California Dreamin'

A Letter to My Son

Dear Stewart,

It was so good to talk to you last night.  What a day Christmas turned out to be.  I cried all the way to work, thinking that Christmas was supposed to be spent with family.  But I continued on to work and asked God to either “use” me or “teach” me something and that I would come away from work a different person.  Well, as always God didn’t fail me. 

When I worked on Christmas Eve, I kept asking all the patients if there was any chance of them going home for Christmas and most of them said they thought it was going to work out for them to be at home!  I then entered the room of this lady in the Oncology (cancer) ward.  After greeting her and making small talk, I asked her as the others if she was going to be able to be home from Christmas….with a sweet smile, she looked at me and said “Oh, sweetie, I’m not able to ever leave here, that is until I leave to go home to Heaven!”  I froze in my tracks and didn’t know what to say next….but I smiled at her and said, “Awe my sweet lady, then can you do me a favor?” She said, “Sure!”  “Will you tell my brother I said hello and miss him, when you get there?” I asked.  She smiled so sweetly and said, “I would be honored!”  I patted her arm and said “Merry Christmas”, she held my hand and said, “Merry Christmas to you! “ I walked out and closed the door….stood for a second and then just cried.  I looked to Heaven and inside said to God….thank you, I have been taught!

Then Christmas day my first tray was to a room of a 17 year old boy that was in a car wreck in September and he’s been in the hospital for three long months and went from not thinking he would live to speaking with his eyes and hands.  He is now starting to take in fluids besides the tube feedings and I told the boy and his dad that I have prayed often for him because I have been keeping track of him while I delivered his tube feedings each week.  The father told me thank you.  I said, “God is so faithful”….and his dad said to his son, “Can you give her a thumbs up?”  The boy slowly raised his hand and made a perfect thumbs up!  I left the room so thankful I had the option to leave and go home, where the boy has no idea when he will be able to return home…..

the day went on and I was becoming tired and so ready to be home.  But my last tray of the day was taken to the ICU floor where I entered and delivered a tray to this nearly 80 year old woman. Her husband was sitting on the couch covered up with a blanket, watching his wife.  I left the room to get a second tray and the nurse standing there told me “thanks for bringing up this tray”…I smiled and asked why it was so special.  She then told me that the man wouldn’t leave his wife’s room because he had to stay near her, while she was ill.  He hadn’t eaten in a very long time.  So this nurse called in a dinner to be served to him.  When I walked into the room with his tray, I sat it next to him on the couch and said, “I think this is for you, sir.  It’s exactly what I was given for lunch today and it tastes fantastic!” He looked up and me and just started to cry.  I walked away and could hardly see the door due to the tears in my eyes. I just had seen what true love was all about.  When I left the room, the nurse was crying and I was wiping tears and she said…”that’s why I work on Christmas!”   I walked down the hall and cried like a baby.  I had been shown so many things this Christmas and I felt I had been blessed beyond belief. 

I will never forget this Christmas because I was taught so many things.  I know if I ask God for anything, he is so faithful in doing just as I ask….but very seldom in the way I think it’s going to be.  When will I learn that “His ways are not my way"? Isaiah 55:8  (“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.)   

Well, Stewart, I’m going to close for now, but I wanted to share this verse with you because I’m trying to pray this for you and for me….2 Corinthians 10:5  “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. “ 

I love you Stewart, write when you can or call….. Mom :)

Happy Birthday Mom  ..... I love you!

My Little Piece of Heaven

My pink Christmas Tree which only belongs in my pink bed/reading room. 

A Prayer for my Grandchildren

Beautiful Music

Today my heart's cry is to have my life be nothing more than beautiful music to God's ears!!

Makes No Sense

I’ve been saturating myself in reading.  Reading God’s word, devotionals and anything C.S. Lewis has written and I can get my hands on and now A. W. Tozer.  I’m searching anything that will lead me to a clearer understanding of my faith.  For so much of my life, I’ve lived to please others at even the high cost of losing myself.  I broke about the year 2000.  It took me 5 years to completely fall apart and walk away from my family.  I then began a journey of about 6 years to go full circle.  Today, 12 years after having moved to Ossian and starting to watch my family fall apart before my eyes I’m sitting at Panara Bread eatery, somewhat confused and still in wonderment of where my life is going. 

This week some of the passages in “The Best of A.W. Tozer” have spoken deeply to my heart.  Below are just a few of the many that have made an impression on me.

·         Millions of professed believers talk as if He were real and act as if He were not.  And always our actual position is to be discovered by the way we act, not by the way we talk.

·         Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by it implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly (open to view: intended for display) seeking it.

·         For each of us the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God.  Health and wealth and friends and hiding places will all be swept away and we shall have only God.  To the man of pseudo (fake) faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain.

·         It would be tragedy indeed to come to the place where we have no other but God and find that we had not really been trusting God during the days of our earthly sojourn.  It would be better to invite God now to remove every false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether or not we actually trust Him. That is a harsh cure for our troubles, but it is a sure one. 

·         A discredited doctrine of a divided Christ being accepted in many religious circles goes like this: Christ is both Saviour and Lord.  A sinner may be saved by accepting Him as Saviour without yielding to Him as Lord.  The practical outworking of this doctrine is that the evangelist presents and the seeker accepts a divided Christ. The truth has been twisted to the point that we can believe on His saviourhood while rejecting His lordship.

·         Those who think poorly of God and well of themselves may chatter idly of “the deity within,” but the man who trembles before the high and lofty One that inhabited eternity, whose name is Holy, the man who knows the depth of his own sin, will detect a moral incongruity (non conformity) in the teaching that One so holy should dwell in the heart of one so vile.

