Monthly Archives: January 2014

A Bitter Cup

16 Thursday Jan 2014

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January 16, 2014

Happy Birthday to my sister.

Change. Change can have such a bitter taste. Like that cheap coffee in the hospital waiting rooms, or a gas station’s left-from-yesterday-coffee, there’s a bitter aftertaste. More for some than for others. For me, change has never been very welcome; partially because it requires energy – more energy than I want to use. When things stay the same, there is no moving mentally, emotionally, nor physically to accommodate it. At the age of 60, I readily recognize that change is a necessary part of life; and in fact it can accommodate, facilitate, recreate, and do all those other modern moves that keep up with life for us. Without change in my own daily life, I won’t be ready for the changes outside my inner circle. But sometimes, just sometimes, it is not good. Admit it modern world, not all the changes have been for our good. I don’t wish to be a negative person. On the contrary, I am very positive when I say that I like something, and I like it to stay as it is. I look at several situations in a way that one may accuse me of being negative, when all the time, I am being positive about the opposite of what will be, if changed. See? So what has my apple cart teetering? Note that I did not say ‘turned over’, just teetering. Who has moved my cheese this time (to quote a well-known book title written by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard) and why was my lip quivering?

My little sister said as we returned from her birthday lunch, “I need to tell you something”; and she said it very gravely. It caused a wave through my stomach and several scenarios to blow through my mind – was her marriage ok? was a child or grandchild in trouble? was one of my kids about to throw me for a loop? was , was, was… Well, I guess she knew how to manage my expectations so that the real issue wouldn’t be so shocking. The news is that they are going to sell their house, about a mile from us, and move to the city life. Convenience, in general, is the reasoning. But I like having them near me. I like, no I adore, her very large shady, peaceful backyard and all its gorgeous landscaping. That’s been my sister’s house for too many years for me to imagine her anywhere else. Where will I borrow a cup of sugar, or where will I drop by for a dip in the pool; where will I run in to give the kids a hug and a batch of cookies? Oh wait a minute, town is where I work. It’s where our dad lives; where we go to church; and it’s only seven or eight miles from here. Oh, ok, some change is good. But I had to sweeten that bitter cup of coffee, and pour in some cream. I actually handled it pretty well. I took her hand and said, “Change is part of life – we both have learned that! Of course it hurts me to think of you moving, but thank Goodness, you aren’t telling me you’re packing it all off to Florida or some such far off place!!” We laughed, and I look forward to helping her select things for a new house someday. And I’m reminded that God has worked on me a great deal about this change thing. Several years ago, my brother-in-law tried to talk her into this move, but she wasn’t going for it, and I bawled and squawled when she told me he wanted to move. Since then, I’ve been through more difficult transitions, changes, dreams on the edge of dissolving, and with each one God has refined me, chiseled out little receptacles, whereby I can accept and live more in harmony with change. We all have those unique traits that need tweaking in order to survive – mine was change acceptance. True, God still has much work to do on me, but I am better able to help Him with this one. Now I am able to see the positive side. I am thankful for all the years I have had my sister and her family right in my back door, to borrow and lend, to cry, to rejoice, to be a part of her family. How many can say that? And it is exciting to think of their building a new home, of the convenience that it will bring for her trying times, and that she will still be so near. As I write, I realize that I am using the relocation issue as a bucket to hold all the tremendous changes that have occurred in her family’s life, and the lack of it other than aging, in my own. These are not things easily written, nor spoken, and so it was good to have an avenue by which I could harp a bit on the subject of change. All we need to take away from this is in Ephesians 2:10: ” For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” HIS workmanship, not my own. If not for change, how could He make me better?! His knowledge of me is what will sustain me throughout life’s changes. So, since change is always here, ugly or not, to be dealt with, I call on the Lord to equip me that I may in turn be a comfort to another who may not be dealing well with their particular changing times. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties”, Psalm 139:23. How wonderful that God has given me so much time and circumstance to become a “changed person”, in order that I may accept the bigger changes of aging, and such. “Oh Lord you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. …Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.” Psalm 139: 1-3 and  vs 6. Wow. It even blew the great king David’s mind. Some things never change.

