The weight of holiday

My December 25 had a few hiccups.  Conversation was good.  Tamales and queso were good.  Laughter was plentiful and good.  But there were some moments when temptation pulled me back.  Glimpses of past sin ran amok.  On the outside, I smiled, and I truly loved every minute I spent with my daughters.  On the inside, doubt began to brew.  Doubt as to whether I had a right to any ounce of goodness in this world.  Doubt as to whether joy and laughter with my kids should be mine to experience at all.  Thoughts flitted and swirled and sucked me into a hurricane of guilt.  Slowly I sank underneath the weight of divorce.  But right there, the Lord came to my rescue.  He led me to Psalm 103:12, which says, “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”  And His voice rang like a trumpet loud and clear.  The air became clean and crisp, and I could breathe.  The Lord won.  My sin would not steal my joy.  And this year how wonderful was Christmas Day to know the Lord’s love.

Cheated by a wife

“Ever since my wife cheated on me . . .”  That’s what this guy said yesterday as he entered the bus.  The guy stepped inside, paid his fare, and finished telling his buddy the story.  He made no attempt to gloss over the fact that life holds pain.  And hearing him talk made me think.  What do we do with our pain?  Even children on a playground don’t like to be cheated.  Somebody overstays their turn on the monkey bars, and the kids in line race off for a teacher to plead their case.  It’s like playing Monopoly and realizing the banker isn’t honest.  We scream, stomp, throw, and pitch fits, but in the end, where are we?  Psalm 68:19 says, “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.”  God actually invites us to lay our burdens upon Him.  Hand our pain to Him, and let Him carry the weight.  Even if my eyes shed buckets of tears in the process, I want to ask Him to cleanse me.  In fact, crying does wonders to soothe tension.  And if a hangnail can nag me into being mad at the cat and grouchy at my husband, then I can afford no room to harbor big pain, small pain, or anything.  Please know, dear reader, how I prayed for you today to find refreshment in knowing Jesus Christ in a new way.  May this Christmas be wonderful because we experience His power to heal.

Traversing the ice

This past Saturday, I closed my eyes as we drove into Winter Storm Dion.  At 20 mph, maybe 30, the quiet helped my husband to drive, and I hoped to shut out anything that would make me gasp.  We checked weather reports via radio and TV and online, though it was worse than we foresaw.  Traveling 35W to Fort Worth, we met bridges untreated with sand or salt, and the first time the car slid, we knew we were in for an anxious ride.  My desperation led to prayer, as all we could see was a white horizon strewn with stranded vehicles.  Will there be less ice on the next bridge?  Should we exit the highway, but what if the access road is worse?  I asked the Lord to take hold of our steering wheel and guide all the miles ahead.  Just when Hemphill Street looked promising, we found thicker ice downtown and wondered if we’d ever escape colliding with all the parked cars and pedestrians.  For hours and hours afterward, I still felt rattled.  All I knew was to call upon the Lord.  All my moments feeling out of control were accurately just that.  Life became simpler, less complicated, and God was my sole intent.  It’s one way I’ve seen Him bring good out of bad.  Never knew how happy I’d be when the sun shone on Sunday.

Linked to curriculum

What task do you dread?  For me, it's often paperwork.  The job application.  The philosophy statement.  With music, it’s the charting of songs.  I can be glad to organize something, but the sight of too much paperwork leaves me exhausted before I ever begin.  Recently a friend asked me about writing curriculum.  Curriculum implies teaching, and teaching is fun.  But curriculum also means paperwork, and suddenly my celebratory balloon loses its air.  Would I have to sort through all the rigmarole of education guidelines?  The answer was no.  But still writing can be laborious, and I wanted to ask the Lord.  Weeks passed, and doubt crept in, haunting me with my inexperience and heaviness of task.  Yet with prayer, I found myself eager to write.  I dived in deep.  I determined to submit Lesson 1 to my friend and let her judge whether good or bad, but I wasn’t on the fence anymore.  Tuesday came, and my friend asked, “Did you get my text last night?”  I answered, “No.  I don’t have text.  But I brought you something.”  She queried, “What is it?  My text last night was to ask you if you had a chance to write the first lesson.  I have a girl coming in today, and we might give your lesson a trial run.”  And on that note, my heart leaped.  I took a deep breath and handed her my paper.  “I felt compelled to write this.  We didn't talk details, and there’s lots of room for change.  It's simply a rough draft.”  My friend read through the lesson and exclaimed, “This is exactly it!  You even put the Bible verse in it!”  I smiled to think of how the Lord matched our thought processes without the text ever delivering.  And that was only the first link in a chain of blessings that afternoon.  The Lord gave opportunity to pray amongst a new group of friends.  He gave me opportunity to speak Spanish and comfort someone.  Later He even answered my plea for a birthday gift idea.  The entire day was so sweet, having seen Him convert dread all the way into tears of joy and more.  And to remember blesses my soul still now.

