#5 -- Humiliation has yet to prove fatal

The fifth thing to remember on my list of ten has the morning newspaper for a memory hook. In this case, the newspaper is over my bowed head as I try to cover up my embarrassment. I am sure my life is over, that I am literally going to die of embarrassment. But as I wait for death to come the moments drag on ... and on ... and on... and it starts to occur to me that humiliation is not actually life-threatening, that I will almost surely live to see another day. So I take the newspaper off my head and add this insight to my list of ten things to remember, hoping that by remembering sooner rather than later, I can avoid the agony of waiting futilely for death to rescue me from my shame.

My earliest memory of shame happens to also be perhaps my earliest memory of being in church. My memories don't go back far into my preschool years and in this case I am old enough to know at least some of the words of the song being sung. As I sing along with enthusiasm, I am suddenly aware that the song is a "special," not a congregational, that I am the only one in the congregation singing. Oh, the shame! I bury my face in my mother's lap and sob. I don't want anyone there to see me ever again. I just want to escape somehow. And amidst many, many moments that slip past me during that time of my life, it's that moment of shame and embarrassment that imprints itself in my mind and persists for these many years. Still, I survived the moment and went on to sing with gusto again.

I've grown up a little since that time. Now when I accidentally sing when I should be silent (in whatever form that takes), it is generally only mildly embarrassing to me. I make a mental note to find a way to avoid doing it again and move on. Usually. Sometimes I hide for a while, still waiting to die of embarrassment. But death consistently fails to rescue me and I eventually return to the game.

Someone has suggested that we wouldn't be nearly so concerned about what people think of us if we realized how little they do. It's a helpful thought, although it's offset in my mind by the realization of how many formative moments in my life have come from people who had no clue how powerful their words were and knocked me down without noticing. I don't want to be that kind of person. Still, it helps in times of shame to realize that most of the people I think are staring at me are actually too preoccupied with their own stuff to focus in on my embarrassment. There are a few perks to living in a world populated by self-centered humans. Even those heaping scorn on my head or pointing out my flaws will eventually get bored and move on. It's not as though I'm not even more broken than they know. One of life's many underrated blessings is the fact that no one gets to observe every stupid thing we do. The odd person who has nothing better to do than enjoy what they can see of my many slips in life is pretty desperate for entertainment.

And so, in moments when shame and humiliation flood my soul and make me look for a hole to crawl into, I try to instead fix my focus on life on the other side of that moment, to remember that such moments inevitably pass by and the only casualty is my pride, which always manages to recover and come back around to trip me up again. With this in mind, I can even consider the idea of throwing my stubborn pride to the lions when it's the only thing standing between me and more effective living. What freedom there is in realizing that humiliation has yet to prove fatal.

#4 Broken Bread, Poured-Out Wine

The fourth entry in my list of Ten Things to Remember is food sitting on the four-sided, four-legged breakfast table I sit at on my three-point (“h”-shaped) chair wearing my two-legged pants that I put on after pushing the one button on my old-fashioned alarm clock.

These words, of course, find their roots in the Last Supper and echo through time and space during the celebration of the Eucharist. "Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you." and "This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 15:24-25, KJV) However, they come to my list of things to remember via an intermediate source – Oswald Chambers as memorialized by his wife in My Utmost for His Highest. Nine times in the 365 entries of this classic devotional, the reader is called to give his or her own life as broken bread and poured-out wine.

C. S. Lewis writes in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer about hanging “festoons” on the familiar phrases of the Lord’s Prayer during Church of England liturgy, contemplating various aspects of each line. This is sort of what I do with broken bread and poured-out wine. Beginning with the nouns, I think about bread and see it as a solid presence. Being bread in the world is simply getting out there and being present, showing up. When I think of wine and its symbolism for blood, I see it as representing life. Wine is the sparkle of life that accompanies the simple presence of bread.

Picking up the adjectives, adds new dimensions. The idea of being broken takes a lot of pressure off my days. I tend toward perfectionism. I want to get life right, keep my promises, fulfill the expectations others have for me, meet standards of excellence. But I fall short. There are more expectations than I can possibly meet. I can’t always keep my promises, and even my best efforts often leave people disappointed and irritated. Besides, there are sad situations I can’t fix; there is needed help I can’t give. I am broken, less than perfect. I not only am unable to be all things to all people, I don’t even get out of the gate in that regard.

And so I go into the world broken yet present. Broken bread is still bread. And brokenness is the best I have to offer. Rather than drawing back from life for fear of being exposed and rejected as broken, I push myself to offer my presence to others even in my broken state. When I am knocked flat and fear I am irreparably broken, it helps to remember that I was already broken and live in a broken world where there is value simply in being a solid, dependable, nourishing presence.

Poured-out wine adds a dimension of being dissipated. Bread is a solid. It stays in one place. Wine is liquid. When poured out on the ground it flows and is gone. It’s one thing to be broken but solid. It’s another to pour out my life energy into others and watch it flow away and be irretrievably gone. When I am knocked flat and it seems life it draining out of me, it helps to see such a state as one to which I have been called. Jesus told us we find life by losing it. When I choose to live as poured-out wine, it takes the panic out of realizing that I am being drained of my life energy.

As I remember this phrase, I pray daily that God will give me to my world as broken bread (a flawed but solid presence) and poured-out wine (life freely and irretrievably given away).

#3 I am not out of resources yet.

This is the third item on my "Things to Remember" list. The third "hook" for remembering the list is the (three-legged?) chair you sit on at the four-legged breakfast table after pushing the one button on your old-fashioned alarm clock and putting on your two-legged pants.

For this particular list I can't sit on the chair because it's loaded down with stuff, reminding me that I'm not out of resources yet.

It's actually a different image that lies behind this reminder: a memory, a snapshot of a moment in time. I am slaving away in the kitchen, my least favorite room in the house, while my husband and children are in the living room. There may be guests in there with them. I am a most unhappy Martha (see John 10:38-41) working my fingers to the bone washing dishes and feeling sorry for myself while my imaginary sister Mary is sitting in the other room listening to Jesus' stories. (Why does everyone assume Martha liked kitchen work? Maybe she was simply the responsible one thinking, “SOMEbody has to be busy in the kitchen. This work isn't going to do itself!”) I'm exhausted by all the labor.

Really? I asked myself that day. Am I truly overworked? Would I be so exhausted if I weren't alone? Is this about me being overworked or is envy pulling me down?

The truth is, I'm not overworked in that memory. I had plenty of energy left. A little work in a modern kitchen isn't going to do me in. It really was a case of envy because I was working while others were not. I have never in my life experienced complete and total exhaustion, any more than I have ever truly been “starving to death,” and it's disrespectful to those who are driven to the absolute end of their resources to say I am when I'm not.

Well ... there was that one bout with mononucleosis at age 20. I was pretty much wiped out for a week or two. But even then I wasn't unable to move at all. I had to severely curtail my total energy expenditure, but there was always enough energy to stumble through one more task if absolutely necessary.

This reminder starts with physical resources but doesn't end there. Sometimes the threat of exhaustion comes in other areas. The “I can't do this anymore” cry in my heart can be a response to any number of aggravating circumstances. Still, the same questions apply. Really? There are absolutely no resources left? Not even for one more time? Five if the situation is guaranteed to change after that? Ten if someone offers some encouragement and support? The answer has never been, “Yes, I am absolutely and completely exhausted. I cannot take even one more step.” Maybe for some people in some situations, it is. It has yet to be true for me. Every time I hit this item on my list I have to acknowledge its truth to myself.

There is another dimension to this reminder. Thus far, I have focused on personal resources, inner strength to endure one more moment. If I look around, there are any number of alternatives to relying on my own strength. Resources abound! I can recruit help. I can walk away and leave the work for another day or another crew. I can apply some mental energy to finding a quicker and easier way to get done what needs to be done. I can incorporate the ideas of others into my own processes. I can reassess the need. (Is that what Jesus encouraged Martha to do?) I can pray for an extra boost.

Someday I may hit a wall, a dead end from which there is no escape, no rescue. But this far along the journey I have yet to encounter that wall. I always have options. I may feel like I'm running on fumes and about to keel over, but when I look more closely I can say with conviction, I am not out of resources yet! Most of the time I'm not even breathing hard.

#2 My Friendship Is not Merit-Based

This is the second on my list of "Ten Things to Remember" in times of personal distress. By the way, the book I read had a list of "hooks" to memorize as an aid to memorizing other things. The first item on the list was the alarm clock (an old-fashioned type with one button on top and perhaps set for one o'clock) that wakes us up first thing in the morning. I don't need that aid to remember God's love for me as the top item on my list. It's simply a given.

The second item is the pants with their two legs that we put on when we get up. I do use this one, moving from the pants to a teen book series called The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants about four friends and one pair of pants.

