In a Moment

One moment I was on the phone with my husband who had called to say he would pick our daughter up from her gymnastics class…

One moment I was considering how much house I could clean in the few minutes I had until they got home from gym class…

…when suddenly, in two seconds, everything changed.

My daughter fell off the balance beam at the gym.  She told me later that she screamed as soon as she hit the floor and that she just knew her arm was broken.  What we didn’t know at the time is that not one bone but both bones in her forearm had completely snapped in two.  What used to be two bones was now four.

So I jumped back in the car, put on the hazard lights, and flew back to the gym to meet my husband who had just arrived.  There is something horrifying about knowing your child is in pain and you can’t do anything to stop it.  If I could have put her pain on me, I would have.

Suffice it to say it was a long night.  The local ER sent us by ambulance to the very busy Children’s hospital downtown…and, because of an overload, the orthopedic specialist sent us back home with instructions to return in the early morning for surgery.

Despite the bad news that my daughter had a broken arm, the Lord carried us.  I have so many praises it’s hard to put them all in a cohesive list, but, for His glory, I will try:

…I did not have a panic attack.  Yes, I had the shakes when it was all over and we were home, but that was a side effect of all the adrenaline that kept me going through the ordeal.  Perhaps for some of  you this is not a praise, but believe me when I say that this in itself is a divine intervention of the tallest order.  First of all, I had to ride in an ambulance.  Backwards.  This normally would have turned me completely green.  And the nausea would have induced panic.  But my daughter kept up a steady stream of nervous chattering which both put me at ease and even had me in stitches.  She told the paramedic that her bed was very comfortable and she wondered why it was called a ’stretcher’ since ’stretcher’ seems more like a torture device!

…I did not freak out in the Children’s ER despite the large numbers of…well, sick children…and despite that fact that, of all the times to be OUT of hand cleaner, it was that night.  I had no hand cleaner in my purse.  I was in a germy hospital.  My daughter had on a hospital gown and socks, and I had to help her in the germy bathroom.  Yet I did not freak out.  That, my friends, was one of those God things!

…My daughter’s biggest fear was that she was going to have to get a shot or an IV, or both.  The tears started flowing in earnest when she thought that might actually become necessary.  God answered that prayer by providing us with an anesthesiologist who used gas to sedate her rather than an IV.

…She did not have any complications from the anesthesia except for throwing up in the car on the way home.  It’s ironic.  I made my husband ride with her in the back seat because they told us some kids do get sick after receiving gas sedation.  She made it fine almost all the way home.  Then we stopped by Target to get her a movie.  My husband ran in to get it…and while he was gone…she got sick.  Of course!  But I didn’t freak out and neither did she.

…She did not have to have invasive surgery!  The surgeon was able to use the xray machine to help him set the fractures. Adults who get her kind of fractures need pins and plates; kids don’t need them!

…The cut on her arm was NOT due to bone poking through, which was a concern at first.

…This ordeal happened when my husband was IN town and not when he was out of town.  I needed him with me; he needed me with him; our daughter needed us both.

…The ER nurse was a Christian who came to her and gently laid her hands on her and prayed over her…praying for quick healing and for pain relief.  Her presence was a blessing; I watched my daughter’s face get brighter as this nice nurse prayed.  I wish I knew her name so I could write her and let her know that her prayer for my daughter in the middle of that stressful time was the biggest blessing, and that her prayers for my daughter turned into peace for me.

…Today her pain is much better and her spirits are higher.  The swelling in her hand was significant today, so I took her back in to the clinic where she received immediate relief when they loosened up the cast.