At the collision shop

Last week the collision shop called to say my car was ready.  I thought, “Yippee!”  We’d been hoping and waiting for the car to be repaired, ever since that sad day when I hit the deer.  So Monday I picked up the car, but less than a mile down the road, the red airbag light suddenly shone on the dashboard.  “Oh, man!”  The mechanics had worked most all of last week to solve that very problem.  It’s a crucial safety issue, so I made a u-turn back to the collision shop.  They ordered a different seat belt part this time.  Tuesday morning I picked up the car again and drove home without any glitches.  Wednesday morning that red airbag light re-appeared.  I took a deep breath and drove back to the collision shop.  The estimator and manager both apologized, and the mechanics hopped right to task.  Taking a chair in the lobby, I decided I might as well clean out my big bag of a purse.  But amongst all the gum wrappers and scraps of paper at the bottom of my bag, something unexpected happened.  With the week's car frustrations bubbling to the surface, I prayed, “Lord, may you reveal the true problem with this car.  Whatever might have been hidden or overlooked, may You reveal the cause of the problem to these mechanics.”  Humbled quickly, I realized how the Lord had changed my thought pattern.  And when the estimator came to tell me the car was ready, I thanked him and smiled and explained about my prayer.  He responded only to shrug his shoulders and crumple his lips.  He explained about the seat belt, and I pondered what my reaction would have been if I were in his shoes.  Maybe the idea of prayer was new for him.  Maybe he thought prayer didn’t belong in a collision shop.  Whatever the reason, the Lord gave such pleasure to me in offering these quick words about prayer.  Since then, I've remembered something else that happened the first time I picked up the car.  I noticed a Bible sitting on the back seat, and I recognized it as the one usually underneath our driver’s seat.  One of the mechanics must have put it there.  I wondered how the Lord might have blessed the one who found it.  I wondered too if the Lord might have even connected the discovery of the Bible with the prayer He prompted in me in the lobby.  And I stand humbled on many occasions to realize how intricate and far-reaching are the Lord’s ways.  Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”  That “yippee” I exclaimed earlier in the week really did apply, yet now it held deeper meaning, for all this time spent at the collision shop had been for more than just car repair.

For nail-biters & hair-twirlers

Do you have any fingernail-biters in your house?  Any hair-twirlers?  You know anybody who opens a bag of chips at the slightest hint of stress?  This week the Lord gave me new perspective on nervousness.  It seems our hands tend to toil when we’re uneasy.  We start to fidget.  We make ourselves busy to mask the tension.  Yet there’s remedy in simply separating the hands.  Those schoolteachers who tell their students to sit on their hands aren’t altogether wrong.  And hence the posture of prayer and worship.  When I’m prostrate, my hands don’t touch.  Hands cannot twist and twirl hair.  Hands can’t pop knuckles either.  When hands raise in worship of the Lord, hands are apart.  Thumbs can’t twiddle themselves into knots.  Hands can’t open the pantry door to search out the Oreos.  To find rest is to finally quit stirring.  To find rest is to quit biting fingernails, quit trying to fix everything on our own, and quit avoiding being still with the Lord.  With hands apart, we eliminate some of those worrisome energy-wasters.  And I thank the Lord for teaching this week with simple pictures.

FM 3009

“Did that really just happen?  That animal’s body was BIG, with a whole rack of antlers!  Where did he come from?”  It took me a minute to realize I had hit him.  FM 3009 is a dark road that fells lots of deer, and at 5:30 AM, this buck suddenly stood square in front of me.  Abruptly he was there, and abruptly he wasn’t.  And a deluge of thoughts flooded my head.  (1) Do I continue driving or stop?  For several reasons, I opted to continue.  (2) I was sad for the deer.  (3) I was amazed at how the Lord protected me.  For the next couple of days, in almost disbelief, I kept staring at the clump of deer hair stuck at the crumpled part of the car hood.  Friends told me stories of how the collision could’ve caused severe injury if the deer had slid into the windshield or punctured the side window, yet in actuality he didn’t.  The Lord had guided me into prayer the night before and even in the moments immediately prior to the deer, and I felt keenly aware of the Lord with me.  I pondered the idea of how death for one could connect to any kind of wondrous experience for another, but then I thought of how God’s sacrifice of Jesus brought new and wondrous life for us.  The way the Lord brings good out of bad is a mystery, really.  And now each day that I put the key in my rent car while the collision shop repairs my Honda, I consider again the vast mysteries of the Lord.  I consider the greatness of His power and the depth of His love.  The mystery of godliness is great (1 Timothy 3:16). 

