The Big D: Convoy

I am very relieved and happy to report that my husband texted me at 7:30 this morning with the words, "Made it."


 I like to say I'm not a worrier (and usually I'm not) but I would be lying if I told you I didn't go to bed last night with images of him, sweating in the heat of the day, in full gear, rattling around in an armored vehicle, down some awful, dusty, dangerous road, and WORRYING about what could happen. I mean...HOW COULD I NOT?!?!

So I did what I do and I opened my bible. I could not have fixed dinner for my kids, or helped them with their homework, or bathed them, read to them, and tucked them into bed with a kiss goodnight, or found sleep for myself, if I did not have a source of comfort and security to turn to.

Every single person alive has to put their trust in something just to get through their day. During that difficult day, I could have put my trust in my husband's training but it can only carry him so far. I could have put my trust in the leadership of our country and of the Army but they are human and fallible. I could have put my trust in body armor and vehicle armor but that is penetrable. So I chose to put my trust in God, not only to protect my husband, but to protect my heart if the bad guys got their way.

It's the only way I know how to have peace during a time of unrest. I sincerely don't know how people who do not believe in SOMETHING can get through times like this. 


This is my favorite "worry Psalm."


I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me.
He freed me from all my fears.
Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
no shadow of shame will darken their faces.
In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened;
he saved me from all my troubles.
For the angel of the Lord is a guard;
he surrounds and defends all who fear him.
                                                Psalm 34:4-7


I read once that the word "surrounds" is translated from a Hebrew word which means, "encamped."  That's particularly helpful to one who's praying for a soldier, don't you think?

The Big D: Countdown to the end

12 September
Every day that passes gets me closer to the end of this.  Until then, I just continue to carry on and stay active, putting things on the calendar and taking care of things that need taking care of but I think this last little bit is going to feel like the longest of the whole deployment.

I have a handful of friends whose husbands just returned in the last week or so and I'm not going to lie to you. It is so hard to see them with their husbands. I had to watch a friend and her family sit in front of me at church last Sunday and their little boy (who looks SOOO much like his daddy, who I had never seen before) was crawling all over him, clinging to him and whispering in his ear, and I knew how happy they were because I watched her cry, 10 days before his return, overwhelmed by the absence they had endured and the excitement of him finally coming home. But there I was, still alone and fighting the urge to be insanely envious of her. In those moments, it feels like I still have SO LONG to wait!

There are so many of those hard moments when it feels like this separation will never end, and maybe it even feels like the cost of this life is just too great.  I've heard from several women who are struggling and I'm the kind of person who says we have to be master of our emotions and turn to something that encourages us.

I happen to be reading "Bonhoeffer," right now, a book about a German pastor who stood up to Hitler in the years leading up to WWII and was arrested and executed for his part in an assassination attempt. He spent 18 months in prison before being executed by the Nazis but during those long months he was permitted to write letters and he had a fiancé named Marie who received many of them. Something he said to her in one of his letters has encouraged me and I go to it in my mind every time I want to feel sorry for myself or I wonder if this is all worth it:

"No, you needn't have a moment's worry--I'm not worried either. You do, of course, know from the little we've said to each other that danger exists not only out there [on the battlefronts] but here at home as well, sometimes rather less so, sometimes rather more. What man of today has the right to shun it and shrink from it? And what woman of today should not share it, however gladly the man would relieve her of that burden? And how indescribably happy it makes the man if the woman he loves stands by him with courage, patience , and above all--prayer." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I want to encourage you who are struggling. The separation will end, the hard moments will pass, and when you are reunited, the painful memories will fade. I don't say this as an expert because I am still living through it. I say it because I believe it will happen. Be courageous, have patience, and pray.  If all else fails...

    

Responding to Grace

Tis not the work of force but skill

To find the way into men's will.

Tis love alone can hearts unlock.

Who knows the Word, he needs not knock.

