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

Today my Bible reading brought me to Genesis 13: 8-9 ⁸ So Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers.⁹ Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”

Abram, wanting to avoid strife with his relative, has put aside his right to choose and instead offered Lot his choice of lands to live in.  I think that is terribly gracious of him, and Lot took advantage of that grace to take the better portion. Obviously, Abraham was more interested in preserving his relationship with Lot than he was in exercising his rights.

In that same way I need to find the strength in myself to offer up my right to the first and best, and give up that right to others. It’s so hard to do- I am selfish and sometimes foolish. And I am weary of stepping aside for others. When my ‘rights’ are trampled, I want to offer wrath, not grace.

Lord help me to find the courage to do the right thing instead of having the right thing, so I can honor you instead of myself. 

Awake

She is awake again. It is 3:22 AM. Her grandmother's oak wall clock swings it's brass pendulum  rhythmically, consistent. She hears the faint tick, tick, tick counting the minutes, hours. A row of tiny green LED lights illuminate the kick space under her desk nearby, evidence the wireless service functions even at this hour. There are many electronic lights: the TV logo glows, tiny blue computer power indicator, the coffee pot clock in the kitchen down the hall, a bright blue light even glows on the blender. They disrupt the dark, an abnormality that disturbs her.
Outside the Rottweiler across the street barks, and she knows someone is in the neighborhood. A car slides slowly by, and a plop--skid sound can be heard as the newspaper is tossed onto her driveway.  She relaxes into the pale green denim couch, and the springs creak, feather pillows condensing under her weight. Her favorite spot is worn and comforting. Reaching over, she pulls her minky afghan onto her lap, disturbing the sleepy little black house-dog beneath. The Doxie-mutt scootches over and noses under her robe, insistent on owning the warmest part of her lap. She strokes the canine fur, feels the soft, smooth coat and firm little body that burrows closer in response. Tick, tick, tick.
The scent of jasmine wafts in through the open window on a breeze, surprising her: a heady perfume reward for hours spent in the garden. In the bedroom behind her, a snoring man she promised her life to some 30 years ago disturbs her thoughts. He has changed: evolved, become a stranger. She has changed, too. She has splochy peach colored crepe paper with freckles where smooth, tanned arm skin once resided, and the flesh of her pasty thighs is jiggly and soft. the skin below her chin sags, and sticks to her chest below. She wears streaks of gray in her hair, and has given up the weave or Clairol to disguise it. Tick, tick, tick.
This house, once full of wonderful noisy children, now holds relics.  There was a time when she couldn't go to the bathroom without numerous toddlers in tow. She now has the respite she once craved, but no longer wants. The daughter off looking for her future, the sons with wives and heartaches of their own. In the silence she remembers them and breathes a prayer for each. Tick, tick, tick.
There is too much dark time at 3:22 AM to remember the losses: the daughter in law she loved for 18 months before wicked cancer stole her, the grandson at 27 months floating in the pool with no life in him. She aches for the things God has allowed, and for the healing he did not. Sleepiness sets in, and she leans back.  Closing eyes to electronic cacophony and memories, she drifts off to sleep to the swinging pendulum clock's tick, tick, tick.

Growing up... finally!

Recently I heard a talk show host responding to a caller’s statement that, “I can’t stop thinking about how much my ex-husband has hurt me.”  The talk show host responded by asking the caller to close her eyes and think about a big, yellow, speckled, ripe banana. Then the caller was instructed to think of a child’s shiny new red toy wagon.  Lastly, she was told to imagine a beautiful pink, fragrant rose in full bloom.  The caller agreed that she “saw” these images in her mind.  And then the talk show host told her that, indeed, she had just chosen to think on something besides the pain from her ex-husband. Well, my goodness how many times have I said to myself, “I can’t forget (the emotional wound of the day)” or I hurt because of what so and so said to me. Me, me, me! I just can’t stop thinking about me! 