My lost Nehemiah book

Jesus came to this earth to save the lost, and usually we’re talking about people.  Me, you, and everyone.  But just as the parable in Luke 15 mentions a lost coin, this past Sunday my lost item was my Nehemiah book.  I asked the Lord to reveal it in order for me to teach from it.  Days passed, I didn’t know where it was, and I began to wonder if indeed the Lord was leading me to teach about Nehemiah, then perhaps I didn’t need this same book because He would supply me new perspective.  The next day I remembered this particular Nehemiah study was part of a 3-section book.  The following day I remembered it was one of the smaller-sized Precept books.  This past Sunday I thought to look again on the bedroom shelves.  We drove home from church, and there it was.  Bit by bit, the Lord had revealed my book.  To paraphrase Luke 15:9, I say now, “Rejoice with me; I found my lost book!”  And may the Lord bless you today in whatever way you’re feeling something’s lost.  The title of my Nehemiah book is Overcoming Fear and Discouragement.  Certainly the Lord offers encouragement for us all.

A storyteller's first step

Follow Jesus?  How do you do that?  This past Friday was key for me.  I’ve held this notion for a long time that my bus stories might be part of some storytelling.  Having once played sound effects on piano for a theater group, I’ve looked forward for years to incorporating piano alongside the bus stories, though still not knowing when.  My bus book has sat atop our piano, and I've reread the stories and jotted down tidbits of thought occasionally, though it's been only theory to this point.  Certainly prayer has been a part.  Then this past Friday afternoon the whole notion of piano resurfaced with a new momentum.  The piano bench compelled me to sit and pull together a set of TV and movie themes to play at the coffeehouse that night.  First it was “Heigh-Ho” from Snow White, then the theme from the game show Jeopardy! and the theme from Mission: Impossible.  The list went on and on, but still with only a loose image in my head of how the tunes might fit together.  The clock hit 7:15, which meant time to drive to the coffeehouse, and my eyes and my heart stood hopeful toward finding the Lord there working the details ahead of me.  We set up sound equipment and proceeded through several songs, but piano wasn't seeming to fit in the lineup.  After about an hour, I said to my husband, “I might play a little piano here.”  Yet even in that moment, I still didn’t know exactly what I would play, though I sat and started talking with the audience.  As conversation led, I inserted some piano tunes.  What developed was a very fun time of people getting to know each other.  Not quite bus stories, but rather a first step toward storytelling.  The show tunes ended up being background for talking about everybody’s workday.  Kind of a way to relax and chuckle and even include the children and the youth and their happenings from school.  Largely unrehearsed, it became sort of an interactive door for our coffeehouse crowd.  The Lord worked a whole bundle of blessings that night through guitar, oboe, and voice, and most certainly through piano.  My job was to trust Him to guide me and keep my feet from slipping, just as Psalm 121 says.  And I did gather a glimpse of how Me and the Lord on the Bus might become part of some future storytelling.  Perhaps this calls for a celebratory white chocolate latte.

Off-stage with the cashier

Last week I walked into a restaurant and heard some disturbing words.  “I’m going to hell,” the cashier laughed.  But I didn’t laugh.  Hell is too terrible a place, and it lasts forever.  I wanted to be sure the cashier knew she had a choice.  Did I take her comment too seriously?  I’ve met people who say “go to hell” so casually, as if the idea is harmless, as if it’s not real.  I’ve met people who don’t recognize the name of Jesus as the one who can save them from hell.  I’ve asked the Lord to give me His love for people that I may genuinely reach out.  For dinner, our waitress placed some scrumptious chicken and cornbread on the table, but nothing swayed me from hoping to talk to the cashier again, and I asked the Lord for an open door.  Time came to pay our bill, and sure enough, I see the same cashier still on duty.  I paid my tab, and lo and behold, I hear my voice aloud, “I kept thinking about what you said when we walked in tonight.  I’m so thankful Jesus saved me.  And because no one has to go to hell [meaning we all have a choice], do you know Jesus? ”  She smiled to answer, “Yes.  I know I shouldn’t be saying what I did.  It’s just that I did something bad.”  And as she spoke, my heart sighed to know that deep down she did know the Lord.  What relief.  And how blessed I always feel to speak the Lord’s name into public air.  Throughout the week the Lord set me in the middle of several similar interactions.  All happening 6 hours from home on a theater trip.  All woven amidst my usual theater nervousness and my usual lack of sleep.  All this impossible if I had chosen not to follow the Lord into this realm of theater that’s new for me.  But when the Lord orchestrates, my attention turns, and my nervousness dissipates.  I love to see Him at work.