..misty water colored MEMORIES (sing it in your Barbara Streisand voice)

Day 44 reading assignment:
Exodus 35:10-36:38
Matthew 27:32-66
Psalm 34:1-10
Proverbs 9:7-8

I read a lot of memoirs and have thought it would be fun to write mine, just for my family's entertainment of course.  The problem is, with the exception of a very few, I have no childhood memories before the age of 10.  And without memories, one has no "memoir."  This makes me sad because I had a title and everything: "Homecoming Queen in October and Pregnant by Prom."  Now I'm trying to work that title in to a bible study I would like to write for teen-age girls instead.  It is catchy after-all.  But it only refers to a short segment of reckless choices in my high-school days.  That in itself could render it useless as my memoir title, but what a huge role those choices played in the rest of my life.

 I spent the first part of my childhood in very southern California.  The Imperial Valley is a huge agricultural belt twenty-three miles from Mexicali, Mexico.  We lived in a tiny farming community on the corner of "Nowhere and the Sand Dunes."  My mother's mantra was always, "you kids go outside and play"and despite the fact that this is rattlesnake paradise, I don't know if I wore shoes until I was eleven years old.  But my mother was a force to say the least, so go outside we did.  My brother, nearly four years my senior could keep us busy even when the typical summer days paled as the morning sun fried the color out of the ozone.  We had three seasons: The days the wind blew the dirt in our eyes, the day it rained, and hot.  For fun we would take our be-be guns out to the old roofless shop and shoot lizards.  We liked to empty our guns on the lizards, filling them so full of be-bes, they would become our very own "organic" bean bags.  Then, when we tired of squishing them around for the sensory thrill their copper infused bodies offered, we would pinch the pimpled corpse until the be-be popped back out.  This last phase didn't hold our attention long, for after a few extractions the lizard body got slimy from body fluids and we were grossed out.  Disgusting? Yes. But hours of unsupervised fun?  Absolutely.

The environment of my childhood reminds me of scenes from my Bible reading.  The arrid landscape.  The fertile soil.  Pomegranates, lemons and figs grew in our yard and the surrounding region was, and is, a huge supplier of the nation's dates.  I always start  this walk down memory lane with a snapshot in my mind. I see the back of myself.  A little girl, dressed in her brothers well worn hand-me-downs, always barefoot.  In the picture, I am leaning against a front-porch post.  The one the  locusts liked to shed their skins on.  I can remember standing at this post regularly at a certain time of day.  I would fix my eyes on the dirt road across the way, the one that ran down the canal bank.  My eyeballs burning from this deliberate gaze I wouldn't rest until I saw the dust cloud from my daddy's turquoise truck.  The relief I felt from this sighting always left me euphoric because even though I didn't understand it in those days, my father was a functioning alcoholic and the absense of this sighting meant bad things were coming.

It is very interesting to me how since I started reading the Bible consistently, God has begun to permeate every part of my life, of me.  I see everything now in  biblical analogies.  It's a strange and almost bitter-sweet aha moment.  Moments with big regrets of a life with more time behind me than in front of me. Time lost that I didn't spend in a Godly way much less with God personally.  I picture God as that little girl, waiting for me to show up, knowing if I don't, things are coming that He doesn't want me to face without Him.  I made a lot of choices that did not include God.  How incredibly lucky for me that God's glory is revealed in his mercy, grace, compassion, faithfulness, justice and last but so not least, forgiveness.  He took my choices, the messes I made, especially those high-school years, and managed to clean them up, wringing blessing after blessing out of them.

Have you read any good memoirs lately?  I've got a good one for you,  it's not a very catchy title, it's God's memoir.  It's called the Bible.

Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.                 -The Wonder Years-

Enemies and Idols

Days 40-43 reading assignment:
Exodus 29:1-35:9
Matthew 26:14-27:31
Psalm 31:19-33:22
Proverbs 8:14-9:6

Our grandson Sawyer is very literal.  He doesn't get it when we ask him if he would like spaghetti for dinner.  We have to call it pasta and red sauce.  After we get him "dressed" in the morning, feeling proud of whatever he is wearing, he comes in to ask if we like his "dressed".  He had an accident his first day of pre-school a few weeks ago because the teacher asked him if he needed to go potty.  He said a firm "no" then proceeded to poop his pants.  I have no clue where it originated, but somewhere through the course of his potty training, he started referring to it as "going brown poop."  So Linz informed his teacher she would need to ask him if he would like to 'go brown poop'.  Literal and specific.  I understand this about Sawyer because I too take things very literally.

