the cure for afternoon stress

Life piled up, and my stomach knotted.  Worries of life choking out the joy.  Wandering around anxious about everything, unable to function. 

So I opened up the laptop and pulled a little David Crowder off the medicine shelf.  Plugged in the speakers and hit function key-volume-up-up-up.  Really high up, and I started cleaning house to the music.  The beat so loud I could feel it through the floor. 

All the rhythm and words of hope and truth massaged out the knots.  And I sang –really bad and really loud.  Even moving a little bit more than a baptist pastor’s wife probably should. 

Like the day Matt bought Bryan Adams’ If you really love a woman off iTunes, and we each put in an ear bud and slow danced in the kitchen –sometimes you just have to take a break and feel the love. 

“My heart is steadfast, O God; I will sing and make music with all my soul.”  (Psalm 108:1  NIV)

dare I tell this story?

My husband assures me I don’t have to tell people every stupid thing I do, but I think some of us were created for the entertainment of the rest.

For a few years we lived with my mother-in-law on her 72 acres here in Montana, in a beautiful, wooded placed we called The Hill.  On that hill was a dirt road, and on that road was a metal bar that swung closed as a gate.  For years my husband and his family drove their cars underneath that gate without opening it.  I drove under it for years without problem, too. 

Until the day they graded the dirt road, which raised it ever so slightly. 

Let me ask you this.  If you scraped a metal bar across half of the roof of your car, would you then drive forward or backward? 

How do we gauge where we are on the road?  Low enough to go under?  Too high?  I was talking with someone whose friend seemed to have it so easy –everything just handed to her.  Hard not to be spiteful and a little jealous.  She saw so many people in a better situation than she was in. 

Then I opened a Samaritan’s Purse newsletter that informed about the crisis in the Sudan.  Genocide forcing people into caves and refuge camps.  Children with all their bones showing through their backs.  People eating bugs and tree bark to try to stay alive. 

I made Tuna Helper for dinner last night, which made me feel like a complete failure in the kitchen again.  I was apologizing to my kids for fixing them something out of a box, but my daughter told me about this book she’s reading –learning about kids whose parents have a gambling problem and how the kids often are given a soda and some chips and left at home alone while their parents sit in front of slot machines. 

How do we gauge where we are? 

“Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  (1 Thessalonians 5:18)  Thankfulness.  Instead of looking up at what’s above us, we look down to what could be were it not for the goodness of God.  We gauge where we are by whether we feel bitter because of someone higher or compassion because of someone lower. 

Learn from me the lesson of the bar.  You may be a little higher than you think you are.

before you swing your legs off the bed

It’s 4:27 a.m., and I’m wide awake.  Ridiculous. 

My brain yawns and stretches before I do.  It has a cup of coffee –black.  Then when it’s wide awake, with all the worries and to-do lists spread out and ready to go, it wakes up my body.  So at 4:27 I wake up with a start and crash into all of it.  Thinking about the girl’s graduation party and the boy’s paperwork that needs filled out for his mission trip.  Three loads of laundry yet to do.  Need to exercise after last night’s birthday cake, and I hope to get some yard work done before I meet with a friend at noon.  Medical reports to type.  Can I spring clean the kitchen today –or maybe part of it?  What will we have for supper –and what will I pack the kids for lunch today?  Will have to go to the grocery store for meatloaf supplies. 

A morning tsunami.  

“Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  (1 Peter 5:8  NIV)   

He gets up early, too.   

So before I swing my legs out of bed in the morning I say one word. 

Father. 

I feel the press of the enemy from the moment I wake up, as he cunningly works to make me feel defeated before I’ve even attempted to be alive. 

Father, help me.  Give me the bread for this one day. 

