making lemonade

Something is occurring to me:  I'm stuck with me.

Seeing that, you might feel the urge to exhort me that I'm not just "stuck", I'm fearfully and wonderfully made!!!  Or you might want to remind me that others are a lot worse off than me, and I should be grateful for what I have.  You might even want to warn me that I'm sinning in my audacious lack of acceptance for how my Creator designed me.

Maybe you'd be right.

All I know is, since not much has changed in the last 38 years with regard to my basic temperament and aptitude (despite my best efforts to the contrary), I am probably pretty much stuck with being myself, so I might as well make the best of it.  (Not to worry:  I'm not talking about accepting sin in my life, or giving up on God's power to transform me.)  

I'm talking about looking myself square in the face and admitting that although I wasn't given some of the talents that others have, God did give me my own portion of strengths, and I might as well admit it.  That way I can get on with the business of developing them and using them for good, instead of grovelling at the feet of the people I think I should be.

As long as I want to be (or think I should be) someone else [someone organized, say, or someone whose house is always immaculate, someone who plans ahead and actually carries it out, or someone who is always prepared at any moment for anything, someone who is confident and energetic and virtuous], the person God made me to be goes to waste.

So.  There.  It feels like a breakthrough, so I wanted to tell you, but you probably won't be surprised to hear that I have no idea what comes next.

And I think that just might be the point, actually.

I read recently on a friend's facebook page:  

God is radically changing the way we depend on him.  God has been saying, "Stay behind me." I protested, "But God, don't you always tell your friends what you are doing?"  He said, "Yes, and I am telling you that you will not be able to know what I'm doing.  You know nothing about trusting me.  Stay behind me.  And don't peek!" 

We must be convinced in the deepest places that we can trust him.  We will depend on him fully only when we come to the end of ourselves.  [God] won't let any person or any thing on earth meet my needs but him, so that I won't trust in them.

"Stay behind me - and don't peek!"  He says.  

Huh.  

Looks like it might be time to learn to like surprises.

Pollyanna fail

[a resurrected post from the archives of my sugar freedom days]

I could have called this sugar freedom:  day 33 in the style of the previous pro-sugar-free posts, but frankly I'm getting as tired of the titles as I am of the hype.

Don't get me wrong, I am still convinced that going without sugar is good for me.  But.  It.  Is.  H.A.R.D.

There's no magic to it, like I kind of hoped.  No "happily ever after" like I expected.  I like a neat plot, a good story, and so far I haven't ridden off into the sunset, away from the chocolate, with my one true love and a potato.

It's true that my allergy symptoms went away almost immediately.  It's true that I no longer feel that crashing fatigue mid-morning and again early-afternoon.  It's true that my mind is clearer and my emotions have leveled out (somewhat - we are talking about me, after all).  It's even true that I know of at least two people who have been inspired by my experience to begin to cut out sugar themselves.

But the Pollyanna in me is wearing thin (hmmm ... maybe the lack of sugar is starving her!!).  I am still choosing to see the daily miracles, no matter how minute.  But, somehow ...

Doggone it.  I've done it again.

Instead of leaning on the Everlasting Arms, I've gone and pressed hard into something else again.  Something fallible, something weak, something human.  In a word, me.  I've been depending on myself again.  Counting on my resolve to solve all my problems, instead of casting my cares on Him who cares for me.

When will I learn?

"May God Himself [not me, not Kathleen DesMaisons], the God of Peace [not of striving], sanctify me through and through.  May my whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The One who calls me is faithful, and He [not I] will do it."   

I Thessalonians 5:23-24

"Bring on the sanctification, and make it snappy" has been my approach.  Not working, can you tell?  God will refine when He is ready to refine.  My job is to wait on Him, trust Him, praise Him anyway.

"Be still, and know that I am God."  Psalm 46:10

"Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."  Isaiah 40:30,31

spark

Christmas is over.  Except for a few lone homes (like mine), most of the decorations and lights have been packed back into the attic, and winter stretches out ahead of us, dreary and white with cold.

I offer you a trip back a few weeks in time, back to the magic of giving, of a Gift, of people performing just for the joy of it, and for how the joy leaps and spreads like flames on dry grass.

Flash mobs.

So perfectly they portray Christmas:  people living in darkness, not even knowing it, not knowing to long for light, suddenly pierced by joy, by the Light dawning indiscriminately on the undeserving.  Beauty, unexpectedly, in the middle of a street, a store, a weekday's errands.  A Savior, in a stable.

