Mrs. Wait

2012-01-21T01:06:00.002-05:00

So, I was reading about the gifts of the Spirit tonight in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11. And, having heard a ton of people talking about spiritual gifts over the years, I started to think about what they had said and wonder which spiritual gift might be mine...

I got to verse 9, where it mentions faith and couldn't really remember anyone I knew who claimed to have the gift of faith. And, of course, I turned introspective for a moment and thought, "Do I have the spiritual gift of faith???... Eh, I don't know, I doubt it."

And that kind of answered that for me.

But anyway, to be serious for a moment, a lot of times in church or youth group or camp meetings or Christian publications, the discussion of spiritual gifts has always seemed a bit...odd to me.

First of all, I was made a little bit leery the first time I saw a quiz that would tell me which spiritual gift I had. It seemed WAY too similar to the kinds of quizzes in magazines for junior-high girls which promise to tell you which celebrity you will marry when you grow up or how good of a kisser you are.

Second, it seems just a little too focused on self and not on glorifying God or loving those around you. I heard a lot of "where do you feel more comfortable serving..." and "what makes you happiest..." and "what are you good at..."

Honestly, if it truly is the Spirit imparting these gifts on us, it will likely not be in areas where we are comfortable or capable on our own. He will take our weaknesses and make those into strengths in his own name right? And He will probably not give us one main thing to focus on and obsess over.

I think He would probably much rather that we stop looking for our "own area of gifted-ness" and spend more time looking at the lives of those around us and praising Him for giving them gifts in areas where they could not possibly have excelled on their own and allowing them to see the same things in us.

Anyway, I haven't studied the matter really. These are just amateur, and uneducated thoughts...not to be taken as more than just thoughts. I think I will try to learn a little about the subject now though.

2012-01-17T02:33:00.003-05:00

It's 2:33 AM.

I have a question for you: WHAT is drier than the Saharra desert?

Answer: The batch of donuts I am deep frying right now.

I'm not really sure what went wrong, but deciding to make donuts at 2:30 AM might have been half of the problem.

Hungry? Bring several gallons of water and come on over.

In other news, I am going to buy some Clarifying shampoo. I should start making more sense in a week or two.

2012-01-06T22:40:00.003-05:00

We had such wonderful weather today! It was somewhere around 50 I think! Eli and I walked to the post office, and then it was just too nice to go back home so we headed to the park also.

The park we go to is on the top of one of the higher hills near us, and although it is only a very short walk from our house, the view there makes you feel like you have journeyed to a different world! The sky surrounds you on everyside and you can see for miles! The horizon is decorated with distant hills and the rolling mountains of Pennsylvania's "Endless Mountains" region. There seldom are other visitors at the park when we are there, so it is usually an unbelievably quiet, peaceful place to be.

Today I climbed on a swing and remembered again just how much I love swinging! There is just something about it...pushing with all of your might and propelling yourself as high as you can and as fast as you can and looking up as the wind blows your hair back and seeing nothing but the clouds above you! That feeling, that moment, stirs in me the deepest of emotions! It seems to dare ANYTHING at all to distract me. It seems like, in that moment, my Heavenly Father reaches down and cups my face in His hands and gently draws me to focus on Him.

I know, I know, it is just a simple childish amusement in the local park, but to me, there is just something about the soaring and dipping and soaring again that just seems to make all the problems that boggle my mind sort themselves out. It gives me a new perspective and a chance to see beyond the little things that tend to grow bigger than they should in my mind. It gives me a glimpse of joy and makes my heart want to sing. It fills me with wonder at the fact that God would chose to redeem me and know me and speak with me and allow me to know Him. It washes away earth and puts heaven before my eyes in a way that makes me see nothing else.

It has been that way for as long as I can remember. If I think back on difficult days, conundrums, disappointments, and cunfusions in my life, the memory of those moments in bound tightly to the memory of an hour or two spent on a swing, pouring out my heart to a God who listens, cares, and understands. And He is not silent in those moments. I have never been very good at listening to Him, but something about the wind and the beauty and the height...it lets me glimpse just enough of His presence to close my mouth and hear Him.

So, today I thank God for swingsets, and the miniature theophanies that occur there.

2011-12-11T19:11:00.003-05:00

I keep writing letters to friends in China.

But the damp cloths they send me are

always dried out by the time they get here.

Guess I'll never be able to clean my shower curtain.

Oh well.

