Pause the Rushing Moment

Despite the fact that I want to soak up each and every second, the clock ticks on. “Enjoy these moments. She will grow up in the blink of an eye.”  I know!  I really do know because yesterday I held a tiny baby in my arms and now she is knocking on nine. And my coffee grows cold and I am not ready to move on. 

The morning was rushed with so many chores but they all got accomplished so I should count it a success. But I don’t. I don’t appreciate the rush. There is hard work to be done and I understand that, but could you keep the day from passing while I hurry about my chores?  I sat in the car and stared out the window. I am not one that can hold in my emotion. 

A bit surprised by my sadness at this joyous occasion, “What is the matter?”  He asked. 

“It is going by in fast forward!”  

And it did!  It was Thanksgiving Day yesterday and NOW IT IS NOT!

I sit in the morning. My mug of coffee is cold before I am ready for my morning alone to be over.  I want to sit in my jammies for hours without the day passing by, just pause the moment I am in. It is officially Christmas season, the best time of the year. These are the moments, the times that are memories, this is when I make who I am. And I want it to be good!  

But the company arrives and they are gone before I am ready. He is off work and returns before I am ready for him to go. She grows and she is one more step to grown and I want to snuggle just a bit longer. The Christmas song and the warm glow of the fire are a perfect moment that taunt me as they rush so quickly away. Cherishing the moment is not enough. I want to pause.  I want to have forever and eternity. 

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The Always Broken Heart

Age creased the hands of the surgeon.  A large build, tall, athletic, a picture of health.  Without even the knowledge of his resume, his deep voice accompanied with a warm smile, he demanded the upmost of attention.  But in this moment, weakness consumed him.

His knees, clothed in scrubs, bent on the surgical floor of the hospital.  The bright lights produced a spotlight, the beep of the monitors was the soundtrack.  His healthy body held all the weakness of the world in his hands.  

Place your two fists together and you see the size of your heart.  Held in his large hands were two small fists placed together.  In his hands he held a red bleeding muscle.  In his hands he held a heart, the human heart of a four year old little girl.  

Little heart, beat.  Little heart, live.  Grow and smile and meet new people.  Sound out words, graduate from kindergarten, and draw a flower for your Momma.  Little heart, hold hands with your BFF, kiss your aunt when she comes to visit.  Little heart, open Christmas presents, play with neighbors, and learn to ride a bike.  Little heart, hug your Daddy’s neck and throw a tennis ball to your puppy.  Little heart, beat, please beat.

No one wants to speak of the gone wrong.

“Be positive.  Focus on the good.”  Hide in humor, watch TV, focus on number one, purchase therapy and live.  COEXIST.

My favorite novel of all time is Les Miserables.  I hate the setting of the dirty streets during the French Revolution, therefore setting the perfect scene for “The Miserable.”  Oh Fantine!  Oh miserable Fantine, brokenhearted, abandoned by your love, never able to mother your child, raped, and dying in starving agony.  What do positive thoughts have to offer to Fantine.  Fantine is real!  She is the modern day Syrian refugee running for her life, she is the Father held captive awaiting his execution in the hands of ISIS, Fantine is the broken hearted wife uncovering her husband’s Ashley Madison account, Fantine is the child leaving his overdosed mother behind in the dirty government housing as he walks on the bus to face the daily cruelty of his peers, Fantine surrounds us!  Oh, I have been Fantine!

Oh cruel world!  What is our weapon to face you?  How do we survive our dreams that can not be and the storms we can not weather?  Life has killed the dream.

Oh Allah, where is your extended Jean Valjean hand?  Your scales condemn the downtrodden.  Hollywood, have your riches given you peace that is beyond understanding?  Tell me atheist, what is your hope for the bleeding heart?  Is your own heart so wise that you have become your own god?  Are you the answer to the broken heart?  Or maybe your heart is callused and you just don’t care at all.

My Jesus stepped down from perfection and walked the streets of the rejected, he touched the sick, and he accepted the outcast.  He is the only God that steps down from his power and serves the hurting.  He is the only God that pursues me!  He is the only God that does not ask me to earn my salvation, he offers me a world beyond this hurt and the price is paid.

A man, unscrubbed and unapproved, entered the room.  He took the unbeating heart from the hands of this world and it began to beat.  There was nothing worldly wisdom could do, in all our riches and all our knowledge, the heart was dead.  Jesus took the heart of the child and she was alive.  But even more than her, MY heart was unbroken.  

