcome these intervals of sun, but my brain has a built in barometer which responds to changes in pressure by triggering migraines.  As a migraineur (makes me sound successful, or possibly French) I can tell the difference between weather and muscle triggered headaches.  Essentially I have a weather vein in my head.  Now I can join the ranks of the old people who can predict the weather by the ache of their lumbago (sounds Italian), rheumatism etc. For my brain's sake I wish the weather would choose either good or bad and just spend the day there.
     Summer officially begins Tuesday but I'm sure our weather will be as heedless of the summer solstice as it was of the spring.  Weather generally has no interest in calendars.  My favorite joke about weather comes from a friend at church:
                                     "What do you do in the summer in the Flathead?"
                                     "Well, if it happens to fall on a Sunday, after church we
                                       pack a picnic and go to the lake."

I hope summer falls on a Sunday this year.
  

Men of Honor

     My niece and I were having the "If you could live in another time...?" discussion last week.  I don't have a specific time picked out, but I think I would like to live in a time when I would be called "My lady".  It sounds noble.  Not that I want to be a queen, just someone with a smattering of influence.  I don't feel too snobbish about it, I doubt anyone dreams of being a common peon in an age when life was hard and people died young. However, I am very glad to live in this time.  Having cooked for an overnight, pioneer field trip I have decided hot running water is the greatest invention of the 20th century.  Every time I turned around I needed hot running water.  And how are you supposed to wash the pan you are heating the water in?  I would never have been able to turn around in the 19th century.
     I realize, though, that most women called "my lady" had few choices about their lives.  You might be married off to a stranger as part of a political, financial, even geographical alliance, an addendum to a deal drawn up between  men who have no interest in your happiness.  Besides, if I had lived in a era before braces, I would have needed a wealthy father to provide sufficient dowry to bribe someone to marry me.  To paraphrase--my face would be writing checks my personality couldn't cash.  It's better to stay right here in a land with health care, hot showers and lattes.
     But there is something else I miss, something I have read about in books, a time when men valued a sense of honor as much as their lives.  There are still honorable men, ironically, few of them are among those addressed as "your honor"; but the idea of honor, doing right simply because it is right, largely disappeared from our culture shortly after the concept of truth.  If there is no objective standard of right and wrong, neither gentlemen nor thieves are obligated to do more than their follow their conscience, often at a great distance.  There was a time when men knew that being a man required denying his natural impulses and following a higher standard.  Not all did, of course, but those who did were admired and respected.  Imagine a reality TV program about honorable men and women.  They would never make the cut.  Too boring.
     I am privileged to be the lady of an honorable man (my husband has always called me lady, maybe that's where I got the idea) and our children have grown into people of honor, but I wish there were not so many voices out there saying integrity doesn't matter.  It is hard to obey the biblical commands to give honor to God, parents, kings etc. if we do not have it.  The respect and esteem of a dishonorable person is an insult rather than a compliment.  If I could live in another time, I would choose a time when kings were still honored and honor was still king.

Keeping the Vows

     He was not the most talented of the seven brothers in his family and definitely not the tallest; I consider him the most handsome but, as his daughter, I may be prejudiced.  He didn't remodel our home, fix his own car and never built anything memorable, except us kids.  His gardening was limited to a few tomatoes and flowers.  He didn't serve on any boards, join any clubs or rise to distinction at work.  He served as a clerk in the army and worked in an office for most of his career. He didn't even lead us to the Lord, he followed us kids.  In a group he would be noticed only for being quiet.  But he did one thing outstandingly well.  He kept his wedding vows.
     Of the 57 years of their marriage thus far, only eight were unclouded by my mom's schizophrenia. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health... Through all the confusion of  growing up with an unstable mother, Dad was the glue that held our family together and the rock that held us steady.  He didn't do that by inspiring speeches, hugs or camping trips, he just kept coming home.  He kept coming home to a wife who treated him as a stranger, servant or enemy.  He was not always patient, but he was steady when she was moody and he kept coming home to us.  He paid the bills, mowed the grass, lived a quiet, unremarkable life and kept coming home to a loveless marriage and the children who needed him.
     In the later years of her schizophrenia he became mom's caregiver and increasingly stuck at home until October 2010 when her strength deteriorated to the point that she needed to be placed in a facility where she is now and, in the ways he can, he is still taking care of her, still keeping his vows.  There may be other men who would love so faithfully but I cannot think of any.  Heroes do not always rush in saving lives and leading others, sometimes they save them one day at a time.  They just keep coming home to the people they love.

