Come to the Table

A Black Squirrel Feasting at Breakfast

Rye, New York

October 2010

Luke 14:15 NIV

"When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God."

Mom, dad, Teri, Rob and I stood in our backyard on April 3, 1974, looking at the sky. Overhead were rapidly moving storm cells swirling ominously northward toward Dayton, Ohio. One of the cells had already destroyed Sayler Park by the Ohio River. Soon Xenia, Ohio, would be devastated.

Dad had raced home from work as mom prepared our supper. Laid out on the kitchen table were salmon patties, peas, corn and rolls. In the 1970s, fast food was not an option, and families actually sat at the table together to eat home cooked meals.

Mom worked full time during the day, so coming home to prepare dinner took effort on her part.

Dad had rushed up northbound I-75, not necessarily for mom's salmon patties, but because a tornado was chasing him. He could look in the rear view mirror of the car and see the storm cell following him as he headed toward Forest Park. By the time he got into the house, he was a nervous wreck. When he told us what had happened, we all went out back to look to the south.

As we watched the dark sky, we could see the swirling clouds and dangerous entrails searching for a place to land. We were mesmerized. Over 148 tornadoes were reported in several states from April 3-4, 1974. We watched history unfold over our backyard.

Finally, hunger bested our curiosity, and we headed into the house. We knew if we had to run into the basement for protection from a tornado we could be down the steps in seconds. We were relatively calm considering the weather conditions around us.

As we turned into the kitchen where our dinner had been laid out on the table waiting for us, we stopped in shock. What we saw was not what we expected, nor were we delighted.

Muffin, our dog, had decided to seize the moment and eat our dinner all by herself, while we had our backs to her. She ate nearly all of it. She had taken advantage of the feast placed before her.

We chased her out of the kitchen and away from the table, but the damage had been done. We had to scrounge around for dinner on our own that night.

God prepares a feast for me everyday. My attitude is the only part of me that keeps me from partaking in it.

Muffin figured out on April 3, 1974, how to take advantage of the gift set before her. She didn't ask if the dinner belonged to her, she just assumed it was hers for the taking.

I have to do a better job myself feasting on the richness of God and delving into his love and the gifts he bestows on me.

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Lord, thank you for preparing your feast for me to partake of.

It's Not the Red Sea, but It was Still Great!

The Caspian Sea

Located not too far away from where I was teaching.

Exodus 14:21-22 NIV

"Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left."

My presentation over, I drank tea and talked to the English teachers from a small town in Turkmenistan. On my left, I noticed commotion as two teachers discussed a topic in private and nodded toward me. One looked shy and timid; the other jabbed her in the side with her elbow.

Finally, the shy woman addressed me with an unusual request. She asked me to look for her family's cousin in America. She was concerned because they hadn't heard from him in seven years. He had last visited them with his father, and then they lost touch. They wanted to make sure he was safe.

I had witnessed too many miracles in Turkmenistan to turn the woman down, although the image of a needle in a hay stack entered my mind. However, I promised I would look for him.

Due to complications, she was unable to give me his name and last known address before I left for the states. I felt terrible about not getting the information from her. I thought that was the last I would hear from her.

One fall morning as I prepared for work, I opened my email to discover a note from Turkmenistan. It was from the sister of the English teacher I had met. Her sister worked for an oil company in Turkmenistan, so she had access to a scanner and email. She sent me a copy of the last envelope with a return address they had received from their cousin. She also explained he worked in a drugstore.

I looked at his name and address and nonchalantly ran it through Google. The first hit took me to a respected scientist who worked for a major chemical company and university. He had several patents for creating  pharmaceuticals under his name and with teams. I blinked. Wow, I thought. They said he worked in a drugstore. This man creates drugs!

However, I thought I was looking for a Turkmen, and the scientist was clearly not Turkmen. I kept searching.

Finally, I located an obituary for the scientist's father. The obituary mentioned his father's family originated from Iran and Turkmenistan. This placed his family near the region where I had been teaching during the summer.

I returned to the scientist's homepage. I summoned all my courage, wrote a note asking if he were the man who had family in Turkmenistan, and told him if so, I had a message for him from his family. If not, then please disregard my email.

In less than an hour he wrote back. It was him.

I had found the long lost cousin on the first Google hit!  The family had lost him for seven years. God helped me find him in the span of minutes.

The needle in the haystack image came back to mind.  Logically, there was no way I should have been able to find their cousin. However, God led me to him. God placed the right pieces of information in front of me.

Miracles happen. They don't have to be big, like parting the Red Sea, but miracles happen everywhere.

I trust Him to work miracles in my life and for people I know and for the strangers I pray for. God is a living God, and miracle of miracles, He helped me reunite a family.

I wonder how much more I could do for God if I allowed Him to work through me everyday?
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Lord, thank you for your miracles, which change lives around the world.

Peace, Perfect Peace

 

Midwestern April Storm Approaches

Indiana  2010

 

John 14:27 NIV

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."

