Category Archives: MONDAY MUSINGS

Monday Musings: Mountaintops

21 Monday May 2018

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Here it is Monday again, and as I savor my second cup of Maxwell House, I realize I’ve enjoyed my new book by Rick Bragg a little too long and haven’t made my Monday post. This week I share my view from a friend’s mountaintop. This was written last year to express my joy for them, and now seems the right time, with it being Mother’s Day month, to share it.

YOU CAN’T GIVE WHAT YOU DON’T OWN

A Lesson From Someone Else’s Mountaintop

When people reach their mountaintops, they raise their arms, fist bump the sky and shout with incredible joy. Sometimes, their journey is a lesson they themselves may not realize they wrote. One such mountaintop lesson that spoke to me recently is the completion of a long awaited adoption process. Not of my own, but that of a friend.

My daughter’s best friend and her husband adopted a daughter from China. You can read of her family’s incredible journey in her blog, The Glass Slipper at crouchcrew.com. In her beautiful account of their experience as adoptive parents and siblings, she talks about the anguish she imagines the birth mother having as she must wonder about her baby girl’s destiny. Never having been in that situation myself, I too can only imagine the emotional war that must take place within a birth mother’s heart when she makes the selfless choice to give her child what she hopes is a better life. I would say that in our world today this is a decision that almost never is made by anyone other than that mother herself. It got me to thinking of giving and how you can’t give what you don’t have. It is her decision to give. To give a child another life; and to give another family the privilege of calling her baby theirs, is the ultimate gift. That is, other than the gift of God’s own son to us, to make a way for us to have eternal hope, eternal life, eternal joy. This is a gift we could never deserve, and has been given because it is His to give first of all, and secondly because He has that much love for us, His adopted children.

Accepting the wonderful gift that the Father God has given involves another matter of giving. We have to give; give up something first. If our hands are full of self, sin, sorrow…whatever we are holding, then they cannot open to take His gift. These things must first be given up, but what you don’t own, you can’t give. So, we must own our sins. We must own our sorrows and regrets. By pointing fingers of fault at others we are refusing to own, or accept responsibility for our wrongs. Excuses, reasons, or holding onto grudges and envying will not get rid of the wrongs. Until we own our sins, both committed by us and to us, we cannot give them away-

– away, at the foot of the cross;
– away, into the hands of God;
– away, in forgiveness for self and others.

We must stop making them the fault of anyone or anything else. Own them – and give them up. We’ve always heard ‘confession is good for the soul,’ and I think this is why. Though it’s HARD to do, it’s SO worth it. Putting it all down at Jesus’ feet, emptying ourselves of all that stands in our way of grasping His great gifts, is the giving that makes a new life possible. Peter put it this way, “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” (I Peter 5:6-7) Then we are able to give His unending love away over and over to others because it is the true gift that keeps on giving. The more you have, the more you can give.

Kim and Steven emptied something out of themselves to make room in their life for a little girl who was in need of a family. Not a small sacrifice. Nor was it for the mother who gave her baby to become the new joy of another family. Theirs is one example of this marvelous circle of giving that God started centuries ago. The more we give up (ultimately ourselves), the more room we have to accept and the more He gives. God doesn’t push Himself on anyone. He stands waiting, wanting us to share His love, to lead others to Him where He is with arms full to load us up with more love, grace, and mercy. To quote a beautiful spiritual hymn, “I am mine no more”. When we empty ourselves and put on Christ, we fill up with the Spirit, and then bless others by sharing what we now own – the love of God.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35 (NKJV)

“Love one another, for love is of God; he who loves is born of God and knows God.” I John 4:7

Monday Mistakes – 3rd in Monday Series

13 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in MONDAY MUSINGS, The unexpected

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This is the post that I intended to publish last Monday. Ironically, the title was already “Monday Mistakes” and I forgot I had it ready, so I wrote what I posted last week instead. This is a follow-up on my weed and feed attempt from 2 weeks ago.

The weed and feed deed has been done. I assure you that the blacktop in front of us as well as the driveway will not be sprouting weeds any time soon! However, the middle of the yard should have weeds aplenty! My husband tried in his non-teacher way to tell me how to get started. But these seeder/spreaders are unforgiving; once that high dollar stuff is being fanned across the ground, there’s no bringing it back. Controlling the speed with one foot and one eye on the speedometer; the fan toggle with right hand, steering wheel with left hand, and my other eye trying to turn with my arthritic neck to check on the progress (the open/close handle wanted to jog shut from time to time) was a multi-tasking that I hadn’t done in many years. I’ll spare you the rest of the details, and just hope that I haven’t killed precious things in my effort to take out the unwanted weeds. Does this sound familiar?

