BLACK OR WHITE?

Just when you think things cannot get more divisive, they do. 

As recent events in our country erupt, I watch black Americans and white Americans shoot, one to another, and I struggle to respond, not react.

 As a Christian, I know I am an alien in a foreign country (Hebrews 11).  I know that unity is the answer; love heals all; and that what I see in front of me,

Is not it!

Can I solve the myriad of problems we see unfold?

No.

Can I be honest about my own reactions?

Yes.

In an inter-racial event last summer, my own prejudices grabbed me, and exposed a naked ugliness that exploded from the nooks and crannies of my heart.  Surprised me.  Why?

Because if you had asked me prior to the incident, my answer to “Are you prejudiced?” would be, “No!”

Reflection upon that answer alone embarrasses me.  The pride, the glibness, and more to the point,

The unknowing of my own heart.

Jeremy (not his real name) changed my unknowing, to a painful knowing.   The scene?  My neighborhood last summer, hot, humid, Friday evening.  I partnered with a team, two African-Americans who focused on the black community – the program, tagged 11:45, purposed teams who consistently “showed up” to be a solution, a listening ear, a hug, a prayer.

We wore chartreuse tee-shirts, and walked the area every Friday night during the summer.

Most of you know, I am white, a senior, and – well to be honest, not much in tune with what I witnessed that summer.

My journal began to foreshadow my true feelings, “I feel invisible during these walks, and I don’t like being invisible!” But wait!  It gets worse.

Jeremy’s apartment building set the scene – kids playing in the parking lot, the hot concrete their only playground on that hot night –T.V.’s blaring through windows with no screens, and adults hanging out windows to catch a breeze.  Jeremy approached our team immediately, his conversation grew more heated as his evident anger increased, and he shouted, “This god-forsaken neighborhood, I am sick and tired of those blankety-blank no-goods taking over my neighborhood and sending me to this white slum!”

A push-me-over-the-cliff moment!  My own anger rose, I clenched my fists, I felt short of breath, and I knew without a doubt that I could have, WOULD have thrown a punch, had a pastor not been by my side (and probably praying!) My thoughts, crystal clear, screamed “Then get out you dirty rotten scoundrel.  This is my neighborhood, and I don’t like the likes of you in this place!”

A come-to-Jesus moment.

I wish I could report that instantly I saw the error of my own prejudice.  I didn’t.  That MY neighborhood indeed was NOT MINE!

Over the next months, I journaled, sat with those on my team, confessed my true feeling, submitted my resignation to the team (they refused, and loved me into staying), and talked much with my black friends about my own feelings, confused.

My journals are rich with our conversations – and perhaps they will find their way into a deeper essay.  But as I recognized my own predilections based upon my own experiences, I owned them.  I see that as a white person, I can never fully empathize with a black person’s pain, induced in a society where I am in the majority. I can understand that I don’t understand.

 Cultural differences are real, but the richness all the more evident as connections are forged.  I will end with a quotation of a good friend whose response to our dialogues sums up my heart as well.

“The default in this country is white.  There’s food and ethnic food, there’s history and black history.  I will know this country has truly made progress when history includes all history.  Right now all folks need to acknowledge and appreciate and COMPREHEND (italics mine) the value in the differences and diversity of people.”

I, personally, am on a new journey.  I have work to do. 

But God.

 -

Big Girl Pants

What happens when you wait on and listen to God?

Well, He is eager to give you His side of the story.

On many things . . . .
    How much He loves you
    Where to focus prayer
    How He is ordering your day and your steps
    AND, where He wants you to focus your time and energy during specific seasons

Such is the case with me this season after heading for the hills last year to “re-group, readjust, reassess.”  The 3 R's.

And after I spent some time freeing my schedule, and slashing good things (notice GOOD things) from my calendar, I tried to lurch into the reassessing stage.

HOLD ON, NOT SO FAST!  saith the Lord.  The white correction ink had barely dried from the erasures on my calendar, when the phone fell silent. To wit: my days went from busy and long to silent and long. With those silent and long days came some anxiety, boredom, frustration (What is the deal here, Lord?), and I found myself wandering aimlessly around the house and then the streets.  Suddenly on the way to the grocery store one day, I discovered a new treasure.