Unfortunately, despite all the praises and the awesome way God was was faithful to us, I let him, and myself, and my daughter down today.  I must have had some stored up stress in me because I totally blew it this morning.  Totally.  I got angry.  Said very hurtful things to my sweet girl.  Said a bad word.  Why?  Because she smiled at me and I saw that her teeth, which had been perfectly straight one week ago — the result of braces that had just come off — were getting a gap in between them again!  The whole tooth ordeal started  because she had something called a “tongue thrust.”  We’ve done the speech therapy route to correct that.  When I saw the tiny gap, I freaked out.  Man, I’d rather I freaked out in the hospital than today!  I am ashamed.  I accused her of not keeping her tongue in the right spot.  I told her she might end up with an ugly mouth. I cried.  Inwardly I yelled at God for putting all this — broken arm and a tongue thrust — on this sweet little girl.  Outwardly I yelled at this same little girl. Who is this person saying these things?  Oh Jesus, I am emotionally bankrupt and took it out verbally on my child!  When actually, as my husband reminded me later as I relayed the story to him, her teeth probably moved a little because she hasn’t yet gotten her retainer.  A fact I forgot.

One day last week, she compared me to a “sweet little snake.”  Most of the time, she said, I am very sweet and loving.  But sometimes, and she never knows when, I turn into a mean snake!

Okay, so she was trying to wiggle her way out of her own responsibility for not picking up her toys as I’d told her to do.  But, you know, she wasn’t far off the mark.  I do tend to get “snake-like” and hiss every now and then, shaming the very Christ who is in me.  God is showing me a look at myself in the mirror, and I don’t like what I see.  I am reading the book Shepharding a Child’s Heart and am learning that I have sooo much to learn to be a parent who nurtures the heart…who parents in ways that are Biblical and that mirror the way the Lord parents me.

I apologized to my daughter immediately, and she had the grace to forgive me.  Now if I can just forgive myself!  (Even as I write those words, I remind myself of the fact that it is an insult to the Lord to not forgive myself when Jesus died for my sake.)  Forgiving myself has never been easy for me.  But I will.  I will take this experience and repent and praise God for daughters  who forgive their mothers when they mess up and for mothers who forgive their daughters and for the Lord who forgives us both.

In two seconds, our lives changed.  My sweet girl now has to learn to live left-handed — a task to which I was born to do — but her little right hand has been dominant since the day she was born.  I’ve been stressed, but not panicked.  I’ve seen vivid evidence of God’s presence and peace…yet I’ve thrown that to the wind and  “lost it” anyway.  My parents always used to tell me that making mistakes is not a bad thing as long as you learn from them.  My daughter has learned to follow her coach’s instructions about where her hands should be when she’s on the balance beam.  I have learned to hold. my. tongue. when I feel the frustrations crushing in on me. It would be better for me to take a stroll around the back yard with God.  Give HIM my burdens.  Then His patience will flow into me.  Hopefully.

Thank you, Lord, that I’m not “done” yet!  You aren’t finished with me.  May somehow, in some way, this journey my daughter must now take will glorify you.  I want the experience to be one that is like a giant beacon pointing to Christ.  You will be the one to help her with her own impatience at the inconveniences of being one-armed for awhile.  You will be the one to cultivate character qualities in her in ways that I can’t even begin to try.  You, Lord, will be the one to give her confidence and to help her find the bright side of the rainbow no matter what…in fact, you are already doing that!  When she realized she could only play piano with her left hand, she mentioned that she has needed more work on that hand anyway!  You will be the one to mold her heart and her perceptions so that her experience in a cast will help shape the woman you have created her to be.  I put my trust in You.  And I can’t thank you enough for your faithfulness and your peace…no matter what each moment brings.

Pillar of Salt

What are we becoming?  A modern day Sodom and Gomorrah?  Compare Genesis 18 and 19:

So the Lord told Abraham, “I have heard a great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah, because their sin is so flagrant. ²¹ I am going down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard. If not, I want to know.”

And then, in Genesis 19, the three men who had previously visited Abraham went to see Lot in Sodom.  The villagers were so crazy with lust for these men that they tried to break down the door and harm Lot who was trying to protect them.  Lot even offered (if you can believe it!) his virgin daughters to try to appease the crowd, but they didn’t want a woman.  The situation deteriorated very quickly:

“Stand back!” they shouted. “This fellow came to town as an outsider, and now he’s acting like our judge! We’ll treat you far worse than those other men!” And they lunged toward Lot to break down the door.

