You Mean It’s Not All About Me?

Mar18

I love applause. I’ve always liked being in the limelight. I like it when people pay attention to me. From the type assessments I’ve done over the years, that’s not a bad thing: it’s just a part of who I am.

But it can become a bad thing. If I’m wanting to take the credit for something God has clearly done, then I am quenching the Holy Spirit’s fire. If I do things just to garner attention for myself, then pride can set in. And that’s definitely not a good thing.

Lead me to the Cross where Your love poured out

Bring me to my knees, Lord I lay me down

Rid me of myself, I belong to You

(“Lead Me To The Cross” Hillsong United)

Rid me of myself.

Figuring out how to do that is the hard part.

God gives us all talents, and He expects us to use them for His glory. But if someone tells me I’m doing a good job, or praises me for my abilities, I am tempted to be pleased with myself instead of thanking God for giving me the talent that He did. Using the talents: good. Claiming them as my own: not so good.

Bring me to my knees, Lord I lay me down. Rid me of myself, I belong to You.

So when people applaud for me, I need to step aside and let the applause flow to heaven. Because God is all that.

And I’m not.

Thankful today for:

120. new flowers

121. little baby avocado buds on our tree

122. the end of the 3rd quarter of school

Hidden Poison, Surprising Fruit

Mar17

I poisoned my eldest son this morning.

I didn’t mean to. But my choice caused him much discomfort, and if it hadn’t been for a quick ingestion of Benadryl, it could have been much worse.

What I thought was a treat, turned into torture as I chose to have his smoothie made with the protein blast instead of the immunity blast it normally comes with, unaware that the protein blast contains whey protein. 

My son is severely allergic to all milk products.

You would think, after 15 years, that I’d know better than to just trust a clerk who says, “Yeah, it’s supposed to be OK.” As we drove home, Justin taking deep breaths and trying to remain calm as his body rebelled against the evil substance, I flashed back to the rush to the hospital he and I had made 15 years ago, when he was just 6 months old and had ingested cow’s milk for the first time. Praise God he never stopped breathing. Now, Benadryl is nearly always at hand.

It’s like that hidden sin that can so easily entangle us. What we think is just an innocent brush with something–just one drink, just one visit to a pornographic website, just one small lie to my spouse about where I was and who I was with–can turn into something much bigger, and even life threatening. Sometimes we don’t even see it coming.

Then there was yesterday. After throwing the ball in the yard for the dog to chase, my mother-in-law came in an announced, “We have a tomato plant in our yard!”

What? How could that be possible since we never planted a tomato plant or seed?

But sure enough, there was this thriving plant, with set fruit on it already, living between ixora bushes, right next to our screen enclosure. What a surprising blessing. Don’t know where it came from, but we will enjoy its fruits.

Sometimes God grows us in ways that are surprising, too. We see the fruit of it in our lives. I like the line from “Evan Almighty.” God is speaking to Evan’s wife, who has taken their boys and headed to her mom’s as she thinks Evan has gone over the edge building this ark thing. God says to her, “Do you think when you pray for patience, that God gives you patience? Or does He give you opportunities to be patient?”

Have you prayed for kindness and wanted God just to make you more kind, and instead He’s given you opportunities to be kind? To love better? To be more peaceful? Gentle? Self-controlled? All fruit of the Spirit. We might not see it for awhile, but like our little tomato plant, one day we all of a sudden realize, we have been bearing good fruit.

Hidden poison, surprising fruit. Both show up in our lives consistently. If we can manage to avoid the one, and thus stay alive in our spirits, then we can live to see the other, and bless people with the results of our growth.

Thankful today for:

117. Benadryl

118. surprise parties

119. speaker phones

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Mar16

I really need to have a conversation with Jan. And Monique, I’ve hardly spoken to her since she had her baby–two years ago, was it? And Laura? I can’t even remember the last time I saw her. And Maureen. And Erin, And Shari. And Juanita. And Maria.

These are my neighbors. We live on a small Cul-de-sac. I know all their names. But, boy, have I been neglecting these relationships. We wave and say hi, but that’s been about it.

It’s not like the cold winter has kept us inside our houses. I think the average temperature this winter was 75, or something like that. I may be exaggerating, but you get the point. It’s not been the cold weather; it’s been my cold heart.

Most are older than I and don’t have kids the same age as mine. And they haven’t exactly made overtures to talk to me either. Why do I always have to be the one to do the initiating?

Maybe because I’m the one who supposedly walks with Jesus. I’m the one who knows the importance of community. I’m the one whose church is right across the street, for crying out loud!