  Seventy-two Psalms, almost half the book speaks of enemies.  I keep reading without pause through key scriptures because I don't believe I have enemies.  But enemies are not just the literal sense of the word.  Satan, of course, is our greatest enemy but according to my Bible, temptations can be our enemies.  My application lists examples:

1. Money - never had it, never will
2. Success - not a goal of a dedicated underachiever like me 
3. Prestige - see #2
4. Lust - I sincerely don't think so but this Bible reading has me second guessing everything these days

It's a quick shot down the list, I lick the tip of my pencil and with head held high and without hesitation I check myself off this list.  But something nags.  I get out of Psalms and back to Exodus where the subject matter is all about the Israelites and their incessant need for their mindless idols.  Come on  people puhleeze!   The literal voice in my head sings a righteous; "No golden calves at our house by golly!"  Finally I can feel confident of receiving some tidbit of God's approval in this area.  And with that thought, completely against my will, I flash on the things I have prioritized above God.  The list is long.  And wanting some semblance of self respect I will keep the worst of it to myself.  But it starts with my obsession with my garden.  I couldn't begin to say how many hours I have logged there.  Nobody could know this by looking at my garden today because oddly, circumstances this year have removed almost all of my time in my garden.  Is this some sort of spiritual message?  Nah.  At the other end of my long, dirty list of things more important than God?  I can't believe I am saying this but it is my family.  I am a serial mother.  Don't mess with my family.  But God calls us not to love anything or anyone more than we love Him.....  literally.

Our great temptation is still to shape God to our liking, to make Him convenient to obey or ignore.

20/20 vision

Day 26 reading assignment:
Exodus 2:11-3:22
Matt: 17:10-27
Psalm 22:1-18
Proverbs 5:7-14

I'm a hypochondriac.  I'm not proud of it and in my defense I do draw from a gene pool muddied with diabetes, heart disease and stroke.  I am convinced almost on a daily basis that I am knock knock knockin on heaven's door.  It is a real fear, from my shortness of breath to my tingling fingers.  If the body is indeed a temple I'm afraid mine is the temple of doom.  This morning I was sitting in my car in the Starbuck's parking lot.  I was catching up on my reading before facing a long to-do list.  As I was reading I was aware of my worsening eyesight.  The words on the page were blurry no matter how I squinted to see them.  I felt a quickening in my chest that something had gone dreadfully wrong with my vision in the last twelve hours.  A noise outside my car caused me to turn to look out the window, I caught my reflection in the side view mirror and realized I was wearing my sunglasses instead of my 2.00 powered magnified reading glasses.  What a relief that despite my impending stroke/heart attack, I am not going blind as well.  But this story serves as my own analogy in my inability to see spiritually.

In Philip Yancey's book, "The Jesus I Never Knew" he talks about an analogy of Jesus by Karl Barth: "A man stands by a window gazing into the streets.  Outside, people are shading their eyes with their hands and looking up into the sky.  Because of the overhang of the building though, the man cannot see what it is they are pointing towards.  We who live 2000 years after Jesus have a viewpoint not unlike the man standing by the window.  We hear the shouts and exclamations.  We study the gestures and words in the Gospels and the many books they have spawned.  Yet no amount of neck-craning will allow us a glimpse of Jesus in the flesh"....he concludes with "sometimes those of us who look for Jesus cannot see past our own noses." 

In Matthew 17 Jesus seems like he is disgusted with the disciples and chastising them for their weak faith.  The application in my bible explains that Jesus' purpose was not to criticize them but to encourage them to greater faith.

I had a call this morning from my sister-in-law.  She is not a hypochondriac.  After two questionable mammograms this month and a procedure last week, her doctor called this morning to say that she needs to come in to the office tomorrow to talk about these latest results.  We all know that good news comes in the form of a form-letter stating that the results were all "within the normal limits".  Doctors do not call you in to tell you there is nothing to worry about.  This sister-in-law is my very dear friend and christian mentor and the most faithful prayer warrior I know.  She would laugh out loud at this description of her because she is also very humble.  After a fleeting bout with dizziness and nausea at the nurse's words she said to me, "It's not about this being cancer.  Whether it is or isn't, it's about how we get through the trial."  She is not crippled with fear but seeing it as a great inconvenience that may cause her to have to rescedule her trip to southern California in a few weeks.  No high drama just a request to "pray her through this."