2011-12-10T00:09:00.003-05:00

Would you like to know one of my favorite things?

Well, this is my blog, so I'm going to tell you anyway.

Have you ever been folding laundry and looked down at the basket and found a sock sitting there, right next to its match?

It's kind of like God smiled down and decided to give you a small gift to remind you of His love.

2011-11-27T00:21:00.002-05:00

Hmmmm. I just recieved an e-mail that promised to tell me about some great "Black Friday Deals"...it is 12:21 AM, Sunday the 27th. I might be wrong....but it looks like someone needs a new calendar for Christmas. :)

2011-11-11T23:59:00.001-05:00

I remember years ago hearing the old saying about making a wish when the numbers on the clock all line up. I don't believe in wishes, but whenever I see the list of numbers all the same, it reminds me that I serve the God "...who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us..." and I am reminded to bring the desires of my heart before Him in prayer. Over the years, I have asked Him for many things. Sometimes His answers have been "no", sometimes "yes", and sometimes "wait", and, in the case of praying for a husband, the answer was "Wait" with a capitol 'W'. :)

Anyway, on this the 11th of November, 2011, I can't help but look back on all that He has done for me. The prayers He has answered just the way I had hoped, and the ones He has answered in ways I did not like at the time, but later saw to be the most perfect way. I thank my Heavenly Father for being so gracious to me.

And if I were to ask for anything on this 11/11/11, it would be that I will spend the rest of my life bringing glory to His name.

So, I will make this my Ebenezer day and I will use it to look back and remember His goodness to me.

So Very Thankful!

2011-09-27T22:54:00.001-04:00

I have been reading some disturbing online articles and comments on such articles, that discuss marriage.
I can't remain silent a moment longer. I can see so clearly the mindset of most of my peers in regards to relationships and it truly makes me want to cry.
I think, if I were single, I would probably not care about these articles. Or worse yet, knowing who I was before I married the man who has changed me in so many ways, I probably would have looked down on them in some sort of self-righteousness that would befit a nun.
But I am not that girl. I have known the joy of being cared for in sickness and health. I have known the joy of looking in the eyes of the one man who knows me even better than I know myself and, inspite of that, knowing that I can trust him to be there with me until death seperates us.
It makes me want to weep for the many women who will never find a man so completely self-sacrificing and full of unconditional love. It makes me weep to think that they have not found something they can hold onto and invest in that will grow as they grow. I hurt for them that they do not have someone who will look at them when they are old and gray and see them as beautiful just because they are the one, the familiar friend, the beloved, the chosen bride.
I have found the greatest husband out there. As evidence I will offer this fact: I am typing this while listening to a recording on our computer of him singing for me the song, "When I Fall In Love". I think though, that the one thing which makes my husband so spectacular is that he is not original... meaning, he is imitating someone else. You see, my husband chooses to love me as Christ loved the church. He choses to sacrifice for me in ways I could NEVER deserve. He chooses to accept me, to forgive me, to cherish me at times when I could never expect him to. His sacrificial love for me makes me want to love him even more. It makes me want to live in a sacrificial way. And this is the whole point of marriage. It is all just a big flannelgraph. It is just an example of God's love for us. "We love Him (God) because He first loved us."
In a world where marriages, families, children, and life in general are disposable, I want to thank God for the beautiful gift of a marriage that includes a promise of "till death do us part" and for a man who is following in the footsteps of Christ.

2011-09-23T21:24:00.001-04:00

Hmmmm. I was sure at first that my eyesight was going. But it isn't. There really and truly is a giant, inflatable, illumminated Santa Claus in the backyard of the house across the street on the evening of September the 23rd.

I'm really not sure what I think of that.

2011-09-21T22:06:00.000-04:00

"Brushing one's teeth is at the top of a ladder at whose bottom is the loss of one's soul."

I can hardly contain my laughter. This phrase from "Les Miserables" just made my day. It doesn't matter how many times I read this sentence, it just makes me laugh! Hmmm...perhaps then I can feel a bit less guilty about the time I was too sleepy to brush my teeth before bed. Still laughing here.

And, as a side note, I am typing this while listening to the chapter after the one in which this quote occured, and...causing me to laugh even more...in my half conscious listening I heard the volunteer read the word "lugubrious". I am sure that Victor Hugo had not intended his 5 volume masterpiece to be a work of humor or comedy, but it sure does give me a lot to laugh about while doing dishes and folding laundry. The worst part is that a good deal of my laughter follows the word "lugubrious" which is supposed to bring to mind something sad. Ah, Mr. Hugo, how can I ever thank you for the hours of amusement!