My kids have sold them all coupon books in fundraisers over the years. They’ve knocked on their doors to ask them questions for a survey during their community unit in first grade. All three kids, the same questions, a few years apart. No one ever complained.

My dog has run through their yard.

The last time I spent any significant time with any neighbor was when three of us had to go to juvenile court to testify against a boy who had broken into one of the neighbor’s cars. It was me, and two of the husbands. I had to go because I took pictures of the perp, even though David saw him first.

But I spent a couple of hours talking to them while we waited for our case to come up on the docket. It was a great conversation where I learned a lot about them.

That was in August.

Seven months ago.

Who goes that long without talking to a neighbor?

I’m frustrated with myself. Things simply must change. Spring is right around the corner.

I’ve got some cleaning to do.

Thankful today for:
114. My neighbors
115. A waning fever
116. My bike, that hopefully I will get on and ride today

Thoughts on Turning 50

Mar15

I’d been thinking and dreaming about my 50th birthday for a year. I knew it was coming (of course), but I really wasn’t too thrilled about it. I hang out with a lot of younger women. Sometimes, they make me feel really old. Most of the time, though, I just like hanging out with them.

50 just sounded so . . . old.

I’m the third one of my siblings to make that step, and they seemed to survive it. So, after tossing around the idea of just having a small group of close friends join me in celebrating this momentous occasion, I decided to blow it out. You only turn 50 once, after all. And I hadn’t had a birthday party in many years. My last one was a surprise for my 30th.

 My husband, David, took my guest list and emailed them all, hired my good friend Laura, cake maker extraordinaire, to make a lovely red-velvet cake with the words “50 is the new 30” on it, and we prayed for good weather.

Then the doubts crept in: Would anyone want to come? Seeing as how my birthday is 5 days after Christmas, would anyone be in town? Would they be bored? Please, God, don’t let them be bored.

Soon, the replies started coming in: if they were in town, they wanted to come.

Two days before the big day, we scrubbed the pool deck, cleaned the house, and hit Sam’s Club for the goodies. When the day finally arrived, the weather was perfect, we floated candles in the pool, set up a chocolate fountain, laid out the fare (smoked salmon, cheese logs, pigs in a blanket, mini-quiche and more) and waited for the first guests to arrive. I had made up a “Steph-trivia” quiz, posted around the house newsworthy facts of the year I was born and found a wonderful “Hits of the 60s and 70s” Pandora station that we kept on throughout the day. The songs made me smile.

But more so, the 50 guests (yes, if my counting was right, there were exactly 50 people there) who filled our home made me smile. Only downside was that I hadn’t appointed anyone as the photographer for the evening, so I have only a couple of shots of the event. But it’s there in my memory forever. And the thought that kept running through my head as the guests kept coming was this: “You like me. You really like me!”

Maybe turning 50 isn’t so bad after all. Not when you’re surrounded by such good friends.

Thankful today for:

111. a decaf skinny black and white iced mocha from Starbucks’

112. daylight savings time

113. a fun event to look forward to

And The Sickness Goes On

Mar14

As I write this, my littlest, Morgan, is sleeping. It’s 6:42 p.m.

Sigh

Yet another illness has gotten into our house, and I’m baffled as to why. We’ve really been hit hard this season. Some have surmised that it’s the warm winter that set all our allergies aflame, opening our sinuses to other little buggies that have stuck around and made us sick. Only we don’t have the classic signs of allergies; just a little nasal congestion and some coughing. No itchy, watery eyes. No constantly running nose. There have been sore throats, but that’s about it. It’s been a silent stalker and I’m ready to be done with it.

All the kids have missed at least one day of school. My mother-in-law has had to curtail her piano teaching business for the last month, David missed a couple of days of work. I’m the only one who kept up my job(s), even though I had two days where I barely had a voice. But then, that’s typical mom-hood, isn’t it?

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

What really do I have to complain about? My children miss a couple of days of school and have varying fevers and coughing and headaches. They don’t have cancer. They have all their limbs, and those are all in working order. They have never been in any kind of accident causing debilitating injuries. We are blessed with our health the vast majority of the time. I think I know people in all the above categories.

Though we lost three babies to early miscarriages, we have many friends who have lost a child in many different ways: a freak accident; complications from severe disabilities; trisomy 13. Disease, disfigurement, death. Not happy subjects, but a fact of life on this planet. A sad, sad part of life.

Thank God for the Resurrection! We so look forward to heaven where there will be no more death and sickness and pain.

Meanwhile, around our house, we break out the applesauce, ramp up the carrot juice, make everyone as comfortable as possible, and pray that she is the last one to fall.

Amen. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Thankful today for:

108. hope

109. colloidal silver

110. Tylenol