So it's been six months since I've posted here. School, work, family, church and free time (what's that?) has been taking up all my time. But I was encouraged today in the least likely of places.
As usual, I spent the day in a mad rush, trying to get everything accomplished. I was in tears as I drove up to a school board meeting I had to cover for the paper. I have mid-terms to study for and I am more than a little behind in one subject. My daughter needs help studying and my husband and I never get any time together. I found myself wondering if it is all worth it. Admittedly, I let it all get to me at least once a week.
So I settled into my chair (they give me a real comfortable one to sit in and I'm always thankful for that). The chairman always reads a devotion and I usually look over the agenda during that time to see what's going on but today I listened.
He talked about perseverance and said that goals always come with a price. Today the devotion mentioned school. He read about long nights studying for exams, long hours working to pay for what doesn't come cheap, the sacrifices that must be made and the way to get through it all. Envision a goal and keep it in mind. Great explorers never see the obstacles, he said, they see the wide expanse before them and the prize at the end. Then he likened it to the race we run as Christians.
What a lesson. In the midst of my day (or evening by this time), God found me when I wasn't looking for him. He encouraged me even though I didn't approach him for encouragement.
Several times throughout these past couple of days this has happened. I wasn't listening for his voice at all (sadly enough) but I've heard it in the voices of friends, family and, more often than not, complete strangers. There's been a mix of admonition, encouragement and good old fashioned advice that people weren't even directing towards me, but it was there.
I wonder what I would have heard if I was actually listening.
Be still and know that I am God.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Home run!
This is a narrative that I wrote in creative writing class today. Thought I'd share it with you.
My favorite place when I was a child was the baseball field behind the church. The white building with the broken bell was nestled between two prominent foothills in my small Virginia town. My friends and I would sit with our parents in the austere wooden pews for the sermon. The preacher's voice would drone on about eternal fire and damnation and we'd be swinging our feet over the dusty wood floor, our eyes searching the outside world for a glimpse of the field we would play in after service. Every once in a while I would turn in my seat to look for my friends. My mother would tug so sharply at my ear, tears would come to my eyes and threaten to spill over from the pain.
When the benediction signaled the close of the service, us boys would scramble down the aisle of people who were waiting to shake hands with the pastor and tell him how encouraging it was to hear about the eternal fires of hell for the fourth Sunday running. We'd press between bodies and jettison out the red double doors and make a bee line for the field.
The bases were large pieces of slate and we had worn paths back and forth to each one. The field wasn't turf like they had at the golf course, but patches of crab grass scattered here and there with no apparent pattern at all. There was a tree right behind first base that Billy, our catcher, hid behind ever since Willy knocked out his two front teeth with a curve ball.
This was holy ground and we always made newcomers take off their shoes. Besides, it's easier to slide into third with bases loaded on that slick dirt when you're barefoot.
Our field was far enough away from the whitewashed church so we'd never broken any windows yet. Macon Haywood donated two stained glass windows last year with the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. The problem was we were Anabaptists and the congregation would have preferred depictions of John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey. They windows were prominently set to the left and right of the pulpit so the morning sun would make the colors dance all around the sanctuary right at ten o' clock when the singing started. The adults all said it lent a holy quality to Eunice's organ playing. I thought it sounded like a cat being gutted with a spoon.
Plaques with Macon's family name were put in right under the windows. "It was my money, and it should be my name on them," he said. "People should know who has the culture in this town."
The only culture we cared about was the stuff Josh Newsome brought to our game. He was a barefooted newcomer who looked to be almost six foot and only in the ninth grade. He was the son of a potato farmer and said to be a good hit. All the adults were serving food on the tables and we were in the bottom of the third with bases loaded and Josh was up at bat. Willy pitched his famous curve and Josh's bat connected with the ball and it went sailing over the field and crashed right through Macon's Virgin Mary, causing fragments of multi colored glass to explode in an array of midday fireworks.
Now one window is left shining brilliantly beside the pulpit and the other side is covered with plywood, waiting for Macon Haywood to have another bout of generosity.
My favorite place when I was a child was the baseball field behind the church. The white building with the broken bell was nestled between two prominent foothills in my small Virginia town. My friends and I would sit with our parents in the austere wooden pews for the sermon. The preacher's voice would drone on about eternal fire and damnation and we'd be swinging our feet over the dusty wood floor, our eyes searching the outside world for a glimpse of the field we would play in after service. Every once in a while I would turn in my seat to look for my friends. My mother would tug so sharply at my ear, tears would come to my eyes and threaten to spill over from the pain.
When the benediction signaled the close of the service, us boys would scramble down the aisle of people who were waiting to shake hands with the pastor and tell him how encouraging it was to hear about the eternal fires of hell for the fourth Sunday running. We'd press between bodies and jettison out the red double doors and make a bee line for the field.
The bases were large pieces of slate and we had worn paths back and forth to each one. The field wasn't turf like they had at the golf course, but patches of crab grass scattered here and there with no apparent pattern at all. There was a tree right behind first base that Billy, our catcher, hid behind ever since Willy knocked out his two front teeth with a curve ball.
This was holy ground and we always made newcomers take off their shoes. Besides, it's easier to slide into third with bases loaded on that slick dirt when you're barefoot.
Our field was far enough away from the whitewashed church so we'd never broken any windows yet. Macon Haywood donated two stained glass windows last year with the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. The problem was we were Anabaptists and the congregation would have preferred depictions of John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey. They windows were prominently set to the left and right of the pulpit so the morning sun would make the colors dance all around the sanctuary right at ten o' clock when the singing started. The adults all said it lent a holy quality to Eunice's organ playing. I thought it sounded like a cat being gutted with a spoon.
