road

each brick

a good intention;

desperate….

I reach

The destination

I seek.

I find a door

where I began this journey

at the very first brick I paved.

A sign

it says “only by me”

and I notice in the corner, a small

hand written add on

“with authenticity”.

as an infant, as a man.

I wonder, God, What is to be?

Why? I wonder, why choose me?

Dearest Father, Loving King,

I don’t know how to cope with these things.

Guidance, you ask?

Yes.

That would be nice,

Until then Lord, prayer is my vice.

I dream in your mighty hand, my God,

Of a day that will come to be…

I see in a distant future; a day in eternity.

I dream to know you, as you have known me.

I dream away worries  

I dream away tears;

I rest in an Unsettled Grace

you really are here.

Inside, there was a boy. He had been in his bed for three days. His leg… broken, and there was no way to fix it. Already, this missions group was aware of how they would come up short on this trip. Our American mentality makes us believe we can do all things, anything, anytime. Unfortunately, out of our element this doesn’t include anywhere…. here… you can check out the orphanage:

http://www.olivet.org/?page_id=138

They came back with stories for the church that sent them. Yes! They had done so much, but their hearts were filled with even more hope now than before they’d gone. I’ve spoken with missionaries before, and it always amazes me how they come back with a deeper sense of needing to help, and a higher credit limit of hope for the people who need it… They simply knew, they must do more. They MUST send medical supplies and personnel. Rumblings of Tables for Hope began:

http://www.olivet.org/?p=1167

That was where I became involved.  They are making a gourmet dinner and asked if I could help create the dessert.  Something fancy, something special. Those of you who read this blog know I’m up for crazy feats.

The dinner is June 2. I just can’t get this image of this boy out of my head.  I’m sure his leg has healed by now.  I find it so surreal that making 300 plus chocolates with decadent fillings will actually help this or any other child that lives across the world.

American lifestyles of the midwest mediocrity… meet Tables For Hope.

I know that this fundraiser needs to sell out…  So here I am… Doing more… I know you may not be reading from Fargo, or may not be able to attend, but please, consider contacting this church… Olivet Lutheran 701- 235- 6603 and ask how you too, can donate to the Tables For Hope event… it will change a child’s life.

A man I admired, loved and looked up to… a man I was convinced was sent by God himself was tortured and murdered in the street… and it seemed like everyone was OK with this?!?! How could I possibly stand up against the masses?

A man joined us… still reeling from our thoughts about the chaos… we shared with him, about the man who was just brutally killed. By the end of the day, my companion and I broke bread with the very man who had died.

I commonly hear people discuss about how shameful it was for Jesus’ disciples to deny him, to turn him over to authorities… but what about this journey back home? When I put myself into the position of watching the crucifixion, I can actually view with compassion that there really wasn’t much anyone could have done… besides the fact that it needed to happen to fulfill scripture.

I think what happens, now, after his death and resurrection, is more telling of the nature of the disciples…. and us. They had been witnesses to the greatest story to ever be told.  Would they go on to tell it? Would they be safe to tell it? Do you feel safe to share it?

“There comes a time when a woman needs to stop thinking about her looks and focus her energies on raising her children. This time comes at the moment of conception. A child needs a role model, not a supermodel.” ~Astrid Alauda

I don’t know if my Facebook friend was expecting a debate to emerge from a seemingly beautiful, heartfelt quote. The give and take rivaled right out of the gate, right at the strike of her ’enter’ button. The question became not about a woman’s committment to raising her children, but at the sentiment of whether we can still adequately care for ourselves as independent people, aside from our role as parents.

I am a woman with the up and down self-esteem of a teenage girl. I see the value of tending to our looks to boost how WE ‘perceive’ others are looking AT us… what THEY see… how I feel when I look in the mirror…

That in mind, nothing in life has boosted my self-esteem more than having two great kids that lovingly call me ‘Mommy’. The day I became the adult in a relationship (the pregnancy of my first-born) was the day I became more beautiful from the inside, and I haven’t stopped blossoming since.

*sigh*

I am, however, approaching the ripe middle age of 40 and blushingly admit that my self-esteem has taken another tumble in the adolescent ‘dumps’. I always wanted more children, I wanted to be further in my career, I want more money, I wanted to look and feel better than I do at this age. I wanted to be a more exciting person than a super nice, working class, suburban Mom.  Isn’t this something we are supposed to go through? 