In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says to the disciples: "You didn't have enough faith.  I assure you, even if you had faith as small as a mustard seed, nothing would be impossible.

When I left my sister-in-law's house today, I went to Safeway to buy Mustard seed.  Leaving the store I saw a poster with a big pink ribbon on it that said: The month of OCTOBER is breast cancer awareness month.  It's amazing how immediately one can become aware of breast cancer.

When I got home I opened my bottle of Mustard seed.  They are in fact smaller than a bee-bee.  I'm praying now for just that much faith.  Because with my glasses on, they are even bigger.

A Casual Christian...or How to Never Know Jesus(even though you think you do)

Day 3 reading assignment:
Gen 5:1-7:24
Matt 3:7-4:11
Psalm 3:1-8
Proverbs 1:10-19

I wish I had a dollar for everytime I have been ranting like a mad woman at my family, only to stop long enough to answer the phone with a warm and cheery "Hello!" I continue, engaged in the conversation all nicey nice, hang-up and pick up ranting where I left off.  What a phoney!

In Matthew 3:8 John the baptist called people to more than words or rituals.  He told them to change their behavior.  The application on this verse explained that God looks beyond our words and religious activities to see if our conduct (especially when we think no one is looking) backs up what we say.

Imagine sitting in the back of the room at your own funeral listening to what people are saying about you.  What would they say? "Oh my how did Cindy stay so thin?" Yeah not likely.  How about "I never knew Cindy was a christian did you?"  I didn't have to be at my funeral to hear this.  About 9 years ago our second daughter was about to marry the love of her life who was a youth pastor at a local church.  We were very involved in the activities of the county fair in those days and there was much talk among our circle of friends about the impending nuptials.  A dear friend was relaying a conversation to me that she recently had with a mutual friend of ours. I can't say where that conversation was going because at her opening line I went numb and stopped listening.  "So Lindsay's going to be a preachers wife...can you imagine Cindy a born again christian?!"
When I heard this I felt physically sick.  I was immediately aware of God's disappointment in me.  What had I done, how had I behaved that made this friend assume I was the furthest thing from a christian?

My parents were members of the Lutheran church.  Every Sunday my mother would scrub us up and march her 6 children into church delighting in the attention we would bring her.  She would proceed to sing the loudest because she was also very proud of her voice.  At the age of 12 I went through the memorization process of being confirmed in the church and to this day I have no idea what that was about. For awhile I believed we went to church for the spectacle we created.  I understand now that I have no right to these judgements.  My point is that from noon on Sunday until the next Sunday morning, there was no evidence of Christ in any of our lives with the exception of the memorized prayer of thanks at dinner time and at bedtime when my mother would shout from somewhere else in the house, " Say your prayers!"

By the time I was 15  I was dating a boy who claimed he was agnostic.  I had little idea of what this meant (The belief that any existence of God is unknown and probably unknowable) but I was pretty sure it was my ticket to sleeping in on Sunday mornings.  The announcement of my new spiritual philosophy was not well received and I was forced to endure the painful hour on Sunday mornings anyway.  My relationship with the agnostic ended eventually and in the spring of my senior year at the age of 17,  I discovered I was pregnant.  On the date of what would be my senior prom, I married my first husband. Now that's another story for another day anyhoo........After the birth of my son, with the encouragement of a neighbor I began my real search for God.  When my friend made the 'imagine Cindy a chrisian' comment, I had been a christian for 27 years.  Evidently a casual christian at best.  It could have been many things that spurred that comment.  I could laugh with the best of them at a dirty joke, I was a consistent contributor to the gossip mill and certainly took the Lord's name in vain on a regular basis.  I only spoke of my spiritual beliefs in the safe surrounding of other christians.  I changed behaviors to match my environment like a chamelion changes colors. It makes people uncomfortable when you get all lofty and righteous on them.  But #1 on the list of my failures was that I had not been consistent in raising my kids in church, teaching them, by EXAMPLE about faith and reliance on God.
I had never developed a personal relationship with Him which had robbed me of his voice.  I thought it was enough just to believe-and, in theory it is-but I believed with my head.  I never invested my heart.  According to the bible, faith must be more than belief in certain facts.  It must result in actions or it will die away.

Where then does a person learn about faith?  The best answer is; at home.  We all have a front row ticket to the best (or worse) reality show right in our own homes.  It's real and it's raw.  Despite the hypocrisy I saw in the faithlessness of my mother, at least I got a glimpse of God.  My mother's actions at the very least, planted a necessary seed that caused me to seek Him later in my life.  I used to have strong criticisms for much of what my mother did or didn't do.  My reality is that I'm ashamed to admit that I was simply too lazy to get my own children to church, for any reason, selfish or otherwise, with any kind of consistency.

