"They Are What They Contain..."
Here is one thing I know for sure: you can have an amazing house, and it not be a home. A home is far more than an architectural style, far more than its materials, or even its location. A home is the very essence of the people who live there...if the husband and wife truly love each other, there is a winsomeness and a peace in that home.
Another Day is Done
Watching the flooding in Pakistan on television this morning, I was struck by the fragile flower that life is. (I know...this is a heavy way to begin a post - and on my twin daughters' birthday at that! Stick with me, I hope you'll be encouraged.)
Our life is a vapor, Proverbs says, and then it vanishes away. I saw a man in Pakistan, about my age or older, clinging to a large chunk of something, hanging on for dear life, in all those raging flood waters. I will never know if he made it out alive.
But I have him to thank, whoever he is. For some reason, it hit me with vivid reality that life is lived one long day at a time. Thousands of days that man had lived, and it all came down to what may have been his few final minutes. I watched that man, for a moment, and was overwhelmed with the fact that he was born, had a childhood, probably loves someone, or several someones. A lifetime of memories were right there, clinging and fighting just so that one more day could be lived. That man, if he lived, will never again have an ordinary day.
I hope I don't, either.
Someone said "the days are long, but the years are short" and they were exactly right. My life has been lived, thus far, one minute...one hour...one day at a time. I was born, I had a childhood, I've learned a few things and loved a whole lot of people. Countless moments, one after another, add up to what is my whole life today. Much effort, many prayers, tears, laughter, pain, and joy have gone into my one life already.
And it could easily be all over in a matter of minutes.
The human body cannot go ten minutes without oxygen. In ten short minutes, my whole life, all its hours and its days and its years, could be finished. Final. Any thoughts yet unspoken or unwritten would die with me, unexpressed. Memories that are mine alone will slip into eternity with me, they will not be left behind in a box or gathered up with my things. Why do we not spend more time reminiscing? The Lord has been so good, and I am commanded to remember! So that my children, and their children, will remember. So that my friends will not forget.
Anything, to be remembered collectively, must be talked about, and more than once. Time has to be taken, around dinner tables and over telephones, and in cars and in front of the fireplace. Moments must be stolen back, and memorials made to the faithfulness of God. "Remember when...??"
And how about these words: "I love you."
And, "I am sorry. Let's begin fresh, slates wiped clean. You - a spouse, a parent, child, or a friend and child of God - you with an eternal spirit, you are far too important to be abandoned this way, and I want to come back and rebuild that which is eternal: our relationship. Quick! Hurry, let us go back to loving each other before the sun goes down, and this one precious day is over!"
Fragile woman, I am. Because my life is as a vapor, no day is ordinary. Every day is a gift. Life is far, far too short to not place urgent and immediate value on my relationships. Theoretically, in less than ten minutes, all that has been left unsaid, will never be said, this side of heaven. Every wrong not made right, will be left just as it stands in the heart and memory of someone I say I care about.
This day was not ordinary. It was not common. It was filled with the atmosphere of eternity, and loaded with value. I pray I have invested it well.
Because I will, one day, stop breathing. Less than ten minutes from that moment, I leave it all behind. Ten short minutes.
I began it by filling the house with sunflowers - always sunflowers for my girls' birthday.
Stopped by this shop
For a dozen of these. Oh...my...heavens. So good.
Justin and Hannah brought this home from an antique shop today. Timothy Paul will be joining us for dinner here, by this time next year.
Dad and a few of his kids, playing "that game".
And playing...and playing...(it is nearly eleven, as I type, and they are playing it again!)
Happy Birthday, my Sarah Howe! Your first birthday as a married woman, and you are more beautiful than ever. As the sunflowers will always say, "I am so proud of you!"
No...it has been no ordinary day. Tomorrow will also be absolutely stunning in its unique opportunities and responsibilities. The sunrise will be God's encore of the miraculous. The moment my eyes open, it will be time to be about the business of loving God and loving people. Oh, God! May I live tomorrow's minutes and hours with full awareness of their worth!
It's A....
Tim and I drove our daughter Hannah and her husband to their ultrasound appointment...
....a little bit of a hike to the doctor's office...
Hannah decided to tell her mother and father-in-law by baking cupcakes with either blue filling or pink filling inside the cupcake! Guess what color icing was in this delicious dessert?
Yes! Our very first grandbaby, who shall be named Timothy Paul McConnell, is doing very well!
::squeal::
IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!
It seems to me I've loved you since the day your mother was born. I am beside myself with gratitude and joy! You are being born into what is becoming a long line of Bible teachers and preachers. Your great grandfather Gilreath , your grandfather Atchley, your daddy (a Bible teacher in the making)...and now you. You truly have "a goodly heritage".
