The Right Side of the Bed

Steve’s ankle hurts. Therefore, at some serious urging from me, he is taking the day off from his planned fishing trip and he lies on the couch, foot elevated, watching TV and occasionally whining a bit.

I was unpacking groceries in the kitchen and doing a little Christmas decorating. And I heard a man on Law and Order (a man who was probably a suspect in his wife’s murder) say, “You don’t know how much I love her. She was the reason I got up every morning.”

And I began to think, why do we get up in the morning anyway? I mean aside from the obvious pecan pie on Thanksgiving and excitement of Christmas morning. On an ordinary day, why do we get out of bed? Suspend the whole, “Because, you nut, I have a job that I have to go to” argument. You see, that is no longer a consideration for Steve and for me. Therefore, I can address these thought-provoking, gut level questions.

If you did not have to get up to be at work, consider Saturdays and Sundays and lay aside the “because I have to go to the store to get milk” reasons, what makes your day? I guess I’m asking at the very basic level, what makes you tick?

Why do Steve and I get out of bed, when we finally don’t really have to? Is golf really the reason he gets up every morning? Settle down, sweetie, I’m just joking. But it’s one of those questions that’s not as easy to answer as you would think.

So I started the thought process. Because I live in this beautiful place. Because I love my husband. Because I want to serve my God. All perfectly lovely reasons to get out of bed every morning. When I was more militant, I would have frowned and said, “Because I’m here to glorify God and tell the world about Him!” But is that even it?

I believe, I hope, the reason I face each new day is quite simply because I love my Lord. That’s it. And the amazing thing is that’s all He requires! But the beauty of His plan is that when I go forward to meet with Him, to just love Him every day, He fills my heart and my soul with love, joy and peace. And that makes me love Steve and my family, my friends and this perfect life He’s provided for me. It makes me want to serve Him and to tell the world about Him. Simple, undemanding love. It’s the reason I get up every morning.

Lamentations 3:23-25
Because of the LORD'S great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him….

Simply Feeling Peaceful

It’s crept up on me again. That emotional, roller-coaster time of year when at one moment life is not only good, but vibrant, exciting, full of promise and – whoops, the next minute is here already and, hang on, I’m plunging down that mudbank of despair. All right, I hear you. Maybe I’m exaggerating a wee bit.

But aren’t the holidays something of a mixed blessing? I blame it all on the grocery stores. Where the Halloween candy sat yesterday, there sits on November 1 a display of canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce, mini marshmallows, nuts and spices. And my blood begins pumping. Not with thoughts of the Thanksgiving food, but everything that goes with it. The harvest decorations, (which for me are the ones I pulled out in late September and are now beginning to look a little tired – my gourds are moldy for goodness sake!), the travel plans, the step onto the holidays merry-go-round.

No, it’s not about the fixins’. It’s about the whole family event. My thoughts race forward to what this year will be like, older adults and the absence of children and grandchildren, and my emotions begin to plunge as I remember past beautiful and ideal Thanksgivings. Wait. We are a normal family – we had no perfect Thanksgivings! But jostling, crowded, table-bulging dinners with too many chairs at one table and children complaining about the lack of chocolate desserts – those we had.

Just indulge me one more quick personal note and you’ll be glad you did. Because, wow, do I have a holiday tip for you! All those lovely Thanksgiving pies and cakes? Our family eats those on Thanksgiving morning for breakfast with the Macy’s parade. C’mon you know you’re too full to really enjoy those after the big meal. And you’ll love them with a big fire in the morning. I know I’m too late this year, but you can remember it for the next.

Hop off the Thanksgiving tilt-a-whirl and get in this long line for the Christmas bone-jarring, brain-rattling roller coaster! Rinse out the last of the Tupperware that held those turkey leftovers because you’ve got only a few short weeks to sample this smorgasbord of ups and downs, this eat stress like candy, this try to catch the spirit of, this why do I hate this holiday I love thrill ride.