Richard Crashaw - 1652

Grace loved Chester but Chester didn't love Grace in return.  She knows it.  You can feel her insecurity in the letters she wrote to him in the summer of 1906. 

My Dear Chester,
...I think I shall die of joy when I see you, dear.  I will try not to worry so much and I won't believe the horrid things the girls write...

You can also tell that Chester wasn't a very good person but Grace didn't mind.

...You have said you would come and sometimes I just know you will, but then I think about other things and I am just as certain you won't come....

She loved him anyway and held onto the hope that he would come for her.  She had given him everything there was for a girl to give to a boy and she waited anxiously for him to respond to her proclamations of love.  He never spoke affectionately in the 3 letters he wrote back to her dozens.  She even apologized in one letter for how affectionate she was in hers and tried to mimic his curt, businesslike tone.  But by the next letter, she was back to worrying over why he hadn't written, and proclaiming her love again, and wondering when he would come.

Unrequited love is so unfair.  I see Grace as a young woman who has taken a gamble by baring her soul to a man who may or may not love her back.  She stands there trembling and naked before him, while he remains fully clothed and buttoned up, from his hat all the way down to his boots, arms firmly crossed over his chest, revealing nothing, risking nothing.  That way she is the only one who stands to lose.

This happened once in the bible.  Not in a romantic way but the risk was no less inherent in the gamble Jonathan took when he proclaimed his undying loyalty to his friend, David.  1 Samuel 18:3-4: "And Jonathan made a solemn pact with David because he loved him as he loved himself.  Jonathan sealed the pact by taking off his robe and giving it to David, together with his tunic, sword, bow, and belt."  We don't know what David's response was because the bible doesn't give it.  The scene shifts abruptly and Jonathan is left standing there, naked and defenseless, and without a response to this lavish display.

We know a little bit about Chester's response to Grace through her letters.  He accepted her affection enough to get her pregnant before almost totally ignoring her.  She begged and pleaded with him to take responsibility and not be a coward, to come to her parent's house where she was burdened with her secret--his baby--and take her away.  She worried to the point of making herself ill and confessed to fainting when she received a letter from a girl Chester knew, admitting to things that Chester did in Grace's absence.  But it was too late for her to walk away with any dignity.  She needed him to come for her and she desperately wanted him to love her. 

Forget for a moment that life was different for an unwed mother in 1906.  These are things we all long for.  When we have physically, emotionally, and spiritually given all we have to give, we want it to be given back in full measure.  We will be forever incomplete and feel cheated if it's not.

In the surprise of the young century, Chester did show up at Grace's door, told her to pack her bags, and took her away.  You can just bet that everything about that day got instantly brighter for Grace, can't you?  The twinge of morning sickness evaporated.  The shadows on the front lawn, which once seemed so ominous and foreboding, were now merely dappled evidence of the sunshine which was finally going to beat down on her face as she joined her savior on the front stoop, carpetbag in hand, future secure.  I imagine the relief, the feeling of pure joy, that must have seeped through her veins at the sight of him standing there before her.  I imagine the way she must have thrown her arms around his neck and basked for a wonderful moment in the assurance of his love for her. 

They went to a resort in the Adirondacks and stayed in a hotel for the night.  Grace must have assumed he would take her to a chapel or to a Justice of the Peace to marry her quickly and quietly.  But he didn't.  The next day he killed her and dumped her body in Moose Lake.

Tragically, Jonathan lost his life too in a senseless killing.  Not because of David, though.  In fact, we learn in 1 Samuel 20 that David fully reciprocated Jonathan's friendship and loved him just as fiercely.  They often risked their lives for one another and kept each other alive when King Saul would have killed them both.  It was the original bro-mance!  So why did the prophet Samuel, author of his first book, leave us hanging for two whole chapters, wondering at David's response to Jonathan?  Maybe what's left out of the bible can be just as telling as what's left in.  Maybe by leaving David unresponsive, Samuel is giving us a sneak-peak at the coming of a Savior who would give of himself so lavishly, all that would be left would be his naked body, trembling, and dying in front of people who didn't know what to make of Him.  He still evokes a range of responses in us.  Some of us fall on our faces in a twisting anguish of undeserving gratitude.  Some of us weep quietly and make a simple promise to start going to church again.  Sometimes there is no response at all.  He knew this was a risk He was taking but it didn't stop Him from coming and giving everything there was to give.