Should the Lord tarry, I plan to live to be a ripe, old age. I love you now, and I will love you even more then. My prayer prints have been all over you, since before you were conceived. Soon, I will hold you for the very first time. You may have been a surprise to your parents, but I've been expecting you for almost as long as I can remember. We are going to have a ton of fun together. Hope you like to be read to. (And fish, and shoot guns, but those are papaw Atchley and papaw McConnell things...)
I can't wait for you to meet all my friends. They are all excited to know you are on the way. I can't wait to see your momma and daddy bring you to your church, that very first Sunday. I can't wait to see you take your first steps, hear you say your first words, hear you preach your first sermon. And play your first song.
I am blessed and highly favored. Take good care of yourself, and we'll see you sometime during the Christmas season!
I love you to the moon, little man!
Grandmommy
Guess Who Has Photo Shop?
Shop!
I've already had a brief, basic tutorial this evening after worship practice, from son-in-law Jonathan. Hannah can also teach me a lot, from her days as merchandising manager at Goody's...she did all sorts of cool stuff with this program every day!
I'm sooooo excited. This is one of the pictures I've worked on so far...all I did was make the background black and white, and re-color my daughter Sarah and I, on her wedding day.
This is a learning curve unlike any other. Whew.
Tomorrow!
Tomorrow, we find out whether our first grandbaby is a girl or boy! Hannah asked me to accompany her and Justin to her ultrasound appointment. Can't wait, can't wait...
Of course, I'll be jumping on here to tell the world!
Of course, I'll be jumping on here to tell the world!
"The Trouble With Scotland..."
...is that it's full of Scots!" (line from the movie Braveheart)
Actually, we love Scotland and her Scots. This precious man and his equally precious wife will be staying with us here at the cottage all of next week. This time, the blessing is mine!
::cheers, confetti::
I'm preparing what is, in this case, a literal "prophet's quarters". Knee deep in meal planning, guest room fluffing, birthday preparations (my girls' birthday is Saturday) and preparing my own message for the Master Builder's International Conference next week, I am busy in a blessed-and-highly-favored sort of way.
All the way from Scotland, Joe and Yvonne Ewen will be at Harvest Church on Sunday, August 8th. If you are anywhere within the vicinity, you won't want to miss it!
Mid Life Constancy
con·stan·cy . n. 1. Steadfastness, as in purpose or affection; faithfulness. 2. The condition or quality of being constant; changelessness
More than once, my husband and I have shook our heads at someone who recently turned 45 or 50. The whole "mid life crisis" thing. Believe-you-me, it is real. There but for the grace of God, go I! So many people lose their flippin' minds when they hit about 50.
They think they are hearing God, and they aren't. They think they're entitled, and they're not. They think they need to change things up, and they don't. They need to dig in and practice constancy.
The surest predictor of a mid life crisis is the soul-withering boredom that can set in. After all, it isn't how you begin that counts. It isn't how you end. Those two points in the process are exciting. It is what you do with yourself in the character-defining middle that totally dictates your finish line. It is easy to begin a race.
Almost all races are quit in the middle.
More spouses and churches and friendships and families and careers are left in mid-life than eleventy-hundred people can shake their collective sticks at.
I promise you that, smack dab in your middle, there will be a "tree of the knowledge of good and evil". There will be the awareness that nothing is turning out quite like you imagined. You will feel the urge to prove yourself. You will feel the urge to quit. Or to do something silly like move for the sake of moving, leave for the sake of leaving, buy a sports car or motorcycle, build a McMansion you can't afford, start a band, or raise Nubian goats.
Change! Any change feels like it might do the trick - it might make you feel alive again. Let's spiritualize it, while we're at it, and say we "feel led of the Lord".
Friend. Friend, friend. Sit down here beside me and have some Tension Tamer Tea. We are so in this thing together. I feel it, too.
Your enemy (who, by the way, is not me. Ahem.) will always approach you one of two ways. Only one of two.
Your enemy will either attack you, to try to get you to retreat...or he will try to get you to make peace with him. It is the making peace part that worries me. It is very tempting to make peace when you are so exhausted from the war. It is very tempting to change course abruptly, at the next sign of crisis, and then justify your retreat.
You will find yourself making every excuse in the book for why so many of your relationships are a wreck, for why you do what you do, for why your passion is gone. Every excuse is a justification for making peace with the enemy. The children of Israel were faced with this very thing in their "middle"...that place between Egypt and the Promise. (Ex. 34:11-14)
Beware of that sense of mid-life entitlement. When you don't live daily outside your comfort zone, when you make personal peace and affluence your idol, you end up making a covenant of false peace and false provision with an enemy.
You started out serving the Lord with abandon. Let me tell you - the same grace that saved you, is the same grace you absolutely must function in every single day. Notice I said "function". When there is no apprehension and appropriation of grace, there is dysfunction.
You began well. Stay the course. Don't let the heart ache and disappointments and exhaustion of the middle make you dull and cynical and jaded. Tap into the newness of life that is yours in Christ Jesus!
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