Naked People in Heaven

Instant bad mood.  I search around for my screaming phone on the floor under my bed.  The damn alarm clock continues to scream at the top of its lungs.  Slowly gaining control of my sleeping body, I step out of bed, pick up my phone and turn off the alarm.  The pain of waking up.  In heaven, I will roll over and enjoy the waking up process just as much as snuggling into bed and drifting off to sleep.  (That is if we sleep in heaven.)

My world runs about me in fast forward.  Honking impatiently at the slow moving car, spending what we don’t have for the newest item that hits the shelves, driving around our children to some place other than home.  Why do I join the insanity of the crowd?  I do believe in busying oneself with hard work, but that is not what is happening here.  We are all consumed with what does not matter.

Now.  What we want is now.  The admiring stares of those we don’t know.  Now.  The praise of what drives us around.  Now.  Winners of the race.  Packed pantries to overflowing.  Fashonable jewelry on our bodies and extra in the closet.  Fancy modern restaurants.  Everything that our neighbors have.  Our neighbors that we want to be like, not the ones outside of our neighborhood.

But all we think about is now and we laugh at anyone that suggests otherwise.

Ted Turner is famous for a lot of things, one of them is stating what is on his mind.  Hey, I can respect that.  He likes to chose his words so that other people listen.  He doesn’t just fit into the crowd.  I respect that also.  But I wish that someone would tell him, and a whole lot of the rest of the world, that they are on the wrong train.  When Turner quoted, “I’d rather go to hell.  Heaven has got to be boring.”  I wish someone would have asked him, “What do you want most in life?”….”It will be in heaven.”

Heaven is better than being a billionaire.  There is money to spare, Hey, let’s pave these streets with gold.  Heaven is better than pornography!  THERE WILL BE PERFECT BODIES WALKING AROUND NAKED!  And it will be a good thing!  No one will be embarrassed!  (There will be no sin in heaven.  Pornography is a destructive, cruel sin.  The point is, naked bodies will be good….and everywhere.)  Heaven is better than Hawaii.  All the food will be paid in full!  Heaven is better than Christmas!  That baby Jesus, he will be with us!  It doesn’t sound boring to me!

And what will not be in heaven?  Babies without mommies.  Wheelchairs won’t be needed in heaven, or medicine, or hospitals.  There will not be divorce, no one’s heart will be broken.  What have you been through?  What hurts?  What tugs at your heart and makes you cry out, “That is not right!”  God will end it.  He will make all the wrongs undone and he will wipe away that tear.

“Jesus’ miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we want is coming.”  Tim Keller.

So, look at this world.  Read the Bible.  Take a look at what is good in this world.  LORD, FIX MY PRIORITIES!  SET MY MIND ON THINGS ETERNAL!  Get ready.  It is going to be the best party of all of eternity.  Don’t throw away your invitation.

Baby America

  
Happy 239th birthday to the United States of America!  On this day in 1776, America adopted the Declaration of Independence. 

Not so very long ago, husbands and fathers from the poorest, weakest land on earth took up their crude weapons to declare, “Give me liberty or give me death!”  Mothers raised their children in a wild new country and pressed on to survive in a bare and empty place because they believed. They believed in something bigger than themselves. They believed in doing what was right at all costs. They believed that God Almighty had called them to worship, serve, and fight for the right to worship his holy name. They had hope. They had hope that this hard life was not all they were made for.

Today, I look at my nation and I am sad that I see these rights that they fought for slipping away. I look at my country and take a deep breath and sigh. America bites the hand of God Almighty that has fed her. She turns from the God that has protected her and stomps away like a spoiled little brat. She whines and throws a tantrum and pouts, “but I want my own way!”

And I realize, great men and women that built our country were surrounded by the same crowd. They wondered if their new country would ever survive. So, I stand and proclaim, this world is not my home!  I have hope!  I have a meaning and a purpose. When those around me turn from God, I claim his name!  

Use me Lord!  Use me for your purpose, use me for your people!  When comforts deminish, you are my hope. When my earthly rights fail, you are my freedom.  You are my freedom that can never be taken. No government can outlaw that freedom!