The Last of the Spares

     I will follow up the story of spare son number five with the end of the story of the spare sons.  When the spares were with us I knew what I was called to do, God called me to mother them the way it should have been done in the first place.  It was hard to relate to their struggles and lifestyles because my life experience was so unlike theirs.  I had never been around alcohol, fighting and the legal system, but I had grown up in an unstable home because of my mother's mental illness and some of the feelings were similar.  I needed a whole new pool of wisdom than what I had used with my own kids.  I prayed a lot, but I also loved being able to show the love of Christ to them in the practical ways we are commanded to but seldom find opportunities--I fed them, clothed them, took care of them when they were sick and visited them in jail.  It was extremely fulfilling to me to have an opportunity to extend mothering, my best job ever, for a few more years.
     Both A.J.s lived with us only a month; David, our token Christian, the son of college friends, 5 weeks; Andy, Justin and Mackenzie, four months; Loren, one year; Lance, most of two years.  The hardest one to lose was Lance.  His situation was the most critical, his alcoholism had brought him to a breakpoint between jail and prison, without help prison is where he would be now.  The rules of our house gave him an excuse to say no when his friends wanted to drink, when he was with us he was safe.  I knew I could not save him from the lifestyle that was drowning him, I just wanted to get him closer to the shore where he could touch bottom and get himself out.  Since he is not in jail or prison now, I assume he did.
     When the last of the spares had left God called me to an even harder job, He asked if I could love the way He does, for years at a time, getting no response.  I told Him I could.  That is what I am doing now.  I pray for them everyday, and trust God to continue through others the privilege that was mine for a time, to help lead them to Christ.  This lack of communication is not limited to inconsiderate young men.  I listened to a woman from a severely dysfunctional home tell about the individuals who had made such a difference in changing her life.  Though she was a community leader, business professional and lived in the same town with the people who had helped her, she had never told them what an impact they had. Some memories are just too hard to revisit.
     I am content to know that I did the job God called me to do in the lives of these young men and all those we met through them.  God always finishes what He starts, the results are His responsibility, obedience is mine.  I do not accept not knowing because I am super spiritual, it is simply the reality of the situation.  I will not try to track them down, they know where I am, ours was always a voluntary relationship.  I wanted to show them unconditional love, now is my chance to give it under the hardest condition of all--waiting.
   

Off the Top of My Head

     We use the expression "just off the top of my head" as a disclaimer that we haven't put much thought into what is about to come out of our mouths.  I should probably use that expression much more often because 99 plus percent of what I say is spontaneous as is way too much of what I write.  But in my case what is off the top of my head is my glasses.  I'm sure  people wonder why I keep them there.  The reason is very simple, I have never once misplaced the top of my head.  Wearing glasses is a relatively new experience for me.  I didn't need glasses until my forties when I began to need weak ones for reading.  I bought them at the Dollar Store.  The one dollar price allowed me to buy many pairs, which I scattered throughout the rooms of the house in which I might reasonably need to read something.  I kept a pair in my purse, bedroom, living room, computer room and eventually added a pair to the laundry room for reading clothing labels.  This system worked pretty well even as I required progressively stronger magnification, but there were still times the glasses I needed weren't handy, so I began tucking them through the collar of my shirt, hanging them from a cord around my neck and eventually perched on the top of my head.  Though mothers are reputed to have eyes in the back of their head, no one claims to have them on the top, so that probably looked a little weird, but it worked.  I increasingly relied on glasses for close up viewing and they were handy as long as I had the top of my head with me.
     I just had to be careful to avoid "stacking", winding up wearing a pair with a forgotten pair perched on the top of my head.  That problem largely disappeared last year when I got my first pair of prescription glasses.  My eyes didn't suddenly get worse, it's just that for the first time in 30 years we had vision coverage and I could get glasses for less than $50.  Bifocals naturally.  I was hoping I could just leave them on all the time, but my distance vision is still good and the slight distortion of the bifocal line bothers me, so I take them off when I walk outside or go down the stairs. My theory is, since the purpose of glasses is to help me see better, when they make it harder for me to see clearly I take them off. So you will find my prescription glasses still frequently perched on top of my head but still unlikely to get sat on or lost.  I think scalp specs may be the next big fashion trend, but that's just off the top of my head.

