Stringing a hammock across my heart and mind

Her ways are pleasant ways,
    and all her paths are peace. Proverbs 3:17

Peace comes from within and actually, now that I am old and greying, I can say with eyewitness veracity that there is little correlation between circumstances and inward calm. All of those poster maxims from across the years and cultures and religions join in this truth, the truth that He has placed in our hearts, that we might not sin against Him:

·      The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances. –Aristotle

·      The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances. -Viktor E. Frankl

·      Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances. –Mahatma Gandhi

·      I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation - Paul

·      I’ve learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. –Martha Washington.

·       

May I be disposed to Him. Because wisdom is about Him, and not about me. Trusting in Him and not in me. That was the whole Adam and Eve and snake thing… Who do you trust? Ah, well, Whom do you trust? (As I type, I am getting Facebook questions about subjective and objective pronouns.) Fear Him and not life. Wandering through the internet this morning… I found a lovely group, Shoestring Ministries, dedicated to asking the true peace question, not What is in this for me? but rather What’s In It For Him? This is what needs to be written on the tablet of my heart: Love and faithfulness.

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God your needs, and don’t forget to thank him for His answers. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ Jesus. Back to my dorky eight-year-old self writing Philippians 4:4-7, The Living Bible, every single day at my little desk that my dad had set up in the library. The library with the “secret” passageway through the closet to our bedroom.

The older I get, the simpler it all becomes. Ah, wisdom.

Every breath I take I take in You Jesus

Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. Psalm 150:6

So sometimes it seems like that all my daddy has is breath.  And it is labored a bit, so mom puts him on a little breathing machine thingie three times a day for eight minutes, or until he has had enough, whichever comes first.

And he sort of whispers to himself about Vanderbilt and the Caney Fork River and edits newsletters in the air.

But sometimes he swings his veritable skin-and-bone legs over the side of the bed and tries to escape.  And if I ask him, “How are you doing daddy?”, he will rasp in a fuzzy voice, “Jes’ fine,” and tell me that feels so good when I rub his back, and then he is done and flops back down, enough adventures for the moment.  

Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord.

Ol’ Evie has breath too.  Last night she was pretty unhappy what with air bubbles or whatever was in her tummy so she fussed a bit, and we all jostled her up and down and patted her back.  Heather and Dustin had shown up with two-for-the-price-of-one-pizzas and who knew Whole Foods sold their own two-buck bottle of wine and got whopped at cards by momma and me which of course never happens, but they said they got lucky at babies and they sure did, 

Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord.

And just now my dad is whispering again, “I gotta get out of here,” so thus ends the quiet candlelit moment, and a new day is beginning.  I can hear momma sweeping the front porch and the men’s Bible study that has met together on Monday mornings for over forty years is coming here these days, and I am out the door to take Jincheng to the airport.

Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord.

Deeper than just another coat of paint

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and He delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand. Psalm 37:23-24

With due apologies to my dear children, I am quite sure that among the other more traditional motherly mantras that I laid upon their young shoulders about being a leader for good and about cleaning their rooms at least once a week, Life is Not Fair was also underlined with a big black crayon.  Which is unfortunate because it is a Big Fat Lie.

Circumstances are not always fair.  People are not always fair. Rules certainly are not always fair.  But life itself is underpinned with justice, the justice of an Upheld Hand.  

And that is where I am to reside, somewhere there, somewhere in the quiet of my heart. At rest. In trust. Delighting myself also in the LORD. Ceasing from anger and forsaking wrath. Fretting not.  

I do not understand Scripture, nor how it is wielded by the Spirit sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.  But sometimes, no, even most, no, perhaps even all of the time, it pierces right through, shall I say, all of the, um, crap of the world and rightly discerns the heart.  

And sometimes, like Saturday for instance, I was humming a little happy song about kindness and postcards from Assisi and fixing my mom’s internet problem with the old unplug it plug it back in brilliance, when suddenly wham, the rest of the day’s verse about kindness and tenderheartedness sliced right through the blasting warmth in my little black car.  Forgiving one another, forgiving one another, forgiving one another.  Even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. And with absolute clarity I realized that there was lack of forgiveness dug in deep into my heart, a rotting putrid thorn bush poisoning my soul, almost unawares.  And the act of forgiveness ripped it out right by the roots and I am quite sure friends and family will agree that there is a new lilt to my fuzzy black-booted feet.

So, as I was neatly setting two packs of cloth diapers on top of the duffle bag of possessions including a skillet and four plastic plates and four plastic cups (why I do not know, but Bernabé said to bring EVERYTHING I would need for two years in one bag), a very well-intentioned woman bustled right into my life and lit into me about being responsible and reasonable and sensible and what was I doing taking my five-month old belly to a refugee camp.  And she did a great job of making my sputter helplessly and fumble for an explanation beyond, well, uh, God spoke to us?  Smack dab clearly, with no discussion.  No research of facts.  No pro/con lists. We didn’t even “pray about it.”  He said go, and we said yes. 

And then from nowhere, well from somewhere, but from nowhere expected the Spirit sliced through the stuttered embarrassment. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold.  Random.  But not out of nowhere.  I guess pretty much out of the storehouse of Scripture that I have known from a child. And I knew in my heart that He was faithful and true and that I would indeed  live this promised hundredfold. 

Charly is coming tomorrow.  Charly from Germany who sort of sums up the path we have led, a first leap into the hundredfold, of knowing that I did not even have to ask Alan if she could come live with us for a year starting tomorrow.  And as I remember my last memory of her, stretched up and across the back wall, disentangling bougainvillea thorns from her face while she cheerfully painted the wall yet one more color in preparation for Heather and Dustin’s wedding, I am struck by the so very trueness of being blessed a hundredfold, again and again, multiplied.  And this crazy house of ours always has room for one more, even though my dad is going to sleep on the couch tonight, and even though I cannot get rid of the creepy cockroaches and the cold pushes through the cracks in the handmade Joesler front door and the very funky but almost dysfunctional iron windows.  And now the front bedroom has undergone a Nicole transformation and I am not quite sure how she visualizes beauty out of every thrift store in town but she does.  
And as I pray through Psalm 37 today, for Nicole and for others in the hundredfold, I am convinced of His Upheld Hand. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

 Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
Delight thyself also in the Lord: and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.
 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.
And He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.