I am proud to be an American!  I love my country!  Today, I celebrate that I am living the American Dream. Today, I celebrate that I worship in an amazing church that preaches the Word of God. Today, I celebrate the freedom to raise my daughter with a Biblical worldview. Today, I celebrate a history of men and women that fought to give me that freedom. But beyond all that, today I worship and praise my God that is in control of it all. 

Happy Independence Day!

In Honor of the American Soldier

Ehhhh….do I have any right?….I shy away from writing the Memorial Day post. I have no right.  Return to my business of the family cookout and let someone else write that post. 

And I realize, I can return to the family cookout. I have my family. I have my freedom. I have the right to write this post…and that is why I have the obligation to write it. 

We are not a military family. I do have two grandaddys, that are now in heaven, that fought for their country during WWII. Their stories, although few that they could share, were awe inspiring. I have seen American Sniper and other movies that cause my soul to take a deep breath. But that is as far as my experience goes. 

Unless you have been there you can not understand!  I can not begin to fathom what it is like to see your best friend shot before your eyes. I can not begin to imagine the agony of a tortured POW. It is beyond my comprehension the sacrifice of leaving one’s family behind because it must be done. 

But I can begin to fathom freedom. I know what it is to practice the religion of my choice. Here I practice freedom of speech. I raise my daughter in a nation that I can chose her school, her church, and her doctor. 

This is not a post of the scares of losing those freedoms or of politics. But this is an article because today, and my whole past life, I live in America. I live in a land where Fathers died so their children could have those freedoms. I live in a nation where much sacrifice was given. 

And I want to say thank you. Thank you to the American soldier that knows the pain and suffering of battle so that I did not have to. Thank you American soldier and Happy Memorial Day. 

An Important Reminder

Do. Do. Do. 

Do not ever, to the negative, the opposite of positive. 

Do not for the month of showers, the month before the flowers. 

Dunce. Idiot. Clown. Twit. Sucker. Fool. Stooge. 

Do

Not

Forget

To

Not

Be 

The 

Twit

Do not forget to play April Fools jokes. 

St Patrick’s Treasure

I don’t really like Pharisees. There are people today that I label with this term, self-righteous, think they are perfect people. Jesus didn’t like them either. (He loved them, as I should, but he didn’t like them). When confronted by the Pharisees, Jesus said he came to heal the sick.

Who is your sick?  Silly question, this is what I mean:

St. Patrick’s Day has its history like any other holiday. I love the festivities, green clothes or you get pinched, rainbows with pots of gold, orange beards, and green beer. But I also like to remember this guy that lived a long long time ago and is worth remembering today. 

St. Patrick lived in Britian with his family. At a young age, he was captured by Irish pirates and taken to Ireland, where he was believed to live for six years. After six years in slavery, he was returned to his home in Britain. However, on his own free will, he went back to Ireland. WHY?

Patrick saw them as sick. And he had the medicine. These people needed Jesus. 

And that is Christianity. It is not pretty. It is not for the purpose of a big house and a life of material blessing. Patrick was the epitome of “love thy enemy.”  He returned to Ireland and spread the gospel in a huge revival that swept across the country. 

Pots of gold are really great, but this St. Patrick’s Day, don’t forget the real treasure. 

Coming From a White Girl

It sounds so cliche to say, but I honestly do not see color as an issue at all in my life, so I feel very silly to write on it at all.  And then I realize, “Thank God it is not an issue!”  I am thankful to be on this end of Martin Luther King’s dream. This world is not perfect but I believe we are living what he dreamed about in many ways.

However, he still inspires me with this quote. When we chose comfort, popularity, money, the list goes on, when we chose to be silent when we should speak up, we, as a person and as a nation, begin to die.  Yes!  There are so many fights that we have grown tired of fighting but the causalities are still being added daily.  MLK was a strong fighter of abortion.  It is that fight that everyone says, “No, don’t bring that up again.”  But I do believe that MLK would be on the front line defending the helpless one more time.

Today, on this holiday,  I am thankful for good change and freedoms that are now enjoyed by those that once did not have them.  And today I still dream of a better tomorrow.

Yep, She’s Mine

Puh lease!  Talk about instant melt!  This is a memory of last year’s Christmas.  My girl was 6 and this was the tag on a Christmas present for her Daddy and I.  Can you say future poet?!  I’m a mom.  I’m proud. What can I say?

Happy December!