I Should...But I'm Not

I really don't think I need to explain this. (Click to view it larger.) My life is a sad, sad circle of giving myself excuses on why I shouldn't be writing.

It's a wonder I get anything done. I type a line. Stare into space. Make hand motions. Eat a handful of pretzels. Read what I wrote last time. Read it again. Edit it. Read it again. Realize I haven't actually written anything today.

Ahh. Should I be writing now? Yes. But some things are easier said than done.

"What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out the window."

Rudolph Erich Rasco

{Homecoming}

{Homecoming}

There's no place like home.

It's a comfort to think that phrase, when we are sleeping on hard mattresses in a hotel across the country, or eating sticky airplane food, or living out of an unorganized suitcase, or hiking through unforgiving brush on a backpacking trip; this is when we think those words. It's when we are someplace that we don't belong, that we long to go back to where we know we are meant to be.

When we are somewhere where we won't be staying long,

when we are somewhere strange,

we long to be back at home.

Because we can't get the love and the care – and the food and familiar beds and familiar sounds – anywhere else.

We know that at home, we are loved.

We can run away, seeking that love other places. But we never find it. No one know us and loves us as our family does, at home.

There's no place like home.

We wander through the world, working and traveling and building out lives and our fortunes: where thieves break through and steal.

We search for love, but it's never as perfect as out Father's love. Everywhere we travel, we know it will be no more like home than any other place on this earth. Because we have no home on this earth. We won't be staying here long.

This isn't where we belong.

Our home is in heaven, where thieves do not break through, nor steal.

And there is no place like that home.

We await the day when we will no longer wish to be home and when we will no longer have to longingly say that there is no place like home – because we will be home. The Celestial City will be the the place we will never want to wander from.

There, our Father knows us and loves us.

There we will be free from searching.

There we won't be aliens and strangers in a hostile land, as we are here on earth.

Here we are always wandering.

There, we will be home.

Mr. Tucket & Mr. Wrinkles

So I caught Mr. Tucket, once again, with his beloved Mr. Wrinkles. Just the two of them. Havin' a little pow wow. Sharing a few stories like women gossiping across the back fence. Plotting how to get more food. Discussing where the best places to sleep were. Commiserating on their arthritis.

They were not happy at being interrupted.

{Conditioned}

{Conditioned}

In my mind, there are two ways of doing things: the right way...

and everything else.

There is one right way to put on conditioner, and the back of the bottle says how, and I read it obediently before applying to be sure I'm not doing it wrong.

Conditioner?

That's how I view life. I say that I have an imagination, and that you should live life to its fullest, and that there is freedom and joy in a Christian's life, and you should enjoy every part of life -

and then I box myself in.

And I cage myself up.

Listening to that little, worried voice in my mind, saying: “You're too afraid to try something new.”

“You're too afraid of doing something wrong.”

To an extent, we all fear making mistakes.

But to a few of us, we are petrified and terrified of making mistakes. Because we have forgotten:

mistakes are proof that you are trying.

We work and struggle and fight to always be right, forgetting that God has no ears for the ones who are always right. He honors the ones who know that they are wrong.

He did not call the righteous to repentance, but sinners.

The whole need not a physician, but the sick.

There may only be one right way to put on conditioner, but it's not the right way that matters.

It's that I've been conditioned into letting the instructions on the back of that bottle

rule my life.

Quoted: Keep Calm

This is honestly a motto which I have followed in life. It's amazing how far a fake British accent can take you sometimes. Try reading Ozymandias with a British accent.
The poem will never be the same.

Who else loves the "keep calm" signs? I didn't even know what they were until the royal wedding last April. (Which, yes, I did get up and watch on TV. The best part was the Westminster Boys Choir singing This is the Day.)
Now these signs enchant me am I am saving every cute one I find. The original is the best, though:



A bit of history:
These signs were issued by the British government in 1939 at the start of WWII, intended to raise British public morale in the event of invasion. For some reason, it didn't really catch on, and only a limited number were printed.
They were rediscovered in 2000, and have now been parodied to no end. As I said, they were pretty popular during the royal wedding.

Some others:

This is for everyone who grew up reading Sherlock Holmes. I actually had my own "Speckled Band" experience this morning, (which was the first Sherlock mystery I ever read.) Except, it was not a snake coming out of the bedroom vent, but a very large spider coming out of the bathroom vent.
My worst fears were realized.

And I thought big spiders only lived out west.





Or, in the event that passing things at the table with the force doesn't work, wave your hand across someone's face and tell him that these aren't the Droids he's looking for.


This is quite possibly the best way to stay calm. I spend my days singing anything and everything, and it usually takes a very irritated family member who is wishing peace and quiet to get me to stop.
As Christina Rossetti said, "My heart is like a singing bird."


There. I just gave you eight very good reasons to keep calm, so we should all be calm for at least a little while, now.

And do not be surprised if more of these signs come up on my blog from time to time. We all need ridiculous reasons for why we should not be so stressed out. Or at least I do.

{Mortality}

I am starting a series today. I would call it a new series, but that would imply that I have had an old series, which I have not. If you haven't noticed, there hasn't been any series at all on this blog, nor methods to the madness of my posting.

So the decision is final: I am stopping this madness. Or at least I am attempting to. And this comes with the disclaimer that I am still human and I may miss a week from time to time.