But the two angels reached out, pulled Lot into the house, and bolted the door. Then they blinded all the men, young and old, who were at the door of the house, so they gave up trying to get inside.

Meanwhile, the angels questioned Lot. “Do you have any other relatives here in the city?” they asked. “Get them out of this place—your sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone else.  For we are about to destroy this city completely. The outcry against this place is so great it has reached the Lord, and he has sent us to destroy it.” At dawn the next morning the angels became insistent. “Hurry,” they said to Lot. “Take your wife and your two daughters who are here. Get out right now, or you will be swept away in the destruction of the city!”

When Lot still hesitated, the angels seized his hand and the hands of his wife and two daughters and rushed them to safety outside the city, for the Lord was merciful. When they were safely out of the city, one of the angels ordered, “Run for your lives! And don’t look back or stop anywhere in the valley! Escape…or you will be swept away!”

Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every bit of vegetation.  But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt.

God heard a “great outcry.”  Who was it who he heard?  Does God “hear” sin in the same way we “see” it?  Or were the prayers of the outnumbered righteous people the ones that he heard?  It’s worth mentioning that the “righteous” one who God spared committed a sin himself when he offered his virgin daughters to the mob.  Rather than calculated and cold, I can picture him being frantic and worried and ready to say just about anything to get the mob away from his guests.  What must his daughters have felt?  Perhaps they knew that this crowd had no interest  in male/female trysts and thus believed their father’s offer was an empty one.  The angels acted quickly before Lot’s mouth got him in more trouble and brought him inside to safety.

Fast forward to 2009.  Take a look at the lead from a story, titled “Work that Tiara, Boy!” that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday:

Spend time with George Mason University senior Ryan Allen and it’s clear why he’s a Big Man on Campus. He wears size 12 pumps.

Allen is now — as of halftime at Saturday’s sold-out basketball game against Northeastern at the Patriot Center — the school’s homecoming queen. He received more votes than the two women who vied for the crown.

My dismay at this story may  surprise you.  I am actually hurting for Ryan Allen.  I feel so sad that he is trapped in a pit of sin that is not much different than the pits I am constantly trying to climb out of.  My pits are many — anxiety…selfishness…materialism…depression…self-reliance rather than leaning on God…laziness, and the Lord knows probably many more that lurk in my heart.  The difference is in the fact that I KNOW I am a sinner and have turned to Jesus to set me free.  I KNOW I am in a pit, and when I reach my hand out to Christ, he hauls me back up and sets me back on my feet.  Because of Christ living in me, I feel my feet slipping and sliding and take courage and strength to resist the pits.  Does Ryan Allen even know he is living in a pit?  Do those who voted him in as “queen” realize it?

No, my dismay is that our nation is so blind!  Our need for a savior is made so evident in stories like these….stories in which sin is glorified because the people are living in darkness.  I do not cry out to God to destroy us or to destroy those who are living deep inside the pit.  I cry for a way to be made that they will see the truth and freedom that is in Jesus.  That college administrators touting “diversity” will no longer equate “diversity” with “immorality” or even “amorality.”  I cry out for a  spiritual awakening — and I ask God to soften hearts and open eyes to truth….and to show me and use me in the purpose for which he made all of us, which is to glorify him.

…lest we all, in the name of tolerance and diversity, turn into a giant pillar of salt.

Digging Into the Closet

I live in a small town of barely more than 10,000 people.  There are, however, not one but two self-storage businesses within a five mile radius.  Imagine my surprise to see red earth and bulldozers in a field less than two miles away from my home with a “Coming Soon: Self Storage” sign affixed to a newly erected construction fence.  Soon there will be three self-storage businesses that will be happy to hold on to my stuff.