And now on with the commentary.

You probably don't want me for a best friend. I am an introvert, which in this case means I enjoy my own company. I shop alone, go places alone, love to stay home alone. I once had a friend who called me to chat when she got a minute to herself. Really? You are home alone and you pick up the telephone just to chat? I was amazed by the idea. The friendship I offer is more of an out-of-sight-out-of-mind sort of thing.

When someone knocks me down, it's tempting to withhold even my weak version of friendship from them. However, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I need to remember his observation in Matthew 5 that anyone can love those who love them back. It's loving those who despise us that is the challenge and brings the greatest reward.

What this means is that I try to offer a friendly smile, pleasant conversation, and genuine goodwill to anyone and everyone whether or not they deserve it. The creepy passive-aggressive library patron. The social butterfly who has plenty of friends and doesn't even notice me. The sour-faced clerk at the store. The rambunctious child. The guy who left his wife, my friend, for a bottle-blond bimbo. The blond bimbo. (And, yes, I'll learn her name and quit calling her names in my head.) And, sigh ... the person who owes me an apology. After all, it's not as though my friendship is such a precious commodity that I have to reserve it for those who have earned it. Nor will withholding it from those who don't deserve it make the world a better place. Although it seems obvious that the way to correct people who are in the wrong is to turn a cold shoulder their way, I don't actually see that approach to be very effective. People seem far more responsive to those who like them. And so I attempt to nurture grace in my living and keep reminding myself that my friendship is a gift, not something to be earned.

Thing to Remember #1 -- God Loves Me

I promised to flesh out my Ten Things to Remember list. Thing #1 seems as good a place to start as any.

1. God loves me.

This is first on the list not because it is the most helpful but because I'm sure it ought to be most helpful. After all, the love of God toward someone like me is downright astounding.

In reality, in times of distress I tend to pass right over this item and move on to something more uplifting. There are a few reasons for this:

a. Of course God loves me. God loves all seven billion inhabitants of this earth, including the person or persons responsible for my distress. It's hard to feel special when you're simply one beloved child among seven billion, especially when it's so obvious that at least a few of my fellow inhabitants of earth have some major character flaws that make loving them quite difficult.

b. The Bible may tell me God loves me, but when there are louder voices -- both inside and outside my head -- suggesting I am despicable, it's difficult to put much conviction behind any self-talk about God's love for me.

c. At least as many times as I have heard about God's love for me, I have also heard about God's wrath toward the disobedient and unfaithful. It's hard to associate unfailing love toward all with a God who will commit most of the population (the "unsaved") to eternal torment in hell.

When I was a child, I was convinced that God wouldn't love me if there were a choice, but it would look rather odd to have John 3:16 read, "For God so loved the world (except one particularly unattractive little girl named Marsha) that he gave ..." I was pretty sure God had no love for me as an individual but simply didn't find me worthy to single out as an exception. I have since learned to accept God's love for me as an individual but not enough for my assurance to stand up well against the blows of people who obviously don't see anything lovable about me. No, this thing to remember alone is not going to be able to pull me up out of the doldrums. It will take more.

Still, it's a good place to start on my road back to emotional equilibrium when the storms of life knock me down. It reminds me that I have been convinced in the past that I am not despicable in the eyes of God and I might want to think twice before accepting such an assessment now without question.

Ten Things to Remember

Several years ago I read an old book from the library about remembering names and faces. I was hoping for help with my face recognition problem, but got instead mostly a system for remembering lists of items. I had fun memorizing a few lists and then mostly forgot it. Except for one list I developed at the time. I call it simply "Ten Things to Remember". In this post, I will share the list. In the near future on this blog I hope to do some commentary on the "ten things", some of which may be incomprehensible in this version.

Here they are:
1. God loves me.

2. My friendship is not merit-based.

3. I'm not out of resources yet.

4. Broken bread, poured-out wine.

5. Humiliation has yet to prove fatal.

6. Someday I will dance.

7. Life is reflective; choose your source.

8. What goes around comes around.

9. The words are not the message.

10. Suffering produces character.

I wish I could remember to "count to ten" in every tense situation and review this list while doing so. I don't always remember, but it's a blessing when I do. Some lines more than others, depending on the situation.

So there's the list. Follow the links where available for commentary.

MS and Michael J. Fox

Last week I read Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox. Early in the book he states that if someone offered to spare him from the diagnosis of Early Onset Parkinson's Disease and give him back the ten years between the diagnosis and writing about it, he would tell them to "take a hike". Parkinson's Disease (PD) rescued him from a life of alcohol abuse and the licentiousness that comes with a Hollywood celebrity status.

The message of Lucky Man was what I anticipated based on the title. I chose to read it because I hope to embrace MS as a blessing rather than a curse.

I know many people who respond to every setback in life by calling in the prayer warriors to rescue them from Satan's schemes to hinder them by eliminating the problem. Where would Michael J. Fox be today if someone had "rescued" him from PD?

I lost a good friend a couple of years ago to colon cancer. He didn't exit this life willingly. At his request, prayer warriors from around the world prayed for his healing, for continued life and ministry on this earth. Their petitions were not granted and the world is a poorer place for having lost a fine example of Christian love in action. I have yet to see the blessing in that loss.

And yet ... I have learned from it. I learned that we cannot back God into a corner and force Him to give in to our wishes by rounding up enough good people to throw their fervent prayers into the mix. I have never seen a more impressive example of united prayer, both in quantity of people praying and past effectiveness of the prayers of those praying. This was the "dream team" of prayer warriors. Still, the cancer won and my friend's earthly ministry of love came to an end.

There are those who would help me round up my own minor league dream team of prayer warriors to fight back against the encroachment of MS in my life. Some are already rallying the troops. My pastor would gladly anoint my head with oil and lead in prayer for my healing if I agreed to it. But is that what I want? I certainly wouldn't choose to become personally acquainted with MS but now that it has taken up residence in my life do I want to forcefully evict it? What if it is my ticket out of some of my own lifestyle mischoices? What if it is a blessing in disguise? Do I want to pour my energy into waging what could ultimately be a futile war against it without giving it a chance to bless me?

I know the answers to my questions are obvious to many. They count any misfortune as an agent of Satan to be forcefully driven away through the power of prayer. I'm not so sure. I will soon be starting a disease modifying therapy (DMT) drug to try to keep MS under control for as much and as long as possible by ordinary means, but I'm not quite willing to count it as an enemy of my soul and take up spiritual arms against it. It's a physical problem. For now, I think I'll respond by physical means and wait and see how it fits into my life spiritually.

Back when my daughter was playing high school tennis, we were often reminded that losing against a better player provides more learning opportunity than winning against a lesser foe does. I would gladly walk away from this game if I could, but since life has put me in the court against this formidable opponent, I think I'll play the balls that come my way and try to improve my game rather than spending large amounts of time and spiritual energy trying to escape over the fence.

The Value of Space

A couple of dozen periodicals make their way into my home on a regular basis, ranging from fifty times a year for Time to four times a year for the excellent Notre Dame Magazine -- tracing back to when we had a Notre Dame student living here. There is good reading in those pages. A few come unsolicited, but we pay good money for most of them.

There is also good reading on the internet as well as many more books on my reading list than I can read. And my life is full of duty and responsibility. Time for reading is limited and the magazines often get pushed aside unread. Or I read them and find value in them and feel as though I should preserve them. This leads to piles of back issues cluttering the house.

Over the past 31 years of living at this address, I have come to realize that clutter-free space has value in and of itself. Now I face the question of the value of magazine back issues versus the value of reclaiming the space they occupy. The obvious answer is that the space should win. After all, new magazines arrive every week. Keeping back issues doesn't make sense from a household ecology point of view. The only way to avoid being overwhelmed by material goods is for the amount of stuff going out to equal the amount of stuff coming in.

Still, it's hard to give them up. What if I have missed a wonderful article on braiding garlic in Organic Gardening or will someday want to refer back to that article by Eugene Peterson in Christianity Today? Do I still have the issue where the Notre Dame Magazine presented such a balanced discussion of illegal immigration?

What all this adds up to is the personal insight that I could easily become a "hoarder". You know, one of those people who are gradually buried alive by all the stuff they can't bear to discard. Someone who, when retirement and solitary living frees up their hours, spends their time clipping articles and organizing them into extensive files for their children to discard after they are gone.

Okay, the magazines have to go. Yes, there will be a sense of history lost for a while. I'll need to nurture my appreciation for the beautiful uncluttered space they leave behind and convince myself it is truly of greater value than the printed words I discard.

At least I have never subscribed to National Geographic. That magazine must be collected more than any other. (My evidence for that is the multiple offers we have had at the library from people hoping to regain space in their homes by offering the library the wonderful opportunity of becoming custodian of their collections.)

