Secret Hopes Shared

A European adventure awaits. Twenty-seven days of travel are ahead. New people, vistas, and experiences as well as old friends and familiar places.

Life is busy. There has been much preparation, and yet not enough. I would that there had been more reflection and prayer in anticipation of what He wants to do. Thankfully He hears our every whispered longing and desire. While it's true that I am pleased - thrilled - with seeing Rhine's castles, Amsterdam's gardens, and Spain's antiquities, I am that much more thrilled about friends to be found - old and new. There is a reconnection that will happen and a strengthening of His people, an enlarging of His kingdom awaits us. These are the things that have totally captured my heart and filled me with rapt anticipation. It is this that I whisper to Him, who hears my every thought, all through the day:

Lord, let us bring a blessing to these people. Let us be used by You to love, encourage, impart, and build. May Your kingdom come as we go in Your Name. May we bring something great to them. May we bring You, Your love, and Your Word. Amen.

I will write soon about a special young man, his role in my life, and God's joining of two nations. We met briefly long ago, yet he is the inspiration for our time in Germany. His simple words, shared then out of a genuine heart of appreciation, have touched me over and over again. He was 17. We will at long last meet again on Thursday. He is 43. How amazing.

Soon. Yes, I will write of him soon. For now, I must get back to the packing and last minute cleaning. And the whispered prayers to the God I serve.

A Life Script

We like to think that life will work out peachy keen. And for plenty of folks, it starts out that way, and continues on that way for a good while.

Eventually things go wrong. Bad things enter the picture: hurts, broken relationships, health issues, financial troubles, destructive addictions. Or simpler things like jealousy, frustration, discouragement, discontentment, or unkind words coming out of my mouth.

Whenever I try to imagine just living a pleasant life, pondering the possibility of such a thing and how nice it could be and how maybe it really could work to have a clean new car to drive to happy community events and freshly mowed yards around tidy gardens and happily playing children out on that mowed yard with smiling faces wearing their simple but designer clothes and warm fuzzies at every bedtime following that delicious gourmet dinner I prepared while hubby gave said children baths - you know, going for the classic average American thing like we see on magazine covers, in storybooks, on the big screen - I come to terms with one constant problem: me. Maybe none of the rest of the people who try to live that life have that to contend with - well, I know most of them don't have "me" in their equation - but "me" in particular is a reference to my propensity to mess up, to harbor hurts, to pass judgment, to be negative, to be selfish. From what I've learned they simply have a different "me" with different problems, if they are honest.

So the house of cards comes crashing down. The Truman Show unravels. The car gets old and crumby and smelly, the designer clothes are dirty and mismatched and the arguing children are no longer smiling, the yard gets crabgrass and the flower beds are weedy, bedtime finds us tired and grumpy after a thrown together meal shared by an unhappy mother and father who can't agree on what to do about the grumpy kids. "Me" has arrived, and maybe "you" have, too.

Enter stage right: self-help books, excuses from well-meaning friends, New Year's resolutions, professional counseling ala Dr. Phil and Oprah, and maybe a decision to cash this one in and start again. Only problem?

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein

So you decide to try something different. Live off the grid maybe. Or move to downtown Manhattan. Or across the country. Get a new job, a new spouse (or maybe skip the actual spouse thing and try something really new), new clothes, new hair color. You can get a lot of new things, but you can't seem to lose the "me" factor: grumpiness emerges, unkind words are eventually leaking out again, depression sits on your shoulder, insecurities make you jealous. Whatever. You discover that it's the same thing over and over again. And the results aren't different.

So what's behind left wing curtain, waiting to come onstage? You know you need more than a change on the outside. You need to make life work as it is, because no matter where you go or how you dress or what you do with your talents on the outside, it's the inner man that is the plaguing trouble.

Once upon a time all those nagging things that are a part of "me" were called sin. In God's book, they still are. And He has an antidote - Jesus, His death, the acceptance of His love and mercy and help. And His Holy Spirit empowers us to be changed - a real change, not an outward makeover. He changes my very heart.

