Home for Halloween

Recently a neighbor came knocking on my door. She needed a jump start for her car but I could not help her. One of the drawbacks of owning a Prius hybrid vehicle is that you can’t do the old jumper cable trick. The Toyota people do not recommend messin’ with their battery pack: the owner’s manual says DANGER and I tend to listen to advice like that. I told her I was sorry but I couldn’t help her. She walked away from my door with an expression on her face that was a mixture of disbelief and disgust. There is another day when you can pretty much count on the neighbors coming to your door: October 31. Many Christians choose not to “celebrate” Halloween, and I don’t disagree with that position. But instead of saying no to participating in a pagan activity, why not consider saying “yes” to your neighbors coming to your door? If you think about it, this is the best opportunity you have all year to welcome friends, neighbors, and strangers! If your porch light is on, chances are there will be children at your door, with mom and dad not far behind. What if we chose to welcome them, share something special, and show them a friendly face in Jesus name? If all the doors that open to children and parents chanting, “Trick or Treat!” are non-believers, I think we are missing out on the best opportunity we have to love these people. Just last week I was at Target and I stopped by the “dollar” item section of the store. You know, the shelves near the store entrance that is full of seasonal merchandised priced cheap. I picked up 8 packages of glow in the dark bracelets, 15 to a pack for $1. Neat! That is 120 treats I have for my little guests that only cost me $8. That’s a bargain! I can add a little message to the bracelets about Jesus and light and invite them to our church. A recent quick flip through Pinterest or Googling “fall décor” will inspire you with lots of great fall outdoor ideas, some that could even be modified to reduce the “scare” factor. What a great opportunity to share God’s love. Case in point: Last year I was baking cookies on Halloween night, later in the evening. A little girl, maybe 13 years old, walking around alone and dressed in a very low cut, inappropriate dress, came to my door. I opened it and she inhaled deeply and exclaimed, “Oh, it smells like Christmas in your house!” Now I have never equated peanut butter cookies with Christmas, but this girl did. It gave me opportunity to talk to her about Christmas, Halloween, young girls walking around alone at night, and lots of other stuff. We chatted at my door for several minutes and I sent her on her way with warm cookies. I haven’t seen her since that night. I pray for her when I think of her. Maybe she remembers something I told her about a God who loves her and died for her. I call that a win-win, and an opportunity for evangelism that I do not want to miss.

My husband, Mark, came home with a new business card which he helped design. It was clever, really, and fitting for his line of work. Mark sells motorcycles at a local Harley Davidson dealership and he is very happy to be spending his days loving the bikes and sharing his passion to ride with his customers. He handed me the new card which read, “Mark T. Welch, Peddler Of fine Motorcycles.” Well of course I noticed the typographical error right away and the critical words were out of my mouth faster than a rabbit with a fox hot on it’s trail. “Oh cool, but there’s a typo,” I stated glibly. I only wanted to be helpful. Really. But the squelching of enthusiasm was done. You might think, judging by the number of typos I miss in the publications I print at my own job that I am not so good at spotting them. But I seem to relish finding someone else’s mistake, as if it vindicates me to catch another’s error. The truth is it makes me feel less weak when I discover and point out someone else’s weakness. That is a painful confession. Recently I worked hard on a photo project at my day job, and a church member was kind enough to compliment my effort. It was so nice to hear the kind words! The next day I got a note from someone inquiring about the weird lighting that he disliked during a part of the worship service and I felt discouraged. It’s so easy to open our mouths and slop unkindness or discouragement with the thoughtless surface intent of “helping” someone. How can we get a grip on the habit of speaking kinder words? In 1 Peter 4:7-10, the Word instructs, “ ...stay wide awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything... Be generous with the different things God gave you: if words,let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit...” The Message. its as simple— and as challenging— as that. Oh how my pride gets in the way of God’s work! I want to practice being generous with the words God gave me, and I want God’s bright presence to be evident in my life, but I have much to learn. The next time I do something to annoy you, (I’m pretty sure there will be a next time) would you take it as a cue to pray for me? As you can see, I have lots to learn.

