What are you bonkers about?

Community. What comes to mind when you see that word? I see a group of people who are passionate about something -- whether it's bird-watching, beer, or bible study. It's so fabulous when you are with that group of people and you can talk with them about your "thing" and know that they're right with you. You don't have to worry that they think you're a little bonkers because of your passion... ok, let's say the word -- "obsession"  -- with that particular thing. Because you know they're also a little bonkers about it.

When you find yourself part of a real community, it's a wonderful feeling... with none of the fear and uncertainty that comes with some of those high school cliques. Knowing that there are others out there who are like you in this one way makes you feel a sense of belonging.

I have a specific instance where that sense of belonging made me grin like a silly girl for a while. It happened while I finished up my Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) study last week, and I had to look up a few words for their definitions.

I use the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, and as I looked up these words ("iniquity", "transgressions", and "justify"... whew!), there's a space at the bottom of the page that asks you why you needed to look up these words. For all three of those words, just about every comment came from fellow BSF'ers who were working on their lessons, too!

That unexpected sense of community hit me like a silly stick and I was really happy for a while. It made me think of why I do what I do, and I have to say, BSF has been a great thing for me these past two years. The study of John last year and now Isaiah this year has taught me so much and changed my attitude in major ways.

And don't even get me started on how much I've learned as a Children's Leader this year... I use some of BSF's tips and techniques on my own boys and it's made such a difference. Like they say, there's no better way to learn something than to teach it.

Speaking of BSF, the lesson this last week has been on Isaiah's prophecy about Jesus and His death on the cross. Isaiah wrote the book 700+ years before Jesus was born, and he got all the details of the crucifixion down... before crucifixion was even invented as a way to kill people. It astounds me the amount of suffering that Jesus had to experience before giving up His life.

The emotions that come most often when I think about His sacrifice is grief... and gratitude. That's a strange mixture, but it's exactly how I feel when I think about how He suffered and died, not just for the whole world, but specifically, for me.

Pretty heavy way to start out the week, but that's the way the ball bounces, to quote a very happy senior citizen (I want to be old like this guy, and I'll write about him in another post!). I am bonkers about my BSF community and thank God for how I'm learning and growing as a person through BSF.

I kinda dragged you into my community with this post, but hope you learned something on the journey. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave any comments here... I love to hear what you're thinking.

What's your community?

No gray hair for me!

Vanity, oh, vanity.

When I started getting gray hairs a few years back (hey, I'm not saying how many!), I was surprised and maybe a little angry at them, so I'd yank them out by the roots and triumphantly throw them into the garbage.

My poor younger brother wondered how I didn't have any grays, since he was sprouting them all over. I really should have told him what I was doing, but... I didn't, let's just leave it at that. I'm a little ashamed of that... sorry little bro.

Not too long ago, I saw a lone gray hair at the crown of my head, sticking up proudly in all of its... different-colored glory. As I glumly considered the price of aging, I looked at that little hair and saw that it was shining, healthy, and pure white! Not gray, or some dingy half-color. But silvery white! How pretty is that?

I think it's amazing that God has created our "default" hair color to be pure white. All ethnicities return to this glorious color as we age... doesn't matter how dark our hair before, we all eventually get white hair when our follicles give up the ghost and decide not to work anymore.

About a month ago, I let my boys know that I blame them for my gray hairs. Yes, I said that. Doesn't every parent say that at least once in a child's life? I'm not proud of that, either. I also blamed Dalen for my varicose veins... I hope he can get past that emotional damage soon.

But now, with my new perspective on my lovely white hairs, I can thank the boys for bringing this on sooner than later. I do love my boys, even if they sometimes sap every ounce of my energy when they can't get along.

I'm actually kind of excited to see what I look like with all white hair. My mom looks fabulous with her elegant mingle of white and black hair, and I'm so proud of her for not giving in to the dye-my-hair-for-the-rest-of-my-life trap.

When I look at my white hairs, I smile, and thank God for His default setting in this little area. It's a good reminder of how to be grateful for the little things, and appreciate the fact that I have hair! Not that it's bad to NOT have hair... there are pros and cons in everything. But I've found my "silver" lining!

What's a silver lining you've discovered recently?

Spring and gardening is coming!

One of the surest signs of spring is when the clock "springs" forward an hour, thereby depriving us of an hour of sleep, but giving us hope that eventually there will be more daylight and warm weather. Minnesotans take any bit of hope we can grasp with our cold, frozen little fingers.