Still, it's hard to give up all those beautiful words. Who knows when Organic Gardening will publish another article on braiding garlic? If I ever manage to grow garlic and find myself interested in braiding it will I be able to figure out how to do it? Sure, I could just go here and find out in much less time than digging through the files, but I'm just old-fashioned enough for the paper file approach to tug at me and slow my steps as I carry old magazines to the recycling bins. Only sucking it up and nurturing an appreciation for clean lines and uncluttered space will enable me to do it.

Back to cleaning. There's a wedding on the near horizon that will bring us house guests and should provide some incentive for sprucing up the place. Maybe I can even persuade myself to give up the magazines.

Identity

I started playing the piano at age 5. In third grade the music teacher had me play a Bach Two-Part Invention and explained to the class that they were seeing something unusual. I was surprised by her words. Sure, I didn't know anyone else my age who could play what I could play, but just figured I didn't know what my classmates did outside the classroom.

By high school, music was what made me special, my identity. Then, in my 20s, I moved into an environment where my musical ability was more of a relational liability than an asset. Rather than force the issue, I reluctantly moved on to other interests. Music was no longer a part of who I was. I was an engineer for a few years, then a full-time mother, and later a librarian.

In 2004 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. After the initial shock of hearing the "C" word wore off, I decided I would not join the ranks of people for whom "cancer survivor" is part of their identity. I am not a "cancer survivor" any more than I am a "chicken pox survivor". Cancer is simply one part of my medical history. I had a lumpectomy and five weeks of radiation treatment but treated it as just a small bump in my life.

Now it is 2011. In February, I heard the "C" word again. This time my left kidney was the site of cancer. No relationship to the first cancer. Again, surgery took care of the problem, this time without further treatment, and I declined to allow cancer to define me.

On a Friday evening in mid-June, I noticed I was unsteady on my feet. The next day I developed double vision. That led to a new diagnosis tracing back to a case of optic neuritis I had in 1996. The optic neuritis was a sclerosis. The latest MRIs show that I now have more than one sclerosis. In fact, I have multiple sclerosis. MS.

Now it is time to consider my identity once again. There will be no surgery to put MS behind me. It is a lifetime companion. At the moment, I have no more symptoms than before the problems that cropped up for a few days in June and were resolved with the help of steroids. Shall I become an active participant in the MS community or shall I ignore this unwelcome companion as much as possible? What place do I want to give it in my life during this time when it's still invisible to others?

It has been a while since I have grappled with "who am I?" questions. It will be interesting to see how much of my focus MS manages to grab as it becomes a constant companion. I guess if it starts to take over my life I'll at least have a focus for my blog after all this time.

A Hard Love

This is last week's "Five Minute Friday" assignment from here. In my first attempt, I learned that I am a hopeless editor at the keyboard. The instructions say, just write, don't edit. I'm not sure anyone would understand what I type without editing, let alone enjoy it. I type faster than my thoughts can gel and have to go back and fix things. However, I do much writing with pen and paper which doesn't lend itself to editing. I decided to try that approach. The next step of publishing those inky words has taken a little longer. But here we go:

START

He needs money. Again. He always needs money. He has no job. What he has is a temper that interferes with steady employment. I think I understand the source of the temper. Life has never given him a fair shake. I wish I could fix it for him. I love him. I want better things for him. But charity isn't the answer. I've helped him out financially in the past, until every encounter started revolving around money and I said I wouldn't give him any more.

Now he's here again with his live-in girlfriend. Her dogs were turned in to the town by her mother as part of a fight between them. Unneutered dogs. $100 needed for registration to get them back. Can I please, pretty please, pay the $100 so they can have registered, unneutered dogs in their impoverished home? They can pay me back next month when her disability check comes in.

Love is hard.

STOP

On writing -- again

The days are full. I consider the idea of writing here much more than I actually do it. It seems that when the ideas come there is no time. When I finally grab some time, the ideas are gone. If I write them down as they come they grow stale. The things I pondered yesterday seem uninteresting to me today. How can I return to yesterday's mindset?

I think I have a lot to learn about writing.

On Distance

Five minutes to write about distance for this contest. I have already messed up the logistics of one entry -- no writing, only stumbling through the entry process. And now for the actual writing.
----------------
She's married now. Four hundred miles from home. Not many from around here could make it. Her father and I (her mother) and brother and sister were there. My mother and two of my brothers were there along with a sister-in-law and two nephews. We closed the geographical distance that generally separates us and came together for a day -- from Indiana, Florida, and Virginia to Missouri by plane and minivan. We sat together and, amidst the joy, were aware of those not there. Yet, it was good.

And that's how much I can write in five minutes.

On writing

As I am subscribing to more blogs, I run across posts directed toward wannabe writers. One such post talked about the hard work that goes into being a published author. I believe it. Even a blog is work. I could put much more time into my posts. Pictures and links would make them more attractive but would also add to the time required. So I just have text. Joining blogging networks would bring me readers, but that would require more time investment than I want to make. So I settle for those who happen by. It's obvious that I need some sort of theme and consistency, an identity for my blog. But I don't have one and just drift from subject to subject.

As I pondered the post about writing being hard work, I realized that I can probably add being published to the list of dreams that aren't likely to be realized in this life. The desire simply isn't strong enough to trump other demands on my hours.

And so, dear reader, I think you will not have any difficulty fighting off the crowds to make comments here. Like much of my life, this place is a low-traffic area, off the beaten path where few find it.

Yet, I upgraded my counter yesterday so I can see more than a small snapshot of the traffic going by. Even out here in the sticks, it's nice to see people stop by now and then and it's tempting to look for ways to attract a few more this week than last week. I'm pretty sure I'm not headed for the big time, but I think I'll at least keep posting now and then.

Thanks for reading.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Someone asked recently in a forum I read if I know my strengths based on the Clifton StrengthsFinder [tm] assessment from Gallup. I do not. I have had my "spiritual gifts" assessed several times. (My "spiritual gifts" have an uncanny resemblance to my natural talents.) I have also done personality assessments. But I had nothing to contribute to a discussion about StrengthsFinder[tm] results.

It turns out there is a book associated with the StrengthsFinder[tm] assessment. No problem. I am a librarian. I'll simply borrow the book and discover my strengths. But, no, the Gallup people are way ahead of me. Each book comes with a single-use access code for the online assessment. There will be no free results for this exercise. If you want results you have to buy a copy of the book.

Still, I have a used library copy of the book and have read the part up to where I'm supposed to take the assessment. There is angst in this book. The author describes a world that sniffs out and treats weaknesses rather than recognizing and capitalizing on strengths. In the view of those behind the book, this approach is far too common, almost universal.

I have somehow missed this anxiety-producing part of life. Or maybe I'm blocking painful memories. I can't remember a single instance where someone said, "Marsha, you are not good at this. You need to undergo training to boost your skills in this area. You can do anything if you set your mind to it!"

A few samples of the many areas where I am weak:

1. Art -- drawing, painting, sketching. I took general art in school and was required to draw so many sketches a week. I did. They came out better than I expected. I guess I learned something in art class. But they were never good. Still, I got an 'A' for effort and was allowed to move on without notice. No one pressured me to become an art major so I could develop my stunted talents in this area.

2. Cooking. I can bring my scientific, mathematical skills to this task and follow a recipe, but I lack all sorts of basic skills for cooking. The most basic of those skills is interest. When I am stuck cooking, I turn on the kitchen television. This serves two purposes: First, it combines two tasks I would never choose so I at least feel like I'm multitasking and not wasting my time on just one of them. Second, when I lose my focus and start to wander away from the kitchen, the need to turn off the television before leaving the room serves as a reminder of why I'm there, that perhaps I'm supposed to be stirring constantly, not wandering off. Yes, there has been pressure over the years to be a normal wife and mother who can whip up delicious meals for her family and for sharing, but the food industry has offset that pressure by offering an increasing variety of alternatives to cooking.

3. Sports. My lowest grades in school were in physical education. Besides have very little spirit of competitiveness, I also have no natural athletic talent. Other than in PhysEd in school, I have never been pressured to develop athletic skills. When we play slow-pitch softball at church, I suggest that I would be an excellent choice for either team. I throw like a girl with no athletic ability, can't catch, and don't run very fast, but I have a glove for the proper hand and can almost always hit the ball -- usually straight to first base thanks to a poorly-timed left-handed swing.

4. Asking others for help. I used to be very bad at this. I lived by the philosophy that if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself. I'm sure people noticed, but no one ever pressured me to take classes on delegation. I had to figure out for myself that there is value in sharing tasks with others -- multiplying the resources available while perhaps saving on the time invested.