I guess my mind is on storage “crap” today because I am getting up the nerve to clean out the dreaded CLOSET UNDER THE STAIRS.  I could probably have my daughter film a horror movie out of that one.  The closet, I’m afraid to say, is so packed and jumbled that a person has to bend over and climb over mountains of junk just to get to the back.  What is supposed to be a coat closet for guests has become a catch-all of all the stuff I don’t know what to do with.  There’s a Dora the Explorer game my daughter played with six years ago…it’s missing about half its pieces, but for some odd reason it moved to Texas with us.  We have a solid brass bar sink in there somewhere.  Yes…you read that correctly.  There is even a SINK in the closet!  My in-laws gave it to us when they moved.  The original intent was to “one day when we win the lottery” put in a bar upstairs and use the brass sink.  Other goodies include a baby gate, tupperware plastic bins filled with half-completed photo albums, assorted pillows, black widow spiders (probably), and a set of doggie pooper-picker-upper baggies that we’ve never used.  When I get off this chair and pull everything out, I’ll probably have more interesting things to report.

What I refuse to do, however, is to buy storage for my junk.

I think Americans (including myself!) have enjoyed so many blessings that when hard times hit, we have a whole generation (mine) that does not know how to do without.  My parents’ generation knew all about pulling up those bootstraps and “making do” with what you have — and being grateful for it.  People saved and re-used aluminum foil.  They grew their own vegetables and froze or canned what they couldn’t eat right away so they’d have food in the winter.  They bought modest houses  and made the children share bedrooms and even (gasp) sometimes made sisters share a bed.

Fast forward to my generation.   When my husband and I bought our first home with an FHA loan, we had to jump through many hoops to be approved.  My husband had to provide letters and other documentation about his overtime pay.  I had to provide proof that I would indeed be a teacher again the following year.  We did not know for sure if we were qualified until the day they called us to sign the papers.  As frustrating as it was for us to keep providing “one more thing” to the loan company, I understood why they were being so cautious.  We were first-time home buyers.  We did not have established credit, and it would have been irresponsible of them to provide a loan to someone who they knew could not — or would not — pay it back.

Since that time, we have sold and bought four more houses.  (Lots of cross country moves, you see.)  Each time, it got easier and easier.  I thought at the time this was because we’d established credit — and that’s probably part of it — but I know in retrospect that lenders were purposefully relaxing the rules and making risky loans.  For example, before we even looked for a home, we called our lender to see how much of a loan we could afford.  By our third house, they told me to first find a home and then come to them with the amount!

No wonder the housing market crashed.

Americans kept wanting bigger and bigger houses.  We had to have extra bathrooms.  Media rooms became all the rage…game rooms are great places to corral the kids.  I’m not knocking down the American Dream of prosperity.  I’m just trying to get a handle on MY part of this, from a godly perspective.

I’m squirming in my seat to read these words from Jesus in Luke 12:

When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required. I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished. Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!

In light of the images captured on this short video,

I can see very vividly how people today are divided against each other.  It’s not just Democrats vs. Republicans.  That’s a very narrow view of the world.  God sees us all.  There is no Jew or Greek or master or slave or rich or poor in Christ.  Many of these extremely poor people are believers…praise God!  They have hope, and in God’s kingdom, they will be WAAAAYYY ahead of me.  Many more are not believers.  Can you imagine what it must be like to watch your own children starve to death right in front of your eyes without having God to lean upon?  How do they do it?

The Lord requires much of me…because He gave so much…because He’s given me so much.

So, it’s back to the closet.  I’m going to try to get organized.  But what to do with the stuff I’m not going to keep?  What do you do with the “junk” in your house?

Because I’ve always wanted to do a poll, this seems like as good a place as any to include one:

Perhaps if we all dug through our closets…and our cabinets…and our drawers…we’d find a new use for old stuff so we could, like our parents, learn to “make do” with what we have instead of running out and buying more.  Better yet, maybe we can find someone in need — at church, through homeless shelters, through a friend of a friend — who would be very blessed to have our old stuff.

Is It A ‘God Thing?’

I’m the kind of girl who doesn’t believe in coincidences.  God has answered every one of my prayers…even a non-answer is an answer.  It’s a “not yet,” or possibly a “never.”  But, since He is God alone and I am not, I accept his authority in all areas of life.  Even in the confusing ones.