Peace.

I almost heard the Lord sigh as if to say, "Ah, now we can talk!"

My quest to peace didn't end there.  Then and only then did the Lord talk to me about what He wanted me to do this season – write. “Your heart, your soul, your mind to your pen, and your pen to your paper.”

For those who know me, I have spent better than 50 years speaking my heart, my mind, and my soul.  It took the Lord more than a few years to shut me up!  Now that He has shut me up, He wants me to open up again, this time with the written word.

Isn't that just God though!!!

Now, I have no idea -- NONE -- as to what to write.

Starting this blog I believe was like sitting down to a piano after years of not playing -- practicing scales, stumbling over notes, establishing habits and patterns.  Though it was spotty at best, I did manage to establish a rhythm and garner a few followers.

So thank you followers!

But when I signed up for a writer's class and a critique group last month for the first time in 20 years, and assignments started coming down, I realized that to write one's heart, one's mind, and one's soul takes what we resist in order to bear the fruit,

work and the time to do that work.

I've been resisting -- but when faced with my first writing assignment in a very long time, I realized that I have grown. I did not want to write what had begun to come more easily -- my blog, or my journals. I wanted to stretch!

So, I dusted off a novel which has been shelved for 20 years, rewrote parts of it, took a deep breath, and laid it upon the altar of the critique group to sock it to me!

I lived through it!  Most of all I learned what I learned from waiting on God -- this is a process.  He does want me to write, but why?  Who knows!!!  Every writer fears just about everything there is to fear in facing a blank page.  And more.  But I stepped over the comfort of familiar.  And the unfamiliar -- when I took the first step, was whoa!  OUT THERE!

So, for me, what is out there now, will not be out there six months from now if I continue "practicing." What I know now, is that God is with me in this venture, and if He wants me to write, then, I best do it.  Fearful as I am, this round, I put my big girl pants on, and took a step to the next level of being a big girl. And for now,

that feels really good.

Moving! It takes a Village!

Moving!  It takes a Village!

Call these times crazy, call me crazy, but what I know is that --

In these times when decisions come at me hot and heavy, and the gray matter leaves with the same intensity, I NEED THE PEOPLE AROUND ME!

Once again in my current life challenge, I am aware that IT TAKES A VILLAGE!  To wit:  my adult son Tony is moving in with us this weekend.  Life has thrown him a curve ball or two in the past year, and we all bit the bullet, took a deep breath, and said "We can do this!"

Everyone who moves knows in their BONES the agony of sorting, boxing, selling, lifting, breaking, tired beyond reason, and while I have not had to go through all of that -- I've faced the spatial dynamics of moving, squeezing, bloodletting stuff, and waving down strangers in the street to make a home for all of my house plants, saying good-bye to china I never use, and

downsized again in the house 1/3 the size of the house we moved out of when we downsized the first time.  REALLY?

Because -- WHERE DID I GET ALL OF THIS STUFF? And, someone is moving in here?
My God in heaven!  Help!

After sweat, blood and tears, albeit with much prayer, today, I look at my now empty office--- 18 shelves cleaned out, files, oh dear God in heaven help me sweet Jesus!, 13 years of Mary Kay inventory relocated, desks, journals, stacks of paper of my half-finished novel, 137 pens, two boxes of envelopes left over from the depression, three boxes of stationery begging for one of those pens to hit the paper, and not a few tears.

My sweet friends are praying, really praying because they know me, they know Tony, they know Brian, and they know this will be a new journey for all of us.

My dear neighbors are rooting for us, because in one way or another, they've been through this journey, and another is storing the treasures ready to go somewhere else in his garage.  It takes a village.

My cat and dog are nervously eyeing the piles of boxes, and desks, and computer monitors suddenly appearing in the dining room -- home of my new office. 

Well, no more dinner parties for awhile.  But another team of dear ones are the event planners anyway -- threw a birthday party for me last summer to end all birthday parties.  In short, not my strong suit, but I am blessed by theirs.  It takes a village.

