Archive for September, 2009

Pleasing Babies and Pleasing God

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

I’ve only been grand-parenting for 7 weeks now but baby Kendall has already gotten me hooked on the compulsion to try and please the little one.

My daughter-in-law Leah and 7 week old Kendall recently spent several nights with us while our son Jeff was at a mountain bike convention out West. I’d forgotten how babies this age need round the clock attention. They eat, sleep and need their diapers changed often and you never know exactly when any of it will occur. Leah is nursing and hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in ages. So I eased into the role of trying to keep Kendall from fussing between feedings and naps.

The craziest things please babies. In Kendall’s case, it’s being carried up and down the stairs. Over and over again. Jeff and Leah live in a one story house, and for some reason, me carrying Kendall up and down the stairs here quieted her down like magic as she turned her wobbly little neck to figure out this strange experience. Up the stairs. Down the stairs. I started counting each step out loud. 16. Then I paused on each step, said the number and added a meow to the count. Then I went back up adding a stairway full of “woofs” to the numbers. One time I got to the bottom on and the count was 17. Go figure.

But here’s something else I’d like to figure out. Why is it that the most exhausting thing you can do in a house – climbing steps – is the one thing Kendall liked? Why couldn’t she have picked rocking in a chair? But to please Kendall, I wore myself out going up and down the stairs until her little eyes got heavy and at last closed.

Maybe God wired us to try to please babies because He wants us to make the connection of wanting to please someone because we love them. In the same way, if we love God, we’ll try to please Him.

Yet the most amazing part of pleasing God is that He doesn’t always choose the stair climbing. More often He chooses the rocking chair. Most days all He wants is for us to simply spend time with Him in prayer, resting in who He is, communing, being together. We’re at peace like a baby in her mother’s arms. And God is pleased by our still and trusting heart.

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How Do Husbands and Wives Stay Close?

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

This past Monday after I called my husband Gordon at work in Atlanta telling him that my flight had been delayed indefinitely at Midway Airport in Chicago, I got to wondering about modern marriages. Here we were miles apart and who knew when we’d ever have a chance for quality time together. I wondered what it takes to stay close to your spouse these days when there’s so much else to do during the day and you spend so much time apart.

Monday was a very bad day to be flying into Atlanta. Maybe you heard about the torrential rain we had that caused major flooding on a scale we haven’t seen in decades, if ever. Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta was completely closed down, meaning a whole planeload of us strangers were waylaid for hours at the gate at Midway wondering when we’d ever get home.

Sitting there I had a long time to observe the strangers around me. One young couple didn’t realize that the way they were snuggled up next to each other proclaimed, “We can’t get enough of each other.” The young man had his arm around the dark-haired girl’s shoulders. He pulled her close to him. He rested his cheek on her hair. She rested her head on his shoulder. He smiled. She looked up and smiled back. They didn’t seem to mind the delay because they were together.

Then I studied another couple with a ten year old girl sitting between them. This couple was equally totally unaware that their body language was saying, “We’re not sure what we have in common any more.” The man was absorbed in reading a book. The woman was staring at an I-phone screen. Occasionally the woman got up to wander off somewhere. The man didn’t look up or notice. The woman didn’t lean over to tell him where she was going. They seemed like two planets in very different orbits. Neither smiled. They seemed disengaged from each other. Distant. Did that eventually happen to all married couples?

We finally boarded the plane at sunset. As the plane gained altitude a man one row up on the aisle held a crossword puzzle up in his small individual spotlight. Suddenly a simple memory of my own parent’s marriage flooded over me. Crossword puzzles. My parents weren’t really much alike in any way. Dad was from a Midwestern city, Mom was a rural farm girl from South Carolina. Mom had an artistic bent and could sketch with delicate sympathy the tiniest wildflower. Dad worked as a budget analyst for the government and actually liked it.

My parents were two totally different people who could have been on individual orbits if it hadn’t been for the crossword puzzle in the daily paper. Every night after dinner Dad would fold the paper until the crossword puzzle was a small square. Mom found a pencil. Then they would sit down on the sofa together and put on reading glasses and begin putting their heads together. “What’s a four letter word for great lake?” “How about Erie?” Mom would write it down and they’d continue to collaborate on clues. After they’d spent half an hour or an hour together on the sofa, the puzzle would be mostly completed, but of course, looking back, I now see that wasn’t the point.