Plaques with Macon's family name were put in right under the windows. "It was my money, and it should be my name on them," he said. "People should know who has the culture in this town."
The only culture we cared about was the stuff Josh Newsome brought to our game. He was a barefooted newcomer who looked to be almost six foot and only in the ninth grade. He was the son of a potato farmer and said to be a good hit. All the adults were serving food on the tables and we were in the bottom of the third with bases loaded and Josh was up at bat. Willy pitched his famous curve and Josh's bat connected with the ball and it went sailing over the field and crashed right through Macon's Virgin Mary, causing fragments of multi colored glass to explode in an array of midday fireworks.
Now one window is left shining brilliantly beside the pulpit and the other side is covered with plywood, waiting for Macon Haywood to have another bout of generosity.
Friday, January 20, 2006
I have died and gone to heaven!
The day after I posted my previous blog, I got a job at our local newspaper as their education reporter. Talk about purpose on the tip of my tongue. I now have a job doing what I like to do. School this semester is wonderful too. I have six communications classes this semester: Creative Writing; English, Language and Linguists; Rhetoric; Writing, Criticism and Theory; C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (my favorite)and Editorial and Feature Writing.
This is my second semester at Pfeiffer University and friends I took classes with last semester were glad to see me again, and vice versa. It's great when someone walks out of there way to see me to class or to my car, or just goes to town for some coffee inbetween classes. My life has had more than its share of rough spots, and God has just been so incredibly good to me. I don't just love my husband anymore, I'm in love with him. Our daughter is the most wonderful girl I've ever met. She enjoys spending time with her mom and dad, likes making me breakfast on Saturday mornings, and her friends are part of our family. We are making friends with the parents of her friends, so the circle just keeps on growing.
I used to wait for the bottom to fall out when things got normal, and now I just enjoy life as it comes, with no fear of the future. I don't know how or when it happened, just realized it did. There's so much to do in life and just so little time to do it. So many things to write down, so many books to read, so many friends to spend time with.
Years ago, my brother gave me a plaque with a scripture on it that I read daily when things were tough. "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11. I have always kept it in a prominent place in our home so I would be reminded of the Lord's will for me every time I passed it. I believe in prophecy, in the ability to speak the word of God to someone and have it affect their life. Living words, words of hope and promise, words to encourage and lift up, edify and strengthen. I have to say thank you to him. Although it has a pretty frame and is calligraphied with vines of green and red, it's the words that have sustained me when I was too depressed to lift a prayer, to hopeless to believe in a brighter day, to ashamed to feel worthy of good from God's hand. Somehow, deep in my spirit, even in those times, those words resonated true.
I also have a card on my refrigerator that my mother gave me several years ago. It reads....."Commit your works to the Lord, Mary, and your plans will be established." Proverbs 16:3. It has a frog on it, which has significance for me, but that is a story for a whole other blog. I didn't have any plans, I just had a spark of hope that God had some for me and would bring them my way. Of course, I pursued avenues that would give me a better life: college,Godly companions, and a stronger marriage, a strong church body and a better walk with Christ, but he opened all the doors, which is also another story for another time.
It's always easy to look back and see God's hand when things go well. It's harder to see God's hand when things seem to be falling apart around you. He's sustained us through so much, and I have every confidence He will continue to do so.
That's my testimony. That's my God.
This is my second semester at Pfeiffer University and friends I took classes with last semester were glad to see me again, and vice versa. It's great when someone walks out of there way to see me to class or to my car, or just goes to town for some coffee inbetween classes. My life has had more than its share of rough spots, and God has just been so incredibly good to me. I don't just love my husband anymore, I'm in love with him. Our daughter is the most wonderful girl I've ever met. She enjoys spending time with her mom and dad, likes making me breakfast on Saturday mornings, and her friends are part of our family. We are making friends with the parents of her friends, so the circle just keeps on growing.
I used to wait for the bottom to fall out when things got normal, and now I just enjoy life as it comes, with no fear of the future. I don't know how or when it happened, just realized it did. There's so much to do in life and just so little time to do it. So many things to write down, so many books to read, so many friends to spend time with.
Years ago, my brother gave me a plaque with a scripture on it that I read daily when things were tough. "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11. I have always kept it in a prominent place in our home so I would be reminded of the Lord's will for me every time I passed it. I believe in prophecy, in the ability to speak the word of God to someone and have it affect their life. Living words, words of hope and promise, words to encourage and lift up, edify and strengthen. I have to say thank you to him. Although it has a pretty frame and is calligraphied with vines of green and red, it's the words that have sustained me when I was too depressed to lift a prayer, to hopeless to believe in a brighter day, to ashamed to feel worthy of good from God's hand. Somehow, deep in my spirit, even in those times, those words resonated true.
I also have a card on my refrigerator that my mother gave me several years ago. It reads....."Commit your works to the Lord, Mary, and your plans will be established." Proverbs 16:3. It has a frog on it, which has significance for me, but that is a story for a whole other blog. I didn't have any plans, I just had a spark of hope that God had some for me and would bring them my way. Of course, I pursued avenues that would give me a better life: college,Godly companions, and a stronger marriage, a strong church body and a better walk with Christ, but he opened all the doors, which is also another story for another time.
It's always easy to look back and see God's hand when things go well. It's harder to see God's hand when things seem to be falling apart around you. He's sustained us through so much, and I have every confidence He will continue to do so.
That's my testimony. That's my God.
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