#9 - A Remembered Promise

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. --Joel 2:25

I kinda went crazy when my daughter got married fifteen or more years ago. My marriage to her father had been one of disappointment and heartache. I found myself spending hours outdoors in my garden the week before the wedding, crying, weeding, transplanting, fertilizing.

Three days before the wedding I started shopping for pretty jewelry. I didn't know why; I'd never had any. I lost my credit card. I switched to my check book and came home having spent money I didn't have to a pile of yet more telegrams and phone messages from my daughter's father. The back story on this isn't pretty, and my spirit broke in the ugly face of the terrible, haunting marriage that had been mine. My sixteen-year-old son came home and found me curled up under his baby blankie, crying.

I blubbered out what I'd done. He sat with me on my bed while I showed him all the jewelry, the bracelets and rings, the necklaces--the pearls and diamonds and precious stones. A single mother with three children, this was lunacy.

"I think I know what you're doing here," said my sixteen-year-old at last. "I think you're buying yourself the nice things he never did."

I stared at him. That's exactly what I'd been doing.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "We're going to take all this back to the stores tomorrow, and I promise to someday buy you a pretty ring."

Blake's promise touched me deeply. But the years went on.

At Thanksgiving, he called and asked for advice on a ring for his girlfriend. What kind of stones? Color of gold? Wide band? Thin? I could only offer what I liked. "When are you going to pop the question?" I asked.

"I don't know yet."

Christmas came. Blake handed me a large box. Inside was a lot of newspaper and, what's this? A ring box? I felt the instant sting of tears. I glanced to Blake. He was smiling. I flipped the velvet lid--and saw  the prettiest diamond and emerald ring ever. My breath caught. I could not breathe. I couldn't. The tears leaked. Still I couldn't breathe. Finally, I whispered, "You remembered."

"Yes, Mum, I remembered."

His dad had been a selfish man who resented me even the basics. I look back and can't believe I lived in such barrenness. The gift this Christmas was not the ring; the gift was Blake's remembered promise given as a teenager but which he never forgot. Surely this kind of love and generosity makes up for all the years the locusts ate.

Dear Lord: Sometimes when you make it up to us, we get far and above what we ever expected. Thank you.

#8 - A Gift Unexpected, Request For Forgiveness

Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”—Mark 2:6-7 (RSV)

Gwen LaVelle

When I was divorced in 1982, I needed the love and support of my old high school youth group leaders. I hadn’t seen Jeff and Gwen in years and was living in another state, but when I contacted them I was in for a rude awakening. Their harsh condemnation was crushing and for years I carried a deep sense of grief and loss.

In 2008 I returned to Arizona for the first time in 36 years. A friend told me Gwen wanted to see me. I was surprised—and not that sure I wanted to see her. But how could I not?

Waiting for her at my friend Carol’s house, I paced the floor. I'd determined I wasn't going to let the loss pass without comment, but I wasn't sure how to handle it. I'd never stopped loving Gwen and her condemnation was a badly healed wound.

To my surprise, Gwen came up the walk and gave me her beautiful smile, a smile I've never forgotten and which has returned to me over the years in the most unexpected moments. She gave me a well-remembered hug, too; and before I could catch my breath she gave me a warm and weepy apology.

Me 2008

Her condemnation, she explained, had been bothering her for years, and she'd prayed for years that God would give her an opportunity to tell me just how how sorry she was. “I was young," she said. "I was stupid, I followed the script. Will you forgive me?"

Forgive Gwen? Refuse a gift I never expected? Sometimes forgiveness is sooo easy.

Prayer: Thank you for never forgetting the barrenness of our grief and loss, and sometimes allowing restoration to that which was lost through forgiveness born of you.

#7 - Pure and Faultless

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress. --James 1:27 NIV

Leika, Loving Life!

Once upon a time a little girl lost her mother in childbirth. Then her father in Haiti's earthquake. And then her  granny took her to the orphanage, and she lost the last member of her family. Her name is Leika. She is my newest granddaughter. Finally, after three-and-a-half years of Haitian paperwork, seven-year-old Leika is finally home with her "forever" family.

My daughter and son-in-law went the end of January to get her, a little girl with so much loss: mother, father, granny, home, language, culture, weather, friends, caretakers. I haven't met this castaway yet; she has to first learn who her new family is, her now home, her new siblings, everything new. And then I can.

Until then, Heather and Dallas give a daily report on Facebook. Daily I check the updates. She's taking all things in stride. She met her first escalator at the airport in Port au Prince. She loved it. Up and down, up and down. She met her new big brothers (Rome, 12; Kodi, 10) at the escalator in Seattle. "Go!" said her parents. Up and down on the escalator three siblings bonded. Once "home," it became apparent she loves the outdoors--oblivious to the cold, playing for hours at the pond, on the trampoline, in the swing. She's funny. She's smart. She's a total tomboy. She and her big brothers are hitting it off to the point she won't sleep in her own pretty pink room but on the floor with Rome and Kodi in theirs.

Someday they'll start bickering as all sibling do and someday Heather and Dallas may even wonder why they ever did such a thing. But this I know. Taking on an orphan is pure and faultless before God, an everlasting responsibility with its own reward.

#6 - Hot Lava! Living With Anxiety

Phil, Heather, Blake
when Hot Lava was big!

When my boys were little, they had a game they called “Hot Lava!” They spread every towel we owned all over the house and leapt from one to another—safety zones in the hot lava flowing through the rooms and down the hall. 

Twenty-five years later, their wonderful game became in my struggle to find consistent work. Only it’s not fun. For six years I've been leaping from towel to towel, part-time job to temporary job, unable to linger comfortably, poised for the next jump, always looking ahead while looking back. The longer I go without permanent work, the less likely it'll ever happen. Depression dominates my little game of "Hot Lava."

I’ve been writing a great deal about how God has kept me more or less solvent the last six years, providing much-needed “safety-zone” towels of summer jobs upon which to land. He’s even provided adventure along the way and moments of peace. For this I’m grateful.

But as I begin another winter scrounging for seasonal work in Alaska or the Yukon, familiar anxiety builds. Can I find work? If so, will I find housing? In both Alaska and the Yukon, affordable housing is nonexistent. The stress descends and I find myself physically and emotionally taxed. I know I can’t keep this up. The anxiety is killing me.

But unlike the boys who folded up the towels and put them away when they grew weary of the game, I have to keep playing. It's February and real work is forthcoming so I'm back to embracing seasonal employment in the Far North. 

Is it possible to keep playing Hot Lava without the worry? If I could manage it,  I might even enjoy it the ever-changing scenery.

At Christmas, my daughter gave me a devotional book by Sarah Young. She suffers chronic issues of her own. Her short daily devotionals are not take-away points gleaned from easy living with the occasional bump—but rise from a space of unrelenting stress. ah, ha! She’s found a way to jump from towel to towel without the anxiety. According to an interview she did for Christianity Today, she simply sits and listens. Jesus, she says, is calling. He wants to talk to us.

“Walk by faith, not by sight,” He says. “I am with you, watching over you. Turn your thoughts to me, don’t jump ahead. Rest in Me today. Trust Me absolutely. You can only find me in the present.”

What if I quit looking for God in the past, the hot lava of rolling toward me with pending doom? What if I stop searching for safe landing up ahead? Can I really trust Him for the future, without looking where to jump in get myself another five months of financial survival? 

What if I simply look for Him where I am today? Will I find Jesus here?

There is no end to the anxiety for "women of certain age" find themselves constantly looking for full time work paying a livable wage. Help me to relax, and just take one step at a time instead of leaping forward in panic.