Faith is a rich heritage we can pass down to our children, even if we do it badly.  Borrowing from The Practical Life of Faith: "Whatever else may be said about home, it is the bottom line of life.  It is at home, among family that we come to terms with circumstances.  It is here life makes up its mind.  It's a place where milk is spilled, where toes are stubbed and where people see you in your underwear.  It's real life where real people rub up against real challenges.  How we meet those challenges determines whether the faith of the family flourishes or flounders.  Faith is meant to be an everyday companion, not a weekend guest.  If someone were to peek through the keyhole of your front door what would they see?  For faith to be served up family style nourishing generations to come, 2 things have to happen.  We have to think of our homes as training bases, not holding pens.  The home should be a launching pad for sending children into the world, not a storage facility for isolating them from it. Second we must develop in our homes a contagious confidence in God."  Where was this information when my kids were little?  Luckily it's never too late when it comes to our spirituality.  Being the matriarch of a family is an enormous responsibility.  So,  do as I say not as I did.  NEVER take it casually....I'm the mommy thats why.



       "Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words."
                                                                       St.Francis of Assisi

Put on the big girl underpants and get on with it!

Day 1 Reading assignment:
Gen:1-2:25
Matt:1-2:12
Psalms: 1:1-6
Proverbs:1:1-6
This is hard.  This showing up to the daily blog page is really hard.  Day 2 and I am having some serious doubts.  I got the reading done, where is my spiritual inspiration?  My days were already full and now I think I can just be clever on a daily basis?  What on earth was I thinking?  I am a gadillion pages from the lessons on perseverance (and complaining).  I started to read ahead but I am doing everything in my power to avoid "the squirrels" and they are everywhere!
Today's squirrels, however, are much cuter and actually have names; Sawyer, Thatcher and Crew.  They are 3 of our 9 fabulous grandkids. Crew is 8 months old and master of the G.I Joe crawl that allows him access to EVERYWHERE.  Thatcher is 21 months, dangerously close to that terrible 2 thing and lets just say it's a good thing he is so stinkin' cute because he's a pistol.  Sawyer is 4, and milk out the nose funny (just like his grampa) and incredibly smart.  He also has autism.  I don't say he's autistic because that wording makes it sound like autism is what defines who he is rather than a condition he is learning to live with.  Thatcher also was beginning to exhibit red flag behaviors that are associated with the creepy "A" word.  24 hours after his 18 month immunization Thatcher stopped talking.  He started flapping his hands, walking on tippy toes and banging his head on the walls and floors.  He would cry for prolonged periods, had chronic diarrhea, stopped eating and was losing weight.  It was at this time that the family moved home to be at Grampa and Gramma's.  Since their arrival in early July, our Thatcher can now call the kitties, mimic Spike the horse and is attempting sounds for words he once had.  We count these as huge successes.
These guys are busy, messy and loud. This afternoon they were hanging with grams while mommy made a quick trip to the store-all by herself.  No biggy, I thought, I could still get a few words together for the blog.  But first I had to sit Crew on the lawn for a quick minute while I untangled a crying Thatcher from the horsey swing that the bull dog was also trying to swing on.  I turned to see Sawyer had stripped naked as a week of successful potty training was taking a turn for the worse.  Crew started to cry as he toppled face first in the dirt, Thatcher's wail was escalating to hysterics and Sawyer was off on a dead run, naked, chasing Pedderkitty, the family cat. I managed to herd Sawyer inside and toward the bathtub while carrying 2 crying babies.  Safely in the house I sat them down. Thatcher tripped, sending a lamp sailing, landing in pieces when... THE PHONE RINGS!!!
 It was mommy,"how are the boys?"
"Fine!" I lied, in my high pitched liars voice.....

 Earlier today Sawyer was heard saying, Speed Racer racing through the ketchup!'  That pretty much sums up the state of this household and also why this day's post didn't happen until 12 ish a.m. I came to the conclusion years ago when I was raising my own kids that there will always be ketchup to be mopped up, laundry to fold and over all clutter to sort through. But the babies grow up quickly.  A year ago Sawyer had only a few words. Today he said "Gramma I'm so happy."   God is so good.  These little boys battle far bigger foes on a daily basis than I.  I can do this.  2 days down, 363 to go.