We are looking forward to 50-degree weather this week... YAHOO!!! There may be some who will venture out in their t-shirts and shorts, blinding us all with their lily-white skin, but I plan to take it easy. Maybe I'll wear a lighter coat and leave off the scarf and gloves. Who knows, we're living large here in the northland!

Plus, the annual winter hibernation has brought its normal result (unlike the wild animals, who LOSE weight with hibernation, I put it on like an extra layer of protection against the cold), which means I'm going to need to do some serious gardening this spring and summer.

Gardening is exercise I can handle. Exercise I can't handle includes going outside in cold or hot weather, sweating in any capacity, and breathing too much dry indoor air. So there's not much left that I CAN handle. Sheesh, no wonder I've been gaining a more serious layer of protection every year!

Add to that the sneaking suspicion that I'm going through perimenopause, and my winter has been something else. I don't understand why they don't just call it menopause, unless it's to make us forty-somethings feel better about it. "Oh, I'm not going through menopause yet. It's PERImenopause, you see. Totally different because I'm way too young to be going through MENOPAUSE."

But back to my meandering musings. I am so looking forward to gardening this year because we will finally be moving into our own home, after three years living with our loving and longsuffering relatives. We are so grateful for family who loves us enough to let us live with them!

And I have to say, it's been a truly wonderful experience, living with another family for long periods of time (years!). It would seem to be an unusual thing for it to be a truly wonderful experience, but it really has, honest!

Sometimes, when my lovely sis-in-law and I would meet in one of our living rooms (they have a downstairs apartment that they let us stay in) in our robes, chatting over our morning coffee, we would wonder why more families didn't do this -- share a roof but have separate living spaces.

We did find out that as our kids got older, the space became too small for our growing families, but the kids LOVED having their cousins right upstairs/downstairs. It's much more understandable to me how families "back when" could stand living in tighter quarters than we do now. I'm sure that with the housing market the way it is, more families are discovering the wonders of living together.

I'm so thankful that it's been a wonderful experience. And now, living with Brian's dad, in his too-big house since my dear mom-in-law passed on almost two years ago, has also been a wonderful experience. I'm not kidding; no rosy mist interfering with my memories because we're still living with dear dad-in-law and will be for at least a couple more months while we fix up our house.

Honestly, I think it's unusual because we have the greatest family in the world, on both sides. We are all normal people with normal problems and some dysfunctions (just like everyone else in the world), but family is always priority. There's nothing we wouldn't do for each other. What a blessing!

The boys saw our house for the first time tonight, and they are so excited to have their own rooms. It's a small house, but just right for us. We close on it tomorrow morning, and I must be a little anxious about it because I had a nightmare last night that we were not able to get the house because someone else had bought it. Yikes.

So gardening in my own dirt, putzing around in my own house, and loving EVERY situation God puts me in... that's what I'm really looking forward to this spring. Now if only my teenagers would calm down....

Listening to that little voice

Why do we put off doing good? I know that sounds so grammatically wrong, but I'm talking about deeds of goodness here, just to clarify. I often get a little voice that says, "You should do this for that person, that would really help them out." It's worrisome when I respond to that little voice out loud, but that doesn't happen very often.

When I respond and actually do the good thing, I usually feel great afterward. Sometimes it ends up being awkward and I don't feel so great, like the time I saw a young woman (late teens, early 20s?) walking on the side of the highway on a snowy, blustery winter day. She looked REALLY cold, so I stopped ahead of her to ask her if she needed a ride. It was hard to get to the shoulder because of the heavy traffic that was moving pretty fast, and the shoulder was really slippery.

Now I don't normally make it a habit to stop and offer rides to people, but I figured she looked too cold to be ready to rob me or whatever. What I didn't think about at the moment was how it would look to HER -- a gray van pulling over and slowing to a stop in front of her. Plus, I had pulled over to avoid the traffic, and that didn't leave her any room to walk on the plowed part, so she had to go into the deeper snow to get past the van.

When I rolled down the window (wow, that's an inaccurate term nowadays) to ask her if she needed a ride, she very politely smiled and said, "No, thanks" and kept on walking. Well, DUH! After I thought about it for two and a half seconds, I realized that young women should never accept rides from strangers unless they're bleeding uncontrollably, and even then, to be very careful about it.

