No, My Words Haven’t Fled

“The words won’t go away,” I told a friend recently. Alas, judging by this blog, one wouldn’t know it. My words seem to have fled. But if you’ve given it even a teeny thought, I should explain that the words haven’t gone. They’re only flowing in other directions–into my weekly Sunny Side Up columns, preparations for our spring speaking, and editing other projects. 

A few books are taking some of the words too. My latest, Practice by Practice–The Art of Everyday Faith, should be on shelves by Easter.  Speaking of that…I hope your own Easter is both blessed and bright!

See you at home! (Pssst….every month I give away a free book. If you’re interested, don’t forget to fill in the form on my home page.)

Those Good Old Awful Days

Response to a holiday greeting from one of Rick’s former roommates while at Wascana Rehab Hospital:

As incongruous as it seems, Rick and I have some great memories  of the weeks you shared his room in Wascana—as difficult as they were for you both. We never laughed more.

It’s interesting to me that sometimes the most difficult times are the most fondly remembered. I heard recently that British people, surveyed years after the German blitzkrieg in London, recall those as the best years of their lives. Since we began fighting the pirates, as I call Rick’s West Nile Disease, I’ve come to understand that.

Something noble and wonderful emerges from deep inside the human spirit when under attack, and for many people, it may be the only time in their lives they experience it.

There are things I miss about those months under siege…one of them is meeting such wonderful people as yourself—people we never would have met otherwise.

Full of Beans

 From a note to a friend, explaining my dawdling on my next book project, a follow-up to West Nile Diary:

 I’ve been guilty of an over-indulgence of Beans*, and trying to work out our post-West Nile life…which is just what the book is supposed to be about: How people “cope” when life flips them upside down.

*our grandchildren, who live one street over, and visit frequently

 To a fellow writer, discussing our lives and our work:

 Most of the time that’s all I want to be when I grow up…just a wife and a mom and a grandmother…someone loving for the family to come home to.

 But isn’t it interesting how God sets us often on a path that’s different from what we think we’d enjoy best?

In Spite of the Pirates…

 New Year’s letter to another friend facing life’s body pirates…

 We’ve faced a few obstacles with Rick’s condition, accompanied by a lack of understanding on the part of medical professionals and the insurance company. Ah well..we were never promised roses, were we?

 From a note to good friends…

 We’re living on faith, good words, and most importantly, God’s good graces – what better way to fly could there be? …But faith-flying always encounters storms—we’re holding on for a ride.

 2010 will be great indeed. No matter what tomorrow holds, we know who holds it—and us!

Finally Finished the Dollhouse

To a good friend who asked about some of the most special parts of our Christmas…

Our son, Anthony, still recuperating from his mangled ankle, and on a break from rehab, came home for Christmas for the first time in six years. He spent hours helping me paint and fix up the dollhouse we began when Amanda was little. Back then, Rick and I got it to the, “well, it looks like a doll house – sort of” stage and left it that way for more than twenty years. We painted it sunflower yellow, and wallpapered all the rooms. It ’s not Better Homes and Garden variety, but it’s wonderful to me. The best part was working on it with him.

Undeserved

We’re preparing for Thanksgiving at Hope House. The joy is almost physical. Like a passing zephyr, its warmth encompasses me. I feel battered by love. Brought to my knees by a providence unmerited; my defenses, shattered. Our own home—well, on paper at least—and if we behave, and nature does too, it could be that for awhile. No other place on this old terrestrial ball, brings me more joy these days. It’s not the place, you see, it’s the mercy that provided it.

Family will join us at the feast. Dear friends, too. We’ll stretch the table to crowd-length, pile it with provender until it groans. We’ll bow our heads and thank the One who provides it all. We’ll laugh at the children, eat too much, tell funny stories, eat more, talk more, laugh more. Wait awhile. Then we’ll clear what we couldn’t eat, make tea, and bring out pumpkin pie. (“I don’t like pie, Nana. Pie is not my favorite,” says one dissenting bean. There’ll be pie anyway.)

 Ps. 100 nestled in our six-pack this morning. Usually we don’t move into prayer until we’ve finished all the Psalms and the daily Proverb, but that hundredth Psalm stopped me today. Held out its verses like a constable on the road to mercy. Demanded I pay my due. Bow your heart, child. The King has showered you with delight. Undeserved grace. Thanksgiving is your toll booth.

 “Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with joy; come before him with singing. Know that the Lord is God. He made us, and we belong to him; we are his people, the sheep he tends…

 “Come into his city with songs of thanksgiving and into his courtyards with songs of praise. Thank him and praise his name. The Lord is good. His love is forever and his loyalty goes on and on.”