At our community group meeting last week while we shared prayer requests, I told of how my parents had a very quick move from one part of the state to another.  My grandmother is not in the best of health, so my parents decided, with much prayer, that they were being led to move closer to her.  I remember telling my mom at the time that the sale of their house was under God’s authority, even in this weird collapsing economy.  My husband thought they were nuts to put their house on the market in the dead of winter — their own realtor suggested that they wait until May before putting the house up for sale.  But the sign went up in the front yard anyway.

Their house sold in one week.

I opened my big mouth and said it must have been a “God thing” for the house to sell so quickly.  He knew their desire to honor their parents, and He provided a way to do so.

Kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to see how God is taking care of my parents.

But there’s a flip side to this story.  A man in our group has had a prayer request for a year that his parent’s home would sell.  His parents died and left behind a mortgaged house.  He and his brother are both struggling financially to keep paying for this empty house.

Is it a “God thing,” too, that this house has not sold?

As a woman of faith, I have to reluctantly say that somehow, someway, this struggle for them has a God-given purpose.  Maybe God has already selected the family who will purchase that house and is preparing them financially.  Maybe He wants to encourage all of us to trust him daily for our needs.  It could be that this man and his brother and their families are closer to God than ever before because they have had to learn to rely on His provision each month.  I don’t have the answer for why their house hasn’t sold.  All I can offer up is faith that it will sell eventually in God’s perfect timing.

I’ve walked a bit in their shoes.  Several years ago, my husband and I wanted to move to a different house in the same town.  We put our house on the market and began planning the building of the new house.  I picked out paint colors and wallpaper and carpet.  We selected the brick and the trim and told the builder which trees we wanted him to keep.  A flood of people began looking at our home…but we had no buyers.  Weeks turned into months, and still our house would not sell.  We changed realtors and lowered the price substantially.  Still there were no buyers.  The builder told us they had to release our contract and offer the house to someone else if we did not have our home sold in the next couple of weeks.  I alternated between frantically pacing and calming prayers.  I knew God was up to something.

Out of the blue, a man my husband had worked with previously called him up and offered him a new job halfway across the country.  The opportunity was too good to pass up — more responsibility, more pay, and a chance to ‘move our cheese.’  We kept the house on the market and then did the unthinkable step in faith: we went ahead and moved.

The new company provided us with a furnished corporate apartment in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore.  To say I was out of my comfort zone is a huge understatement.  Here I was with a two-year-old and a very energetic Dalmation living on the sixth floor of a combination hotel/apartment complex on the harbor.  I had no car.  I had to take a taxi to the grocery store.  Little old country girl hillbilly meets the big city — what a hoot!  To top it all off, everyone took the “water taxi” to get wherever they needed to go.  I get terribly seasick and hate boats of any kind.  I rode the water taxi twice but managed to stay close to the apartment for anything else I needed.  Every other night the fire alarm went off, and we had to grab the baby and the dog and head down six flights of stairs before we got the “all clear.”

But guess what?  I did it!  I proved to myself that I could live and function in a completely different environment…God showed me His presence in so many ways.  I got to experience beautiful sunsets on the harbor, and I learned to be patient when waiting for God’s timing…because it was indeed perfect.

A couple of weeks after we were settled in the corporate apartment, we got the call that we finally had a buyer for our home.  We lived in the apartment for a couple of months and then bought a home in the suburbs of Baltimore where life once again ruffled in familiar, comfortable ways.

Looking back, I remember the times of pacing, of wondering why God wasn’t allowing us to reach our dreams.  It was because He had even bigger ones in store for us around the corner!

Writing about the “God things” in life gives me a different perspective on current events in our country.  We have become a nation that turns to The Government to solve its problems rather than turning to God.  Our first president, George Washington, understood the danger inherent in governments:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Yet our people today are appealing to this force, to this ‘fearful master,’ for their very livelihoods, and those of us who question them are labeled unpatriotic or uncaring.

Could it be a ‘God thing’ that our economy is now in the tank?