So that good deed turned out really bad, but I think I would have felt worse if I hadn't stopped. I think that's one of the reasons I argue with that small voice when it tells me I should do something. I remember the times when it's gone bad, and I get discouraged from trying it again.

But what's even worse is when I don't even think about the good deed in the first place. Something happens and I think in retrospect, "Oh goodness, I could've done that to help and it would've been so much easier for them!" Then I slap myself mentally on the forehead and vow to do better next time.

I think what is required is time spent... thinking. In silence. With no noise or distraction. I am so not good at that. I'm one of those people who cannot leave the radio off in the car. There MUST be music or something. So thinking in silence is very hard for me.

A while ago, I spent a few hours sitting on the couch, just thinking about everything. I had no music, TV, computer, nothing. Just me and my notebook. WOW... that was so fruitful. I was listening to my thoughts and interacting with them (not talking out loud, either. I don't think.) and coming to some surprising conclusions.

I've done it in the car, too, when I'm driving somewhere that will take a little time (anywhere is a little time from St. Francis). When I take off the radio, I actually allow myself to think and mull over things. And then that little voice can tell me where I can do good and for whom, and I can think about other ways I can help too, instead of simply reacting to the immediate need.

As you might have guessed, the little voice that leads me to do good would be the Holy Spirit. When I listen to that voice and follow through, sometimes it feels good, and sometimes it doesn't. But that's not really the point, is it, to feel good about it? Because if we did it to feel good, it would be a little self-serving, which would kind of take away from the good deed.

Sometimes when we talk about doing a quiet time each day, we fill that time with reading or praying, or listening to music. Those are all good things, and it's good to do them every day. But there should also be times of quiet listening. Listening to ourselves or to God, and following through with those little promptings.

How will you respond the next time you hear that little voice telling you to do a good deed?

P.S. The little voice that's telling you to lie or cheat would NOT be the Holy Spirit, just sayin'!

A Cruise Ship to Ponder

I like word pictures; they seem to stick with me longer than most anything else (besides actual pictures). I'm a very visual person, so it makes sense that seeing a picture in my mind will make it come more alive. This past week, I've had a picture come to my mind and it's really sticking, so I'd like to share it with you.

Imagine a big ocean, calm and serene or gray and angry or even storming and wild. Whatever fits your mood for the moment. As you survey the water, you suddenly see a cruise ship coming in your line of sight. It's huge, almost the size of small city, and whatever waves you've envisioned aren't doing anything to affect the cruise ship's path through the water.

Then you realize that you're in a little rubber dinghy with a motor in it, a small motor. And you're heading straight for the cruise ship. You can see people on the ship through the windows, and they're having a fabulous time, dancing, relaxing, or chatting with each other.

You're not sure where the cruise ship is heading, but you really want to know, and so you get right up to its side as it slices majestically through the water. Reaching over, you bang on the hull and yell, "Where are you going? What are you DOING?" No answer.

Of course, you have to keep your course with the ship, but your little motor is having a hard time following, and your useless banging on the hull isn't doing any good, and it's not getting you any answers. So of course... you redouble your efforts and bang harder and yell louder.

This word picture came to me as I studied Isaiah 46: God's purpose is like that cruise ship. Isaiah 46:11b is the verse that inspired this word picture:

"What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do."


We have two choices when it comes to interacting with God's purpose for our lives... we can be on that rubber dinghy, banging on the side of the ship, shouting and agonizing about where it's going. Or we can be ON the cruise ship, relaxing and going with the flow.

Sometimes, even being on the cruise ship doesn't guarantee you know where it's going, but at least you can relax while you're getting there! Personally, I prefer to be on the ship, and whenever I get the urge to get in my little rubber dinghy and start banging on the hull, I stop and ask myself if it will actually do any good.

I can relax on the cruise ship because I know the Captain personally, and I know He's an AWESOME captain and will take me on the ride of my life. If you don't know Him personally, then it makes sense that you'd be anxious to be on a cruise ship and not know where it's going. I hope you get to know Him personally if you don't already. He's a great guy and only wants the best for you.

Any illustration like this will have its shortfalls, and I don't pretend that this one is perfect. But if it helps you as you ponder where you're going in life, then my purpose with this blog has been fulfilled. Thanks for reading, and please comment if you have a moment!