What's your response?  Are you preoccupied like Chester?  Are you too busy living life, and having fun, and skirting responsibility, and doing things your own way to stop and notice what's already been given to you?  You can stand there with your mouth shut like David in chapter 18 and leave Him hanging.  You can even turn away from it and ignore Him.  That's your right as a human being who was made to choose.  But it's been done so you have to choose one way or the other.

You can choose to respond like Chester did when he dumped his gift in the lake, preferring life without it.  But your choice won't be ignored forever.  Grace was known by the people in Chester's life.  She was missed when she was gone.   The authorities drug the lake and recovered her body.  The truth could not stay hidden and Chester would have to answer for his choice.  He went to trial in a case that captivated America.  Grace's letters were read to the jury and when they heard her plaintive cries for his love, and felt her vulnerability as she sat and waited for him, it moved them to recommend execution for young Chester, who only ever wanted to have fun.  He died by electrocution on March 30, 1908.

Friends, if you think there is nothing more to this life than having a little bit of fun before you die, go ahead.  No one will stop you.  You may not go to the extremes Chester did to cling to that thin thread of independence, but you know your life will one day come to a grinding halt.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe in 70 years.  But know too that you have been given a lavish gift.  Consider it with awe and wonder.  Respond to it.  Reach out to Grace now.  Take its hand, and then let it throw its arms around your neck and say into your ear, "Finally.  I've been waiting for you."



Quotes from Grace's letters come from the book, "A Northern Light" by Jennifer Donnelly.  Information about Chester's execution comes from (I know, I know) Wikipedia.

Ready? 1...2...3...Cannonbaaaalllll!

So, it's been four months since I've written.  Anything.  That creative and thoughtful part of my brain totally shut down when we invited all sorts of crazy into our lives with Army enlistment.  We have sold the house we lived in for 8 years (which is its own crazy story), moved in with in-laws, left a wonderful school district, submitted a resignation from a job I have loved, and the hardest thing of all: preparing to say good-bye to the church that has loved us, sustained us, and changed us.  All this while doing my best to figure out what to do with my present while all my ideas about what our future would have held unraveled and then knit itself together in a radically different pattern. 

The new pattern has lots of camo in it.

And combat boots.  And automatic weapons.  And acronyms.  And long lonely nights while my soldier is away doing what needs to be done.


But this new future is lovely in its own way.  It will involve lots of change.  But change is the essence of an adventurous life.  There will even be pain.  But pain is the key to growth and, to borrow a phrase I learned recently, all growth is spiritual growth. 

Some people, upon hearing this truth and desiring spiritual growth for themselves, creep along the edge of change and dip their toes in, gradually warming up to it.  Not us.  We grasped each other's hands, took a flying leap, and plunged in cannonball-style.  Not because we are more brave or adventurous than the next family.  But because the pain of staying the same was worse than the pain of change.  Sometimes, that's what it takes to get a person to move.

I could be the type who holds a grudge against God for allowing calamity to reign down on our lives with the first devastating job loss that got this ball rolling.  At the time it seemed like the end of everything good in our lives.  Now I realize that it was only a stumble.  We got kicked in the shins  and limped along for the next few years, rebuilding, surviving, looking for silver linings, thinking the worst was over.  There were uniforms hanging in the house again.  The smell of leather and gun cleaner was like perfume to me.

But it was not to last.  The next time we got punched squarely in the gut.  While we were writhing around on the floor, trying to suck a life-giving breath into our lungs, God was quietly bringing together a plan that would set us on our current course.  But before we could take the first step, we had to be looking up at it from where we lay.  Only then would we see it clearly, accept it, have joy in it, and do the cannonball into it.