The Reluctant Samaritan

     I was so desperate for blog ideas that I wasted way too much time one day this week reading through my old ones.  That inspired me to waste even more time following up on ideas I didn't expand on at the time, like this one, the story of the reluctant good Samaritan.  This is the story of spare son number five, A.J., one of two A.J.s that lived with us.  This A.J. was a friend of spare son number three, Mackenzie.  A.J. lived in Pablo but visited Mackenzie several times over the four months Mackenzie lived with us, usually spending the night, but I really didn't know him.  I didn't particularly want to know him. A.J. had peculiar body language, it's hard to describe, but his back kind of arched backwards and he held his head at an odd angle as if he were floating, or trying to.  His didn't seem to be high or have any physical abnormalities, but he seemed abnormal all the same.  I didn't mind having him around, but was never sorry to see him go.  Mackenzie said A.J.'s grandmother, who had custody of A.J. and his sister while their dad was in Afghanistan, had shipped them off to their mother in Colorado.  After Mackenzie moved to his own place, he told me he had bought A.J. a bus ticket to Kalispell so I knew he was back in the area but didn't give it much more thought.  After all, it didn't have anything to do with me.  Famous last words.
     In those days I used to clean my house weekly, (now I clean it weakly) and it was on one of those cleaning days that I glanced out the window and saw someone wrapped in a sleeping bag stumbling around in the street.  I went back to cleaning sincerely hoping it was no one I knew.  Then the doorbell rang.  It was A.J.  He had been at Mackenzie's apartment the night before, got accused of stealing and then beat up by a stranger down the street who had got caught up in the excitement.  His nose was broken and one of his two front teeth had been jammed all the way back into his gums.   Doctor wannabe Mackenzie decided there was no head injury so broke into a trailer he knew of near our house, gave him a sleeping bag and left him to the healing influences of solitude without water or pain meds and a mile from the nearest help. It had taken him until afternoon to have the energy for the walk to our house.  A.J. wanted to shower before going to the e.r., meanwhile I hunted through our unclaimed clothes pile for some dry clothes for him.
     I found out at the hospital that A.J. was only 17 and, though they could give him urgent care, signed permission would be needed for the surgeries he was going to require in the coming week to extract his tooth and straighten his nose.  Whenever they took him away for tests, I was on the phone frantically trying to find somewhere for him to stay.  For all I knew he was a thief and no one still living at our house could vouch for him.  Unfortunately the only place he had to stay was the apartment where he got beat up.  Before releasing him the doctor asked where he was staying, he did not want him spending another night alone on the island.  A.J. spoke up, "I'm staying at Connie's".  Now we both knew.
     I checked on him through the night and took him to the dental surgeon the next day; I decided he could stay until after his surgeries, a couple days...  This is where I got introduced to really dysfunctional families and the slightly more functional department of family services.  A.J. had insurance but no one wanted to sign permission for surgery.  His mother never even called the e.r. to find out how badly he was hurt and later refused to sign even when the doctor promised to accept assignment, to charge no more than what the insurance paid.  Grandma wouldn't sign because she was mad that he sneaked back to Montana without telling her, even though she had said she didn't want to hear from him again.  I had to initiate a neglect complaint against the mom just to access family services and then didn't hear from his case worker until after his surgeries.  Grandma finally signed for the dental procedure so his father wouldn't be bothered in Afghanistan, but she refused to sign to reset A.J.'s nose because "his dad has a crooked nose and so can he."  But it wasn't about appearance, without surgery he would never be able to breathe properly through one nostril again, without prompt surgery they would need to rebreak the nose.
     After the initial discouragement of realizing there was no way A.J. would be with us a couple days and having no knowledge of how to deal with this kind of situation, I became tenacious.  This boy would have surgery one way or the other.  I didn't care if I got his mother in trouble.  If she couldn't even bother to call the hospital she was neglectful.  I had the Red Cross contact his father in Afghanistan for permission for surgery.  I didn't care how bad it made him look that he hadn't even known where his son was.  I didn't care if grandma's feelings were hurt.  I cared about A.J.  Somehow I cared about A.J. even though I hadn't wanted to.  The doctors accepted low military insurance reimbursement, one even operated on his lunch hour and the office staffs of both made many phone calls to his hateful family because all of us apparently cared more about A.J. than they did.
     So A.J. had his surgeries.  His father instructed me to take A.J. to the police station following the second surgery and implied he would try to keep me out trouble for "harboring" a runaway.  The police didn't even interview A.J., they don't apprehend runaways over 16 unless they have broken the law, A.J. was a couple months shy of 18.  The bus ticket to Colorado his father promised never arrived.  A.J. stayed with us a month.  Among all the usual mom stuff I drove him to his two fast food jobs until he earned enough to buy his own ticket.  I have not heard from him since, typical for our spare sons. I think the Lord sent A.J. to me because I had the medical background to take care of him and the persistence to deal with his difficult family. God himself supplied the ability to love him.  The main question I was asked when all this started was, "How do you know him?"  My answer "I hardly know him at all".  I guess the biblical answer would be "He's my neighbor".

