I Want

I want...what do I want? It is important to know.

I want to dwell in possibility.

I want to inspire you. ("others" is too generic and remote for me. I want to inspire you.)

I want to be inspired.

I want to be able to use a Tan Towel without streaking myself.

I want to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire every single day in His temple.

I want to live in the reality of Christ in me, Christ as me.

And Oh. Mah. Weeeerd. I want a zoom lens.

I want to worry less and take joy more.

I want to let go of what is out of my control anyway. And that would be almost everything in life besides what I wear tomorrow.

I want to cling tightly to grace.

I want a different car. Didn't used to. Now I do. Now that my Preacher has his new truck, I'm smitten with the ardent desire to drive something decent. And for me, that would still be something older, but older on purpose...older for a reason...older by choice. Hmmmm. Kind of like me. I'm so stinking proud that I am finally a grandmother, and it is my choice to embrace it.

The very idea of a "hot car", with any woman over 40 at the wheel, just makes me smirk. My son's young girlfriend drives a Mustang, for crying out loud, and she looks adorable behind the wheel, and that car is perfect for her. She gains major cool-points for driving it. Me? I'm forty plus. I'd lose major cool points, by trying too hard. I can't do the "I-drive-this-because-I-can-and-I-need-for-you-to-think-I'm-still-hot" car. I'd rather eat dirt and die. But pay no attention to me. I don't know anything.

I heart the older Volvo station wagons!


Hear me out. Someday I'll find me one, all boxy-looking and in perfect shape, white or black, and she shall become mine. It's an "intellectual-but-cool-and-good-looking-in-an-elegant-40-something-way"chick thing. I love the idea that I drive the car I inherited from my grandmother. That's the vibe I'm going for. I'm weird like that. I do all my own psychoanalyzation, because to be analyzed by others gets tedious and boring. And the results are nearly always inaccurate.

It goes all the way back to the TV show "Judging Amy". Plus, I would still need the sort of vehicle that I can toss all my antique store finds in. Something besides a green mini van. Amen.

I want to be more like Jesus. And I know...after that rant about middle aged women and their image cars, you don't believe me. But I do. I really do.

I want to be a Barnabus Friend, a Paul Mentor of young Timothys, and to be Jesus' John the Beloved. To lay my head upon His breast.

I want dark chocolate.

I want to see even more souls saved.

I want to be out of debt, and for the Vols to win the SEC championship - both things this year, by some miracle, pleaseGod.

I want more of God's glory on full display in my life, and I want to laugh with a best girlfriend until my eyes pop out of my skull and my very life passes before my eyes, which will make me laugh even harder.

I want to grow old with my peeps - all my family, grandchildren present and grandchildren to be. All of Harvest Church present, all of Harvest Church to be. My vision encompasses the years and the generations like that.

I want crab legs. Right now.

I want Sarah Palin to be Chris Christie's Vice President.

I want either Peyton Manning or Tim Tebow to play for a Superbowl ring this year.

I want to shut up now, because you want me to shut up now.

Jeanne Oliver Designs

I am a huge fan of all things hand made. I have a strong desire, in this season of my life, to support home based designers and writers and artists.

So. I must tell you. I am so in love with Jeanne Oliver and her clothing and bag designs. I never thought I'd see my way clear to buy one of her tops (too short for me to wear as a dress)...until she ran a very brief (I think it was a one or two day only) deep discount awhile back.

Really big discount. Big enough for me to bite the bullet and order.

(this photo from Jeanne Oliver Designs)

I so love this little top. It is my favorite thing in my wardrobe right now, and I predict it will remain my favorite throughout the fall season. I've already worn it a couple of times, and it is one of those pieces that strangers will ask you where you bought it. (That has happened to me once, so far - but, as I said, I've only worn this top a couple of times).



Jeanne also does exquisite packaging. My dress/top arrived wrapped in a sheath of grey tissue paper, tied with a strip of torn-fabric string. The top comes with a pin...a cluster of grey linen flowers. But Jeanne included an extra ivory colored fabric flower, tucked in a tiny burlap draw string bag. All hand-made.







She also tucked in some of her photography. I was hugely blessed by the message...for me, in this season of my life, a prophetic whisper from heaven ~

This message both speaks to my life in recent years - letting go of legalism and any person, place, or thing that weighed my spirit down...and it speaks to my "now" - letting go of all that is out of my jurisdiction.

Oh, the letting go is the hardest thing. It is a free-fall into the grace-through-faith by which I'm saved.

Anyhoo. There was also a torn page from an antique French dictionary, all kinds of beautiful ephemera (which I heart, so so much) and a note from Jeanne herself...

Look at the loveliness ~



Her fall designs come out next week...and if she runs another "special", I doubt any force will be powerful enough to keep me from just one more Jeanne Oliver Design.