I read somewhere that solving crossword puzzles is a good way to keep your brain sharp as you age. But on Monday night I uncovered another benefit of crossword puzzles, or at least small shared things like them, for keeping husbands and wives close in a marriage. Those puzzles created a little hallowed spot of time for my parents to be together every day, collaborating together on something that didn’t have to do with household chores or raising children.

When I got home, I found out that Gordon had recorded Dancing with the Stars. So we sat down and watched it together, commenting to each other on every dance. (Even though neither of us can actually dance ourselves!) So what’s a four letter word that’s the secret to closeness in a marriage? T-I-M-E.

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Prayer Power When Words Fail

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Recently in the Super Walmart parking lot I discovered how powerfully we can communicate without saying a single word . It was an 85 degree afternoon and I had just purchased a week’s worth of groceries. I unloaded the bags into the trunk of my Toyota sedan – the cherry vanilla ice cream Gordon is crazy about, the healthy red pepper humus for me. It was over $80.00 worth of groceries. I got into the car ready to hurry home before the cold food got too hot. I turned the ignition. Absolutely nothing happened. Not even a little cough in the engine.

Dead battery maybe? I know next to nothing about cars. I was miles from home and Gordon works way off in downtown Atlanta so I couldn’t call him to come to my rescue.

Since I didn’t want the cherry vanilla ice cream to go soupy in the trunk I was going to have to ask a stranger for help. There weren’t many people in the parking lot. Besides, I hate asking for help. Then I had an idea.

Gordon makes sure all of our cars have a set of jumper cables in the trunk. I opened the trunk and rummaged under the groceries. I unzipped the cables from the pouch like I actually knew how to use them, then went around to the hood. It took me a few tries to figure out how to undo the latch. That’s all I did – popped open the hood and stood there with jumper cables in my hand making a wordless statement of need. Anybody could take one look at me and realize that you can’t use jumper cables without the help of another driver.

Sure enough, the moment I had the scene set up a man and his wife came up out of nowhere and offered to help. They pulled their Jeep around next to my car. The man went clamp, clamp to my car and then clamp, clamp to his car and I turned the key and my engine went rrrrrr. I told the couple they were angels. Then I waved and drove off, Gordon’s cherry vanilla ice cream still nicely frozen.

As I drove home I marveled at the fact that it’s possible to communicate so powerfully, precisely and with perfect success without forming a single word. Often we experience this wordless yet powerful communication in prayer as well. There are many times during prayer when we simply show God what we mean. Maybe we raise our hands up to Him when we need something. Maybe tears come to our eyes when we’re overwhelmed with gratitude. Maybe we simply sit silently in an empty sanctuary and feel His presence and enjoy being still and silent there with God. Next time when words fail you during prayer, just show Him how you feel. And strangely enough, without saying a single word, we’re able to understand each other perfectly.

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Last Weekend the Walls Spoke to Me – Literally

Friday, September 11th, 2009

The walls that spoke to me last weekend were in narrow stairway in the 1930’s cottage at the home of my son Chris in an urban Atlanta neighborhood. My job was to pull down the 1960’s wallpaper. It had a small flower print in oranges and yellows. Not exactly a single guy look. The paper had been up there so long and the old paste was so dry it practically fell down in relief.

Unfortunately, on the very first piece the walls told me something I certainly didn’t care to hear. There was 1930’s wallpaper hidden under the 1960’s wallpaper! This wallpaper was even worse than the first. No telling what color it started out, but now it looked like soot with small faint blocks of early American motifs on it. It made the narrow dark stairway look like a haunted house.

Then, in the tiny hallway at the top of the stairs the walls really started talking to me when I ripped down the 1960’s wallpaper and instead of finding the 1930’s paper I found painted sheetrock. As I peeled off the paper, written words began to appear, neatly written in pencil. The more I pulled, the more words appeared. My excitement grew thinking I was about to uncover some fascinating clue into the history of the little cottage or into the lives of the long forgotten occupants. What personal words of wisdom had they hidden away here for posterity?

The words unveiled themselves in a neat column down three feet of the wall. It was a very long poem! My heart raced, hoping it was an original poem written by an unknown aspiring poet who lived in obscurity in the garret of the cottage. It was entitled “A Cat Named Sloopy.” At the very bottom it said, “Rod McKuen,” a poet who gained popularity in the ‘60s. I pulled more paper and found the opening lines of Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe, my heart sinking as I realized that I wasn’t discovering the works of an unknown poet but perhaps the graffiti-like “decorating” of a 1960’s flower child. Or maybe a few favorite poems copied onto the wall by a starry eyed college student from nearby Emory University who fancied cats and tragic love stories.