Open your eyes to the wonder of the giving...

... and receive!


La Traviata in a Valencia market ...

... opera in a Melbourne open air market ...

The Hallelujah Chorus in a food court ...

... haunting music on a Basque metro ...

Carol medley in another food court (one of my favorites - watch for the awed little boy!) ...

Song and dance at a German train station, complete with ticker tape!

... and Ode to Joy in Spain, the best of the best of the flash mobs.


All those people, surprised by joy - did you see their faces?  Hungry, incredulous - "for me? here?!"  Absorbing beauty like an withered sponge, plunged again into healing water.  And the joy of giving joy must be as nourishing as the receiving - flash mobs are a glorious epidemic.  Youtube.com offers hundreds, from a South African town square to a railway station in Helsinki, from a Thai airport to the tourist streets of Charleston, from Hong Kong to Copenhagen, Vienna to Glasglow ...

And the beauty of it is, we're all made with a gift to give.  We all can give joy like that.  Each of us is created with some spark of life that the world needs.

So shine!  Give what you've got - maybe not music, or not opera, or not dance, but you can start with a smile or a hug.  And then listen - to God, to those who know you best - and find the spark you were born with ...

... and go light a fire.


(Got your own favorite flash mob?  Drop the link in the comment box - I'd love to see it!)

grass magic: the whole truth

Remember a post from our family week two summers ago?  Where my Farmer led the children in a glorious cheese-making venture involving fresh mozzarella and a certain artistically paraffin-coated round?

We were remembering at breakfast this morning ... and I realized that my glowing post gave a prematurely positive impression of our success.  Here's what really happened:

The mozzarella started out so nicely ...

And their little hands had so much fun squeezing and shaping ....

... that no one noticed that those lumpy little balls showed no resemblance to the silky orbs of fresh mozzarella that we've enjoyed from the store.  It was our mozzarella, after all.  Never mind that it tasted, well, cooked.

So that was the mozzarella.

Then there was the beautiful, carefully waxed "soft cheese" that aged for 90 days on my Farmer's dresser (naturally, you've heard of "dresser-aged" cheeses....):

Unfortunately, this gorgeous cheese developed some suspicious molds.  It must have been an amazing cheese, though we never got to taste it once it "matured", because every mold in the vicinity jumped on board - we had pink mold, black mold, green mold, brown mold, even orange mold.  My Farmer tells me that you really don't want to eat pink or black molds.  I guess the others are okay - ??

So that's the rest of the story.

I just wanted you to know.

separated? never!

It had been one of those days:  Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice at each other's throats like wild dogs, bickering and blaming and outright brawling, and under and around and through it all, Lil' Snip's grating whine - when did he become a whiner?! - insisting that someone hold him, that someone read to him, read to him, read to him, again!, that someone play with him - nooooo, this way!!

I was ready to die.  [sorry, I know it's dramatic, but that's the way it was.]  Actually - by God's grace alone - I had died, over and over, to my self that day.  And as naptime mercifully approached, and I tucked the loudly protesting toddler under my arm and carried him, struggling violently, up to his cage, I mean crib, God shone His light on my heart, and taught me something beautiful about His own.

I still loved that Lil' Snip.  He had been purely intolerable that morning, and somehow I had not only tolerated him, but I still loved that inharmonious, recalcitrant bundle of muscled will.  All his discordant belligerence, his complete lack of courtesy and grace had done nothing - nothing - to separate him from my love for him.  I was happy to be separated from him for a few hours, it's true, but at my core, my heart still beat love, love, love, love toward him.

And that's God's heart toward me, toward you:  nothing, nothing, can separate us from His love.  Sin keeps us from intimacy from Him, but even sin does not change His love for us.

When Lil' Snip awoke, cheerful and compliant (actually, his snit lasted a few days, but let's compress that for the sake of brevity), ready again to receive my love, I forgave* him his obstinance and accepted him gladly back into my arms.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine

or nakedness or danger or sword?

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, 

neither angels nor demons,

neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, 

will be able to separate us from the love of God 

that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Romans 8:35, 38-39

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* a difference here is that my toddler does not confess his sin; when we, however, "confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (I John 1:8-10).  Needless to say, another difference is that I, unlike God, am powerless to cleanse Lil' Snip from his unrighteousness, much as I would like to be able to!