Preserving Basil - An Easy Tutorial

In the morning hours, before the heat of the day, cut some of your basil and wash it lightly. Let it dry briefly. You'll need coarse salt (Kosher salt is coarse salt) and an airtight container. The prettier the container, the better. Why have ugly if you can have pretty? Why have unsightly, when you can have cute?


I have, many times, said to my youngest son, "If you were ugly, I'd have spanked you more often, and you might be better behaved today."



He is the youngest, and you parents know how tired you are by then. And he is achingly cute (my oldest boy is terribly handsome, and my daughters are stinking gorgeous, and why all my adverbs are pejorative I will never know) and he does behave shockingly from time to time.


And I'm shallow like that. I err to all that visually appeals. Back to basil...

start with a layer of coarse salt, and lay your basil leaves on it. Try not to let them touch, but you don't have to be obsessive about that. It is okay if they touch a little bit, sometimes. You just can't stack 'em, one on top of the other.

Cover your layer of basil leaves with a layer of coarse salt.

Continue until you have something like this. Your basil will keep this way, at near-full-aromatic-state, for about six months!

Keep it in a cool, dark place....like a pantry. Don't keep it on your windowsill. Do as I say, don't do as I do. I am erring to the visually appealing, here, and also obnoxiously showing off my rosemary infused olive oil, in the used-to-be lemonade bottle.

Speaking of cute, of achingly adorable, of over-the-top sweetie-pie-ness, it is time to slip in yet another braggadocious Grandson Photo:

Poppy and I are preparing Little Britches for his first football season. He'll be a Volunteer, through and through, for yeay verily, he hath a goodly heritage.

Yeay, verily. Verily, yeay.

The Exquisite Writing of Hal Borland

"Summer is misted dawns and searing afternoons, hot days, warm nights, thunderstorms cracking their writhing whips. Summer is shirt sleeves, sunburn, bathing suits, tall cold drinks, dazzling beaches and shimmering lakes. Summer is the green countryside, the cool fragrance of mountain pines.

Summer is the house wren bubbling over with morning song. It is the long afternoon aquiver with the sibilance of the cicada. It is slow dusk freckled with fireflies - and prickly with mosquitoes. Summer is a meadowful of daisies, a field of corn reaching for the sun, a straw hat, a hoe and a garden.

Summer is the fresh garden pea, new lettuce crisp in the salad bowl, snap beans, sun-ripe raspberries on the bush and chilled strawberries in a bowl of cream. Summer is the weed, the gnawing insect, the foraging woodchuck, the nibbling rabbit. Summer is sweat.

Summer is April and May grown into June and July, the green world working almost eighteen hours a day. It is a lazy river and a languishing brook. It is a vacation dreamed of, realized, too soon over and done, too soon a memory.

Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January."

~Excerpt from Sundial of the Seasons, by Hal Borland - I absolutely recommend it.

Generational Work

Today, I am so aware of the Gospel being a Generational Work. On many levels, I see this as clearly as the August sky.

"One generation shall praise His works to another, and declare His mighty deeds..."

Firstly, I see the need for young men in the church - men in their early to mid twenties - to mentor teenage men. Mine is not the only church, by far, experiencing the dearth of young men with the leadership skills, talents, compassion, and charisma necessary to make loving Jesus seem desireable to their younger counterparts.

Men in their twenties aren't being taught that the Gospel is a generational work. They don't feel responsible. They aren't being taught how to stick and stay and not run away. They aren't being challenged to see their church as an extension of their family, and to accept the mantle of responsibility to mentor the young guys in their home church. ("Home church? What's that?")

This is partly because the parents, those middle aged men and women, aren't taking responsibility either. They, too, float from church to church, easily offended, not sinking roots into the relational soil, weathering the seasons, reaping the harvest. ("Harvest" means so much more than seeing souls saved. Harvest is fruit matured to the picking-point, in any and every good and happy area of life!)

I remember a conversation the Preacher and I had, a couple years back, with an old salt of a saint who'd pastored churches, and does pastor even now. We were talking of those we've seen come and go in our churches, and how sad it was, this loss of potential and momentum and fruit, when roots are ripped up and transplanted, over and over, to no real avail. We were lamenting the limitation that comes when people of any age do not respect authority, nor do they value continuity of years in relationships.

He said, "I will tell you this: 100% of the drifters and the relationally challenged have issues with their own parents. You cannot devalue or disrespect that most basic relationship and expect to somehow understand how healthy relationships in the family of God function."

Ah, wisdom is justified by her children.