5. Making telephone calls, particularly to ask others for help. This is the stuff of nightmares for me. I can't imagine a worse job than telemarketing. It has about the same attraction as dying and going to hell. I turned down many requests when my children were in school to accept a calling list to recruit parental involvement for various projects. Now, I try to include a disclaimer every time I accept the task of making a phone call. It goes, "Never believe me when I say I'll make a phone call. The chances of this call being made are almost zero." I don't remember anyone ever suggesting that I focus on strengthening my calling skills. Usually, they just take their chances because I'm the obvious candidate to make the call. And I guess I actually make those calls often enough to keep getting the assignments, but it's still a definite area of weakness.

I'm left-handed. Back in the dark ages of internet communication, I once subscribed to a "newsgroup" for left-handed people and discovered all sorts of scars among those who had encountered the "hand police" when young. They experienced various levels of persuasion to use their right hands.

There were no "hand police" in my life. Rather there was accommodation. My mother bought an iron with the cord out the back instead of on the side. My utensils were always on the left side of my plate at the dinner table. I'm the one who got piano lessons because I started picking out melodies on the piano with my left hand. I have always experienced left-handedness as something that makes me just a little bit special, never as a handicap that needed remedial action.

The StrengthsFinders[tm] author and associates with their wounds from those trying to fix their weaknesses remind me of those wounded left-handed people. I find their stories interesting but can't identify with them. I was one of the lucky ones. I was given piano lessons so I could develop my natural talents rather than signed up for tennis clinics where I had no hope of success.

I still don't have an official list of strengths to share. I could come up with a list similar to the list of weaknesses I have shared above. My list wouldn't correspond with the terms used by StrengthsFinders[tm]. The descriptors would be more concrete. For example, I am analytical, logical, detail-oriented, and have a natural talent for music. I tend to step into leadership vacuums, leading most easily when people offer to follow. And in this, my sixth, decade I find myself spending substantial time in that sort of environment and voluntarily working on my ability to delegate tasks I'm tempted to do myself.

Still, my analytical nature finds the StrengthsFinder[tm] assessment attractive. Maybe even attractive enough to buy the book just to get an access code. We'll see.

What is a good length for a blog post?

I have been reading a lot of blog posts lately. One thing I notice is that I go into skimming mode when someone gets too wordy. When I look at my own posts, they meet the criteria for too wordy.

I know a preacher whose sermons are too long. He says he doesn't pay attention to length. How long a sermon lasts is simply how long it lasts. I use the same philosophy for my blog posts. I write until I've said what I want to say. That usually ends up being enough to fill a full page in a word processor. Just as my preacher friend ends up with too many words for his listeners to absorb, I end up with too many words for people to read.

Maybe I need to think in smaller chunks, corral the loose thoughts, trim out the fat.

New goal: for today, for this one post, I will not create a scroll bar in my posting window.

You can tell a lot about a person ...

I have heard multiple times over the years that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at their checkbook. These days I would guess that for those under 30 you can mainly tell from their checkbook that they are under 30 and don't write checks. Maybe that goes up to 40. Actually, I am 53 and don't write many checks. You'll have to look at my Quicken files to find the information that used to show up in my checkbook.

Rather than my checkbook, what you really want to see is my blog feeds to find out what I'm like. I might even be finding things out about myself. I just deleted a couple of blog feeds. Too much doctrine, too long, too frequent, not enough personal observations. The benefit per word just wasn't there. I also added a couple of new ones -- chatty blogs by young adult Christians observing life. I actually read several posts from one and then closed the window in which it was open before realizing I would like to see more from that writer. I tried to follow the path back from current subscriptions to the new candidate and couldn't remember how I got there even moments after making the first trip. I had to look at my browser history to get back to it. I think the original path included a random post from a blog collective, a profile for the writer of that post linking to another blog with comments linking to the third. Or something like that.

The blogosphere has been particularly active and interlinked lately with reaction to a new book by megachurch pastor Rob Bell -- Love Wins. Much of the reaction is negative. (The book's current #1 ranking on Amazon on the subject of faith and #4 ranking overall would support the maxim that there is no such thing as negative publicity.) The comments and comments on comments and links to other comments are good for weaving one's way through the jungle of blog entries. Those who respond with thoughtfulness, grace, and good humor to the negative comments catch my interest. I'm interested to read not only what they write but also what they read.

I haven't ordered the book yet. I will probably read it eventually but have no sense of urgency. I may even wait until I can borrow it from a library rather than making the choice to own it. After all, do I want such a controversial book in my personal collection? What if someone judges me by the books I read?

Okay, that last part was a joke. Anyone looking for evidence on my bookshelves that I might appreciate the writing (and preaching) of Rob Bell wouldn't have to look far. Although I don't see any of his books in my line of view at the moment, the half dozen books by his friend Brian McLaren might be a clue. I may have given away the only Rob Bell book I have purchased and not bothered to replace it. Along those lines, my reasons for not buying the book have more to do with concern that it might not contain enough groundbreaking material to earn a permanent spot on my shelves than fear of what others might think to see it there.

I see from recent posts and responses that a few of my Facebook friends consider Rob Bell a heretic. This is one of the reasons I don't feed my blog into Facebook. Back in the old days, I didn't publish my checkbook register for all to see. These days, I publish thoughts such as these in public places such as this but try not to wave them under the noses of those who see them as evidence that I'm straying from the faith. Fortunately, my profile is low enough that not many of those trying to rid the church of all Rob Bell influences will bother including me in their sweep.

She's plenty able to do what she WANTS to do!

So I'm lying around pampering my body with its closed-up incision and doing only what I either feel like doing or want done enough to do it. And I keep hearing an echo in my mind of the words in my title. There is definitely a huge "want to" factor weighed in to my choice of activities.

What I'm finding is that I have little tolerance for stress and unpleasant tasks. And it doesn't take much activity at all one day to put me off my feet the next. If I force myself to take on unpleasant tasks, I end up quickly exhausted. But I'm sure it looks selfish and inconsiderate from an outsider's point of view.

Scene #1
"Are you interested in going to Walmart to pick up some groceries?"

"No," I reply in a weak voice, "that would be way too big an outing. I'll just stay here on the couch and focus on getting well."

Scene #2
"The sun is out. Would you like to go walking?"

"Sure! Let me get my pillow and walking stick and shoes and socks and I'll be right with you. I'm thinking I can do two miles this time out."

Obviously, I'm able to walk. Why is it so refreshing and healing to walk two miles on our country roads but exhausting to ride to Walmart and walk through the aisles there? Why did I go back to church twelve days after surgery and enjoy two hours there but a couple of days later walk away from less than an hour back in my work environment with less physical activity completely exhausted?

There's a lot more than physical stuff going on here. Fortunately, the words in my title are only echoes in my mind. Less than three weeks after surgery, people aren't applying pressure for me to make their priorities mine. It's just interesting to notice how much the "want to" affects the "able to."

Listening to my body

Yesterday was two weeks after surgery to remove my kidney. I have been wearing a pedometer constantly other than the two days in the hospital when I didn't have a waistband on which to mount it. And I've been doing a lot of walking. Walking is refreshing, particularly when soft spring breezes start to blow.

Monday I walked 5,800 steps, some inside the house while doing very light housecleaning, others outside, strolling along at my slow post-operative shuffle. It was a good day.

Yesterday, I also walked 5,800 steps. But it was a very different day. I made an outing in a vehicle. It was a short outing. I was never more than two miles from home and wasn't gone much over an hour. The two stops along my route mainly involved pick up and delivery. I declined to be involved in a third stop which was a social gathering. Too much, too soon. I could see that. What I didn't anticipate is that when I said no to the social gathering and mentioned my plans for the day, it would prompt a couple of people from the social gathering to meet me at one of my destinations. Oops. Now I was dealing with well-wishers while upright rather than while sacked out on the couch at home. And for some reason, that didn't work out well. It wasn't according to my plan. I hadn't signed up for that level of interaction in that setting. Plus, the pick up and delivery involved more load than I anticipated. I had to deal with two eccentric door locks I didn't expect to find locked. And, okay, I drove two miles to my destination and the two miles back home. Which wasn't bad in and of itself, but was definitely an extra challenge. Together, those things added up to more energy expended than I expected. Then I took a walk with a companion and ended up walking faster than I would have on my own.

Now it's Wednesday afternoon. I have logged 350 steps today. I'll likely do more before the day is over, but, obviously, I have barely moved for the past eight hours (actually the last 18 hours). And I'm just now to the point where moving seems like a reasonable thing to consider.

Such small things. Locked doors. A pile of mail. A slightly faster pace while walking than the day before. Social interaction that tapped my energy while away from home in an unanticipated manner. A heavy car door to open and shut multiple times. I don't think it's so much that I overestimated my energy level as having so little reserve for unexpected drains. Thankfully, all activity is optional for today so I don't have to push.