The Cream in my Coffee: a Tale of Two Sisters

11 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by in Children, Faith, Life

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The dead of winter has never been an inspirational time for me. The things that usually inspire me to write are sunshine, autumn and spring, beginnings and endings, children and aging – all that, but January, hmmmm, not a lot. Only two things have been the cream in my cup of January. One, fresh starts are nice, so the first week of January feels good to start cleaning out and cleaning up. Secondly, my little sister’s birthday is in January and I always enjoyed helping Mama try to make it special for her at a time when we were usually snowed in. Thinking of her childhood, I was reminded of a sweet story she told me recently. So to warm up today’s cold winter weather, I want to share a little piece of my sister’s life that was truly the cream in my coffee, so to speak.

As we all learned from Mr. Linkletter and Mr. Cosby, kids do say the funniest things, and I absolutely relish the things that come out of their little minds. My sister has two little granddaughters, and the following conversation occurred between the two of them. Their ages at the time were 7, and “almost 4!” years old. They are in the back seat of the car, and have no idea their Mimi and Pawpa are listening, and the discussion of genealogy has somehow come about.

K (the 7 year old, wise beyond her years): “I’m older than you because I was in Mommy’s belly before you and you came later after I was out.”

I (the 3 year old):”Why wasn’t I in Mommy’s belly the same time you were?”

K: Isabella, I was there first, and after they cut me out, then you were put there, and they cut you out, so I came first.”

I: (with trembling lips and shaky voice) “But it was dark in my Mommy’s belly and I needed a flashlight; why weren’t you there with me?” (tears)

K:” Isabella, when I was put there, you were up in Heaven with God, and you were still in God’s imagination, so He put you there after I got cut out.”

I don’t know about you, but when I first heard this, I had tears in my eyes and goosebumps! The old adage ‘out of the mouth of babes…’, right? “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee…” Jeremiah 1:5  “For thou hast possessed my reins; thou has covered me in my mother’s womb.” Psalms 139:13

I knew immediately that I truly wanted an avenue by which I could share this delightful conversation between my great nieces. I hope you enjoyed it. Now my coffee is cold, but my heart is warmed with the cream of a child’s heart; and the knowledge that when we feel alone and in need of a flashlight, we are held in the imagination of a great and loving God, Who had a plan for us from before the beginning.

My first coffee break, with a teacup

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Children, inspiration, Reflections

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Although I’d wanted to write since childhood, my best inspirations came after having children of my own. So often in the past 36 years, I have heard my inner voice narrating, “I am a writer”, and so I have stored up several little incidents that I simply want to share. And that’s the neat thing about writing, for me, anyway; that I can express a thought or emotion, or report a happening, and enjoy it for just that – and if someone else enjoys reading it, then that’s icing on my coffeecake.

It began back in about 1980 in our little 12×65 mobile home, as I made my way from the morning pick-up and straighten-up and into the kitchen where our little brown-eyed 3-year-old was leaning over the kitchen table, one foot in a chair, the other leg folded behind and a finger just coming out of the butter dish. “Look Mama”, he said excitedly, “I found a new real good sompin‘ to eat, butter on crackers!” The look on his face said, “please don’t scold before you hear why I’m nearly on the table, and there are crumbs everywhere”, and there was just a hint of guilt in that sweet smile. He seemed to think he had single-handedly invented the world’s best snack. I, however, was seeing a whole different picture. There amid the crumbs and smears of butter on a placemat, was a buttered knife, a used piece of bubble gum, a cocklebur and a teacup of water holding the two Rose of Sharon blooms he had brought in to me earlier. My heart melted at the sight of this gorgeous chunk of a child, and with gratitude for such a moment. I don’t recall anything else about that day except that I grabbed a scrap of paper, which I still have in a basket, and wrote down the memory.

I wish, of course, that I’d stopped to write down many more memories, but I was taught that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and I sure didn’t want to let the devil set up shop in our home! So, busy I was, and too few coffee breaks I took in those days. As I look back at that kitchen table, I know how blessed I was. Two beautiful children, a husband who worked hard to be sure I could stay home and raise them, and a simple country life allowed me to soar a bit with the eagles, on wings above the storms, gathering strength to run, or walk, as life’s course would dictate, without falling beneath the load. Isaiah 40:31 became my favorite verse long ago, and I cherish it more and more as I reflect back, and look forward.  With too few dollars to keep film in the camera, I grabbed pen and paper and began storing little notes like a squirrel hiding nuts. Now, being older has two sides: with a little more time to grab a cup of coffee and reminisce, perhaps, but will I be able to recall where I’ve stashed all those tidbits of time? I hope that I can discipline myself to write regularly, but don’t bet all your beans on that one!