15 months later...

this 15 months later, I bake a cake and reflect on life without these grandchildren. The children stolen, living a different life, with a "new daddy" who is a lie. The mommy lives a lie. She holds and loves her children and you wonder how she can speak words of love and words of evil to her babies. How does she sleep at night with the evil secrets in her heart? How does she live knowing that the son in Heaven sees and knows and understands that his momma has done this terrible thing to his daddy? The family is a fragile thing in today's world, much more so than I could have imagined. I had no idea that an angry spouse could cry abuse and a family court system would tear father from child with no thought to hearts broken. Nights not slept. Arms aching for the child unforgettable. Not much care about truth. The man must be the monster, they think. But why? Can't a woman tell a lie? Is a mother who is angry and mourning a dead child not capable of dreaming up a means to punish the parent she deems responsible? So she commits murder of the family, smash a father's heart, crush his spirit, make him pay for her sick, sick heart! Its a perfect crime, and the "justice system" in America plays along. The days pass and you pray and you hope, and you wonder when the pain will end. You think surely someone, someone will see the lies for what they are. The revenge. The hatred and the need for justice, for truth. Pain ebbs, lessens, then a jellybean discovered left behind in a kettle brings all pain back and you remember. You remember. And so 15 months later, we still mourn. We still cry and we still have lost. Tragically, the children lost too. They will grow up and wonder, "Why did my daddy leave me?" "Wasn't I good enough for him?" "Will I be like him when I grow up?" Children do that. They look inward, take on blame, assume the worst. And the crime goes on. The family is torn. The children mourn. All their lives.

The Healing Hand

When I was a kid, I had multiple opportunities to see the miracle of God’s design for the human body in the way it heals itself.  I was one of those kids with constant scabs on my knees. If I wasn’t running over a rock and crashing my bike on a woodsy trail in summer, I was slipping and sliding on a sled down a snow covered hill in winter until I chipped a tooth on the sled rail. Can’t explain it, but it happened. Twice.  I was not a particularly observant child, oblivious to the why or how. I kept falling down and feeling the pain of my injuries, slapping on a Band-Aid and getting back on the bike or sled. 

Recently I sliced a finger on a very sharp blade, and the wound required stitches to help it heal. I watched the doc do her thing at Urgent Care at Kaiser on Stockdale Hwy (observation: don’t go there unless you really, really need it. Its crowded! And they hide all the best docs there, I think.)  Afterward, I went home, bandaged and instructed in the care of my wound. 

Watching the wound heal has been a great reminder of something I take for granted: God’s design of my body to knit itself back together. At the risk of being a bit too graphic, I need to tell you that when I sustained the injury, I was really worried I might lose the sense of touch in this important right hand finger. The tip of my finger was white from the cut over the top of my finger and down the nail and I feared that blood supply was too damaged, which I assumed might also mean nerves were cut. I worried about function. Writing is a doable challenge with a damaged digit, but hand stitching and painting were going to be a major challenge without a sense of touch.  At first the entire end of my finger felt numb.  Then as the days passed, small pain sensations reassured me that the nerves were mending, maybe even sending out test signals?  And 15 days out I am seeing new skin being revealed as the wound has closed and repaired itself.  Who did that?  I mean, the wound was certainly my doing, but the healing? Who decides when blood will clot and when it won’t?  And what’s happening in there under that bandage anyway? 

I had to: I Googled it. (you can learn so much on the internet!)  And here is what I found:
When an injury occurs, the first thing that happens is vasoconstriction — blood vessels leading to the wound tighten to reduce the flow of blood to the injured area. Neat, huh? Then platelets

rush to the scene. These sticky blood cells clump to each other and then adhere to the sides of the torn blood vessel, making a plug. Then clotting proteins in the blood join forces to form a fibrin net that holds the platelet plug in place over the cut, and in just a few seconds or minutes (depending on how bad the scrape is), bleeding stops, thanks to coagulation! The fibrin plug becomes a scab that will eventually fall off or be reabsorbed into the body once healing is complete.

What an amazing design! A great plan, and certainly not something I would have come up with. But there’s more! Once bleeding has been controlled, the next step is stopping infection. The blood vessels that were constricted now dilate to bring white blood cells rushing to the scene. White blood cells engulf and destroy any germs that may have gotten into the body through the open wound.

When the enemies of blood loss and infection have been defeated, the body turns its attention to healing and rebuilding: Fibroblasts (cells that are capable of forming skin and other tissue) gather at the site of injury and begin to produce collagen, which will eventually fill in the wound under the scab and create new capillaries to bring oxygen-rich blood to the recovering wound. Wow! New paths for blood. There’s my answer to the worry about my finger tip healing. God had it covered all along. Skin along the edges of the wound becomes thicker and then gradually migrates (or stretches) under the scab to the center of the wound, where it meets skin from the other side and forms a scar about three weeks after the initial injury.

Puhleeze don’t tell me that a bazillion cells collided somewhere in space and just started doing all this.  This is incredibly intelligent design, and God’s method of providing care for His creation. The icing on the cake is that He gave us the smarts to figure this out so medical science can step in and assist when we mess things up too much, like I did.

So the next time you get a scrape or cut, sustain an injury, or help your child with his latest boo boo, remember the God who made us, his wonderful creations, and the plans he has made for our care.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  Psalm 139:13-14