 On and on and on and on… a kaleidoscope of loving deeds, and whichever way I turn it, it makes of God’s mercy a rainbow.

 I’ve just popped the chicken into the oven. A fresh gift from almost-strangers, it usurped the turkey this year. We didn’t deserve it; we didn’t even ask for it—nor the home-cooked meal that preceded it last Sunday. Hospitality—an increasingly rare gift—colored my week magenta.

 The Lord is good. Praise his name.

 The snow began two days ago. On the street where I walked just past dawn, gold leaves scattered like coins on an ermine blanket. I will not complain, though October hasn’t finished its canvas, and though I haven’t yet planted my bulbs on Hope Mountain—the dimple on my backyard. Our spruce trees, decorated in white, are even lovelier than they were last week.

 Shout to the Lord, all the earth. His love is forever.

 We have one less tall cardboard box leaning against our living room wall. It held an unassembled cabinet. Last night and this morning, the Preacher and I put it together. Grunting, groaning. Love’s co-labor. A drop of his sweat falls on polished wood. I breathe in the miracle that he sweats with work, genuine work, not physiotherapy. Yellow for joy—God is faithful. 

 We belong to him. We are his people. The sheep he tends.

 But as I ponder my rainbow of mercy, comes a query: What about the other sheep?

 I received an email from my good friend Esther in India this week—two actually. Her part of India has had more than its usual flooding in the past weeks. She sent photos.

 I feel battered by love. But Esther’s people, the children, and families, and women she works with, have been battered by this: by rivers and rains that run cold over their crops, rob their occupations, steal their homes and children, leave them alone, with no succor.

 Perhaps that is why a holiday designated for gratitude doesn’t encompass the globe. Because not everyone has obvious reasons–or resources–for feasting. In many countries people die every year in floods and monsoons. People loved. People righteous and unrighteous.

 I am full of joy, yet distressed. My blessings are undeserved, outside of my own ability to attract them to me. I am no more righteous than my friend Kalavathy in India. But I am blessed because I live in a fat, rich country, and I am fat and rich too, compared to Kalavathy.

 It distresses me in the face of that, this sense of underserved blessings. It depresses me that I live in luxury, while my friend dies of hunger and exhaustion in a hovel. My husband is out of work—but has a disability income. Hers sorts onions for a living, but the floods got this year’s harvest. The few onions that are left are rotten. Would you buy rotten onions to stuff your turkey?

 Yet, Psalm 100 says… The Lord is good. Is love is forever and his loyalty goes on and on.”

How is the Lord good, exactly, to Kalavathy, his child who loves him dearly; who clutches her Bible but has grown tired of words and more words? Does she believe that his love is forever? When she watches her own body fade, each day growing weak, weaker, weakest, is she certain that his loyalty goes on and on?

 Oh, Kalavathy, I believe you will soon find that your hopes have been well placed in our God of ultimate, overarching mercy. But I want to know this: am I wrong to count my blessings with abandon, with delirious joy and gratitude this holiday?

 I cannot think so. I believe gratitude is never wrong.  Any blessing from God is a blessing worthy of deep gratitude—of kneeling posture, uplifted hands and praise-filled lips.

 But any burden of God is a responsibility as sacred as life itself.

 Life is beautiful—and hard; the world is warm—and cold. It spins out the consequences of sin daily, weaves them into the lives of those in flood zones and temperate zones. In countries rich and poor. In those given no choice in where they issued their first cry—and which of us was?

I have troubles too, but I will count my rainbow of blessings this Thanksgiving. With joy, many, many prayers—and with a signed cheque ready, addressed .. “To the lovely Kalvathy. From your friend, who deserves not a whit of blessings showered upon her, and whose privilege–and responsibility–it is to share.”

 We give thanks to God.

**** 

Gracious reader….will YOU help me help Kalavathy and other Dalit (Untouchable) woman in her Bible Study group?

Because I have visited Esther’s home and charitable work in India myself, I have confidence that any aid you send will be administered well through the government recognized charitable organization she and her husband run. It will be used and stretched far beyond what you could imagine.

 You can send a cheque to: Cross Cultural Mission Support Ministries 

CCMSM, c/o Debby Pinel, #201, 1867 – 15 Avenue, Regina, SK  S4P 4J4

Designate the funds care of  Esther Kezia, Rajahmundry. Add a note explaining you read my blog. Canadians will receive a charitable donation receipt.

May God bless you as you have blessed others–and as you have blessed him.