I strode into the room just emptied -  I said a prayer, cried a few tears at the life lived in that room, at the gifts the Lord had given me in that space, took a deep breath, and smiled.

Register me ready.  For the journey ahead.  For more life to be lived.  For more lessons to be learned.  Yes, Yes, the process of sifting, shifting, is moving to stabilizing --

the next season of our lives.  Thank you Lord.  Thank you.

 

Sacred Tea Time with My Friend Kathleen

Recently another writer friend and I shared tea -- difference was that:

It was my morning, her evening
Rain pelted on my window and snow fell quietly in her yard
My house cleaner speaks English -- hers does not
My doctor is in the neighborhood - hers is in a major city four hours away

You might have guessed by now that this is a friend of mine who is in another country.

Skype is our best friend right now.  Truth is that a year ago, she had a health crisis which scared us both.  Most of you know by now, that I am on the back roads when it comes to technology. She is not.  Thinking that she did not have much time left, she pleaded with me to get onto Skype.

My husband bought me a new computer for my birthday last year and set me up again with Skype. I have had it in the past, but computer issues rendered it useless until now. 

So now we meet for "tea" every Tuesday morning.  God has given us sacred time.

Our sacred time.

She is the one who insisted on traversing to England as a missionary, married an Englishman after many years serving in England, and don't ask me the story, ended up in Latvia, first on a sheep farm where they built a chapel on their land, and then as Kathleen's health got worse, moved to a home in a small Latvian village.

We have been good friends, closer than sisters, for 25 years. Talking through e-mails, snail mail, long-distance (not cheap!) then cell phones.  We didn't do homing pigeons. All in all, we have only been in the same country for four of those years.

 But God.

When my husband and I lost everything in the recession 15 years ago and Brian struck out in an 18-wheeler to scrape together anything that resembled money, I stayed behind in our family home of 28 years, packing, crying, waiting for the big bad wolves to repossess our home.

Play the violins, it was Christmas.  Kathleen, God only knows how, flew into Portland to console me.  First thing she insisted was that we put up a Christmas tree amidst piled up boxes, and pregnant sadness everywhere. 

Really!!! ?????  I asked.   A gleam in her eye, she took me by the hand.  (She adores Christmas).  Like a trooper possessed, we picked out a tree, bigger than we really could handle, managed to erect it, decorate it, and ignored the fact that it listed perilously to the left.

We bought Christmas socks,  a favorite tradition of hers.  She loves Christmas socks! We had Christmas dinner for those close to us, we prayed for Brian as he took his 18-wheeler through New York City on Christmas Day,  we attended a Christmas luncheon honored as guests of Luis Palau (don't ask), and she held me in her arms many times as I cried over my uncertain future.

I traveled to England several years later when an intercessor friend footed my travel expenses with the exclamation, "You've been called to England!"

Indeed!

A golden time of ministry and friendship; a golden time of gathering with English pastors, intercessors, saints warring against impinging terrorism, as was the U.S. shortly after 9/11.  It was still a time when allies stood together, as did brothers and sisters of the Lord and we all felt God's presence as we lived those glorious three weeks.  Prayers flew across the pond to my husband and son, still struggling to regain stability during the recession.

As is always true, sisters don't always see eye to eye.

We've had those times too.  Living in different countries doesn't always mean you skip over the hard parts.  You just navigate differently.

As writers, perhaps we look at life differently.  Sometimes more reverently. Sometimes with brutal honesty. Maybe because we are in the latter stages of our lives, continents apart, time is a very precious commodity. The gift?

Intimacy. Freedom. Love.

Loss is shared, hopes dashed, pain, physical and emotional, ejaculated into a plain of solidarity, and finally, laughter!  I am in her bedroom, because that is where she spends most of her time-- her dog jumps up and smiles in the screen; Gunther, my Australian shepherd, will have no part of it.  But my cat Maggie, spends much of her time walking across the screen, oblivious to the intimacy.

Ian, her Englishman husband, who I have met in person only once, is now more than a brother in the Lord.  In the last round of Kathleen's battles with her health, we met over Skype, cried, cried and cried some more, prayed and prayed some more.

Kathleen came home again, but in great pain.

This type of intimacy has its price.