Yes, in fact, we can do more damage than good if we do not balance the bitter with the sweet. In my dandelion driven distraction, I forgot to put the cat up; fortunately by the time I actually got started, the dew was all dried so I have hopes that he didn’t pick up the chemicals with his paws. In my haste, I forgot to decrease the distribution width on the first swipe, then I misjudged the radius of my turns and didn’t cut off the fan, so there is much overlapping, and that is not the end of my mistake list. But I had the best of intentions. They say roads are not paved with good intentions.  I was nearly finished with what I knew was not a good job, when I thought about the BIRDS!!! I love them more than pretty grass, so what was I thinking????? Now I will be watching for their welfare for days, with my stomach in a knot until I know that they are OK.

Have you ever put forth a great deal of effort in helping someone, only to decide in the end that you did more harm than good? Yes, so have I. It’s that balance thing again. Carefully selecting enough constructive criticism while being sure they know you care; and providing the encouragement they need is a daunting task. I have recently been in such a situation. After much encouragement from my heart, and sincere prayer for someone, I found that there was still something holding that person back. She just wasn’t able to get over the mountain in her path, but she seemed to be making so much effort! It was breaking my heart. Then when I observed what I’ll describe as slipping back over loose rocks that were sure to trip her as she climbed, I made one last  effort to give a hand up.

Regret seems to love me – it comes to sit with me often.  I just have to remember that my intentions were good when I worked to remove the weeds and fertilize the lawn. My methods were not as well thought out. But we just can’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I learn from mistakes; forgive myself and others; hope for new beginnings; and keep on loving. I believe I can feed, without the weeding next time. Encourage, without offending. Lesson learned.

 

 

Monday Makeovers

06 Sunday May 2018

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“…all things are become new.” II Cor. 5:17b

The clothespins were starting to fall out of the ripped side of my old blue bag. It was made of that stuff somewhere between paper and fabric, so there was no mending that! Certain that it would not endure another trip to the clothesline, I began pilfering around for a solution, without having to buy another one;  or more likely, wait through several trips to the town of forgotten errands. Rummaging around in my craft supplies, I spied a piece of heavy canvas, so old that I don’t recall what its origin was. The great nieces had used it for a drop cloth once, but it just never felt right to discard it. So, I’d shuffled it around 100 times, more or less.

  • One old coat hanger and my wire cutters provided a stabilizer for the back side, where I placed:
  •        two grommets from my sewing box, left from a project of three years ago;
  •        removed the actual hanger from the old bag to fit through the grommets;
  •        used an old spool of brown thread for contrast stitching,

and it’s a new clothespin bag!MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Why, you ask, would I care about a clothespin bag? Because for me, and my family, there is nothing that compares with the scent of sheets and pillowcases hung out to dry on the clothesline in the fresh spring air. So that’s the why of that.  As to why I didn’t just go grab another no-trouble replacement at Wal-Mart? There’s a little bit of a DIY’er in me and a lot of cheap, too. So if I can make it out of old parts, and not incur more expense than buying one, why not?

I’m so glad the Lord didn’t just toss me out, but set out to remake, renew, and refurbish me instead. My soul was torn, and my spirit was falling out. The devil was wearing me thin.  But the love of the Father made my soul whole. The Holy Spirit speaks peace to our dismantled spirits through the Word of God. And Jesus Christ sacrificed all the needed materials to make us new.  “This people I have formed for myself; they shall declare my praise” Isaiah 43:21

When God’s people, Israel, had been cast far off, scattered among foreign people and lands, God’s prophet Ezekiel relayed to them that God would restore His people. “Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgements and do them, and they shall be My people, and I will be their God.” Ezekiel 11:19-20.

Today God’s spiritual Israel, His people, “know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.”  (II Corinthians 5:1, speaking of the resurrection) There is also a renewing in this life that can be a daily blessing. When we as wives, mothers, sisters and friends let each other down, betray our own hearts’ desires and do what we wish we would not; and worse, when we let down the Christ Who gave us the perfect example, we are being the torn ragged old cloths that time and temptation produce. But we have One who loves us much more than we can understand, and He has provided a way to mend and makeover those who go to Him. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (verse 17)

Thank you Father God for taking my heart’s old tattered cloth and replacing it with the sturdy fabric of faith; for giving me new purpose every day, spurred on by your Spirit and the zeal of fellow Christians. Thank you for a day of rest and worship, preparing me for my Monday makeover. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.” (II Cor. 4:16)