Cisco

    I have been blessed with a husband who likes cats as much as dogs, such men are rare.  We have been blessed with two wonderful cats we have, however, actually had four cats.  Perhaps significant is that both of the unwonderful (underful?) cats are females.  A cat loving friend (ironically named Tom) told us that females are like this because they have an instinct to keep their distance during kitten bearing years when humans, other cats etc. are viewed as a threat.  Our cats are spayed but their instincts probably don't know this. "I'm groomed, I'm willing but nobody asks me out."  Standoffishness is certainly true of Sola, our current underful cat.  We got her from a... (What is the term for a bunch of cats?  It is a pride of lions. I'll call it ...) "scrounge" of feral cats that my sister feeds.
     She was the only cat in her litter, hence the name. Later we suspected she killed off her siblings.  Fortunately Sola doesn't look like her country cousins who seem to be the cat version of dingoes with short bodies and wedge shaped heads. Some of them don't even shed like normal cats, they molt. Sola spends a lot of her time sleeping at the foot of our bed close to, but not on, the blanket I put there as a sacrifice to the cat hair demon.  Somehow she recognized the ploy.  Under the right conditions Sola will tolerate being petted and through the years is becoming friendlier but she has one potentially lethal (to her) characteristic, she meows with the loud insistence of a starving kitten.  It is a not a Siamese yowl, but it is a demand nonetheless. Since she is five years old, I have given up hoping she will out grow it.  Yes, we pay attention when she meows, but it makes us want to hurt her.  Underful.
     Our former underful cat is the one we got our daughter for her seventh birthday; somehow she forgot to take Annie with her when she married even though we offered to mail her.  Annie lived to be 19 1/2, long enough to outgrow her diffidence and, like the aged both human and animal, began to crave being touched.  The decision of when to put her down when her health failed was one of the hardest we have ever made.  Maybe we will feel the same about Sola someday.
     Our current wonderful cat is Maynard.  Maynard is at one with the universe, to the point of seeming stoned.  He likes everybody and everything and is quite confident that everybody likes him.  But before Maynard we had Cisco.  Cisco had a white and orange coat as soft as rabbit fur.  Unfortunately it seemed to maintain its soft texture by renewing itself through perpetual shedding.  Also perpetually renewed was his need to nurse.  For years Cisco sucked on earlobes, knuckles and any other loose bit of skin he was allowed to. He loved to be outside because he loved to be terrified.  We'd see him racing from bush to bush to escape the perilous wind, leaves, bugs etc., then he would come in the house with his tail poofed four inches in diameter.  Cisco drooled.  He would crawl up on our stomach or side when we were lying down, kneading his paws up and down, smacking his lips contentedly and drooling.  The endearing factor outweighed the gross factor.  Not many people have someone who loves them to the point of drooling.
     Cisco died unexpectedly at the age of 13 under anesthesia while getting his teeth cleaned, one of those complications you read about but never expect to happen. Reed came home from work early that day, as much for his own sake as for ours. We wrapped Cisco in the rug he always slept on and buried him under his favorite bush in the backyard.  I miss him to this day.  What I still have with me are the memories and the lessons I learned from Cisco.  Lesson one:  Love with abandon, crawl up in God's lap. God would rather have our clumsy love than dignified indifference.  Lesson two:  Exude contentment--drool if you must.  Lesson three: Live with abandon.  Ordinary events can be an adventure if you choose to see them that way.  Lesson four:  Part of the adventure is doing things that scare you.  And the final and hardest lesson I learned from Cisco's death, it is to trust the mysterious sovereignty of God.  God's eye is on the sparrow, but sparrows still die, and it is all part of His care and keeping of the planet and His beautiful, inscrutable plan for us.

Empty

     I am beginning to think I have used up all my ideas for this blog and my mind is empty.  There are always thoughts rattling around my brain, of course, but none that compel me to share them at this time, so rather than blather I am going to insert a poem I already wrote--about being empty.  Since it is dated January 2010 and was inspired by Palm Sunday, I assume that's what we were studying in BSF. 

 

Empty

     We do not wave palm branches now
and there are none on earth we bow the knee to,
so how can such proud spirits bring
sufficient honor to a king unseen?
In our time honor has become
   an empty word.

     We do not shout "Hosanna" now.
We're much too proud to think that we need saving,
or believe in self-delusion that
by our effort, we can save ourselves.
We offer those who need our help
   such empty hearts.

     With earth-bound hands we offer you
man made things but seldom true worship,
religious rites, but not right behavior.
With our self-imposed lists and labor
we faithfully follow tradition, but
   with empty minds.

     Perhaps the best that we can bring
to you, who are our friend and king and brother,
are quiet times remembering
that we have nothing to offer
but listening ears and honest talk
   and empty hands.