·         He asks nothing but a pure heart and a single mind.

·         We learn that circumstances do not make men; it is their reaction to circumstances that determines what kind of men they will be.

·         I have long believed that a man who spurns/rejects the Christian faith outright is more respected before God and the heavenly powers than the man who pretends to religion but refuses to come under its total domination.  The first is an overt enemy, the second a false friend. 

·         But we must not get the impression that the Christian life is one continuous conflict, one unbroken irritating struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil.  A thousand times no.  The heart that learns to die with Christ soon knows the blessed experience of rising with Him, and all the world’s persecutions cannot still the high note of holy joy that springs up in the soul that has become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

·         Faith is not a substitute for moral conduct but a means toward it.  The tree does not serve in lieu of fruit but as an agent by which fruit is secured.  Fruit, not trees, is the end God has in mind in yonder orchard; so Christ-like conduct is the end of Christian faith.  To oppose faith to works is to make the fruit the enemy to the tree; yet that is exactly what we have managed to do.  And the consequences have been disastrous.

·         It is much easier to pray that a poor friend’s need may be supplied than to supply them.

That all being said, I sat this morning in another church service that has discouraged me to the point I’m thinking I will never find anywhere to settle into and connect with a church.  The church is so technical and cold.  I’ve visited 2 churches and not impressed with either one.  No one talks to you when you walk in.  I walk in look around and just find a seat.  No one approaches me to say hi….nothing.  Then I sit and look around and everyone is so cold.  Where is that love and closeness that Christ speaks about in the New Testament?   I think the New Testament church would be so confused by observing today’s church.  This morning’s “worship service” was more like sitting in a Las Vegas show….lights, orchestra, technical sounds and visuals…..I looked up at one point and asked within my heart ‘God, do you like this? Does this make you smile?’ I’m so confused.  What is church any way?  Why don’t I fit in any longer?  Am I damaged goods or have I built up a protection around my heart that is so thick that nothing proclaiming to be of ‘church’ can even penetrate through?  God get’s through to my thoughts and my heart.  I can read a promise in His Word and I start to rejoice ….but to sit in a service and coached on how to sing or worship just seems fake and manmade.  Will I ever think differently? I want so much to be obedient and I know God’s word says not to “forsake the gathering together” but why do I sense fakeness or loneliness when I’m supposed to be surrounded by something of God?  It makes no sense to me, at all.

Laundromat Nightmare

My Laundromat Nightmare

                Remember any dreams as a child? I do.  The one where I am sitting in class and the teacher calls on me to answer and as soon as she says my name the entire class breaks out in a loud roaring laughter?  I am paralyzed and can’t move because I wasn’t aware of any joke and I have no idea what prompted their outburst.  Looking around I find in horror that I am sitting in my skimpy baby doll pajamas?  I feel the blood drain from my face. I close my eyes praying it is all a bad dream.  Suddenly awaken to find myself in a cold sweat. I just pray that never happens in real life. 

                Well today I had a real life experience of my dream but it didn’t take place in a classroom, it took place in my Laundromat.  I’ve recently moved to a new town and know no one.  I’ve never had the luxury of using a Laundromat before because I’ve either owned or was supplied a pair while renting. I had to ask for direction and after locating the Laundromat confidently, I walked in without fear.  There were couples working on their laundry together and a few mothers with small children trying to fold clothes and chase their young.  I walked through the lines of washing machines to find three of them located together where I began loading baskets of sorted laundry.  I filled my washers and then walked to the coin changer.  Feeling pretty sure of myself, I felt I could accomplish this chore without any errors. The first machine was loaded with all whites, the second for lightly colored and the last one for everything dark.  I added detergent and fed each machine enough quarters to start.  I stood nearby at a folding table organizing and preparing the paperwork for a visit to the bank and post office when my laundry was completed.  The time passed quickly and within a short time all items were in their appropriate dryer.  Once the drying cycle began I lost myself in my book with my iPod playing some of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs. 

                The dryers began to slow and stop one by one.  I carefully, piece by piece began to fold and place each item in assigned basket.  It didn’t seem awkward at the time, but out of the first dryer came my delicate items that didn’t need as much time to dry as my towels and sweatpants.  Unaware of anyone near me, I began taking each item from the dryer and shaking any lint that may have attached itself for a free ride back to my place.  Then my nightmare began- I wasn’t aware of who was next to me because Stevie Nicks was telling me “You can go your own way”…. I glanced up and for the first time realized how just how many single men were doing their own laundry - ALONE.  I looked at my hands and saw I was carefully folding my lacy undergarments and several of the males were watching as I neatly matched each side together.  The heat that flushed my face stopped me cold.  I dropped my hands with my unmentionables inside of my laundry basket and froze.  I couldn’t believe I was lip sinking “you can go your own way” with Stevie and completely unaware that so many were seeing my personal items being carefully paraded  as if I were the only person enjoying my laundry time. 

                I couldn’t bring myself to look up, I turned down the music being pumping into my ears and I moved faster than even I thought possible; folding a portion of my clothes still damp.  Nothing eased my embarrassment.  I stood in unbelief – I had broken one of my mother’s rules “undergarments are to always be under!” 

                I finished as quickly as possible and cleared my area for the next side show to begin.  I still had enough wits about me to recheck all of my machines to make sure any single socks hadn’t been left behind.  I gathered my items and with head bowed, I made my exit from this personal stage of embarrassment.   Knowing the fear of wearing my pajamas in class was only a dream I use to dread, I now know how it feels to be singing and folding my panties for the world to enjoy. 

                Next stop – pricing a used washer and dryer for my new apartment!