Only now I believe that its not only each other's hands we are holding.  According to Psalm 37, "The Lord directs the steps of the godly.  He delights in every detail of their lives.  Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand."

I'm not quite ready to look back on our lives and delight in all the details, but God, who sees the beginning, the present, and the future, does.  And as I look as far as my limited imagination can see into the new future that has been knitted together, before I take a step, I will reach my hand up and hold on tight as He takes me on the ride of my life. 

A Story to Tell: Thanking God for the Hard Parts

I submitted this piece about my grandma, Margaret Ruth Barnes (11-15-24 to 12-17-12), to a Ladies Home Journal writing contest while she was still living.  It didn't win but I thought it was a fitting tribute to a lady who taught me how to play Canasta, and Karem, and how to make noodles. I learned to ride my bicycle in her drive way.  She took me to Branson to see Shoji Tibouchi when I was in grade school.  She rocked me in her easy chair the night I threw up in her house even though I had already grown taller than her.  She "clouded up and rained all over me" when I deserved it and always gave me Edy's ice cream with chocolate syrup to make up for it.  She was a complex woman and love seemed to be hard for her with some people but she was a pretty awesome grandma. I will miss her.

We walked, hand in hand, down the wide white hallway.  Being in this place makes me uneasy.  Perhaps it’s the smell of urine that makes my eyes sting.  Or the men and women we steal glances at as we walk past their open doors.  Some of them stare back at us as we pass.  Anyone who is left in their room at dinnertime is confined to their bed.  I can’t imagine what goes on in their minds, hour after hour, day after day.  I see them with their hair matted and spittle on their chins, legs twisted and lifeless in the beds.  Their eyes are sometimes dull and glazed, sometimes confused and crazy.  In the split second that I spy on them as I pass their rooms, I try to imagine what they were like when they were young, vibrant, healthy, and beautiful.  I wonder what kinds of things they did with their lives, how many kids they raised, what adventures they went on, and if there is anyone left to tell their stories.

It makes me sad to think of this Greatest Generation leaving our world one by one.  There will never be another like it.  They were shaped and molded by hardship.  It made them strong and self-sacrificing.  They knew what it was to survive on next to nothing.  And when they had plenty, they were grateful for it and didn’t squander it.  But it was the hardship they endured that gave purpose and meaning to their lives.  Overcoming it gave them a story to tell.

Finally in the dining room, I spot her from across the room, even though all that is visible of her is her tiny head, with her soft white “teased and set” hair peeking out above her wheelchair.  We come around her chair to greet her and her eyes light up in recognition as always, though I’m not convinced she could actually tell us our names.  I don’t ask her to.  I don’t want her to feel bad.  She is wearing a crocheted red sweater and holding a stuffed dog in her lap.  I don’t know who gave her that dog but I’ve never seen her without it when I’ve come to visit her here.

I pull up heavy chairs, scraping them along the tiled floor so that we can sit close to her, despite the plate of pulled meat and green beans that has been placed in front of her.  “How are you, Grandma?” I ask her.  She shrugs her shoulders and smiles, giving me a garbled response that I can’t quite make out.  Her dentures don’t fit inside her mouth anymore so they nearly fall out whenever she tries to form words.  I just smile and nod.

“Three pretty girls,” she says, looking at my daughters.

“Yes,” I tell her.  Placing a hand on each of their heads, I say, “Allison is in second grade, Rachel is in Kindergarten, and Morgan is about to turn three!”  She puts a hand over her mouth as if to feign surprise. 

