Gecko at the door

This morning I awoke to a gecko dangling at the door.  We have oodles of those little pink guys, and they scurry into even the skinniest crevice.  Somehow this one didn’t quite make it over to the other side.  Used to be that our cat would chase down geckos, but he's 20 now and has long lost his urgency to embark upon too many chases.  This time I was on my own.  This gecko had shimmied into the doorjamb, and I had 2 black beady eyes staring at me, with 2 helpless front legs dangling from about 6 feet high on the door.  I could feel my heart softening for this creature that I normally wouldn’t want anywhere near me.  Was he alive?  If I pulled the door, could he loosen and squirm away?  I peered a bit closer for any signs of life.  He showed slight color in his head, though with salmon-colored skin, a little color is hardly anything.  It was the tremor in one of his legs that led me to want to loosen him from the door.  He was harmless, and though he has plenty of companions who make me squeal sometimes, I didn't want him to suffer needlessly.  I sidestepped behind and grabbed the doorknob and pulled back, and he dropped all the way down.  For a couple of moments, he lay motionless, maybe stunned, and then he ran.  For him having been so helpless a few seconds ago, looking so tortured and desperate, he seemed to regain life and energy in an instant.  Just like us.  One decision can leave us jammed.  Temptation slithers around, and if we consent to it, we might open the door to a huge, long line of consequences, and suddenly we're panicked.  Just one sloppy move.  But I don’t want to go there.  The Lord can surely rescue us, but I don’t want to grieve Him.  I don't enjoy feeling my heart race in fear, and I don’t want to hinder anyone else with that same feeling.  I don’t want to be that gecko jammed in the door.  And I pray to the Lord, who is our greatest protector, that He may free us up and make us ready and willing to move when He calls.  He loves us so completely that my body aches to consider the thought of grieving Him.  First Corinthians 10:13 reads, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” 

Unwonted invitation

Do you ever hesitate to invite someone in fear they’ll decline?  I mean, how disappointing would it be to invite a new friend for coffee, or how embarrassing could it be to try to gather a group together, but in the end no one comes?  I’m hoping this week’s story encourages you.  A couple of weeks ago, I invited some friends to my house to study.  I hadn’t seen these friends this summer, and I was eager to brew my new pack of Community Coffee and laugh with these girls and seriously study all at the same time.  But one by one, their emails replied no, can’t come, not this time.  The first said, “Sorry, Linda, but I’m going on vacation.”  The next one said, “Yes, I’ll be there,” but in the end she didn’t come because her children were sick.  Still another friend wrote, “I’m intending to come, Linda, but I’m waiting for a certain phone call that will determine whether I can or not,” and evidently her phone call didn’t allow her to come.  All the while, I held to my lesson plan, hoping for even just one friend to be available, as I had prayed before ever emailing the invitation and didn’t want to abandon the date and topic I felt the Lord gave me.  Thursday night I stayed up late to fine-tune some teaching points on 2 Samuel 9.  Friday morning came, it was 10:30, and no one arrived.  The clock hit 11 AM, and still no one.  The house surely felt empty.  My heart felt a little hollow too.  Yet there was no point in sitting around just being sad.  And then around 11:15, an interesting thing happened.  The phone rang, and I noticed it was a friend from church.  Often he asks me to substitute-teach, and so my brain started to race in excitement, though I didn’t want to get too excited too soon.  This friend explained he had been sick with allergies, and would I teach his class on Sunday?  Almost jumping through the phone, I exclaimed, “Yes, I’ll be happy to teach!”  And in reality my heart had already leaped its first tall building in a single bound.  I had this freshly unused lesson so eager to be taught.  I felt the corners of my mouth stretching into the hugest of smiles to realize 2 Samuel had just found its new time and place.  And come Sunday, our lesson proved wonderfully fruitful.  All the way through, the Lord kept giving insightful discussion across the class.   Afterward I pondered the whole sequence of events.  Why did the Lord lead me to invite the Friday group in the first place?  He could have bypassed that invitation, given that none of them attended anyway.  In staring at my calendar, I realized He timed things perfectly to have me stay up late Thursday to study because Friday and Saturday already held music commitments.  Certainly He knew the schedule of things.  Perhaps I invited the Friday group because someone there felt lonely.  Maybe the Lord blessed them through the invitation to know they were thought of and included and loved, even though they couldn't come.  I do know I was blessed in the thrill of seeing the Lord connect multiple dots along a road that seemed to meander here and there.  Isaiah 55 talks about the Lord’s word never returning void, and so all the more reason we have to proceed when He leads us to offer invitations.  Regardless of any outcome visible or invisible to us, He speaks with large-scale purpose, bringing to fruition as He sees fit.