This morning I had a “show stopper” moment, a revelation from the Lord that, no doubt, He has tried to teach me before.  But I am a stubborn and self-centered gal, and sometimes God must roll his eyes and simply sigh with exasperation at my attitudes. Fortunately he sticks with me, despite myself.

The moment came as I read a morning devotional by Jan Silvius entitled “My Favorite Bad Feeling”. Jan wrote about our human penchant to immediately dive into our childhood comfort zones when life challenges us. She wrote,  “If we can’t control anything else in our lives, we can control what we think about. But when we have been buffeted by a situation that throws us, it is easy to abdicate our control  and go to our “favorite bad feeling.” That’s the feeling we went to as a child because we learned that it helped us get what we wanted. Once you are an adult, you will find that it is the first place your mind rushes when there is something troubling on your mental radar screen.

Some of us cry, some pout, some sleep, some eat chocolate, some go shopping, some withdraw, and some slam doors, some clean house, some sit and stare. You could probably fill in your own favorite bad feeling. But you don’t have to respond that way, you can choose not to go there. Circumstances rarely change, but how you feel about the circumstances can change dramatically.

How you feel is up to you, not to anyone else in your life. Peace is the result of choosing to focus your mind on what is true and honorable and right. When you choose to do that, it is amazing how much peace will overtake your mind and heart.”*

So after ruminating on Jan’s lesson for 24 hours, I ask myself this morning, “What will I do differently because of what I have learned?”

Well, of course God gave me an opportunity to implement this lesson right away when a co-worker said something that inadvertently hurt my feelings and, instead of kicking into that childhood comfort zone, I CHOSE TO say, "Hey, that comment kinda threw me under the bus." My co-worker responded, "Did I leave tire tracks? I’m sorry!" We both chuckled at the light hearted reply, and then worked out the issue and all was well. Holy diffused emotions, Batman! What freedom! What blessing!  That was so easy!

Now  I must give credit to a mature colleague who responded well to my expressed concern. That helped a lot (note to self: hang out with people who are mature and transparent and faith-filled). But the most important thing for me was to step out in faith and maturity, state what I thought in a polite manner and be willing to discuss the situation openly and fairly instead of diving into my childhood comfort zone of self-protection.  

That was a wonderful experience for me, and a small step in a more mature direction. The emotions that I usually let myself  wallow in (yes, that’s my choice—ouch!) were immediately diffused and I will not spend the rest of my day in “wound licker” mode.  I like this!

So what about the banana and the wagon and the rose?  Well, in my spaghetti thinking mind, I was tying those lessons together with two passages of the Word that suddenly gained clarity for me: Philippians 4:8, “Finally . . . whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.“  This passage tells me that I CHOOSE WHAT I DWELL ON! Now that may be obvious to a lot of you, but not to me before now, apparently.   And 1 Corinthians 13:9, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a (wo)man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”  God was telling me, sweetie, it’s time to grow up—put your big girl panties on and don't behave like a brat. Yes, he was!

You see, for months I have been praying for peace:  peace in my days, peace in my heart and mind, no matter what my circumstances.  I was waiting for God to drop it magically somehow on my doorstep.  All the while, God's Word was saying that peace of mind is within my grasp, if I will simply choose what thoughts I focus on.  My mind is mine alone, and no one can place an emotion there for me. I do it all myself.  God is calling me to step up my maturity level, thinking about the right things and choosing not to linger in the mud pit of unforgiveness and unkind attitudes because I am not a child.  With growing up comes responsibility, for sure, but also the immeasurable freedom of walking in contentment and peace, knowing that the God who made me and loves me is with me every step of the way.

I invite you to take that step of faith today, out of your childhood comfort zone and into the freedom and wonder of God’s blessed peace. Its only one decision away, and only you can make it.

*Excerpted from A Grand New Day © 2008 by Thomas Nelson. Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Used with permission. All rights reserved.