We go through it every year, don’t we? It looks like we’d learn. I think it’s because the season, the day, is so important we just want to get it right. We do want to pay tribute to the Savior whose birth we celebrate. But we also want to love our families and honor our friendships and show our appreciation to those we love. We just feel this deep sense of obligation while the child in us screams “Why can’t it be like it used to be! What about my fun?”

All that to say I have no answers for you. But I can reach out my hand and offer you the promise of peace – sweet, quiet, personal peace – in the midst of all the bell-ringing, cash register craziness. And that is no small gift. Don’t misunderstand. It’s not mine to offer. I’m just the messenger.

But imagine this – a small oasis, a sweet smile and an understanding heart that is eager to join yours when the lines get too long or the noise gets too jarring. Jesus is standing right next to you and He understands it all because He’s felt it all – the press of the crowds, the demanding voices, the rejection of family, the failure to please when you’ve offered the perfect gift. He feels your pain and He’s holding out His hand to relieve you of the burden.

Just take a deep breath and go there with Him to that place of quiet rest in the middle of the mall. Personal peace. You’ll still ride the emotional roller coaster. But you’ll ride it with a smile.

Isaiah 26:3; John 14:27
You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

A Porch Is Still a Porch

I wouldn’t even say anything. But it’s about the porch. And I feel like I owe it to you to report. The screens are down. New and improved? I hope so. We have waffled on this decision for some time. We didn’t want to give up the sounds of nature for comfort.

We’re told we will be able to use the porch year-round now, whereas the heat and the sun used to drive us in for about 8 hours a day, 5 months out of the year.

We haven’t spent an entire winter here yet. I’d love to be able to inform you that the snow and the cold drive us in as well. I’m praying for snow but the rest of the community, I believe, is praying the opposite. Time will tell. Regardless, the porch will be both cooled and heated.

I’ve had at least one friend here who groaned when I told her, “Will it still be Penny’s porch?” Oh yeah. Because as far as I’m concerned, a porch is all about attitude. The rockers will be there. And you’ll never hear me call it a sun room, Carolina room, spare room.

However, there will be glass, floor to ceiling. Big windows that I can open and still hear the rain, the wind and the birds. And that’s what it’s all about. We talked to several people and found the most open plan we could find.

So please continue to visit. Coffee maker still works and I have a rocker reserved for you. Y’all come!

God of Wonder

I was listening to the radio Saturday night while driving home and the lyrics caught my attention. “Your baby blues, so full of wonder….” (Plumb) which led, thought-progression-wise, to the upcoming Christmas season and that Gloria Estefan song about seeing Christmas through the eyes of a child.

And I felt a little wistful and nostalgic. Because the holidays were always such an exciting and fun time for me as a child. But I’m not taking you there. We’re going someplace else.

I know God’s desire for me is a childlike faith – complete trust, open-hearted love and a life lived with abandon for Him. I’ve also learned that He often answers my prayers in a positive way when the end result will be my deeper relationship with Him and a life lived to His glory.

So I prayed. I asked God to restore to me a sense of wonder. Not in a Disney, computer-animated, wow me kind of way. I want to see God’s creation, His awesomeness through the eyes of a child again.

In her book, “Awakening Your Sense of Wonder”, Janet Chester Bly says that “Wonder is the ability to be amazed or offer sincere respect or count some things as sacred. We grow in wonder when we…allow the attitude of awe and appreciation to rule, rather than skepticism and resentment. Wonder is a moment of enlightenment, a ‘graced moment’ when the humdrum tingles with excitement, when we’re faced with a scene straight out of heaven’s drama or tranquility.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of skepticism, cynicism and pessimism. I need the mind of a child! I want to be wowed all right, but by the small things that I would normally consider mundane. Listen to what Janet Bly goes on to say: “We’re so immersed in the gifts of the ordinary that we can’t see them. The rich jewels of our daily inheritance awaken in us no more wonder than the gold-and-antique-encrusted rooms of a fifty-room palace dazzle a spoiled prince. Appreciation and longing and gratefulness remain unborn until we lack something that we’ve taken for granted.”

So I prayed. I want to notice them now. I want to praise God for His good and perfect gifts this minute. I want to be aware of the world around me and be awed by it.