Could it be a ‘God thing’ that our children’s performance in public schools is going down?

Could it be a ‘God thing’ that so many of our children are filled with such angst and disregard for human life that they think nothing of taking the life of another who ‘disses’ them?

We reap what we sow.  The flagging economy and other woes facing our society today is a direct result of the one  thing government will never be able to solve: SIN.  Sin is behind the fall of our nation, and if we continue to do nothing about it, we will continue on our current path. The anti-God movement is gaining momentum.  I don’t know how to stop it, but I know George Washington might have been a prophet after God’s own heart when he said:

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

We the People who have elected…and kept electing…corrupt politicians…who have allowed ourselves to rely on The Government to cure our health, our finances, our bank accounts, our corporations, our whales, our Golden Cheeked Warblers, our mortgage woes — we are being disciplined.  According to the writer of Hebrews, we should embrace this discipline and learn from it:

And have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as his children?^[d] He said,

“My child,^[e] don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and don’t give up when he corrects you.
For the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.”^[f]

As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all.  Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits, and live forever?

For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.

So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.

Today as I prepare to go to a homeschool mom’s meeting, I’ll try to remember those words from Hebrews 12.  Take a new grip.  Strengthen your knees.  Mark out a straight path.  Become strong.  Because it’s all a ‘God thing.’

Do you believe God when His word says in Romans 8,

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. If God is for us, who can be against us?  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Absolutely nothing going on in the secular world can separate us from the love of God in Jesus.  Nothing.  Not a stimulus package that no one had time to read before it was passed into law.  Not an automobile bail-out.  Those things are just symptoms of how needy our great country really is.  We have people turning to Government when all they really need is Christ.

Show Me The Money

Oh, joy.  President Obama said last night that the federal government is the ONLY institution with the wherewithal to pull our economy out of the pit (that’s a socialistic mantra if I’ve ever heard one).  Today the Senate brainiacs in Washington passed the 850 Billion dollar “spendulous” package.  And the markets jumped for joy, right?

Wrong.  They plummeted.  Again.

If the economic stimulus package put together is so good, why did the stock market drop?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we don’t HAVE 850 Billion dollars sitting around to be distributed.  Our government is already so far in debt that it will take a lot of digging to get out from under the foreign lenders.  We already have a crisis trying to fund the biggest Ponzi scheme ever initiated — social security.

Old Soloman was pretty wise when he said in Proverbs 22,

Direct your children onto the right path,
and when they are older, they will not leave it.

Just as the rich rule the poor,
so the borrower is servant to the lender.

Those who plant injustice will harvest disaster,
and their reign of terror will come to an end.

The reason the banks tanked is because the feds stuck their noses into the mortgage business.  They FORCED banks to make risky loans to home buyers…and now we are all reaping what they sowed.

The question nobody is asking is this: who is holding our chains?  To whom will our nation be a slave?  With all of this borrowing, we’ll be a slave to someone.  If we aren’t very careful, we might wake up one morning to find we have a new national language that isn’t English.

Loving With Actions

It is with great joy that I introduce the newest member of our “family.” Zulma is a beautiful ten year old girl who lives in Guatemala. She has two brothers and two sisters and lives with her mom and her dad. Her dad is an agriculture worker, and her mom stays home to take care of the family.

Recently our family took the step of sponsoring a child — Zulma — through World Vision. Those who have been following this blog know of our trouble to have more children and our struggles with should we or shouldn’t we adopt (me wanting to, my husband not ready yet). Zulma is one answer to our prayer! We will be supporting her financially each month, but more importantly, we’ll be establishing a relationship with her through emails, letters, photos, and prayers. My daughter has always wanted a sister; now she has one. My husband and daughter are already dreaming up a time when we can go visit her.

Why World Vision? Well, for starters, our church partners with them. For another, 87% of all donations go directly to the children. One of my dear friends, Holly, told me about child sponsorship over a year ago. I never forgot her shining eyes as she described the children she and her family support — and a little voice inside my head told me to get off my hind end and do something.