Oh, and just in case you haven't the time to research the context of the quote above, it is in a description of a particular convent in Paris where the nuns all have yellow teeth because brushing one's teeth is apparently very vain. :) Still laughing. It might be a full week before I can keep a straight face.

2011-09-20T19:38:00.000-04:00

Today my husband left his phone home by accident when he left for work.

I had forgotten how long his work day really is. I haven't stopped to think recently about how great a blessing it is to be able to send him messages during his lunch break, to tell him how much I love him, to hear about how work is going, to be able to feel like we are not really that far apart.

Hurry home my beloved.

I pray that I will never, never forget just how wonderful it is to be married to this amazing man.

2011-09-15T23:25:00.001-04:00

Hmmm. I did not realize when I began listening to Les Miserables that it was not just those eight books of 2 to 14 chapters. Those were, in fact, only the books in Volume 1. I am now listening to Volume 2. And I must say, book 1 of this volume is...not thrilling. At least not to me. But if you would like to hear an extremely in depth, and extremely subjective history of the Battle of Waterloo, this is the book for you.

And apparently the word "lugubrious" was the first thing that comes to Victor Hugo's mind when he picked up his pen. I'm pretty sure he somehow managed to work that one word into each chapter of each "book" of each volume of his famous story. But it is a prestigious sounding word to add to my volcabulary. If anyone were to ask me what I though of Les Miserables, I would tell them, without hesitation, that, "It is indeed a lugubrious tale!"

In other news, I do so miss my Dear Jason. Because of disastrous flooding in our area he had a few days off last week, and so they have worked him for the last 6 days straight, and of course, will have him working tomorrow and quite possibly through the weekend. I guess all those days with him here last week made me spoiled, and now I am feeling so deprived at only one day past a normal work week.

When I am seperated from my Prince Charming, I am afraid I am quite a lugubrious site! :)

2011-09-10T22:23:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Librivox, I am enjoying listening to a variety of different volunteers read "Les Miserables" aloud to me this evening while I do dishes.

And, thanks to a Marvelous and loving God who blessed me with a man so far beyond what I deserve, I enjoyed listening to Jason read O. Henry aloud to me the last two nights. I do so enjoy listening to Jason read. And O. Henry is such a great author that I can hardly wait to hear the next sentence.

The actual text of Les Miserables is quite long (divided into 8 "books" of 2-14 chapters each) and very, very wordy. I doubt I would make it very far reading it on my own, or doing anything more interesting than dishes while listening. But enjoying it this way is actually quite pleasant.

And, in other news, I began work on a "Thanksgiving Tree" today. I am so excited about it! I will have to post some pictures when it is closer to being completed. I have wanted for several years now to start a family tradition for Thanksgiving, but often forgot about it as the Christmas decorations began showing up...in August. But the Walmart in our town has not yet begun the Christmas aisle, and has not even played a single carol on the loud speakers, so fall actually has a chance to be fall here and not just "pre-Christmas". Of course, our Walmart is closing down on Tuesday and a brand new one opens across the street from it on Wednesday. So they will probably swing open their doors to the tune of "Santa Claus is coming to town..." Oh well, I will complete my tree before then and stake a claim in this house for Thanksgiving!

Be Fore-warned...

2011-07-01T17:49:00.000-04:00

This post contains harsh language.

Please know that these are simply statements of what I am learning/convicted about in my own life and are not intended as criticism of anyone besides myself.

That being said, I will now share with you a verse I just read:

Ezekiel 23:37 "They have committed both adultery and Murder-adultery by worshiping idols and murder by burning as sacrifices the children they bore to me."

I found that verse to be convicting because I was thinking recently about idolaty and what it looks like in my life, and about my role as a mother and how well I am doing (or not doing) in that role.

To talk about the idolatry for a second, I was thinking recently about WHY it was so hard to resist the idols of the old testament. What I realized kind of suprised me. I tend to think of the people of Abram's time as being like modern-day-me. I always thought they worshiped idols because they were bored or...naive. I forget that they were largely uneducated farmers.