 And Happy Thanksgiving.

The Love Verses…for writers

I met with friends recently, at the Providence Renewal Centre in Edmonton. 

In the blue and gold of autumn, near a benediction of pines; to fellow scribes from across Canada and further at Inscribe Christian Writers Fellowship’s fall conference, I spoke the words below.

Some of the attendees have requested them, and since God inspired them, I pass them on with gratitude, in the hopes they’ll be well used:

For though I have the tongues of men and angels, and have not love, says the Book of Books (I Corinthians 13)…

Let me paraphrase that for word-wrestlers like us:

 Though I have the genius of Max Lucado, Jan Karon, or Karen Kingsbury; an audience as large as Phil Callaway’s or Janette Oke’s; the giftings of Marcia Laycock, Bonnie Grove…or even Kathleen Gibson;

 Though I have a website that attracts thousands a day, five high-traffic blogs, and more Facebook and Twitter followers than all my friends;

 And though I have never faced rejection, have been taught superbly by masters, fought over by agents, sought after by editors, and am the dream freelancer of major media or the darling of my publishing house;

 Though I am an Amazon bestseller—or even a Canadian bestseller;

 Though I am all that and more:

 If I haven’t learned that who I am, and how I live and love is more important to God than what I write or what others think of me—my words are as effective as a cell phone without a signal, a printer without ink, a computer without a monitor.

*****

Fellow writers, remember this:

Words are sharp tools. Use them wisely.

IF YOU HAVE CHANGED ONE LIFE, YOU HAVE CHANGED THE WORLD.

By His Good Pleasure

We’ve been searching for a year.

Now God, our God who arranged for birds to have nests, for foxes to inhabit holes, and people to dwell between walls….God, whose own Son had nowhere to lay his head on this often unkindly earth; God, even now preparing mansions for his children in heaven…that very good God has arranged (by his very good graces) a home for my husband and me. Here, on this side of heaven. A home to keep, to live and love in, to restore in…to use as long as he allows.

On the morning before we knew the house would be ours, I woke singing an old hymn: “Here I raise my Ebenezer. Hither by Thy help I’ve come. And I hope by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home!” I sang it almost all morning–it kept returning to me, like a lost thing running home. Later that day—“no house, terribly sorry,” said the bank. And the plan died—though not the hope.

But early the next morning, through unconventional, unexpected means, and a series of small miracles, God broke through “the way we always do things” and changed the situation entirely. On hope’s account, we’ve signed the papers on a just-right bungalow in a small community around ten miles down the road from the city in which we’ve lived and ministered in for almost two decades.

For the first time in my life, I’ll live on a gravel road, surrounded by less than 200 people, in a town with zero amenities and a post office in someone’s home. It also has a zillion stars for nightlights, pastureland only steps away, a backyard treed like a park, and birds to sing the sore away. Avian glorias to wake to–and grandbeans just over on the next block.

We’re moving to Ebenezer. We’re moving to Hope House. We’re moving home. We’re grateful.

Butterfly Friends

My friend–she, the lovely one (rake thin, blonde)–waits inside the art gallery at the top of the stairs, chatting with the curator.  They stop when I get to the top. ”I feel like an escapee.”

They laugh, and the curator excuses himself. 

“Monica,” I say.

“Kathleen,” says she, reaching out her arms.

We hug, then stand back to size each other up. It’s been a few years since we made time for each other. Since we really looked at each other. Her face looks different. Older. Wiser. Thinner. And sadder, somehow. I never expected that. 

I wonder what she sees when she looks at me. The same, perhaps, except for the thinner part.

Gusts of time and circumstance swirl bitterly among kith and kin, sometimes. Unkindly winds that make strangers of friends. And the  Nile has not dealt charitably with my friendships.

I will not have that. I will not give in. In the last two months I’ve called back the ones I have most loved; first in my prayers, then using words. Come, I beckon. We have rich gifts unopened. Come. I am ready for you. I thirst for you. Will you have me? Do you have room?

They’ve begun to arrive, alighting like tentative butterflies on the petals of my soul. We are older. We are more tired. But we are lovely together.

Like today. Like Monica. We wander through the gallery, gaze at the gems birthed by her own exquisite soul, then wander down the road for cold iced tea on the porch of the vintage coffee house. We make it last almost two hours. We look into each others’ faces, annoint each others’ wounds with the soothing oil of comradeship and prayer.

God is good, but life is hard–and far too short to watch a friend drift away without trying to hold them just once more.

One at a time, I will unfurl my petals. Land, butterflies, land.