Incentives to take a walk

Before my surgery I had this wild idea that if I couldn't drive to work afterward, maybe I could work up to walking the two miles to get there. The idea made me laugh. Then I had the surgery and discovered that walking really is an option. Both my body and my doctor agree that there's no harm in it as long as I exercise some moderation.

Still, exercise for the sake of exercise is always less than compelling to me. I came home from the hospital to a promise of spring and was taking a couple of walks a day. When the weather went back to February dreary and cold and my temporary walking companions weren't exactly signing up for the long haul, it became more difficult to get myself out the door.

Tonight I walked a little less than two miles.

What drove me to it:

1. Someone said, "It is warm out there! You should open a window!" (Warm? That sounds good for a walk.)

2. A good nap that made me feel properly recovered from a couple of strenuous car outings in the past few days and ready to add an activity to my rest/move cycle.

3. Continued encouragement from my doctor for walking.

4. Seeing someone who consistently recovers from serious health issues more quickly and more fully than expected. He's an inspiration to me.

5. Telling someone I was walking less and hearing the "I knew it!" tone in her response as she noted that she had wondered about my initial burst of energy. Who wants to be identified as a "flash in the pan" with no ability to sustain what they start? I am NOT a "flash in the pan"! I'll prove it by grabbing my raincoat and walking stick and heading out the door into the warm misty weather.

6. My trusty ol' PDA and earbuds that make walking a musical encounter with some of my favorite music of all time. (Fortunately, traffic along my walking route is almost nonexistent and, even with the earbuds, cars have no excuse for running me down as long as I pay some modest level of attention to what's happening around me.)

Ah, a good combination. A medical professional giving me full permission to go walking, inviting temperatures outside, a good walking route, and a friend to tell me, "I knew you couldn't get back on your feet this quickly."

The Thrill of Accomplishment

OK, I think I'm done with this sitting around stuff. There is huge satisfaction in accomplishment, and walking just a little further today than yesterday isn't quite doing it for me. Nor am I going to find any satisfaction in the "word search" puzzle book someone sent me. It's time to see what trouble I can get into around here.

I'm not even close to being a workaholic. Rather, I am fully capable of filling my hours with activity that looks like work but actually contributes almost nothing to the overall good of the world. Still, when I am able to accomplish worthwhile tasks, there is certainly great satisfaction in it. I'm thinking it's time to conjure up a "lite" to-do list and do it in the name of mental health.

Right after I take a nap.

The power of discontentment

I had a cancerous kidney removed a week ago. When I posted to Facebook that I was taking a vacation, checking into a place with full service amenities -- breakfast in bed, uniformed staff available at the push of a button, etc. -- a friend said she was jealous. She was joking, of course. Still, it's amazing how discontentment with what we have can make another person's lot seem so very attractive. Even the idea of having major surgery can seem like a treat to someone who has to get up every morning and trudge off to another day of work. 

 I'm lounging at home right now, with a to-do list to die for. 1. Nap. 2. Heal. 3. Recover. That's it. Oh, I should probably take care of a few physical needs. Eat. Toddle off to the bathroom now and then. That sort of thing. But it's still a pretty short list. And I hear that people pay good money for the pills I have sitting beside me. Ah, mine is the life of luxury. And all it has cost me thus far is one kidney, some pain, and a pittance of copay for drugs and lab work. (I'm sure the bills will start showing up soon.) 

 There is huge power in both contentment and discontentment. I am truly blessed. I have no complaints with life. But I could if I chose discontentment. Contentment is definitely a choice. When I choose it, it's not difficult to count my blessings. When others choose discontentment, they discover they have drawn the short stick in terms of blessings. Then they see me and all my blessings and are truly envious, regardless of my actual lot in life. If I were homeless and living in rags but able to count enough blessings to be happy, there would be discontented people who would look at me with envy, wishing they could chuck all the burdens of responsible living and join me in my carefree lifestyle. 

 A number of years ago, I was serving time in my least favorite room in the house while others were lounging in the living room waiting for me to produce food for them. I was highly displeased with this arrangement and railing against it in my mind. After all, I was as tired as those people. I deserved to relax as much as they did. 

 The question that came to me was: Are you really so overworked? 

 Overworked? Well, compared to everyone else around here ... 

  NO! Not compared to everyone else. Compared to an absolute scale of exhausting physical demands. 

 Uhm... well, no, not really. Not when you include the physical demands that come with slavery or other types of servanthood on the scale. It has actually been a pretty easy day. And life. I could expend much, much more energy in a day if I worked up to it and kept myself at full physical capacity. And if the people in the other room were swinging pick-axes and carrying rocks, I would feel quite blessed here in the kitchen. 

So why are you complaining? 

 Hmm... it's amazing how things look different when those lucky others are taken out of the picture. I am blessed to have discovered the secret to being content with the lot I am handed. I wish I could pass that secret on to others who are sure they could also be content with my lot but are not nearly to blessed by their own.

Agh! When was my last back-up?

So I'm convalescing on the couch, laptop on lap. Life is good. But one can only spend so much time staring at a computer screen. I close the laptop. It heads into suspend mode as I lower it to the floor beside the couch. My arm doesn't quite extend far enough. One end of the computer is on the floor, but the other end drops a couple of inches. The hard drive heads are still engaged. End of hard drive. Gone. Dead. All my lovely files. I notice the drop and wince, but don't realize the significance until next time I open the computer, at which time it starts making little whimpering sounds.

I wait for the panic. This is far from my first hard drive crash. I have been through this before with all the classic steps of grief.

1. Denial -- it can't be. Maybe it's not really dead. Surely someone can bring it back for me.

2. Anger -- in this case, at myself. Why did I drop a valuable piece of electronic equipment on the floor? Why didn't I have a decent backup?

3. Bargaining -- HOW much does it cost for data retrieval on dead hard drives? Can I pay someone to bring back my lost files?

4. Depression -- The pictures I will never see again. The data lost. So devastating. So hopeless. So valuable and yet not worth the money to bring them back, even if it were possible.

5. Acceptance -- yes, my data is gone, but life will go on. I won't pay for resurrection. I will accept the loss and start a new collection of data on a new hard drive. I will survive.

So I wait for the panic. Arghh! My hard drive is dead. My data is lost. Let's see. What did I lose?

Uhm... well, I did a new blog post earlier today. Yes, and it's safely stored at blogspot.

Uhm ... mail files. I have lots of AOL mail files and this computer is the official storage spot for them. Yes, and the most recent ones are still on the AOL mail server. Is there really that much value in the old ones?

Data, surely I had valuable data on here. On a laptop? Why would you store your valuable data on a piece of equipment that can walk away in a moment? All the most essential files are stored other places, remember? Haven't you started storing most stuff in dropbox?

Pictures. I have pictures on here that may not exist anywhere else. Maybe, but aren't most of them pictures someone sent you via email? It's not as though you have the only copy in existence.

But always before I've missed most the little things, the files not worth backing up. The applications with no supporting media. What about those? Name one.

Hmm... so, still, I'm convalescing. I can't be expected to sit at a desktop during my time of need. So bring your work laptop home and use it.

That's it? No grief other than the value of the hard drive and the Windows license? This is certainly a change since the last hard drive tragedy.

(Placeholder for summary last line -- I'm still on my mental break.)

Taking a mental break

My surgery is over. The growth on the kidney was a non-typical cancer. It's now gone -- the cancer (hopefully), the growth (for sure), and the kidney that was hosting it. I'm recovering quite nicely. The blessings are many. Despite my last post, I'm not listing them. That would require organizing my thoughts, lining things up, managing my thought processes, prioritizing my goals for the day. I'm taking a break from all that. This is a stand-alone post, not one of a series, not part of a plan.

I'm surprised. I arranged to take some time off from life while recovering from surgery. I have 22 staples holding things together northwest of my navel (if north is up and west is to the left). That's the part I can see. I have no clue what lies beneath the surface. There's some pain involved in all that. No surprise there. What surprises me is the message I'm getting from within and without that it's fine to stretch the limits on my physical activities. The only restrictions I have involve driving and lifting over ten pounds. Walking is fine. Climbing steps is fine. The way to return to full health is to be as active as possible physically while getting plenty of rest and not ignoring the messages my body is giving me.

It's the mental process that is surprising me. It was around 18 hours after I arrived home from the hospital and was settled comfortably on the couch with my laptop when someone suggested a little project I could take on while convalescing. It was a project that wouldn't require a lot of mental energy. Gather some information, make a phone call, or maybe just send an email. Nothing much. And it could result in a $50 refund for an event my husband and I will miss this next week. Little effort; tangible reward. What's not to like?

Except my brain declined the assignment. No, I'm taking some time off. I'm not doing research and gathering information. I'm not focusing on completing a task. Not this task. Not the thousand other tasks that would fit this same model.

