Support System

Turbulence shakes his balance, and his hand flashes for steadying,
something sure, like a seatback,
but my shoulder, curved and strong too, will do.

Never turning or noticing the feel of bone, he presses hard, and I know purpose,

a body made like a staff.

Lord, who today would You have me undergird, uphold?

(Photo: collecting luggage, cluster of thoughts, in Detroit airport)

I left on a jet plane... and am back again, the bags unpacked, mind settling. Now to collect thoughts, offer thanks for the grace ... grow. Thoughts from the journey....

Best Beauty Tip Proven ...

To the dentist today... and thinking more on the Best Beauty Tip...

Smile: Happier Marriage

"Another study, by Dacher Keltner, correlated the smiles that female graduates displayed in two yearbooks with later life satisfaction. It was found that the bigger the smile, the more satisfying later marriage and the greater their well-being."

"Women who displayed more positive emotion were more likely to be married by 27, less likely to have remained single into middle adulthood and more likely to have satisfying marriages 30 years later," said Dr. Keltner. ~cited here and here

Smile: Better than 2,000 Chocolate Bars

True! The British Dental Health Foundation cites research that "a smile gives the same level of stimulation as eating 2,000 chocolate bars or receiving £16,000 in cash. The results were found after researchers measured brain and heart activity in Scottish volunteers as they were shown pictures of smiling people, given money, and chocolate." ~read further here

Smile: Grow in love

"Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other -- it doesn't matter who it is -- and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other." ~Mother Theresa

Sent this way from "At the Feet":

"Browsing through the blog world, I found myself at Holy Experience... I happened upon 7 simple words. Yet, in spite of their simplicty, these words have been ringing through my mind.

"If you are saved, inform your face." ~Unknown

What does my face show? I really had to ponder this for awhile. Reluctantly, I succumbed to the truth that there are many times that my face is completely unaware of the amazing saving grace of Jesus that it has directly benefitted from." ~the entirety of Sonja's thoughtful post At the Feet

Smile: The Best Cosmetic

Fenelon :

"Those who are wholly God's are always happy...Happy are they who give themselves to God...Happy are they who throw themselves with bowed head and closed eyes into the arms of the "Father of mercies" and the "God of all consolation"....

"There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness." ~Marguerite, Countess of Blessington

Lord, help me put on the best make-up of all: that which isn't made up. Joy!

Related: Best Beauty Tip, Radiate Beauty , At Study in Brown: Gaze
Photo: Ann chosing true beauty

Real Spring Cleaning

What I caught began with an innocuous call, or so it seemed, mid-morning on Monday. An insurance agent needs a digital photograph of our geothermal heat pump by Friday, a formality for our file and his job. Which compels Dutch Farmer on Monday evening to remove every boxed up memory, Christmas wreath and invoice from the last 7 years out of the storage room to begin reorganizing afresh so that aforementioned agent will not injure himself getting his photo of said heat pump. I join the the late night lustrating.

Come Tuesday morning, I slip into storage room to file a gift bag, and am met with open floor, empty shelves—space. Throughout the course of the morning, I find several excuses to crack open the door, just to steal a peek at the wonder of it all, and, now, in hindsight, I think that in fact the wonder of it all was contagious, for by noon on Tuesday I begin stripping down bookshelves, sorting Thorton Burgess, G.A. Henty, Wilder, Montgomery, Dr. Seuss, Flaubert, Teale, Porter, and Richard Scarry, discarding, purging, releasing, and reshelving. Which leads to the rearranging of three desks, two children’s tables, a puzzle box, a piano, and 5 bookshelves. And so the dominoes continue to fall, with the dividing up of toys, labeling of tins, arranging of baskets.

I wake Wednesday morning, still feverish and deep in the throes of it, and before breakfast, empty out our bedroom closet of corduroy shirts, maternity swim suits, packages of ping pong balls. I fling overalls I once wore to the zoo, bag skirts I wore with cowboy boots, and toss cowboy boots I don’t wear. I gather for the thrift store an old suitcase I hauled around Quebec for three months when I was fourteen and can’t now zipper shut but I write my name on the dust it wears and smile and think of the memories. Gone too are pants that never did fit in spite of all my wishing, a pair of shoes that pinched my little toes red, a sweater that itched and irritated whenever I foolishly wore it. And soon, through a tangle of clothes hangers and a knot of old ties, it emerges: open floor, empty shelves---space!

Calling shoes out from the shade of dresses, I align them on a shelf, and they blink, adjusting to light of day. So I stand back. Stretch. Breathe. Revel.

Dutch Farmer, in from the barn, searches me out and I seek his face, reading for multiplied delight. And trip on this,

“You put your shoes on my shelf?”