My heart needs help. Every day. In Him I find real change and hope. Whether the yard is mowed or not.

I Will Bore You With My List

You know it's been busy when you don't even realize you haven't posted. Huh...

It's been a full week of special meetings, school, counseling, meeting folks, shopping, and pizza partying. But now I've moved on.

In ten days, four of us fly to Europe to begin a month long adventure of travel and service. Ten days. So I've begun in earnest to make lists, shop locally and online, contemplate needs, and make new lists. My goal is to pack light - so light that nothing will need to be checked, at least for the inter-continental flight. We do have a flight from Frankfurt to Madrid that only allows one carry-on: a single personal item. So we will need to check a bag for that leg of the journey. Hopefully nothing will get lost during that simple excursion!

I like the challenge. (Many people consider packing in a carry-on for a month of travel a challenge.) I LOVE the challenge. Hmmm. Let's see here. Put together outfits for 7 days, then do laundry in Germany. Repeat the process three times in Madrid, and arrive home with clean clothes to unpack. Hopefully. Whew.

My list so far?

• cosmetics
• meds
• Ralph Lauren blue and beige knit dress (I found it yesterday at TJMaxx -- perfect for travel!)
• Linen lightweight jacket, beige (This rolls up nice and small.)
• Medium blue twill jacket
• Navy, beige, and salmon flowered top
• Limited 917 skinny jeans
• Navy georgette skirt
• Primary colored floral patterned gauze skirt
• Yellow patterned T-shirt
• Navy T-shirt
• White T-shirt
• Rust colored embroidered sleeveless top
• Peter Pan collared cream colored sleeveless shell trimmed with pearls (quite a dressy touch)
• lingerie (I will spare you the details)
• Navy peek-toe flats
• Beige comfort sandals
• Cobalt blue gladiator style sandals
• a scarf or two, a few necklaces

I will wear several of these for travel - the jeans, a top or two layered, and the twill jacket. The rest should readily fit in my gorgeous leather carry-on size dufflebag (a Christmas gift from the kiddos.)

I have lists for Rick and Merrick as well, but Camilla is on her own. Poor girl. It's tough to travel light when you are 16, don't you think? It can seem a bit boring. But I find it challenging and a bit fun!

Another Garden Lesson

I mentioned to him that I needed to head out to my garden and get after that spring phlox, the wild variety.

"You could just let it all go. You know, you get that Victorian garden effect."

"Oh," I chortled, "that Victorian garden effect is actually quite studied and planned. It is not a free for all. If I don't remove the excessively aggressive stuff, it will choke out the others and soon I will have predominately spring phlox and nothing else. No other color, no other size. The delicate will be trampled, the less pushy types will be swallowed up. It won't look pretty at all."

As I spent the next hour digging I found greater evidence of that very truth. In the midst of the carpet of a grassy-leaved white flower bearing plant several spring phlox were pushing through. Now - I have hopes of someday splitting that carpeted mass and sharing it with daughters. But I would never do so if I thought a single root of this phlox was present. So I will now need to cut out large portions of the good in order to be sure to rid the mass of the bad. And I best do it soon, or there will not be any uncontaminated good left at all.

It is popular to think that a truly Christian church is a place of great liberty where anything goes. We like to think that our Christian walk allows us great liberty as well. But as I considered my garden dilemma I realized, too, that God has called some things sin and some things holy. We should not tolerate ALL things, and we should take note of what is not good, to eliminate such things, lest they crowd out, trample, and overcome the good, the delicate.

Just like that wild Victorian cottage garden is actually carefully planned, so is true liberty. If chaos reigns, you can be sure that true and just liberty will not be found.

A Title

The God of Hope. That's His name in the book of Romans. His -- Jesus, that is.

"Kinda like the sign over His desk," is how the preacher man put it. "You know, a title, a job description. The God of Hope."

"You lookin' for hope?" He says. "You've come to the right place. We specialize in Hope here."

Now if that's not great news, I don't know what is. We all need hope. We all do better with hope. We all give up without it.

Jesus Christ. He is The God of Hope. Romans 15.13. Check it out for yourselves.