Here's a short list of things I could do while convalescing:

1. Catch up on email for home and work. Read the new stuff, sort through and delete the old stuff. All from the comfort of my couch.

2. Organize files. Grab a couple of folders out of a drawer and take as long as I want to sort through them.

3. Make a list of topics to research in Google. Spend just one hour a day doing that research.

4. Make some progress on the pile of books and magazines waiting my attention.

5. Learn something new.

6. Write thank you notes for all the many kindnesses coming my way.

The pattern here is tasks that require almost no physical exertion, just mental exertion. After all, it's my body that has had surgery. Why would my mind need time off? It should probably be kept active so I stay sharp.

But no. I don't think so. Life is far from stress-free for me. My various to-do lists for work and home and outside activities regularly threaten to overwhelm the time available for doing them. I think I need a mental break. I can't afford to take a lot of time off, but I think I can afford another week of letting go of my mental focus and giving my mind a vacation. Then perhaps I can ease my way back into regular life while considering ways to perhaps settle at a slightly lower level of stress.

People hear about my surgery and encourage me to lie on the couch for as long as needed for recovery. Taking a mental break while recovering physically is a little more of a challenge, but I think it will be worth the effort.

I would wrap this post up with some summary thought, but that always requires significant mental energy. So I'll just quit.

Blessing in the Thorn

Phillips, Craig, and Dean sing a song called "Blessing in the Thorn" that has been a blessing to me. Having encountered a thorn in my life, I am once again seeing the beauty of the blessings in the thorn. To briefly state the "thorn" (so scholars won't have to spend centuries trying to figure it out), my left kidney has a lesion on it and is scheduled to be surgically removed the day after tomorrow. I'm not sure I can even begin to catalog all the blessings I am encountering in this thorn, but thought I would record at least a few of them. 

1. Symptoms. Thinking back, I wonder how many I ignored before some showed up that drove me to my doctor. What a blessing that they escalated to where I couldn't ignore them any longer. Yet, once I had appointments made and was committed to getting to the bottom of them, they subsided almost completely, allowing me to resume my normal schedule between doctor visits. 

2. Modern medicine. I won't even try to be more specific than that. What amazing miracles of healing happen every day in medical facilities around the world. 

3. Timing, both the big picture the small. On the big side, it looks like I'll be able to make it to my daughter's wedding in five weeks. It wouldn't have had to work out like that. On the small side, I do bookkeeping for two organizations. My surgery is on the 15th of the month at the start of the least intensive time for bills. In between there are multiple blessings in both the timing of the surgery and how that timing all came together. 

4. Friends. It's great to know people care. 

5. Prayer. What a gift it is to have people remember me in their prayers. 

That's just a start. Maybe I'll find time to add more in the next days and weeks.

Missed Moments in Time

Tuesday I joined the church ladies group at the local restaurant for lunch. I arrived a little early and stopped to chat with a man sitting by himself at a table that could have accommodated the entire ladies group. It was the first time I had seen him since he had taken a public tumble and become a topic of our small town news. His arm was in a sling. I stopped briefly to chat. He has medical tests scheduled for next week. I would have enjoyed learning more and catching up in general but wasn't sure he would appreciate being joined by a bunch of women so I moved on to claim an empty table. I was then sitting by myself for several minutes and he was still sitting by himself. As I gazed across the room, I pondered the options that would have allowed me to chat with him a little longer. He was a member of my church years ago before moving out of the area and then to a nearby town. It's always nice to catch up with him.

That was Tuesday. His 38-year-old daughter was pronounced dead of a heart attack on Wednesday morning. My husband and I are going to the funeral home for visitation tonight. It will be a tragic scene. No parent should ever have to bury their child. And for reasons I won't go into, this is, if possible, even worse than most cases of daughters dying too early. (Perhaps all cases are worse than most cases in one way or another.)

Ever since I heard, I have gone back over that scene from Tuesday. There he was, sitting alone, dealing with his own health issues, unaware of what lay in his immediate future. There I was in the same room, sitting alone, waiting for other companions. It could have been one of them who met with tragedy in the hours to follow. It's not that I made the wrong choice, the curtain was simply drawn on the future and I didn't know it was the last chat I would have with him before unfathomable grief moved in to become a permanent fixture in his life.

Still, it's a terrible reminder of how precious our moments with people are.

Life -- The Database

I like databases. They're wonderful ways to organize things. My favorite example of something begging for a database is a baseball card collection. You can organize your actual cards by only one method. You might sort them by team, by date of acquisition, by value, by field position, or any number of ways, but they can have only one order. If you choose a different criteria for sorting them, you lose the order you already had.

A database, on the other hand, allows unlimited sorting options. And filtering options! You can make a list that includes only pitchers and sort them by their statistics. Or you can list only the cards above a certain value. Or only the rookie cards sorted by year. Oh, the fun you can have organizing your baseball cards once you have entered them into a database!

What I want is a database for life. I just got back from a library conference and am pumped up with new ideas for things to do in the library. Right now they're banging around in my head or on a couple of pages of notes and some handouts. I added a few of them to my standing to-do list for the library -- at the end.

What if a had a database for all these ideas? I could assign each task a value, estimate the time investment needed, put them in categories, give them a start and finish time. I could do the same for my home to-do list. When I got up in the morning, I could run a report ranking my priorities for the day. I would have a field for date of completion and run a report of completed tasks at the end of the week. New ideas would be entered in and given a place among existing obligations. Tasks that went beyond the time available could be reviewed to see if they could wait or needed to bump another task off the list. I could customize each day's list to reflect my schedule for the day -- work tasks for work hours, home tasks for evenings and weekends.

I could also use my database for memory assistance. I could record the news from someone today that he just had cataract surgery. Next time I see him, I could pull up the record of the surgery and ask if the operation on the second eye went well.

I could use my database for a diary and calendar, recording tidbits from all aspects of my life -- diet, exercise, menus, recipes to try, service contracts purchased, schedule for auto service, for health check-ups. Sure, I have ways to do these things now -- calendars, journals, reminders here and there -- but wouldn't it be wonderful to have them all in one place?

Of course, if I'm going to use my database for memories, I would need to add a "fade" factor similar to the one my brain uses. After all, I don't want the memory of the stupid thing I did today to be just as sharp and painful two years from now. It needs to be softened around the edges. Good memories need to sweeten with time. Bad memories need to blur. I would simply build this into the database.

Ah for such a database. How long would it take to develop it? How much maintenance time would it require? Would I have time for living with all the time investment needed for data entry and manipulation? Let's see -- get up (record rising time); check breakfast menu; eat breakfast (record food consumed, update household food inventory and shopping list to reflect food used); watch the news (record the days' news items and my reaction); etc., etc. Something tells me this isn't really going to work out too well. I need some sort of automatic data entry system.

I guess this is what my brain is for. If only it were better organized and let fewer things slip through the cracks.

Oh well, one can always dream.

Gratitude

So ... a friend has a laptop that had slowed down to a crawl, to the point of being almost worthless, particularly if the wireless card were turned on. My husband had looked briefly at it and didn't want to mess with it any more. He figured it was a virus and recommended finding a good computer repair shop.

I was only vaguely aware of the problem until the discussion of repair shops came up. I volunteered that if our friend couldn't find anywhere to take it, I could take a look at it. He was leaving town without the laptop for a couple of days and took me up on the offer.

Several hours later, I had eliminated a bunch of background processes, cleaned up the registry, uninstalled some extraneous programs and had it running like a top. (No sign of a virus, just junk processes eating up the CPU resources.) Although it required a significant time investment and I had to reinstall the printer with driver software that wasn't quite a match for his printer, I was generally pleased with the outcome and returned it with the satisfaction of having done better than I expected with it. I figured I could tweak the printer driver later if he came up with software for it.

Next time I saw the laptop owner, I asked him if it was running all right. He didn't know yet, having not returned to it, but made a comment about me knowing all his secrets. Huh? I told him I knew he used to have a weather desktop utility, that I had simply been interested in the running processes on his computer, not his files.

A few days later, I happened to see him with the laptop and asked how it was doing.

Fine.

Just fine?

Yeah, it's doing all right, even starts up quickly.

Fine? That's it? If his car had been coughing and sputtering and would barely start and someone took it and tuned it up and returned it starting and running flawlessly would he say in an offhand tone it was running fine? Would he ask if the generous mechanic had rummaged through all the stuff he kept in his trunk?

I think I'm going to add up my time and send him a bill.

Nah, not really. I'll just make a note that the gratitude one receives for a gift is not necessarily going to reflect its worth in the general marketplace. And continue to give gifts as I am able.

Sometimes it goes the other way. A simple act of service requiring little time or effort will be received as a precious jewel. This wasn't one of those times.