I have watched my friend's physical pain, as she winces, as she puts on a brave face, as she bares her heart, questions and all.  She, too, has been there for me, as I have travailed through tremendous loss, different than hers, but intense. She was here  in the states to see my son Chris for the last time before his suicide --  again God's provision when she was not all that well.

But God.

We first met years ago when we were called to lead a ministry called "Heart to Heart."  Although she was physically challenged even then, she led a full life. We met in her apartment,  decorated with the special "Kathleen" touch (the girl has style), we shared a cup of tea, talking nonstop.  At once it was apparent we were kindred spirits.

We did what kindred spirits do! We bowed our heads to give ourselves to God and to "Heart to Heart."

And after lives of bumps and grinds, jubilation, hope, faith and prayer, wonderment and wondering,
we know the gift of heart to heart.

Truly and very truly, we can say  thank you! and"Amen."

PATIENCE

I am not sure if I want to pray for patience or not.

Most of us who pray know full well that if you pray for patience, you will have to enter the "Patience  is Required" Room.

Two aisles are evident as you enter this room, one that veers to the right, the other, to the left.

Hmm, which one to choose?

Some clues are evident.  The aisle to the left is cluttered with broken articles, chips of pottery, disjointed computer components, a rusted carburetor.  Farther down the aisle lie scattered pages of paper.  Strewn alongside are unfinished paintings, and violins with sprung strings.

Broken dreams perhaps?

The right aisle beckons.  The shards of pottery are fewer, there are still pages of paper, but they are stacked neatly and they are filled with words and musical notations.  Paintings propped on their easels have dried, magnificent in brilliant color, architectural drawings are rolled in perfect scrolls.
And at the end of the aisle, a newly-refurbished car stands clean and gleaming.

You, dear reader, know where I am going with this.

Impatience destroys.  It demands selfishly "My Way!" "My Time!"  It leaves behind unfinished business.

I almost fell victim to the unfinished business of impatience this very morning. Coffee in hand, I strove into my office with purpose and resolve.  I excitedly sat down to hammer out nuggets of wisdom. 

Alas, a battle ensued with Microsoft Windows 10. " My Way! My Time! " I cried.  "Nope!" sneered Windows 10.  "Not today!"  So I grappled, I tangled, I commanded, but to no avail. I muttered unwholesome words, and stormed out of my office, announcing to my dog, who was laying on the hearth in a dead sleep, "I AM THROWING THIS COMPUTER OUT!  I am not writing one word on this thing today!

Deep in the recesses of my technological angst a still small voice whispered, "But there are words today for you to write."

I took a deep breath, prayed "Help", and walked slowly back into my office. No nuggets of wisdom remained, nay, no excitement.

Ah, but a new resolve rose up inside of me. As I looked around, I realized I had entered the "Patience is Required Room." Had I taken the aisle to the right where patience has its say, where perseverance fuels active resolve?  I heaved a long sigh, wrote my piece and asked the One Who Knows how to navigate the technological challenge my new Windows 10 application posed.  Turns out in my resolve, I learned something new. (What a concept).

Mind you, the prose is not the beginning of the next great American novel.  But I won a battle with impatience.  I walked down the aisle to the right, and placed my page of words on the tall, neat stack in the "Patience is Required" Room.

For today, I ran the race, and patience won.  For today, that was enough.

MY OFFICE. A PLACE TO THINK?

To you who know me, and to date, that is all four of you who follow this blog, I am far from a linear thinker.  I am more serendipitous, which bleeds copiously into my lifestyle.

My office is certainly a reflection of wow, a cluttered mind?  Perish the thought!  My calendar is buried beneath trinkets, journals, old cards (uh oh, new cards!), library books, and reminders to book appointments, one for a colonoscopy and another for cleaning my teeth.  Care to guess which one I will book first?

My husband Brian, who is a very linear thinker, has built up the structure of my office -- shelves, two solid tables aligning the main desk, and a cabinet on the wall.  Stellar work!

But he will receive many crowns in heaven for being --

My computer guy.

Bearing the burden for many years, he set me up recently with a new laptop, believing his technical assistance calls may well be over, (at least for a while).