The next morning, I stood on my driveway waiting for a ride to church. My attention was drawn to a snail making its way across the cement. Its head was fully extended and I could see the shell rolling slightly from side to side as it lumbered forward. I was mesmerized. And my mind began to think of all those creatures that God has given homes and protection on their backs. And how different each one is. I was stopped dead in my thoughts and AWED by the fact that God is indeed awakening a sense of wonder in me again. All I had to do was ask!

Mark 10:14-16
When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.

For Zelma T

“Your sweet little old gray-haired mother.” That’s how she always signed her cards and letters to me. She could well have said “Your sassy, feisty, outspoken, witty little old gray-haired mother.” She died at 83 on October 31, 2003, Halloween. Even in that she got the last laugh. I can just hear her, “Try to forget me now!”

This woman who so influenced my life bore the name of Christian with tenacity, pride and boldness. In her last three years, she became more frail and less able to get out and spend time with people. She had to use a portable oxygen supply. She was greatest grieved by the fact that she could no longer witness. She said she told God He would just have to bring them to her door – and He did! An electrical installer, a county worker – no one would be leaving without hearing the Good News of Jesus Christ. Turns out, in both of those cases, God had brought them to her door for that specific purpose. She left instructions that the occasion of her memorial service be used to give the plan of salvation one more time – her “last chance.”

At 69, she took a home mission assignment to go to the inner city in Buffalo, New York. Loaded up her car, didn’t know a soul, didn’t have a place to live, just trusted God. She served there for six months and rejoiced in it for the rest of her life.

Mother went to early Sunday School. After it was over, she’d run outside and stand in the handicapped parking spot to save it for her sister, who didn’t need it. Supposedly my mom did because she rode home with her and had the oxygen. Frankly I can’t see it. She could almost outrun me.

One day I called her and she sounded very tired. I hung up and worried a bit. So I called her back and asked about it. This is what she said. “A person can’t sound tired? Don’t you worry about me. I still have a lot to do. I still have my list of old ladies I visit." She was 81.

She had a mild heart attack. When the ambulance got to her house, there she sat on her front porch swing with her purse in her lap waiting for them. I went home to Arkansas and sat with her in the hospital and helped her check out and get all her medications. Then we went to Cracker Barrel with my aunt and cousins for dinner.

She was completely comfortable talking about her death. She used to say, “To tell you the truth, I’m a little excited about it.” Do you know what that excitement was? That was the joy of her salvation. When she died, we had a brief graveside service that was a true celebration of thanksgiving for having had her zesty sense of humor and her in-your-face honesty.

The warm November day was full of sunshine and the wind that she loved so tugged at the few remaining leaves on the trees around us. Stories that she wouldn’t allow to be told while she was still with us were shared of her giving to others. My husband and children were with me and we had the closeness that only those intense occasions in life bring. Friends I hadn’t seen in over thirty years were there to lend support. Funerals for successful world-centered citizens are dignified and sad; graveside services for poor God-centered “gray-haired little old ladies” are pure joy.

I realize I’m getting on in years myself. Not only do I no longer understand commercials, most times, I don’t even know what they were for! Pop culture references are lost on me. I watch American Idol and marvel that many of the songs they perform are completely new to me. My grandson had to repeat who he was going to be for Halloween three times and then I had to look him up on the internet to see who he was.

My kids say, “What’s up with her anyway? She doesn’t like to do anything anymore but listen to the birds, talk about God and read the Bible. What’s wrong?” Nothing’s wrong. I'm filled with peace and "I'm a happy soul." I’ve turned into Zelma T.

Be Sweet

It was the mantra of every southern mom, shouted to teenaged daughters on their way out the door. “Be sweet!” It meant so much more – “Remember who you are”, “I’m watching you”, “Don’t get in the car with someone you don’t know.”

And thus encouraged, I slammed the door and ran toward the waiting car with instructions to be the very thing I saw as the kiss of death. As adjectives went, “sweet” and “cute” lurked at the very bottom of my list of desirables. Yet those two words were the ones most often thrown at me and caught like Velcro on the sleeves of my baby blue mohair sweater.