As interesting as it was to uncover the poems, as we drove home I felt an empty disappointment. I longed to know something personal about the wall writer. Who was she? I realized that knowing and being known personally is a universal longing of the human heart. There is something compelling, satisfying and healing when another lets you into a small part of their true selves, when you trust each other enough to share your innermost you. Multiply this by 100 to re-experience the joy we feel the very first time we receive what we sense in our hearts to be a personal word or sign from God that shows how He intimately knows us and cares completely. What a gift that we continue to live out this personal intimacy with God every day through prayer!

If I ever decide to write a message to future homeowners under wallpaper, maybe that’s what I’ll say. I’ll tell them my personal story of how God found me and how I found Him and how we talked every day. I imagine that the walls will really be glad to finally know what to say after being silent all those years. There are some things worth shouting from the rooftop.

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Are You at Your Best Looking for Lost Things?

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Last night something little and important got lost – outside in the dark. We had finished up our first Prayer Igniters Board meeting at my house and I bid goodbye to one of our board members Paul. As I was saying goodbye to the last member, Mary Jane, on the front steps Paul came back saying, “I lost my truck key.” We went back with him to the dining room table and looked around where he’d been seated. No key.

He explained that he had all of his other keys, but this one had been on a special holder attached to the ring and it had broken off. We all three went slowly down the sidewalk with our eyes glued to the white concrete. Unfortunately there was a big dark gap in front of the garage between the illumination of the front porch lights and the flood lights on the driveway where Paul’s truck was parked. Surely it was there. Our search turned up nothing.

Paul went back to rummage around his truck. I went to get my little high intensity pen light I use on my morning prayer walks when it’s dark. I told Mary Jane, “Here’s a tip if you ever lose a diamond. Turn out all of the lights and use a flashlight and you’ll catch the diamond’s sparkle.” I’ve lost – and found – a diamond before. That’s how I know. I went on, “Thankfully this key is much larger than a diamond and it’s definitely somewhere between the dining room and Paul’s truck.”

Mary Jane and I started back at the front porch, scouring the sidewalk with the light. “Shine the light over in the grass on this side,” Mary Jane said, “He had it in his right hand as he left. Maybe it fell into the grass and that explains why he didn’t hear it drop.”

As Mary Jane and I did a slow and thorough search of the sidewalk and right-side grass, I started quoting scripture out loud, something like a little prayer for God’s help for our search. “I will give to you the keys of the Kingdom. What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven…” I never can quote chapter and verse for you, but somehow appropriate scriptures bubble up and I can later figure out where they came from with a concordance. The Scripture felt soothing.

It was a great verse, but we didn’t find the key. We looked around the driveway near the truck some more and I asked Paul if his wife had a duplicate key back home I said, “It will be easier to find the key in the morning when it’s light.” Mary Jane offered to give Paul a lift home. Paul called his wife on his cell phone. I stood there idly playing the beam of the flashlight under Paul’s truck. “There it is!” I said, pointing the beam of the of light under the truck and slightly behind the tire. We all saw it. To prove a point I turned off the flashlight. Our shadows cast by the floodlight under the truck made an inky black shadow that rendered the key completely invisible. Paul bent under the truck and got the key. We all said good night, case solved.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I lose something vital like car keys or an important document, I usually go into a tizzy and it nearly ruins my day. But I got to thinking just the opposite last night. I got to thinking that we’re at our best when we’re searching for something we’ve lost.

Maybe instead of getting unglued, I could start counting up the blessings of the search: teamwork, attention to detail, determination, applying logic and reasoning skills, thinking of alternatives of how to get things done even if the item isn’t found right away, even seeking a little divine help. And then there’s the whole issue of light -finding a way to illumine unlikely areas, thinking outside the box and under the truck.

The ability to search is a glorious gift from God. If nothing ever got lost we’d never need to go on the hunt. God wants us to love a good search, especially our search for meaning in life that brings us back to Him time and time again. After all, the Bible says, “He who seeks will find…” (Matt. 7:7) And that’s really good news any day of the week.

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