I, who began my writing career in college with a Royal typewriter, never grasped the confidence that I could make a go of it on the computer. But I stumbled along, singing a song, as Brian, with the patience of a saint, assisted me through various calamities.

I am absolutely certain, from the way he literally skipped out of my office after setting me up with this laptop, that he thought --

Well, that his work was done!

I felt hopeful too.  Up until,

I pushed another button telling Microsoft to Yes! Go Ahead! Advance me to Windows 10. As I was to discover, it was an "uh oh" moment."

"You did WHAT?!" His voice rose a few decibels. Quickly I discerned that this option was NOT a good thing.

We have been married for 35 years.  In this time, I have learned that at these critical junctures, I must come up with a LINEAR answer.

Truth is, the linear answer would have been that the cat strode over the keys of the computer to peer out the front window, and in my distraction, I did push the button. Doesn't Microsoft know what they are doing after all?

Linear or not, this did not appear at this critical juncture, to be the right thing to say.

Instead, I chose,

"I don't know."

His brow furrowed, he challenged, "Katy, I wish you would call me before you do these things."

(I am thinking, gosh, what things?)

Gratefully, I saw an out.  "I did try to call you, but your phone was off."  (I did try to call him to pick up a quart of milk on his way home.)  I handed him a cup of tea, and said, "Don't worry, I will call technical assistance tomorrow and work this out on my own.  You won't have to worry about a thing!"

I thought that was a pretty linear line. 

He took the cup of tea from me, sighed, and wandered back to my office.  Little did he know 14 more crowns would be coming his way.



 

LAYING LOW, GOING WITH THE FLOW

Last time I left you dear reader, I had grabbed a copy of Andrew Murray's WAITING ON GOD, my journal and my Bible. No GPS, no expectations, no agendas,  just to lay low, go with the flow.

I discovered, at a deeper level, to listen.

To be still.

To be all right with silence.  Lots of it.

I sat with pain.

I sat with restlessness.

I sat with guilt.  Shouldn't I be doing something?

I sat with anger that I was still grieving, that I didn't understand, and that this "feeling stuff" takes so much time!  Doesn't the Bible say not to let the sun go down on your anger?  Really?

I let myself wonder.  I let go of political correctness.  I went to the Lord to let Him do the transforming work.

I slept in.

I watched lots of Hallmark movies.

I read lots of books.

I didn't answer my phones always.

I deleted huge blocks of needless e-mails.  Whew!

I listened to my body.  Too stiff? Too hungry?  Too bored?  Too sleepy?

I took my Bible to quiet places, and spent hours on favorite passages, digging in with new ones.

I took note of all of the technical things I did not understand.  And after awhile, I acknowledged (begrudgingly) that I really yearned to know more, and took steps to learn.

I dared to get into my bathing suit at my heaviest weight, and go swimming in a public pool. Proud of myself.

Not so fast! Time to be humbled when I then forgot which guest locker was mine and stood, soaking wet, in the public lobby of the gym waiting for rescue. Made new friends as others, who experienced same dilemma, laughed with me, and patted me on my wet head.

I took long walks, and marveled at my dear joints for still moving.

I decided to be a big girl, joined a writing class, and wrote with abandon.

I allowed friends to love me in many, many ways.  I took time to embrace those wonderful gifts!

I let myself struggle over the surrender to God, of my son, of my husband, and of myself! This seemed easier when we were all younger!

I let myself speak my heart.

Often.

Was this floating in uncertainty a good thing? I decided to give myself permission not to know if it was or not.

But one day as I walked with my dog Gunther in the delicious heat of a summer day, I realized --

that I relished looking ahead again,

that perhaps the anger and fear of life that comes with grief,

might be ebbing away for awhile,
 
and that with all that comes with the chaos of loss,

new sprouts of fun and excitement again spring up in my soul,

I laughed at Gunther's yank on the leash as he lurched at a squirrel in our path, and understood --

that God had bestowed upon me, a wondrous vacation,  time and space to experience a new depth of living.

Thank you Jesus! 

When even in the midst of "life", we can receive the unexpected wonder of You!

The greatest gift of all measure.