What I jot down on my paper during service is usually incoherent, mixed in with a thousand references and quick lines scribbled out that the pastor said which I would do well to remember. Once I get home and look at the mess I've created with my notes, something I've written down usually pops out at me, and pulling out my trusty laptop, I expound on it.

This series is what I end up with after quiet Sunday afternoons of writing. These are short musings from my heart that have made me aware of something in my life, assured me of a promise God has made, or are my own personal re-dedications to live each day like I was dying.

I hope they in some way spur you on to do the same. I know I'm not the first person to say this, but we will always have something to learn, no matter how long we live. I have a life time of revelations still ahead of me.

So welcome to Sunday.

{Mortality}

This life is 100% mortal.

1 out of 1 people will die, and 1 out of 1 people know it. Right now, in the particular season of life we are in, we may not be staring death in the face. But someday we will.

We will face it with our friends. We will face it with those we love and cherish dearest. There will be weeping, and mourning, and sorrow to match no other earthly sorrow.

Many have already begun to face death. Day after day there are funeral processions. There are graveside services. There are half-mast flags. All will, at sometime, walk to the valley of the shadow with someone, and then stand weeping on the shore as the one they love leaves them to go to a place they cannot yet follow.

But the day will arrive we when enter that valley for ourselves. When we become a worldly fatality. When we join the mortality rate as 1 out of 1.

Death, grief, and pain come to everyone.
And everyone chooses, in that moment, how they are going to deal with it.

I was first confronted with death at eight years old, when my Papa died. I didn't really understand what was happening. My innocent mind was acquainted with a weight that it had no clue how to carry.
So I let the weight lie.

I felt the hole of Papa being gone, but I knew that he was in heaven, and so with that sole comfort, I willingly let go of the burden that I couldn't bear.
My simple, childlike faith carried me through. I had the strength I needed for the season of sorrow I faced, and the strength was sufficient.

I wasn't planning on meeting death again. But I don't plan my life. God blessed me with five years of not having to face the valley. Five years of dealing with other things in my life.
And then I was blindsided. One Sunday night in November when I was 13, I learned that the 19 year old son of dear, dear friends had been killed in a car crash.

I was suddenly standing on the brink of eternity, but I couldn't follow. I couldn't go any further than the brink. His grieving family couldn't follow. His best friends couldn't follow.

Where was God? It felt that way at times.
In that hopeless, helpless state, God began to teach me something about death.
He taught me that when I was asking where he was, He was actually right there.

I knew of five young men who were killed that horrific year. My mind suddenly came to the understanding, for the first time, that I lived in a world of death. I lived around death and in death and faced with death. And it wasn't going to go away. Ever.

We live in a deathly world.

But Christ is life.

He is the God of the living, even in the face of death. And when His saints die, they are actually going into true life – so He is still the God of the living.
When we belong to Christ, we need not stand on the brink of death with hopelessness, because we know that the end of the this life is just the beginning of another. Dying, here, allows us to live more truly than we have ever lived before.

I was blessed to know believers who were taken away. I was blessed to learn to grieve with hope, because God doesn't just take us from this world into nothing. He takes us from this world into Glory. He took those believers from pain to painlessness. From danger to safety.

1 out of 1 people will die.

But 1 out of 1 Christians will never feel sorrow again. And there is going to be a huge family reunion in heaven. And that earthly mortality rate,

it won't matter any more.

Because Christ died, so that when he calls us to walk the Valley of the Shadow, we need not fear death. Because as His children, in death, we live.

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. Luke 20:38

Sixpence in Her Shoe: Book Review

Sixpence in Her Shoe, by Phyllis Mcginley, was a breath of fresh air. It was written in 1964 about the American housewife, by the American housewife, and for the American housewife. That description in itself sounded boring, even to me. But then I started looking at it, and who can resist a book in which the third chapter is entitled “How Not to Kill your Husband,” and starts with the line:

“Talk all you like about automatic ovens and electric dishwashers, there is nothing you can have around the house so useful as a husband.”




In an age where the term housewife is almost nonexistent and, when used, is used as a degrading term, it is refreshing to read a book where someone is upholding this role in the home as something to be proud of and just as legitimate as any other job. Mcginley presents the mother, wife, and keeper of the home as someone to be valued in society and not dishonored. As she puts it, “We who belong to that profession hold the fate of the world in our hands.”

We raise the children. We cook the meals. We feed the family. We host the dinner parties. We make life for those in our home either a heaven or a hell, and Mcginley is offering practical ways to make it heaven.

She offers good advice, humorous stories, age-old wisdom, and encouragement to the new wife struggling to keep up with her husband, children, and home. She covers everything from cooking, entertaining, shopping wisely, raising children, and decorating. Though some of the problems she raises we no longer deal with - such as hiring Help or learning how to use an electric oven - the vintage mother and housewife still had much to teach me, a young lady who someday hopes to have my own home and go against modern culture’s grain by actually staying in my home and raising a family there.

Reading the book was almost like sitting next to my grandmother and collecting the decades of wisdom she has gathered, only more condensed. If you ever find an old copy of this book: read it. It was well worth my time and I am going to keep it around until I have my own home.

It was truly a vintage jewel, and I can’t thank my great-aunt enough for passing it along to me.

"Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave."
Martin Luther