The thief comes in the morning to destroy our day, but Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  (John 10:10  NIV) 

Two morning voices.  One to destroy and one to fill up.  Which one do you talk to before your feet hit the floor?

a trampoline and broken glass

So I was sitting at my computer on a blustery day, and a massive gust of wind whipped up, hurling one of our lawn chairs into the basement window and breaking the outer pane of glass.  I jumped up when I heard such a clatter but couldn’t throw open the sash because it was broken.  (Sorry, I think I’m a bit sleep deprived today.)  As I inspected the glass, I looked up and also saw a trampoline in my backyard.  We don’t own a trampoline.   

Isn’t that how life happens?  You’re just sitting there and in one gust of wind everything changes.   

I looked out the back door a few hours later and saw a neighbor standing in my back yard with her head tilted sideways.  That’s my trampoline, she said.  And we wondered how the trampoline could be in her yard one minute and in my yard the next. 

I called to find out we have a $500 homeowner’s deductible.  Sigh.  But dad’s words came to mind.  The words I heard him say my whole life. 

It’s just money. 

Perspective changes everything.  When the glass breaks and the unexpected flies into your life, how do you perceive it?   

“We walk by faith, not by sight.”  (2 Corinthians 5:7) 

There’s more to life than just what we can see.  More than broken glass.  More than an insurance deductible.  More than a trampoline.   

What unexpecteds have blown into your life lately?  Check your perception –are you seeing them only at face value, or are you viewing them through the lens of faith?

a homemade Mother's Day card

Yesterday I drove to the grocery store, and as I rounded the corner I saw the massive United States flag flapping in the wind.  I stared at it as I drove closer.  Stared at it while I waited at the stoplight. 

Why isn’t that flag at half mast? 

Don’t they know I’m grieving?  Doesn’t the whole place know I’m about to let my baby girl walk the stage to receive a diploma and then leave the stage.  And leave me? 

In that deep heart feeling as I watch the flag, I feel a painful appreciation for you that I’ve never experienced before, mom.  The way I felt when I rubbed dad’s name at the veteran’s memorial.  When as an adult I began to grasp the danger and pain and sacrifice of Vietnam. 

My mind does a flash back to two people crying.  A mom and a daughter.  Crying all the way through a Texas church service.  Our last Sunday before you drive away from me at college.  As the service finishes a kindly old man and his wife touch our shoulders and ask if we’re okay.  I’m the president of the university.  I promise we’re going to take good care of your little girl.  We cry some more.  They sat through an entire church service, watching a mother trying to imagine letting go.  Trying to imagine not having her daughter crashing about the house anymore.   

That moment is all I can think about this mother’s day.  You let me go.  I’m searching back in my mind to see how you managed it.  How did you make me feel so free and so loved and so secure?  Free enough to go to a college I had never heard of four states away from home.  Loved enough to be happy wherever I went.  Secure enough to fly up high like a kite without feeling lost and alone.  How did you do it mom? 

My little girl takes a personal finance class.  We talk about credit cards and balancing checkbooks.  Savings accounts and retirement plans.   

You are my biggest investment, little girl, and now I am about to give you away.  Give you away to the world, because you are too beautiful a work of art for me to hang in an obscure, safe corner of my little house.  The world deserves to enjoy you.   

How did you do it, mom?   

·        A kajillion batches of hot chocolate chip cookies waiting for me after school.

·        Every single new Trixie Belden book ever written, bought for me.

·        Wait mom, can I just tell you one more thing? as you keep trying to close the door after tucking me in.  You keep listening.

·        Don’t stop playing.  I love to hear you play the piano, you said.

·        Breakfast for supper.

·        Kissing is like cauliflower.  You acquire a taste for it, you said. 

So much goodness poured into me.  Then goodness let go. 

We’ve been here again this year.  Mom, I want to be a writer, I say to you over the phone.  You send me an email saying you love my blog and you can’t wait to read more.  You read it every day.  Here you are again encouraging me –to take my little suitcase of words and go out into the world. 

How do you do it, mom?  Invest so much and then give it away? 

So gracefully. 

You are an incredible woman.  I hope I’m doing it as well as you did –this letting go of a little girl.

I love you,

Chris