Your shelf? My mind scrambles: I sent the ping pong balls, rolls of scotch tape, race car trophies, and batteries that merely squatted there, and moved them all into rightful residences! I reclaimed neglected territory! I enlarged our boundaries with the removal of unnecessary tonnage! But my tongue lies, thankfully, barely, still.

I mumble something unintelligible, collect an armful of clothes for the thrift store, and retreat.But changing over the laundry, indignant retorts roar through my frontal cortex, hardening heart arteries. I let them.

Iron heart sharpens razor tongue.

I set out breakfast dishes, and this heart tail snaps and whips subtly, quietly… stingingly.

“Are you planning to go with us into town this afternoon?” he asks, buttering bagels.

Feeling less than buttery, I crack out a sharp “No!”

They eat, and I return to closet. Another shuffle gives my shoes a bruised home elsewhere. Mainly because I haul, rather unceremoniously, my wedding dress, crinoline, veil, out of the closet and down to capacious storage room. I flick out the light, close the door.

At the close of breakfast, and before we step out into the day, we pray the day’s Scripture. It’s my turn, and I read:

“Therefore as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12).

Is it normal to feel so conspicuously, startingly, the unclogging of one’s arteries?

In my spring cleaning furor, how had I purged out the only attire necessary? Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. And how was that I would pray this verse, this day, with this ugly, naked heart? But He knew.

So come Wednesday at noon, a wedding dress once again anchors the corner of the closet, he and I wear happy, sheepish, forgiveness, and our shoes mingle intimately in the shadows of a top shelf.

And maybe this house, heart, is cleaned a bit deeper.

For grace is contagious and love a spacious, wide open place.


Lord, wash this heart clean.

Light-hearted

I wake heavy, a heart swollen with responsibilities, hurts, failures. The weight pushes me down into the mattress, smothering. I seriously consider it: surrendering. What if, just for today, I pull the covers over my head, a larger-than-life white flag of defeat. I just don’t think I can unpack another day; not today.

Press on. I am with You. Remember? Yes, Lord. Yes. I inhale, squeeze close my eyes, and wrestle out to the floor, into the cold stream of now.

A link comes early. Of a mom of six. Oh, do I understand all too well. Her auction listing on ebay, for a deck of nearly new cards which her children snuck into her cart on a hazardous shopping trip, prefaced by this hilarious snapshot of said wild outing. I read her listing. And laugh. Uproariously. The swelling eases.

I am not alone. Apparently 94, 000 people from around the globe have come to read this stay-at-home Mom to half a dozen, seeking some laughter, some loosening.

Instead of crying through a rough patch, she’s thrown back her head and let the laughter come from the deeps, surface, wash over her. Revived. The 10,000 emails that have inundated her inbox say others feel good when they do that too. To be like the Proverbs 31 woman, and laugh, long and full, from the soul, at the days to come.

I log off. And feel light. In the early dark, I sort laundry. And grin. Make beds and smile. Scoop up the baby and dance, the world spinning happily with us.

Did Jesus do this too? Laugh? How could he be fully human and not?

For laughter is right, soulfully good: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine…” (Prov. 17:22).

The label of that good medicine reads: “It doesn’t matter.” That which has you in knots, twisted and tied so tight you can hardly breathe? That which looms on your horizon, low and menacing, like massive thunderheads black with storm? That which weighs you and drags you and strangles you? “It doesn’t matter.” Laugh. All is tremendously, unwaveringly well.

God’s kingdom is one of surprising paradox: everything matters, and, really, very little matters.

Yes, all moments are pregnant; hallowed, meaningful, holy. Because He, staggeringly, is in each one. And yet, all that matters in each moment is that which is solely and only Him. The love He embodies. The souls He’s sculpted, carried in time’s containers. Him, close, now. The rest can be gladly stripped away, straw for that fire at the end of time.

I take it all too seriously—as do 94,000 others---thinking the scaffolding that props up against this life matters too: the bills, the tasks, the body’s health, the outward gantry of it all. Then comes the flash: there is Good News! For all of us reeling under and through the heaviness of it all, there is Gospel Good News. This all doesn’t matter. All things are being made new. All is transporting grace. All there is, is dance between eternal souls and the God of eternity. That, that dance, is all that ultimately matters. The scaffolding falls away.

Yes, certainly, we strive, we press, we work heartily. There is no doubt: the Christian life calls us to commit, to not turn back, to count the cost. But we never, ever forsake the wonder of grace. The joy of the Good News, renewing the cosmos. The mirth of mercy, for even me, even me.

As Reinhold Niebuhr said “Laughter is the beginning of prayer.” Laughter, easy and familiar, is the always of rejoicing, the praying without ceasing.