“Really?” she asks.  “They grow so fast.”  Again, I smile and nod.  I don’t really have any other news.  At least none that I want to share with my grandma, who I’m not convinced yet, knows who I am.  I don’t feel like telling her that my husband lost his job last week.  For the second time in three years.  What difference would it make to her that we had blown our savings getting us through the last time he was unemployed and, having struggled with a decline in income, hadn’t built it back up yet?  Would she care that we didn’t know if we would be able to make our house payment this month?  That there was no way our house was going to sell in this market anyway?  That unemployment was hovering above 9% and it could be a very long, very uncertain, and very painful time ahead of us?

Lost in the thoughts of my own troubles, my mind is yanked back into the dining room when I overhear one of the nurses on duty refer to another one as Shorty.  “Who is Shorty?” I ask, looking between them.  The petite middle-aged woman who is feeding a patient next to my grandma looks over at me and says, “That’s me!”

“Margaret’s husband was called Shorty almost all of his life,” I tell her.

“Is that so?” she asks, continuing to feed her patient.  I begin to tell her how I once found an old high school English textbook of my granddad’s copyrighted in 1934, in which a friend had doodled a face behind bars and jokingly wrote underneath, “Shorty in 15 years” but my story fades when I see that she doesn’t seem all that interested.  That picture has always fascinated me because I never knew much about my grandparents.  I knew they were my dad’s parents; two kind and generous old people whom I stayed with every once in a while and saw on holidays.  They were wonderful grandparents and very much loved.  But they didn’t often speak of their early life and so much of what made them who they were always remained a mystery to me.

I know just a few things about my grandma.  I know that she grew up very poor during the worst of the Great Depression.  She told me once that when she was a young girl she shared a table with another little girl who ate an orange with her lunch.  My grandma had never tasted an orange and the sight and smell of that orange had her transfixed.  When the girl left the table, leaving behind the orange peelings, my grandma ate them.

I know that when she was 16 in 1939 her parents told her she was old enough to take care of herself and not to come home from school.  So she didn’t.  She stayed on the bus that day until the route was finished.  The bus driver asked if she had anywhere to go.  She said she didn’t, so he and his wife took her in and finished raising her.  She learned to drive a stick shift by driving that big old school bus and once told my sister and me that’s why she preferred to drive an automatic.  The wife of that bus driver would later come to be known by us grandkids as “Granny” and she would spend her last years in the care of my grandparents.

I have no idea how Grandma met Granddad but at some point after marrying him, she put herself through beauty school and opened a beauty shop.  She was a working mother and an entrepreneur long before Women’s Lib.  I find this ironic since I sit here, privileged to be born into a world with “equal pay” and I choose to stay home with my girls.  I have no memories of that beauty shop she owned.  By the time I came along a generation later she had semi-retired and was servicing a few loyal customers out of her basement.

My grandparents must have been very successful in life.  They seemed positively rich to us kids.  They certainly did to me now that I sat in front of her as a grown-up, feeling decidedly unsuccessful in life at the moment.  Grandma and Granddad nearly doubled the square footage of their house with a massive renovation.  And they enjoyed traveling a great deal.  They went to Hawaii, Europe, Nova Scotia, and made many weekend trips to Branson, sometimes even taking a few lucky grandkids along.  She brought two little Hawaiian dresses, one red and one blue, back from their trip to the Island for my sister and me.  I had just told my own daughters about those dresses I remembered so vividly from my childhood a few days before so I asked my grandma if she remembered taking that trip all those years ago.

She didn’t.  Did she remember the trip to Europe?  She shook her head no.  All those tour bus trips with your friend, Naomi?  No.  I leaned back in my chair, surprised and disappointed that she had no stories to share.  More than that though, I was sad.  I studied her tiny, fragile, shell of a body, bent over from osteoporosis.  Her hands which had once performed magic on ladies’ permed hair were arthritic and bony, with skin so translucent I could practically see through it.  Once so strong and capable, she had spent a lifetime working, sacrificing, and saving so that she could enjoy the pleasure and luxury of travel and now she didn’t even have a single memory of it.

We left the nursing home after a bit more small talk.  She probably wouldn’t remember we were there so one of my daughters left a homemade picture on her nightstand. 