I am not going to waste time wondering whether I’m normal or not. I am enjoying the extra self-care that these ‘middle age crisis’ feelings are driving me to do… makeovers, bubble baths, ditching the minivan and seducing my husband. I was guilty of losing myself in the love of my family, of that I have no regrets… I am guilty, as well, to taking a cannonball plunge into the pool of ‘self’. I will not regret that either.

If you are driving around town and see a middle-aged woman playing in the midst of the kids at the playground… don’t mind me… I’m just working on an ‘inner makeover’. There is a time to give beyond ourselves as parents. There is also a time, that being a role model means giving in to one’s self the idea that we can, indeed, reinvest continually throughout life. Kids, teenagers. adults, seniors… life is always as we perceive it. I am thinking it is important to keep several different lenses around in which to look through.

~~~~~~~~~     http://hotcocoaphoto.blogspot.com/~~~~~~~~~

    Now, when I hear about a ‘Lazarus’ experience, I have the tendency to think of it as a ‘sneak peek’ into Heaven.  As if God has this eternal blog for us to read and interpret what is to come.

                                                   ~ ~ ~

     The moment I met this kid, I knew. I knew he’d change my perception of eternity. I don’t know why, he wasn’t overly assuming in posture, didn’t exhibit special intelligence, but it was the way he treated people. He would swear and cuss every other word, yet somehow, in his own way, made the people in his life feel valued. He said words like ‘thank you’ and asked questions.

    One day, he looked at me… maybe it was ‘TO’ me… and said this mind altering sentence. “I don’t believe in God.” I’ve often wondered what made him say this to me, but what I do know, for some reason, this really  great kid was serious. He had obviously been through a lot, and I had to assume he was looking for a response of some kind, so I asked, “why?”

     I am guilty of surrounding myself with christians in my daily life. I love to hear heart-warming stories about people being ‘saved’… but what this kid had to share would be a cancer in mind from that day forward. You see, he died. He was in a very serious car accident and stopped breathing on the roadside while waiting for emergency services to show up. He literally had body parts slayed out next to him.

He died.

    I’d like to go on about bright white lights, beautiful sounding choirs and images of friends and family who had already passed, but for this kid… nothing…  Now, I believe in God. I believe He is faithful and follows through on his promises and I believe that He has marked a place we would call Heaven for each of us. But…

What do we do with a story such as this?

Everything about it is contrary to what I believe… or want to believe. Do I ‘unlearn’ all that I know of death? I’ve been on a ‘death bed’ and know that I can’t do this. I can’t throw away that awestruck wonder I feel when I witness something that can only come from God. I can’t ignore the hope I feel that in the promises kept by God are also promises yet to be fulfilled. so….

with that, I gotta say, I believe this kid.

I really do think he experienced nothingness on the side of that road. However, I must say I wonder what God did here. God works in all of us, believer’s or not, yet this actually pretty good kid was merely a product of his environment, an environment God made, yet was denied a sneak peek at heaven. Why? …and is it wrong to wonder?

I’m left to believe that some day, in some way, the fact that our paths have crossed will not be in vain. This experience has strengthened MY Faith, rather than fill my thoughts with doubt. I know what it means for me… at least in this moment… but what is the adequate response? Thank you God, for this gift of Faith…. now what?

the frozen road gently winding

a broken glimpse of snowy wind gusts

to grandma’s house, scenes we’re finding

rest my little ones

the fun will be had

a christmas trip we wander

good conversation

love does abide

in this, we all grow stronger

   Recently, I’m drawn to thoughts about God’s Promise to us. Christ. An all-encompassing thought or ideal that He, Himself, would come to mankind and continue to reveal who he is as the alpha, the omega…. and do it as a man, a god, and to do so with his very breath.

   The baseball (from part 2), written as a fictional story, relates to us all.  A belief. A thought. The idea that a baseball could be made even better. Sacred in the eyes of all baseball enthusiasts. That ball zinged the amazement of neighborhood boys, perhaps not a true story, but relational none the less. We all had our signed baseballs, our swedish meatballs, our epic sand castles. 

   All three were wonders of their time, their moment in history… then lost. I like the baseball story most because in the story Ray’s father signed it. It wasn’t what it was perceived to be in reality… it was so much more…

   I can’t imagine a father out there, that wouldn’t stand at the threshold of giving his child the best, most implausible gift ever, and then choose not to, knowing that it would eventually become what it really was. It would eventually be destroyed. Christ is kinda like that. Our father, God, came to us… knowing he would have die.