According to the popular opinion of their day, there really was a god of fertility and a god of the sun and gods of...all sorts of things. Anyway, it was considered "good business sense" to worship and appease the gods. If you did not worship the sun god, and then your fields were flooded out, it was not really suprising to anyone around you. You should have known better. If you did not make a sacrifice to the fertility gods and then had no sons to work your fields or care for you in your old age, who would take pity on you? You asked for it.

And with life as hard as it was back then, I am sure they saw the worship of these gods as a legitimate necessity! And then along comes God, and calls a man called Abram to leave all of that behind. To trust and worship only one God and follow Him to places unknown. That would have been hard. Kind of like giving up a secure job with a retirement plan and medical insurance and following a Man from Galilee who says that he has no place to live but that the eternal rewards will be great.

So I have been thinking about all of the things that I worship without knowing it. And the funny thing is, I am as superstitious and uneducated about it as the people of Abram's day. I think that I will not be able to live without this computer right here, even though history is filled with stories of people who did just fine. I think that I must own an extensive wardrobe with things relatively up to date and appropriate for various occasions. I forget that peole have survived life with only two or three changes of clothes to their name. I think that our meals should have variety and ignore the fact that there are many places where people live relatively healthy lives with a steady diet of rice and vegetables. I feel a "need" to relax and watch movies and yet, people survived just fine before the motion picture industry came along. And for these simple pleasures I will strive and make sacrifices. I could spend more time caring for people. I could give more money to worthy forms of ministry, I could free up some thought and worry, but instead I will continue to worship these things. If I stopped what would become of me?

Oh, and about that other part of the verse, the morbid part about child sacrifice...certainly I would know better than to ever give my sweet child to be burned as a sacrifice to some imaginary deity!!! But do I? Oh reader! I have a gruesome confession! I have made myself believe that I am a deity! My little boy asks me to read one more book, but I am tired. He wants to be played with, but I am busy. He needs consistant correction and dedicated training in righteousness, but I am in a grumpy mood. And so his childhood burns away, one moment at a time, just twigs consumed by the raging fire of my selfishness. I tell him I love him, and then throw another chance to teach him what unconditional love looks like on the altar of ME when I become angry with him over some childish mistake.

Lord, when will I learn? When will I see You for who You really are and see the benefit of forsaking these idols to worship You?

Romans 5:5 "But people are counted as righteous, not because of their works but becasue of their faith in God who forgives sinners."

Please forgive me Lord. And begin to live through me so that my life will count for something.

2011-06-23T15:14:00.000-04:00

I am I, and nothing less,

not much more; not the best.

Saved by the Messiah,

and by Him blessed,

I am I and nothing less.

2011-01-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

Well, after an inexcusable absence I return to write again. And as I have said already that it was inexcusable, I will make no attempt to excuse it.

I will say however that God has an amusing way of making things all tie together nicely if you look from a far enough distance. I have, in someways, learned the things I was wishing I could learn when I last posted.

I bought myself a copy of that book that I mentioned last post, and it mostly sits on my shelf unused until I feel a need to disappear into a warm fairy land of cheerful flowers for a while, and then it is drawn from the shelf and I am swept away again.

But other books have come and gone since then. Some have impacted my life, some have not. Some 40 or 50 plus childrens' books have been read again and again to the delight of my little boy. Several good books have been read over my husbands shoulder. Several more have not been read, but experienced through his descriptions of what he learned from them. And some we read aloud together with a shared, "just one more chapter" glance as we notice the digital clock by our bed reading 4:30 am. We read the Lord of the Rings books this way. And the Hobbit. And I felt sad when we finished. They added something to my life. I know that that is silly. They are works of fiction. How can they make me live differently? And, (blasphemous as it sound) how can they make me read my Bible differently? I struggled with this briefly. I did not know how it made me read my Bible differently, but it did. I felt sure it should not make me read my Bible differently, but the fact remained that it did. And what is more, it made me enjoy my Bible more. It made me see it as more real. More important.

Finally, after much contemplation and several more books, and some good sermons, I realized why. It was because the books Tolkien wrote were about Adventures! and my husband and I are Christians. And Christ is our King. And our King has called us to an adventure. To serve Him, to live and die and fight for Him. To fight against evil and death, and to, with His power, have victory over it! And to think that my whole life I thought I was supposed to give up on romance and adventure stories! God has called us to live out the most dangerous, most beautiful, most breathtaking, True adventure story of them all!