I pondered that sad conversation often over the next few days.  I couldn’t resist making the comparison: my husband and I are in our 30’s and practically starting over from scratch.  Again.  We may never achieve the wealth and luxury that my grandparents enjoyed.  At least it feels like it in this scary and uncertain moment in time.  My grandparents knew fear and uncertainty very well early in their days but they spent the rest of their lives making sure they never would again. 

Grandma, like me, wanted security.  She pursued it with tenacity because the avoidance of pain was the topmost priority.  And when she achieved it, she rested comfortably in it and lived as if she had never experienced life any other way.  She never really wanted to tell the stories of her youth, the really good stories of overcoming hardship, stories about the things that shaped her.  She only leaked out little bits here and there, leaving us to piece together the picture of her early life.  But today, in the final chapters of her life, those are the parts that really matter.  The trips to Hawaii and Europe have all but faded from memory.  Just like the house, the pinnacle of all they had worked to accomplish. 

Grandma and Granddad had always taken immaculate care of their stately post-war 60’s style ranch.  A quick drive past it today reveals the shrubs, which once sat at attention, crisp, and horizontal against the white siding, are now dead and bare.  The birdbath in the front yard has been knocked over.  A large tree has fallen in the backyard and its dried dead branches hang over the mangled chain-link fence like giant brown, bony fingers.  Their once lovely home with its paid off mortgage, a tangible symbol of comfort and security, now sits in disrepair, abandoned and literally crumbling down with rust, rot, and time.  As if it never even mattered.

Could it be possible that this time of hardship that I am living in right now is what really matters in my life?  No one will remember how many vacations we took or how much comfort and security we had.  I won’t even remember them if my grandma’s state is any indication of the future that awaits me.  But there is a reason that the “stuff” that gives us comfort and security in this world is so quickly forgotten.  Those things are boring.  They don’t make for a good story.  They don’t shape anybody.  And pursuing them will only blind me to the bigger story that is being written for my family today.  We will one day tell a story from this time in our lives that will be about hardship and pain.  But it will also be a story that is about more than personal comfort, self-gratification, and the false sense of security in a world that will pull the rug out from under you at any moment.  It is a story in which life is meaningful without that stuff.  And if a life that experiences pain is meaningful, then the pain must have meaning because it helps to shape the characters in the story of that meaningful life.  The stories from my grandma’s early life and others of her generation prove this to be true. 

If you believe in something greater than yourself, then you can trust that it is God, the greatest storyteller of all, who writes the uncertainty and pain into the stories of our lives.  He does this not because he is cruel and mean-spirited, but because he wants our lives to be filled with meaning and purpose instead of just “stuff.”  Our desperate attempts to avoid pain and seek comfort rob us of the potential greatness of our lives.  The lack of stories from my grandma’s later life proves this to be true. 

Knowing this doesn’t make it easy to live through the painful parts of our stories. I freely admit that I dread the coming months of uncertainty for my family.  So, in order to survive them and not let them destroy me, I have to surrender them to God, trusting that he will bring meaning from them, that something beautiful will come from them.  That beautiful thing may not be a paid for home and a trip to Hawaii.  I think it will be even more wonderful than that. 

I think it will be a story of redemption—a story of a family changed, made stronger, made better.  Comfort and security don’t change people.  It’s the pain that occurs in the darkness of night that changes people.  As long as I have the hope of redemption—that the story will end well—I can endure pain, loss, even suffering.  Indeed, I can be fulfilled by it, knowing that true and lasting joy, not the superficial pleasure that comes from comfort and security, will come as a result of it. 

 I guess there will always be a part of me that, like Grandma, craves security and fights desperately to attain it.  It’s human nature.  Maybe one day I’ll have it within my grasp again and life will be boring.  But until then I have a story to finish.  It will be a story about pain and adversity, loss and uncertainty.  And I intend to finish it well, coming out on the other side whole and new, and thanking God for every moment.