“We were filled with laughter, and we sang for joy. And the other nations said,“What amazing things the Lord has done for them” (Psalm 126:2).

And hasn’t He? Then fill too with laughter and sing!

St Theresa prayed well: “Lord, preserve us from sullen saints.” He has done too much, and so little of this terrestial sod matters, for saved saints with long faces and grave hearts.

At breakfast I poke my husband and tease. The uncommon tension, a leftover from last night’s misunderstanding, gives way and his laughter, my laughter, mingles. I tickle the morning’s whiner, bemoaning porridge. The merriment delightfully braids. A cup spills, keeping the dependable, daily tradition. The day’s unrelenting rounds of knock-knock jokes begin. I grab on too, pressing laughter’s cool compress close. This swollen, sore heart knows relief, glorious, emancipating, rapturous relief. The splash of grace, of knowing what matters… and what doesn’t… freely refreshes.

I laugh and feel different: this light heart beats riant, buoyant. Taking flight.

Is it as Chesterton suggests: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly”?

So I try too. And how it all looks better from this vantage point.

From His vantage point.

“Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God." ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I do

On a humid June afternoon, I bend over daisy heads nodding off in the heavy heat of the late afternoon, when the past comes again on a gust of cool.

Dozing daisies brushing up against my skirt, I am transported back to my Dad stepping up on the backporch, worn farmer’s hands carrying a five gallon pail cascading with delicate yellow faces rimmed in white veils. “Think she’ll like them?” he shyly asks.

I can’t help but smile, thinking of that tattered blue wedding album with its faded photos of Mama in a gown of pearls and lace, slender fingers holding a bouquet of daisies.

I nod. “She will. And she’ll remember.” His smile gives way to soft laughter and memories that are only theirs.

A light breeze rouses the daisies, and I am the bride in white with my own trembling hands clutching white posies. With open Bible and earnest eyes, the preacher man’s bariotone English accent fills the chapel, “Today is Ann’s wedding day. And so I am reminded of John Denver who once wrote a song for his wife named Annie’s Song.”

How did the preacher know? I catch my father’s eyes. Tears are spilling down his leathery cheeks, Mama gently leaning into his shoulder. A long ago night Dad had brought home those very notes and Mama had caressed the piano so that the house danced with that kind of intoxicated love. Several times a week during my childhood the house would fill, then rise, inflated with the passion of Annie’s Song.

“Yes, this preacher knows those lyrics: You fill up my senses, like a night in the forest. Like a mountain in springtime. Like a walk in the rain.” Through a blur of emotion, my eyes embrace Dad and Mama in the second pew, and together our tears share the remaining refrain, “Like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean. You fill up my senses, Come fill me again.”

The preacher pauses, then asks, “Isn’t it sad that he later divorced that woman he loved so much?

Isn’t it sad that the great flute player James Galway was so entranced by that John Denver song that he recorded an entire record of songs and called it 'Songs for Annie.' He played those songs as only that Irish flute player can play.

And then he divorced his wife.”

Daisies now fill my arms like a sheaf of summer glory, and I head up the back lane carrying that one line with me too. “And then he divorced his wife.”

Today is the thirteenth anniversary of our marriage covenant; I am picking buckets of my mama’s wedding flower, just as my father once did for her on their anniversary.

And then he too divorced his wife.

A pailful of wild daisies and passion will not be enough.

In the mudroom sink, I fill the tin bucket with water and arrange the sunny faces. Perhaps the wooden candlesticks that witnessed our becoming one could come join the daisies on the dining room table, too? Then to lay out the strawberry pie, the same recipe his mother made for our reception guests, the recipe I make for each annual celebration of our sacred vows, regardless of new babies, illnesses, preganancies, or the whirl of it all. Love simply must be done.

For that is what the greatest thing of all is: a verb, an act of the will, a choice of the heart.

Like deliberately purposing to daydream about him when apart, so we might be closer, the dream reality, when we are together.

Like falling into love routines: steaming bowl of breakfast goodness ready at his place, smile and kiss waiting for his return, bed covers turned back at day’s end.

Simple, preservative acts: massaging the knots out of his shoulders while he reads the paper, leaving thank-you notes on his pillow, smiling and laughing more, because he works so hard to bring happiness.

Passion must mature beyond words to deeds: quiet, daily, self-sacrificing effort. Richer than merely a feeling, love is, in its fullness, something that one does.

I snip off a few daisy blooms to grace the pie and hear again the echo of those two radical words that reverberated off the chapel walls thirteen years ago:

I do.