   Before you send me hate mail accusing me of heresy in saying that Christ isn’t what we perceive Him to be, hold on and let me finish.  I’m trying to tell you He Is So Much More!!! He IS the moment, the memory, the spark of amazement. He was breathed into existence by a God who knew Jesus’s body, that man who he would become, who would, indeed, die. Like a perfect sandcastle pounded back into the existence of a peaceful, serene beach… it was a castle, but so much more. Forever a part of the beach landscape. Grains of sand infinitely missplaced.

Oh… how He loves us. He created life, he transformed it, he lived it and made it eternal. It wasn’t enough to come as one man. God, you see, comes to us in fleeting, and tangible ways.  Sometimes, if you take a moment to step back you’ll find him in all the things that bring us together as one… a baseball, a sandcastle and an old swedish recipe. You can hide, ignore it, but he’s always, infinitely there for you.

  Ray (played by the actor Ray Romano) looks down at his baseball in disbelief when his father confesses that he, himself, signed Mickey Mantle’s name to it decades of years earlier.  As a kid, Ray in Everybody Loves Raymond sitcom, showed all his buddies his Mickey Mantle autographed baseball. He believed it to be more than what it was. His dad signed it himself when he couldn’t get Mickey Mantle to sign it for him. This episode takes us through Ray’s horror to find out his ball was fake, to reveal an even more endearing story that his father had practiced Mickey’s signature for hours to give his son the best gift a father ever could.

    This episode reveals itself to me at a time I’m considering all things permanent. What’s real. What isn’t. The older I become, the more I realize that perception is as tangible  as our material life.

   Perception is anchored by the stories that make them the reality to the believer.

   My Mom used to make the most melt in your mouth swedish meatballs every Christmas while growing up… ohhh… it never mattered what was under the tree.  Those meatballs were, and still are, what my family looks forward to every year. Mom used to boast how the recipe came from Sweden.  I assumed that meant with our ancestors.

   I made these meatballs for my in-law family this year, proudly sharing my Swedish heritage… to later find out that yes, the recipe is indeed Swedish, but wasn’t handed through my ancestral line as I once assumed.  You see, Mom had some correspondences with long-lost and estranged cousin’s/ family that still lived in Sweden some 30 years ago. 

Mom! You’re killing me here! It was such a great story!

   The meatballs aren’t from my family. Ray’s baseball wasn’t signed by Mickey Mantle. The sandcastle (from part one) wasn’t really a masterpiece.  None of these were what they were originally perceived to be. All three, however, delivered the same result….

              (to be continued…..)

   The sun began to hide itself behind the pine tree horizon to the west.  The air became just a few degrees cooler, releasing the stench of a dead fish decomposing in the slough just a hop, skip and jump away. None of us were concerned with that now, we were marvelling at my days work with thoughts of the campfire about to be built next.

   I waded into the cool lake up to my knees and turned around. I looked at this castle through sunburned eyes… and then at the kids surrounding it.  An 8-year-old freckle faced boy asked, “Is it done?”

   “Yes, It’s done,” I said. I knew this was a good one.  My personal best… the biggest… the most detail… I didn’t just build a sandcastle, I built a city. “What are you going to do now? Take a picture?” asked a little girl standing on the sand city’s doorstep.

  “No”, I said, “Now we’re going to destroy it.”

   Silence… One of the kids choked up an unbeliever’s, “What!?!?”

   “Yes… It’s time to destroy it.  Everyone, we’re all going to run in at the same time and flatten it!”  The kids didn’t believe me. They couldn’t conceive that after a days work, I would pulverize my results into the nothingness it came from. 

   You see, I knew. I grew up on this lake and knew that sand castles never last. They are never permanent.  I could take a picture, but the picture would never reflect what it took to make it.  A picture wouldn’t have captured my pride and it certainly wouldn’t have captured the awe in the faces of all the surrounding kids.  No. A picture wouldn’t capture this moment.  I would have to simply need to remember it.  This castle would represent my waning youth. 

   I took a mark’s stance in the water, let out a childhood howl and ran directly toward the center of the city and pushed the largest structure over.  I said to the kids, “C’mon! Come help!!!” With that, they all came running too, with pure joy on their faces! Sand flew three, four feet in the air, and within a few short minutes the castle was a beautiful, peaceful beach again.

   I knew at the time this was a beginning of a life lesson…. a lesson that would continue to play out in the lives around me….

                 (to be continued…..)