Taking a Risk

I've never been what one would call a risk taker.  Except for when I was an ignorant kid who couldn't see my future past the end of my nose.

I did a lot of my growing up years in a small town with a very busy highway running alongside it.

One day when I was about 16 years old I found myself in an old beat up S-10 pick-up truck sandwiched between two guy friends, who, one can only assume, had nothing to lose.  On a quiet little road that crossed the highway, the driver got the sudden brilliant idea to floor it and race across the intersection without stopping.  I held on to the rickety dashboard for dear life, envisioning for a split second what it would look like for us to get side-swiped by a car going 65 miles per hour.  Another split second later, we were safely on the other side and the two guys laughed like idiots and high-fived each other.  Pretty much an idiot myself and not wanting them to know I nearly soiled myself, I probably laughed too.




I took other risks too.  Risks with my heart, with my soul, and with my reputation.  It is only by God's grace that none of these risks resulted in consequences that lasted a lifetime (except for one garish and regrettable tattoo that still makes me cringe when I look at it).

I think it's interesting that I was so willing to take a risk when I so proudly (and foolishly) boasted that I was the only one looking out for me.  Now that I know God, and I know that He made me, He has plans for me, and He'll never forsake me, the thought of taking a risk makes me break out into a cold sweat.

When my husband was unemployed for just a few short days, the thought of not making a house payment, losing the house, and (horrors!) having to change school districts struck such fear in my heart that I found myself weeping in the arms of my pastor's wife who I needed at that moment to quiet my fears and reassure me that this would not, in fact, be the end of the world.

When did I turn into such a wimp?  I think it happened when I became a slave to the false hope of worldly security and personal comfort.  God gave me this gift of my life, not so that I could pursue home ownership and full retirement accounts.  He put me here to do big things.  Risky things.

And time is running out:

"Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.  Remind me that my days are numbered--how fleeting my life is....  My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.  We are all moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing.  We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it.  And so, Lord, where do I put my hope?  My only hope is in you."  Psalm 39:4-7

It's true, when you believe in God, you know that this life is not all there is.  But you also have a responsibility to make this life count for something.  I can't do that if I'm going to be a wimp and cling so tightly to security and comfort that I miss the opportunity to take a risk.  

Boasting about the "What if's"

A new job begins today for my beloved.  A blessing?  That remains to be seen.  It's hard to say when there are so many what ifs.

We can't help but strategize with our limited human imaginations: "What if this new job keeps you from doing the part-time thing you've got going on the side...what if it isn't enough to pay the bills....what if the people there can get you a job at a department you REALLY want....what if taking this job means a better opportunity is passed up....what if this turns out to be so great we might want to move to be closer....what if this turns out to be a dead end and a total waste of time....what if....what if?"

I have never doubted that God would work all things out for good to us who love Him.  But there are so many twists and turns and decisions to be made along the way.  I have to force myself to resist asking God for answers to the "what if" questions.  It's not for me to know and I probably couldn't handle it anyway.  Life never makes sense when we're looking ahead or when we're in the middle of it.  It's only in hindsight that we can see the purpose in the pain.

I will also resist making up my mind what would be "best" for us.  A job here or a job there?  Or how about a job here for a year or two and then a job there.  And we won't be satisfied until the ultimate dream job becomes a reality.......right?  But this is the biggest "what if" of all: what if the thing we say we want the most is not really in God's plan for us at all? 

Jesus' brother, James, warns us of doing this in his book, James 4:13-15.  "Look here, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year.  We will do business there and make a profit.'  How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow?  Your life is like a morning fog--it's here a little while , then it's gone.  What you ought to say is, 'If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.'  Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil."

Lord, help us not to waste this pain by boasting about our plans.  We do not pretend to know what's better for us than You do.  And we look with anticipation to the day when we will look back on this, a changed family, transformed by the pain--made better by it, making sense of the trial, and thanking You for it.