*photo: scarlet love topped with daisies

Do What Mother Did

I sat on the edge of the bed last night, Darryl softly filling the night silence with slumber breaths. In the wave of the old glass mirror, I could see my Grandmother's brown quilted sampler hanging on the far wall. Before me were the nine-patch squares of my mother's wall hanging. Stitches to be fingered, run along to memories and heart places.

But what would I have of Gertje (Vanderhoef) Voskamp, my mother-in-law? Large silver serving spoons from Holland in the cutlery drawer. Knitted socks in all the drawers. A crocheted baby blanket in blue in the linen closet, she so certain our second was another Voskamp son. True. She was rarely wrong. Yet, for some reason, sitting there in a shaft of moon light, I wanted something to pull up and close, something to blanket and cover us, something to hang on a wall as a daily testimony of such a person. I wanted a piece of fabric to daily touch for her 3 score, ten and two more, she who loomed a giant in my life.

But she had been busy raising nine, (two of whom she buried), embroidering names on endless socks and underwear, cooking boterkoek for family gathered around the table after evening milkings, shelling mountains of peas for the freezer. There hadn't been time for quilts. But she always made time for reading the Bible after every meal, praying with each of those nine children before school, running Good News Bible Club for 60 plus children out of the farm home on the 12th line every Friday night.

I pulled back the our double wedding ring quilt and slipped under, my toes brushing Darryl's. I touched his cheek, this quiet Dutch farmer with hands big as mitts.

I pulled the quilt up over his shoulders. And then I knew.

She had given me something that blanketed our lives, covering us with good and godly things. She had given us an eternal fabric, her last at 37.

She, this Mama, had given this son.

"... All the fine-sounding theories of Mrs. Carr-Boldt and her friends crumbled to dust. What would they leave when they were gone? All of their high accomplishments and all of the public's applause would die with them.

But Margaret could do what Mother did

--- just take the nearest duty and fulfill it for posterity and eternity, sleep well, and then rise joyfully to fresh effort ..."

~ Mother ~
1911
by Kathleen Norris

(HT: Haus Frau)

Lord, Dad V. said this morning that Mom was in a deep sleep this morning, not really coming to. But that her last word he heard her speak throughthe night was "Darryl" who had held her hand last night till she drifted off. These children, Father, they are our eternal work, a bit of future's history that You hand to us ahead of time, to touch and co-labor with You in raising, before we head Home.

Father, give us grace and strength to simply, courageously, do what an endless string of mothers before us did: rise to the nearest duty and joyfully fulfill it as an act of worship to You.

*Photo: from a family celebration of Mom and Dad's fiftieth last year. She raised a nurse, two teachers, three farmers, and one full-time missionary serving in Indonesia. Darryl, her youngest, stands in the back row.

All His

From the pen and heart of Madeleine L'Engle:

"In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own."

(A gracious HT: A Circle of Quiet)

Seeking Peace...

"Search for peace,

and work to maintain it."

~Ps. 34:14 (NLT)

Lord, peace is hard sometimes. You are right. I have to look for it, seek it out. And yes, work to maintain it. Paths are like that. Sometimes hard to find, hard to maintain. But the places they lead to. Come, Prince of Peace. Help me find my way.

Repenting and Renewal

We have just completed the last of the 30 Days of Nothing.... and have just celebrated the Feast of Trumpets or Rosh HaShanah:

"In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a Sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation." (Lev. 23:14)

Reading from "The Feasts of Adonai:"

"Teshuva or repentance during the High Holy Days ends a 40 day period of soul searching that begins a month before Rosh HaShanah...People ask serious questions. 'What wrongs have I committed? What habits do I need to correct? What have I done with God's blessings?'"

Perhaps September was the perfect month, Biblically, to embark on this journey of soul-searching through the 30 Days of Nothing? Perhaps these 30 DoN have been a period of soul-searching for each of us, asking the serious questions... and then repenting.

From the The Feasts of Adonai:

"Some believe that the forty days of teshuva correspond to the 40 days Jesus fasted in the wilderness."

Has the 30DoN been our 40 days of fasting from materialism... our own "wilderness" of feeble sorts?

Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16).

We are repenting. We are in prayer. And we are thanking Christ for His blood that atones for our sin... for being our scapegoat and removing our sin. (Leviticus 16)

This is the beginning of the Biblical New Year.... a year of New Beginnings. Clean and Purified by His Mercy and Grace and Blood.

So we begin our next 30 Days... 30 Days of Good Words .

"Each day, say something that you admire or appreciate about your husband to your husband...and to someone else, about your husband!" I would like to expand on this by speaking only good words, words of encouragement, in our home, to my husband and children.

Perhaps October is the perfect month to begin anew...with words of life.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer
~Ps. 19:14

May You give me grace, Lord...and good words.

(HT:Endraughts)