The toil of eulogy

Recently I wrote a eulogy.  Really the point of a eulogy is to highlight the good in someone’s life, though the task of writing one always seems unpleasant.  Subconsciously our brain applies the old Transitive Property from middle school math, which says, if eulogy = death, and death = sadness, then eulogy = sadness.  And we don't like sadness because of its emotional upheaval, so suddenly nobody looks forward to writing and delivering a eulogy.  And that’s what happened to me.  My mom asked me to write this eulogy.  She said, “Well, Linda, you like to write.”  And she’s right.  I do.  Sometimes.  But not this time.  I debated between notebook paper and computer.  I love yellow No. 2 pencils and plain old paper, but somehow I opened a Word document this time.  Actually the computer proved to be a good move, as I edited for 2-3 days.  When my brain was tired, the task meant lots of thesaurus work because slight distinctions in words can ease anxiety before it ever stirs.  The nuances of words, especially when people feel fragile already, can enable a heart to be willing to consider some genuine food for thought.  And it has been within these word choices that still now, 2 weeks later, I have realized the Lord surely guided those hours and days I toiled.  For moments that could have been painful, He gave gentle yet honest wording that He veiled in love.  For this whole occasion that no one enjoyed, simply because it dealt with death and all kinds of sadness, the Lord brought blessing.  In fact, His blessings were multilevel because I had not foreseen He would grow my writing for the sake of a eulogy.  Some say a writer’s goal should be book sales and money, but here I see how great is an opportunity to write someone’s eulogy.  We slow down, we turn off the TV, we think and rethink and seek the Lord.

A radio blessing

Have you ever hosted a guest who stirred up some tension?  I don’t mean something negative necessarily, but just as conversation progresses, suddenly it’s time to address an issue.  Recently I invited a friend to stay at our house for a few days, hoping to offer her a respite from her heavy family situation.  My husband consented to the idea, and truly we were delighted to help.  We had fun cooking dinner together.  We talked; we laughed.  In this case, our guest didn’t say anything hurtful or keep us up too late at night.  Neither did she offend any neighbor or pester our cat.  In fact, she was quite respectful, and we love her dearly to this day.  But tension arose in realizing how she lives at her house.  As the tension grew, I sensed the Lord drawing me to address the issue.  I asked Him, “Lord, how do I handle this?”  My friend’s family was not my family.  I had no ground of exact circumstances.  I didn’t want any words to appear uncaring or even possibly construed as a reprimand.  The next morning I awoke and read through my inbox of emails.  There sat the day’s program listing for KSLR, which is a local Christian radio station.  Joni Eareckson Tada would be talking today about not letting circumstances rule daily life.  My heart fluttered to realize that this could be the Lord’s answer to my plea.  Joni speaks from circumstances similar to my friend’s, and certainly if the Lord was leading me to share this radio program, He knows it’s the perfect thing to do.  But would my friend be awake in time to hear this message on the radio?  I prayed again, “Lord, if this is You leading me, I’m asking You to set the timing here.”  And soon my friend walked into the living room, and the Lord guided our conversation so we could listen to Joni on KSLR.  The tension had been uncomfortable, and I had hoped for more of a carefree pajama party than any kind of instructional time, but that’s not what the Lord called into play.  His plan brought greater depth to this respite for my sweet friend, and I love Him for that.  In John 16:13, Jesus says, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.  He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”