Now, Jason and I have felt God leading us for some time now to let go of our "normal", of our safety net and our comfort zones and to begin to accept God's invitation to live an adventure. Several things have been a part of that leading. Obviously our personal Bible reading is an enormous part, but God has used other significant reminders along the way. One of these was the book "Evidence Not Seen" by Ruth Deibler Rose, Another is "Becoming A Vessel God Can Use" by Donna Partow, and yet another was the Voice of the Martyrs Newsletter. Probably the most life-changing influence was the "Bound With Them" conference that VOM offered in Lima, New York this past fall. More recently we read "Why Men Hate Going To Church" by David Murrow and "Radical" by David Platt.

At the end of his book, Mr. Platt challenges his readers to take part in an experiment. I will not detail it all here because you can read about it on his website. Anyway, Jason and I are trying to make that a "first step" on our adventure. We will likely be very imperfect as we start out, as we are very inexperienced at this sort of thing, but God has shown us time and again that He does not chose the strong, or the experienced, or the prepared ones. Instead He chooses to enable the weak ones to do His will and thereby He shows His great glory, wisdom, and strength. So we are content to muddle through this thing waiting on Him to show us what He can do.

2008-05-05T03:45:00.000-04:00

On Friday my husband and I drove out to my home town. It was the day the funeral home had chosen for my Grandmother's burial. I still have such a hard time believing that she is gone. We drove past the pond that Grandma would walk past everyday. Sometimes I used to join her on her hour-long daily walks. Those were great times. Those were time when I learned a lot. She would tell me stories, teach me songs, and listen to me. She would point out plants and tell me about how the sap lines worked that wound through the maple trees along the road. She always had such great stories about her life on the farm where she grew up. And she had an inexhaustable patience for listening to my rambling.

May Day was on Thursday. It is a rather obscure holiday, but to Grandma and I it was special. It was the day that I left flowers on her door step, knocked, and then ran way to hide. She always made a point of exclaiming about the flowers loud enough that I could hear her from my hiding place.

I decided to place some flowers on the grave on Friday in memory of our tradition. But in the end it just felt so empty. Bright flowers that the living woman would have loved, placed on a lifeless grave seemed so wrong. I bought some flowers for my mother and left them on her doorstep since she is the grandmother now. I think that seemed less out of place. A little one will have to take over the role of flower giver. And my mother will have to be the Grandma.

This evening, at work, I suddenly decided to look back at the earliest e-mails saved in my account. I don't delete them often, and I have had the account for years. I think this must be the first time in at least three or four years that I have even thought of looking back at what is saved the first few letters in the inbox. The second e-mail saved on my account is from my Grandpa. Somehow I had forgotten that he had ever e-mailed me. I read over the letter (dated 3-10-02) and several others I found from him. They were long letters full of accounts of the everyday life that used to be normal for them. It was such a treasure to find and to read. Grandpa doesn't even know who I am now most of the time. And Grandma is gone.

I told Grandpa on Friday that Jason and I are expecting. He probably did not remember the news ten minutes later. But he told me that he wished Grandma could have seen it. He told me that she would have loved it because she always loved babies. Oh how I wish the same. I wish I could have told her while she was still here. I wish I could know what she would have said.

2008-03-27T02:31:00.000-04:00

I have been reading a bit about the life, opinions, and writing of C. S. Lewis. and it has caused me to think.

And When All Is Said and Done...

2008-03-05T00:10:00.000-05:00

I found a book in the library the other day that fascinated me. It was the journal/sketch book of an Edwardian lady. She had filled the blank pages with elaborate and detailed sketches and watercolor illustrations of things she had found in her garden or of fairy tale creatures that caught her imagination. She recorded poems about the flowers and the seasons and the weather. I was enjoying myself immensely as I poured over the master pieces on each page. The animals she had sketched seemed so very life-like and the simple sentence-or-two descriptions of the days events or the current weather were so brief but captivating!

All of a sudden I felt a twinge of guilt at invading the privacy of her thoughts, of enjoying so much a book full of drawings and words meant only for her own amusement. I wondered briefly why her family would have allowed such a personal possession of her to have been published after her death. But then I thought about how glad I was that they had and of the fact that so much talent and time had been dedicated to the creation of those pages, it would have been a shame not to have shared them with the world...right?

It makes me think about what I am doing with who I am right now. Have I been investing in things that I will bury and hide and never share? Will all of my efforts be put toward the futile things that will end with my last breath when I die? "Vanity, all is vanity". I do hope I will accomplish a little something more.