Cute. I longed to bask in words like beautiful, desirable, sexy, foxy (it was the late sixties after all). I had no hope of achieving anything remotely like the patina of poise and polish that surrounded Cheryl Tiegs as she stared out at me from the pages of my Seventeen magazine.

But cute I could live with. Sweet was dull, boring. I had no hope of “dangerous”, no chance at “mysterious”. Why did I rebel against it so? It was the one word that my friends would have used to describe me. Yet it was a word reserved for last ditch efforts at promoting blind dates. It stank of mundane routine, no room for excitement or risk.

Risk looks a lot more promising on that side of twenty than this side of sixty. So now would “sweet” be the term that applies? I am more likely to be called headstrong, opinionated, eccentric (a personal favorite), or intense. Any of those are pleasing to me. I have become someone I rather like.

But I need sweet too. Because my faith is important to me and I want that to show. I looked it up. “Sweet” appears in the NIV twenty-five times and is used to describe water, fruit, drinks, evil, soil, fellowship, words, sleep, longing, honey, wisdom, light, a voice and a scroll. The word itself is not used to describe a righteous, faithful person.

So why have I reversed myself and taken that characteristic as a personal goal? Still a word we use to describe someone who is pleasant to be around, dear, and gracious – someone with whom I would want to spend time – it is more than that. Sweetness indicates a certain generosity of spirit, faithfulness as friend, and a compassion and concern.

Jesus said it in Matthew 19:19, “…love your neighbor as yourself.” Be sweet.

Coming Home

I have tried mentally to write this blog for three days now. I am feeling a responsibility to honor a couple who have gone through a trial with grace and an unfailing witness to the joy they have in Jesus. I am also feeling a need to give a nod to my new community and – at long last I can say it – my new home.

Bob and Sue. We had met them when we came down to visit as nonresidents. But we began to really know them after we moved here in April. Steve had golfed with Bob, who was diagnosed with cancer about three years ago and given only months to live. God had other ideas.

Sue leads the community Bible study I have become a part of. I watched her over the past several months, and then weeks, respond to the demands of illness and the loss of a life partner with courage, absolutely, but so much more than that. Her ever-present smile is genuine, yet she has been open about the ordeal – her frustrations and her failings. She has carried her burden with grace and eyes always on God, intent on giving Him glory.

Bob passed on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 and this community will miss his good humor, “sweet golf swing”, strong faith and, above all, his gentle spirit. Sue will mourn him in her time and in her way, but for now, there’s that smile, reminding us all she really believes it when someone says to her, “He’s in a better place.”

Today as I watched the Baptist church fill while waiting for the memorial service to begin, I realized how many faces I knew. And still they came, filling all the seats, the choir loft and folding chairs that were added. I saw faces I had casually met, friendly faces, open and encouraging faces. And I was struck by how many faces I saw of people I love. And I realized I saw friends, honest-to-goodness friends who would be there for me, as they were for Bob and Sue.

Wyboo is a unique community. Sheltered from the “real world” by distance from town, the location is an idyllic setting on a South Carolina lake. There is fishing and golf, as well as a short driving distance to the familiar vacation spots: Hilton Head, Charleston, Savannah, and Myrtle Beach. I should have been excited to come.

Three years ago when we decided this would be our retirement home, I was prepared to leave Virginia kicking and screaming. God knew this. He knew I needed time and He gave me two years. When He finally said, “It’s time,” He said so with circumstances that could not be any clearer.

I have struggled some, of course. I miss my family and my former church. But to be honest, it’s hard to be unhappy around these people! It is a community where folks could easily be “all about me.” I have found it to be at the other end of the spectrum entirely. These people really care about one another and about the community outside the gates. This is not lip service. There have been more instances than I can relate of honest-to-goodness sacrifice for others – the kind that requires time and getting off your bottom and working for someone.

So I sat in the little church, listening to a mournful, yet beautiful Amazing Grace from the bagpipe, and I felt closed in by community. I belong to these giving, caring people. I was surrounded by friendly faces that will go into the rest of these years with Steve and me. They will love us and support us and we will do the same for them. I am home.