Lessons from the garden

Saturday evening I was out in my garden. As often happens, Charlie the cat inserted himself between me and my plants with a need for attention. I gave in to his demands for petting and ran my hand down his left side. With a snarl, he turned and bit me, just barely breaking the skin. He bit me! It was totally unexpected. Charlie is an old cat and not given to playful wrestling. Something was seriously up. After attacking me, he lay where he had fallen in my garden bed, claws extended, mouth open in a snarl. I walked away to bind up my wounds.

Sunday evening, I ran across someone at church wearing full body armor. I could find no cracks. When I tried to discuss some scheduling she informed me that anyone could work with the current calendar if they had sufficient desire, that participating was a choice that might take some sacrifice but could be done. No surrender, no quarter. Take it or leave it. Leaving it seemed like a pretty good choice in light of the hostility being displayed, but I saw no need to stir up any more defensiveness by saying so. I let it go, thinking it would be easier to work with the other parties involved.

Monday morning, back in the garden, along came Charlie the cat. I said, "I'm not petting you. You bite!" and continued with what I was doing. Not offended at all, Charlie rubbed his head against my elbow. When I ignored him, he moved a little closer and kept rubbing against me. I put my hand toward him and he rubbed against my fingers. I went ahead and petted the part of him that he offered to me. Rather than biting, he purred.

I think there's a lesson here. Apparently, Charlie has a sore spot on his side. If I touch it, he communicates his pain to me by causing me pain. If I play a more passive role, he will let me know what parts are all right to touch. I wonder . . . how can I apply that lesson as I interact with the wounded people around me?

Under lock and key

I have been locked out. Somebody messed with the settings on the church sound board. Maybe it was children. Or maybe it was the musicians.

I am a musician.

The musicians come and practice during the week and insist on using the sound system during practice. Come Sunday the sound board is messed up. Knobs have been turned that should not be turned. Or maybe sliders have been slid. I'm not sure. No one has ever clearly pointed out to me which parts of the sound system are off limits.

In frustration, the sound man built a wood box, installed a lock, took one key for himself, and entrusted another to the pastor in case of emergency. Everything is set. All the musicians need to do is flip the switch on the outlet strip. No adjustments are needed. Thus, there is no need for the musicians to have access to a key. Problem solved.

Enter an additional musician needing an additional microphone. The sound system is locked. One microphone is available for one singer. If another singer is needed, the musicians are welcome to contact the sound man and he will come and turn on an additional microphone. After all, the musicians are prime suspects as the ones twisting the forbidden knobs. They are not to have access to a key.

Oh, brother.

With great effort against strong resistance, the musicians now know where one of the keys is stored. With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility. They will be held directly accountable for any knob-twisting that happens. The very fact that they insist on knowing where to find a key to the sound system implicates them as knob-twisters. People with respect for knobs that should not be twisted would not insist on having access to those knobs.

There are two people behind the lock-and-key decision. There are no more than a dozen people ever involved in music or sound for the services. Did the two people ever consider gathering together everyone who is ever in a position to need to adjust the sound and sharing the secrets of the sound board? How weak does a person have to be to deny access to responsible adults rather than communicate important issues to them? Are the musicians incapable of understanding even the most basic elements of the sound equipment?

I have a secret. The musicians also adjust the thermostat during their practice sessions. Sometimes the church is too cold for the musicians' delicate fingers. Sometimes it is too hot for their frenzied preparatory musical celebrations. The musicians have been known once or twice to forget to return the thermostat to the "unoccupied" setting. Thus far, these occasional lapses have been tolerated with a simple reminder that we need to be more responsible. But now that it has come out that the musicians are compulsive knob-twisters controllable only by blocking access to the knobs, I suspect the thermostat is in line for locking. A programmable thermostat can be installed and programmed to temporarily adjust the temperature for the regular practice schedule. Rescheduled or extra practices will need to be cleared with those holding the keys.

Long ago I figured out there are two rich sources for learning that can never be fully tapped. One source is those who provide positive examples to be incorporated into one's life. The even more prolific source is those who provide negative examples to be avoided. As I have been locked out of a system for which I have had almost no training and which I seldom touch, I am struck by the message behind the lock. It says I am a person who is unteachable and untrustworthy. Rather than insisting that I (and the other musicians) either learn to use the sound system properly or quit messing with it, those making the decision to lock us out swept us aside as hopeless knob-twisters. Not exactly the most edifying message I have ever encountered.

I wonder ... how many responsible adults (or children) am I locking out in mistrust rather than giving them the tools and opportunity to act in a trustworthy manner?

Thought to remember #7: "Life is reflective ... choose your source."

Only my commitment to Christian living prevents me from making a strong negative response to this message of mistrust. My baser self makes such helpful suggestions as locking up the musical instruments and walking away with the keys. Or maybe locking the door to the room where the music is stored so that only the "official" musicians have access to it. Or bringing in our own amps and bypassing the locked sound system.

In my experience, the pull to treat others the way they treat you never quite fades away. The thing to remember is how much better it is to treat others as you are treated by the most loving people in your life (and by a loving God) rather than as you are treated by those who are weak and have few resources for communicating and building relationships.

It's worth repeating and remembering. "Life is reflective ... choose your source." I refuse to reflect this attitude of mistrust and disrespect for the learning ability of others which could so easily spread through the entire church. I will acknowledge the weakness which the lock and key demonstrates and respond with compassion and grace.

How fortunate I am to have encountered grace in my life that operates at a level worth reflecting. O to be able to consistently reflect that grace to those who lock me out.

Competence Is a Heady Thing

This week I fixed the laser printer at the library. I had googled for hints on fixing it and found a place that described the exact problems we were having and offered to sell me replacement parts that would cure those problems. Two problems, two parts, $50.

The first part came with written instructions. It was a quick and easy repair. I tackled it soon after the order arrived and the printer was then functional. The second part came with an instructional dvd. It was to fix a less essential function -- the bypass tray. I procrastinated on that one until Wednesday afternoon when I needed to print material for a workshop the next day and wanted to use both sides of the paper, something most easily done using the bypass tray. I decided the time had come and stuck the dvd in my laptop next to the printer.

An hour later, after removing and replacing five parts and two springs to get to the problem piece, the printer was working but I had one part left over -- a paper-clip type wire spiraled into a spring. I knew I was in trouble when it went boing as I removed the bypass tray. I didn't see where it came from and couldn't figure out how it was supposed to work. The video didn't show that spring at all and the tray worked fine without it. But it bothered me to have a part left over.

Mechanical devices are not my specialty. I have a terrible time remembering how things came apart so I can put them back together. I generally try to avoid taking them apart, particularly things that suddenly fall apart without warning, such as spring-loaded devices. I had spent significant time on that spring without success and everything else about the printer was working. Should I throw it away? Store it someplace until I received sudden inspiration to replace it? I sat and studied it a little longer. It needed to be happy when the tray was in an upright position and experience mild stress when the tray was open. Study, study, back to the printer to look for possibilities. Then - voila! -- I saw how it went. Success! The printer is now fully repaired and all of its parts back in their proper place.

Fixing the printer made me quite pleased with myself. It was a significant accomplishment.

Meanwhile, a coworker made a call to take care of a matter for her adult son. She said, "Someday he's going to have to stand on his own two feet." Obviously, that wasn't the day. I remembered that he was in the library recently and wanted me to figure out a website for him. I had no familiarity with the site and he was the one who needed to learn how to use it. I told him I would simply be poking around the same as he could do himself and walked away. Eventually, he figured it out. Did he have that same sense of accomplishment in handling something himself? He tends to ask me for help every time. Does "standing on his own two feet" have no appeal to him?

Later, that same coworker told me about a call she got from an inmate at the county jail wanting her to assist him in gaining release -- attend his bail-reduction hearing, maybe contribute something toward his bail. The man is 50 years old. What's he doing in jail in the first place? How many years does it take a person to assume responsibility for staying on the right side of the law or for dealing with the consequences of failing in that endeavor?

It made me feel good to fix the printer. Capable. Competent. I can get around most internet sites without assistance. I can live well enough within the law to avoid getting stuck in jail hoping for a bond reduction or someone who cares enough to bail me out. (I've at least managed to escape that fate for over 50 years.)

What is it like to depend on others to bail you out of the tight spots you stumble into? Does such a lifestyle feel right to people with a particular personality and history? Would the thrill of competent living leave them hooked on accomplishment if they could manage to live competently?

I wonder.

Adventures of a Domestic Rabbit

This is a story with a happy ending. The rabbit is back. It's not the end I expected.

On the evening of October 8, I heard a squeal in the woods outside my bedroom window. It was the panic scream of a rodent. My first thought was that it sounded like a rabbit. I thought of the wire cage housing my "Easter bunny" and was comforted by the confidence that no predator could get to her. I decided it must have been a hapless chipmunk.