But what to do? When I mentioned it to my husband, he sort-of brushed off the idea. There are stories he’s heard of sponsorship companies that use most of their money to pay their executives and very little to the children. And then there are all the needy children in America. Wouldn’t it better to support “one of our own?”

In the end, it was our daughter’s curiosity and desire to help a child her age in need that turned the tide of our indecision. She and I looked at the website together. She picked Guatemala as the country because we have a dear friend who is originally from that country, and then we searched for a girl around ten years old. It was heartbreaking to see photos of so many children in need who fit our search criteria! I wished I could have selected every last one of them. But we prayed that God would show us the one girl he wanted us to love. As soon as we saw her picture, we both knew. Zulma is in our hearts forever. Just look at her smile!

It wasn’t until this weekend, however, that any of us understood the true need behind our sponsorship. Saturday there was a welcome packet from World Vision in our mailbox. Included in the packet was a DVD that did a great job explaining what it is exactly that World Vision does to support needy children and their communities.

Seeing the conditions in which others in our world live takes my breath away. Literally.

In Zulma’s part of the world, homes are made of clay bricks and tin sheets or with bamboo cane and straw roofs. Her entire house would probably fit inside one of the bedrooms of my house. The whole village shares a water faucet. Just yesterday at church I fussed at my daughter for drinking out of the water fountain at church. (My obsession with germs, you know. There’s a bug floating around at church that just won’t leave. I’m convinced it’s the kids putting their mouths around the fountains. But that’s another story.) My face burned last night as I watched a woman in Africa dipping water from a muddy seep hole in the ground into a large bucket. She came for water like this three times a day. Somehow, that tiny three-foot in diameter puddle provided water for six families…water that often gave them diarrhea, or worse. My germophobic tendencies are stopped in their tracks when I consider the way of life so many people across the world face every day. My standard of “clean” is something they would never even imagine.

So we began today with a different outlook on our lives and a new appreciation for what we have been given…and a new appreciation for the words in 1 John 3:

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

I will post updates as I hear from Zulma. If our story is touching your heart and you’d like to learn more about how you can help, visit World Vision for yourself.

“I love Jesus, but I drink a little”

One of my facebook buddies posted this video.  I don’t watch Ellen, but I may have to now just so I can hear Gladys!  Honestly, I laughed so hard at this my stomach hurts!

The cell phone heebee jeebies

Quick post.
We just watched the movie Eagle Eye. I know it’s fiction and all that, but so much of the technology is unfortunately true.

Makes me want to throw my cell phone out the window…and my email….and my facebooking…and my blog…

Living simply out on the farm seems like it might be the way to go! If only I knew how to milk a cow…

An Open Letter to the Senate, Congress, and President Obama

Dear Senator, Congressman, and President Obama:

The current economic stimulus bill is so large and cumbersome that it is ripe for corruption. It would be very easy for one of your colleagues to sneak in provisions that have absolutely nothing to do with stimulating the economy and everything to do with satisfying corporate campaign donors.

If, as President Obama suggested yesterday, our economy will not recover without a 1 trillion dollar injection (in addition to the 700 billion passed last fall), then my husband and I propose a different way to spend 1 trillion dollars.

Cut a $3,300 check to every man, woman and child; then sit back and watch the economy grow as families use this money in the marketplace.  For some families, this would be the first time they had enough cash at one time to pay the down payment on a home.  For others, it may be the way they can replace the car that is sitting up on blocks in the driveway.  A few families might use the money for college, or for investments, or for starting small businesses.  But the power to choose where the money is spent would be taken OUT of Washington’s hands and put back in the hands of We the People.

Or better yet, the federal government could suspend all payroll and income taxes for one year.  The additional income families receive will most definitely be used to stimulate the economy.

As conservatives in favor of small government, we’d prefer it if there was NO stimulus package ever passed.  Nothing fundamental has changed.  We are still Americans.  We are still as smart as we were before the stock market went under.  We are innovative and have ingenuity.  The last time I checked, we were still One Nation Under God, not One Nation Under Economic Stimulus Package.