It cuts both ways, I have recently discovered. Parents have to model respect by respecting their grown children, honoring their unique destiny, and asking forgiveness when necessary. No parent, by virtue of their position, has the right to manipulate the lives of grown children, or tear down the choices, spouse, or profession of their son or daughter. If you try that, you will live with the consequences, and they are indeed bitter. Far better to humble yourself, even as The Parent, and sincerely make things right...on your child's terms, not yours.

Otherwise, they will forgive you. But they will reserve the right to forgive you from a distance. Is that really what you want?

Wisdom is proven in the generations. This is why I am so thrilled to see many three-generation-strong families in Harvest Church, my own being one of them. (We are actually four generations strong!) Serving God with my parents and my children, while holding my grandson is what the Gospel is about. I can say that, because I know what it has taken to get to this place....a whole lot of obedience and applying my theology to my biography.

And a whole, whole lot of forgivin'.

And we are SO not a trophy family. We've had to apply the Gospel in ways that have humbled us all into the dirt, laid bare and vulnerable before one another. If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you know. And it ain't over yet. This Gospel that the Preacher and I have joyfully and painfully lived out in the secret places of our home relationships, is a Generational Work.

You can't manufacture it. It isn't assembly-line. It is artisanal work, done by heart and hand. This sort of work isn't nurtured well in an impersonal, business model church environment, with all due respect.

Yes, one generation shall praise His works to another! I need to wrap this up. I hear my grandson waking up...I can hear him "declaring the Lord's mighty deeds"...well. He's declaring something...loudly.

"The Father forgave the prodigal before he confessed (Luke 15:20) and God provided my forgiveness before I asked, and isn’t this the Kingdom I’m orienting to, the compassion before the confession?

I am a daughter failed and I am a parent failing and I know it in ways now I never knew: if I rip apart the bridge of forgiveness for my own parents with my own hands, I destroy the only way my own children can come to me."

~from the beautiful blog "A Holy Experience" by Ann Voskamp

God Loves His Girls

Today, I enjoyed an early morning drive with The Preacher in his new truck.

Today, I was given a purse that cost half what he paid for his truck.

A. Purse.

Today, I enjoyed time with girlfriends, eating cupcakes and salad with strawberries.

Today, I spent some time with a friend who is a missionary to Cambodia.

Today, I'm having a hard time resolving what seems to be two different aspects of the same, good God. I serve a God who often asks me to do hard things - to live sacrificially. I serve a God who requires me to not just understand the gospel, not just espouse the gospel, not just preach the gospel, but also to "live of the gospel", meaning to apply it to my ordinary, real-world relationships. This is often a hard thing to do. Cheap, this life isn't. It has cost me in profound ways. The law would be a far easier thing to live by - and no, law and Good News are not synonymous, though the same God is Author of them both.

I serve a God who asks my friends to do hard things, like live in Cambodia. He also requires them to apply the gospel to their ordinary, real-world relationships, and on top of that, they worry about their child's exposure to rat dander...and spiders as big as your hand can and do bite them. I haven't come near to that, in my service to God. My friends are the real deal, and I am the faux deal. (And it is okay for me to believe that. I'm not having a crisis, I simply esteem my friends - in a very honest way - as being better than myself.)

And I serve a God who happens to know that I love me a pretty, well made purse. I mean, I reckon He knows, since there is nothing knowable that He doesn't know in absolute perfection of wisdom. So He puts it on someones heart to gift me with a handbag that cost more than half what The Preacher paid for his truck.

Oh, but wait. The Preacher was very nearly given his truck. His truck is worth easily four times what the price was (car lots would charge six or seven times what he paid)...which takes me back to resolving the side of God that often asks Tim and I to do hard things, with the side of Him that blesses His boys with trucks, and gives His girls Eric Javits purses. You see...herein lies the rub: sometimes The Preacher and I obey God to the exact detail, and sometimes we don't. And yet He turns and blesses us with unearned, undeserved extravagance that defies our logic.

This is my exact purse, down to the color. Google Eric Javits and Neiman Marcus. Warning: sit down and spit out your coffee before you check the price. And make sure your theology can handle the fact that God often asks His girls to do the Actually Hard Thing (versus the Imagined Hard Thing, or the Self Imposed Hard Thing)...and He loves His girls so much, He sometimes gives them extravagantly expensive, and lavishly pretty purses for no real reason.

These are not easy issues to resolve, trust me.

You have been forewarned.

What The Preacher is Up To

He was up at 5, and then by 7:30 this morning, this is what my camera saw:



He's detailing his new truck. He is putting the Barbie Jeep up for sale, as this deal is way, way too sweet for him to pass up. Our neighbor, because he loves Tim, is letting his truck go for less than a song.

More like half a song.

It's in great shape, one owner.

I have one happy preacher on my hands, because his new ride may not cost him a penny out-of-pocket.

He told me, months ago, "God is about to give me a truck. I need one. I've been asking Him for one."

I should listen to him more often.