Whose Approval Do You Desire?

A kiss from my autistic son

 
Do not ask my son for approval. People stare at him sniffing my hair and he could care less.  The acceptance of God in our lives is not dependent on humans.   

Sitting at church today,  it struck me how critical humanity can be towards each other. I watched an elderly man act out.  He disgreed about some dialogue. I sat quiet. How many times had I opened my mouth? How about thinking it, but not speaking it?  Words spoken or not can divide. 

I travel a lot.  Getting out of my comfort zone brings me to different cultures and diversity. I enjoy meeting new people. Communication is key.  I find a smile is most inviting.  It is the best kind of approval. Maybe. I am happy.

I think upon myself and wonder how hedonistic I may be. That deep seeded place thinking only about being happy as my greatest approval factor.   Can you relate?

Hiking the Issaquah Alps!

Do I need to look to the skys for my answer? Yes, and I also know my approval rating needs to be more like how my son looks at being accepted. It is with no thought of what others might think. 

Let it go.  Close my eyes and sniff away like my Luke!  There will I find peace in God. 
  

The Honesty Factor

There will never be just one way to explain any given topic. If that were so, we would all be robots.  The honesty factor can be in different colors, yet with the same truth. 

Last week all hell broke loose with an issue dear to my heart. I am unable to discuss it fully on my blog. You know it is big when I can not even come up with the words. 

How many times have you had a metaphor utilized by someone to translate what they are trying to communicate?  Ministers love them in their sermons to help us achieve to that “higher” level.  Even physicians pitch them to translate science. 

How many of us have heard evidence based lingo?  We all value the meaning behind what facts are known on any given subject. The question is do we need those  facts thrown at us without some thought? 

Transfer of information always brings to mind a childhood game of whispering in one friend’s ear and then another, etc until all have heard.  What comes out at the end is always a good laugh. 

What if the transfer of understanding  goes amok? Communication 101 in college  after all is more important than even I thought.  

I am always full of questions . I wonder. I think.  I wait .  I need some answers. Maybe you do too. I hear ya.  Is a miracle around the corner? I hope. 

Collision Course

Convinced it’s finished, we find excuses. Lots of them. It is never done.  Conflict comes and goes.  We can be on a crash course that promises to be the collision of a lifetime.  No one said life is fair.

Restorations

Anne Graham Lotz (Billy Graham’s daughter) spoke at an event I attended this week.

We are broken. Yes. That’s right. Not one of us is free from emotional baggage either brought on by our own doings or afflicted upon us by others. How often are we rattled to our core? I must say I have had that kind of life yet I prayed for my release many times even if it was death.
A few nights ago I attended a special event where Ann Graham Lotz spoke to a large audience. Anne is the daughter of the legendary evangelist Billy Graham. She is considered for her generation one of the top 5 evangelists according to the New York Times. Funny thing is that at this event she said she is not an evangelist. Reverend Billy Graham called her the best preacher in the family. I thought that was pretty amazing coming from him.
Anne’s message was clear and masterful. She believes we are living in the end times and prefaced this with language I had heard many times before about the changing circumstances of humanity. She gave example after example of environmental and political reasons. It was interesting and her thoughts on life in our current culture seemed spot on to me.
As a fellow Christian I take heart in the simplicity of the evening. There was a lone man (http://www.fernandoortega.com/) at the piano singing songs that pierced your heart. With each word of one song I paused to allow the fullness of its meaning. The song would draw you in with its deep calling. It would remind me of being at a dear friend’s house that you may have not seen for many years, yet you can resume that friendship right where you left off.
It is in living our lives vulnerable, we rediscover ourselves. I think that is why I love music so much. A song has a way of replenishing me. I can let my guard down. So as I seized the moment in a song, I thought of where my life has come from one restoration to another. It is not a one stop healing track. It is a continuum. If we are to capture the wonder of life, it is a rediscovery process. It is also about allowing people an opening into our lives from not merely knowing someone from the inside out, but the outside in.
After coming home from this special night, I decided to find out more about Anne. I noted in one article on the internet that her husband had been very ill a month ago with a deadly MRSA infection. She thought they might lose him. As I read this, it took me back to my year of horror with the same infection in my skull. The difference is I became extremely angry and resentful to God about this and honestly still have not completely overcome my negative emotions with my experience. Yet here was Anne able to come cross-country after watching her partner fight for his life. Let me just say that her circumstances restored me a little that night.
So today I am a little bit closer to being the best I can be. I await again for another restoration and can not wait for God to answer in an unexpected way. By the way–bloggers thanks for reading as this post was very religious in nature. I am many things, but the most important part of who I am is an ordinary girl telling her story in extraordinary fashion. That is why I started this blog after all.

Every Morning

Photo taken on the farm of my husband’s parents. Nature is so beautiful here.

Every morning I get up out of bed, I look out the window. Most mornings it is pitch black because I am with my kids as they get ready for school. On the weekend, I have the luxury of sleeping in. As I awake, my first glimpses may be the beginning of light from a distant, the softness of the grass in the yard, or baby birds eyeing my feeders. It is in this I reflect on God’s creation. This week as I prepare for my women’s group, the subject is on God’s presence.
In one of the most well-known stories of the Bible in the book of Job, we learn of a man who loved God. Despite all this love he has for God, God allows Job to lose absolutely everything. I can not even imagine what he must have felt like. I have lost many things, but not everything like him. Job is left miserable with the loss of his children, money, and his health. Despite it all, Job wonders why me but he never curses God. Finally God responds to Job through nature itself.
If you have time to read Job 38, it is here that God engages Job to look to the night sky and the clouds of a summer’s day. He than takes him on a wonderful adventure of nature itself and its animals. It is in God’s safari that Job is refreshed in his belief. Can you imagine being lifted up and allowed to see all things created through the wonder of God’s eyes? There is so much more to God than only nature, but it was the way HE chose to show Himself to Job.
Thanks to all of you that write and bring to life a bit of yourself through your stories and photography. I do believe their is the divine in all of this we call life. God chose the Bible to tell us so much. It is through pain and hardship, nature beckons us back to Him. By the way everything was restored to Job. I suppose God could have put on a professor’s cap to teach Job, but He chose to teach through his own Handiwork. I like those kind of lessons myself. I don’t have to take notes.