Please talk some common sense into the nightmare that is brewing up there in Washington.

Figs, faith, and songs

One of my dad’s favorite snacks are Fig Newtons. I never understood his love of them; I prefer the Newtons that are filled with apples or some other fruit. I never did “get” the taste of figs. Then again, I didn’t grow up in the Middle East. Jesus apparently liked figs, just like my dad.

There is one story about a fig tree that has always fascinated me because I never quite understood it. I know there’s a point to it somewhere, but so far it’s one of those elusive – maybe – God – will – tell – me – about -it – when – I -get – to – heaven stories.

Have you ever cursed a plant before? Last spring and summer I tried to grow vegetables. The garden was beautiful for a very short time…and then nasty beetles swarmed in and took up residence in the roots of my squash plants.  I wanted to curse the beetles…but not the plants themselves!

Jesus cursed an actual fig tree.  The very next day, it was dead.

The surprising thing about the story is that the disciples acted like they were surprised!  Maybe they woke up every morning thinking that they had already seen every miracle that was possible.  I also always wondered why Jesus cursed the tree to begin with.  It turns out you have to know a little about fig trees to understand his frustration.

Usually, a fig tree’s fruit develops right along with the leaves.  When the leaves are full and leafy green, the figs are ready to eat.  But this tree was a facade.  It was a sham tree.  It was just pretending to be “all that.”  Its leaves were full and promising, but there was no fruit in them.  Its leaves were full before their time — it was too early in the season for figs, but since the leaves broadcasted their apparent presence, hungry Jesus went to look.

Jesus’ frustration was probably like mine when I have my mouth set on a cold bottle of water only to find that the Dasani cold drinks machine is sold out.  Maybe it still has cokes and lemonades and sprites…but the water that it advertises so boldly on the outside?  Missing.

That’s kind of how I am feeing about my faith lately.   Like the fig tree, I feel like a sham.

I go to church.  I smile and respond to people’s questions about me and make small talk.  But on the inside, I am plastic.  Hollow.  Empty.  My faith hasn’t gone anywhere, but I feel as if I have left my faith, if that makes any sense.  My mind still knows the truth…but my heart just isn’t with it these days.

My mother-in-law’s father had open heart surgery today.  Maybe it’s still going on — I haven’t heard.  But she called me yesterday to ask me to pray.  She seems to think that I have some kind of telephone line from me to God — once, when their house wouldn’t sell, she asked me to pray that it would sell.  I prayed.  It sold.  Within two weeks.  I tend to believe God allowed that to happen to increase her faith…not to show that I have any sort of higher chance of having my prayers answered.  But I still prayed and am praying still for the surgery to go well…for the doctors to have wisdom…for his recovery to be amazing…for God’s glory to be displayed.  I believe the Lord can do all these and more than we can even understand, if he so chooses…

Yet I’m frightened.  What if…what if I am so separate from God right now that he turns his back on my prayers?  Surely he wouldn’t do that, because he’s not a God of spite.  And I have found I am in good company when it comes to feeling this way.  In Psalm 38, David writes:

I am bent over and racked with pain.
All day long I walk around filled with grief.

I am exhausted and completely crushed.
My groans come from an anguished heart.

You know what I long for, Lord;
you hear my every sigh.
My heart beats wildly, my strength fails,
and I am going blind.

Do not abandon me, O Lord.
Do not stand at a distance, my God.
Come quickly to help me,
O Lord my savior.

But I still have hope…and a glimmer of faith still lingers.  God was faithful to David. He rescued him.  And I know he will rescue me  from this angst.  He will fill me with peace.  He will strengthen my faith…and I will have a stronger character for having gone through the fire.  I do not know why I continue to be plagued with anxiety.  I do not know why I continue to feel so empty inside or why I feel like becoming a recluse.  But I know.  I do know that one day I will be able to join David and say, as he did in Psalm 40:

I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,
and he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
They will put their trust in the Lord.

Today, I will wait for the new song he’s giving me to sing.  I know it will come.