The next day, my daughter discovered the empty rabbit cage. The door was propped open. The rabbit was gone. I was somehow distracted the previous day and left the door open and the rabbit, naturally, went exploring.

As I remembered the previous night's squeal, my heart sank. What had discovered and attacked our domestic rabbit, so ill-trained for wilderness survival? I had intentionally fostered goodwill between the rabbit and the dogs and cat, trying to persuade our household predators that the rabbit was "family" rather than prey. Had those attempts resulted in disaster in the absence of healthy fear on the rabbit's part and my restraining hand on the dog?

The rabbit was a gift, a pedigreed 4H show bunny. How could I admit to my generous friends that I lost it by leaving the cage door open? Even though the empty cage was discovered as I was rushing out the door for a meeting, I took time for a brief and futile search -- no rabbit, dead or alive. It was gone. The dogs took a "no comment" position. I wanted to cancel the meeting, but, really, it was only a missing rabbit. It's not like rabbits are hard to replace. Male rabbit plus female rabbit and you have a whole litter to choose from in thirty days. And it's not as though the lost rabbit was particularly affectionate. Any time we let her loose in the house, she would lead us on a merry chase as she evaded capture. Still, the panic scream echoed in my head and my gut ached as I visualized the fate of our pet due to my carelessness.

As I waited for time to ease the initial shock of what I had done, I wondered... How many parents are haunted by a child's scream -- a child hit by a vehicle, maybe theirs; a child losing his or her grip and falling or being swept away by current or wave. How can they endure the endless echoes of that final scream of pain and panic? How do they ever go on with life? What would it be like to multiply the grief I felt for the rabbit by the huge value factor involved with a child. I can't begin to imagine the pain and suffering.

A week after the rabbit escaped, my husband captured her in pixel form sitting not far from her cage by the kitchen door. As soon as he touched the doorknob, she was gone. I wouldn't have believed it but the rabbit in the photo he printed was definitely ours. A few days later he found her by the woodpile. Three of us closed in on her. She let us get close and then disappeared under the wood. A flashlight revealed her at the end of a long hollow run, far beyond reach. The day after that, she let Dave touch her nose when he was out feeding the wood furnace. And a few hours later she sat still by the entrance to her woodpile "burrow" and let me catch her.

Was twelve days enough for the rabbit get her fill of life in the wild and decide to resign herself to being caged in exchange for protection from the dangers of the world along with daily food and water? Did the change of diet from pellets to greens leave her without enough energy to run? Who knows what goes on in the mind of a domestic rabbit? She seems lighter and more appreciative of being a pet, easier to catch in the house, less determined to get away when carried, more inclined to come close to fingers reaching through the cage wire. The failure to fight capture could be simply a lack of energy, but it doesn't take much energy to avoid fingers coming through the cage wire.

I'm pretty sure the scream I heard that first night was the rabbit. It must have escaped from whatever was after it and found a hiding place. What blessing there is in happy endings. Oh that all the endings could be happy endings. My heart still aches when I think of all the many tragedies for which there is no happy ending.

One more blog post

Five months. Almost. That's how long it has been since I have added anything here. As I have mentioned before, it turns out a blog can continue to exist and attract visitors based on existing material rather than requiring constant updates. Still, I fear that blogspot may someday notice that I'm not writing on a regular basis and "weed" me out just as I weed books from the library shelves.

There's hope for more. My garden is winding down. I'm gradually emerging from the crushing to-do list that ate up the summer. I even went to Google reader today to see who else continues to blog and who has fallen silent. It turns out not everyone has wandered off to twitter.

I wonder how substantial additions need to be to stave off the weeding fork. I think I'm past 140 characters now. Is it enough?

Now I just need to come up with some things to publicly ponder before the holidays move in like an elephant in a small room and leave me crushed against the wall.

Fighting heresy

I was reminded again this week that fighting 'heresy' is a delicate operation.

A number of years ago, I left the library at about the same time two days in a row and caught a few seconds of a radio preacher. The first day, he was ranting about the false teachings of "Sanders and Boyd." I turned the radio off. The second day, he was still going on about how wrong "Sanders and Boyd" were. Apparently, these two people were making some pretty big waves. I listened a little longer and came easily to the conclusion that I would find more to like about "Sanders and Boyd" than the one trying so hard to refute their views. A little research led to a more complete identification of John Sanders and Gregory Boyd, proponents of open theism. I bought and read The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence by John Sanders. Sanders' views fit well with my beliefs and the book was profitable. I wondered if I should write a thank you note to the radio preacher who introduced me to him.

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a link to a website exposing the 'heresies' of the emerging church in America. Her son had the dubious honor of being noted as a student leader on this road to heresy. As I looked around the site, I found some of my favorite Christian writers highlighted, along with other names I had not previously encountered. I have left the site open in a browser tab and revisit it now and then. There is useful information there -- links to sites connected with the emerging church, spiritual formation, and contemplative prayer. I don't know of another place on the internet that does so well in pulling together such an attractive set of resources. Being well-practiced at overlooking offensive tirades from the established church, I'm not overly bothered by the negative words that surround these resources.

What is/are the person(s) behind the site thinking in presenting all of these open windows into the ways God is working in the 21st-century Church? Am I supposed to look at them and immediately agree that they must be of the devil? Is that an obvious conclusion to the site manager(s)? Is there any fear at all that visitors such as me will follow the links and embrace what they find rather than joining the "ain't-it-awful" crowd in rejecting them?

The book of Acts in the Bible contains the account of a zealous young Pharisee named Saul who witnessed the execution of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and then went on to persecute the early church. In chapter 9, Saul is off to Damascus to round up followers of Jesus Christ in that city when he encounters a blinding light and a voice that says, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the pricks." (KJV memory version) There's a short conversation and then Saul gets up and becomes just as zealous for Christianity as he has been in opposing it. It strikes me that such a complete turn-around didn't start when that light flashed, that at some level Saul (later to become the apostle Paul) was already beginning to wonder if he might have it all wrong and be working against God rather than for Him. Perhaps part of his zeal was designed to squelch the doubts that had begun to nag at him.

I wonder about the person(s) behind the Lighthouse Trails Research blog. Are they so blind to the appeal of what they are presenting that they are confident that no readers will be drawn to it? Are they struggling to maintain their position of disdain while nagging doubts erode away their convictions? Alternatively, is the site maintained by someone only pretending to oppose this stuff and banking on the theory that there is no such thing as bad publicity? (I would seriously entertain this idea if honesty and transparency weren't a strong value among people embracing spiritual formation.)

Perhaps we should all stick to supporting the stuff we love rather than risk spreading the word about the stuff that strikes us as wrong-headed in our attempt to fight against it.

Let me tell you how it is.

(How's that for a subject with no keywords?)

This morning I was sitting in a hotel lobby using my laptop. A businessman settled into a nearby chair with his laptop, and he and his companion discussed the availability of internet access. When they couldn't get an immediate connection, the companion decided to go get a jump drive rather than waste time trying to get connected. As I continued with what I was doing, I thought I saw the man left behind with his laptop glance my way a couple of times as though he were curious about my success in obtaining internet access. It occurred to me that maybe I could help him get connected but I pushed aside the suggestion. After all, what was I really going to do?

The day before, I stood in a Metro station in Washington, D.C. waiting for a train. A family disembarked from another line and came up to study the map beside me. The mother said they needed 7th & C and thought they would emerge at that intersection if they walked to their left. They discussed it a while and then started that direction. But the mother turned around to check the map one more time to make sure. At that point, I said, "I just came from 7th & C. You were headed the right direction."

I've been taking some training for library software. It's sort of a learning together process. Those doing the teaching are only a little ahead of the students. Questions are welcome. Sometimes I have questions. More often, it seems, I have observations, maybe a helpful tip to offer. In other situations where I'm supposed to be a learner, such as in Bible studies, I might put my observation in the form of a question, such as, "Where in the Bible does it say what you just told us?" Interpreted that sometimes means, "I don't agree with what you said and am quite certain that there is no biblical support for it. I'll let it stand rather than challenge your authority, but I'll at least cast a shadow of doubt over it." It's not really a question.

Ah, the attraction of being an authority. Let me tell you how to get connected, where to go. Here's a tip for doing this computer process. This is what I know about the Bible.

Sometimes I'm the one on the receiving end when other people are eager to share their expertise and help me out well before I've indicated any interest in being helped. Sometimes it truly is helpful and I welcome their input. Other times, it can be quite annoying. In those times, I tend to quit responding while I wait for them to run out of words and go find someone more appreciative of their help. I figure no response beats a negative response.

So when is the right time to offer help to a family trying to find themselves on a map and when is it better to wait for them to look around and ask? Are there times and places in this world for offering unsolicited help? Is this urge to help those around me a character flaw or a gift to be honed and used to bless others?

Just pondering.