 

In Ohio, March can roll in like a lion and leave like a lamb; however, tornado season can last all spring. Even throughout the summer, severe thunderstorms with tornadoes attached to them are apt to tear up hundred year old trees by the roots and fling them across fields and destroy homes and cities in their paths.

 

Midwesterners anxiously listen for the call of emergency sirens during storm season, and yes, the Weather Channel is the favorite television channel for many of us. It took me years to detox from my Midwestern upbringing once I moved south.

 

When we first married, John ridiculed me for watching the Weather Channel for hours on end. He told me it would be hot, hazy, and humid with a chance of rain all summer.  He was right. At least in the Midwest, weather is volatile and changes.

 

One summer weekend in the mid-1970s, I attended a church retreat for teens when a severe thunderstorm blew through the region. Originally we were spread out over several cabins for the girls and boys, but as the weather deteriorated, our chaperones moved us into one cabin with two rooms, one for the boys, one for the girls, for safety.

 

None of us slept easily that night as we heard the storm rage outside, so we sang songs.  We sang for a long time until the boys serenaded us with:

 

"Good night sweetheart, 'til we meet tomorrow. Good night sweetheart, sleep will banish sorrow.  Tears and parting may make us forlorn. But with the dawn, a new day is born. Goodnight sweetheart, goodnight..." 

 

We giggled.

 

During the night, our leaders kept us calm by talking about God and faith. We prayed we would make it through the night safely. We talked until we finally fell asleep.

 

As unnerving as it was to hear wind whip through chinks in the cabin walls or rain lash on the windows, or trees crack and fall nearby us, a calmness that came from our faith in God was within us. This faith led to peace and eventual sleep.

 

When daylight broke, we rose to examine the damage to the campgrounds. Several cabins, including one a group of boys had been assigned to, had trees fall through them. Had the boys stayed in the cabin, they would have had the tree fall on them.

 

Tree branches and leaves littered the ground. Several cabins had structural damage. Windows were broken. Cabins had been moved from their foundations. However, the cabin we spent the night in was untouched. 

 

As we packed our belongings to head home, we remarked on God's greatness and the miracles we had witnessed the past 24 hours.

 

Not only was I grateful none of us had been injured, but I also was thankful for the peace God had given me to get calmly through one of the stormiest nights I had witnessed in my young life.

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Dear Lord, help me remember you left me your peace, and you gave me your peace. Let me use your peace to calm me in the midst of storms in my life.

A Field of Wildflowers, A Basket of Berries, A Totem of Love

Wilderness Conservancy

Rye, New York

October 2010

Psalms 65:13 NIV

"The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing."

Leigh released Travis from his leash, while I let Muffin follow. The dogs bounced after each other traipsing through the overgrown trails of the wildflower field that grew between a patch of wild blackberries to the west and a wooden fence beyond a tree line to the south.

The fence marked the beginning of one section of the 2,630 acre county park that bordered our neighborhood. Leigh and I headed toward the fence. A small opening between saplings was barely perceptible to an untrained eye. A path lay beyond the saplings, and a break in the wooden fence allowed us to hop with ease onto the park's trails.

The dogs enjoyed this leg of the hike as we were canopied by trees and followed a small creek to the campgrounds, where boy and girl scouts used the facilities. In fact, I had spent one weekend in a cabin there when I was younger. To create the illusion of an ancient forest, the park service had placed an indian totem pole in front of a cabin.

We found our log under the totem pole, sat down, and poured out our hearts to each other until it was time to return home. The dogs led us home as we dragged our feet behind them.

Leigh and I spent many hours walking and biking with dogs in tow in the field of colorful flowers, picking wild blackberries, running from a garter snake guarding the sapling trees, and sitting under the totem pole talking about our hopes and dreams.

We were 13, 14, and 15 years old and Travis and Muffin were our constant companions on these walks through the woods.

At the time, we talked about God, but we didn't obsess about Him. None-the-less, He was with us. He heard our hopes and desires. He must have delighted and sung with us as we ran after the dogs singing our own goofy songs. How wonderful now to think He was watching Little Leigh and Little Lori grow up, and He knew the plans He had in mind for our lives even then.

As is it happens, it was in our garden of wildflowers that Leigh told me when her dad finished his residency as a doctor they would move from Ohio. We took the news as friends do. We cried and then made the best of it. We continued our talks.

Even today, after all these years, we talk. It may only be a few times a year, but time stands still, and we pick up the conversation as if we were sitting under the totem pole or picking berries to take home to freeze. 

For me, joy is a summer day in a field of wildflowers with a friend I love while God watches over us.

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Dear Lord, thank you for the joy of friendship in my life.

Walking in Sunlight All of My Journey

Floating in Sunshine

Ecclesiastes 9:11 NIV

"I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."

In 11th grade I ran for class president for our senior year. At the time it was important to me, and my friends supported me. We made posters and campaigned. I forget how many others were in the race, but my friends assured me I was an easy favorite for the position.

Up to the end of the day when the announcement was made, my friends told me I had won the election. So, when the results were announced, and my name was not mentioned, I was devastated as only a sixteen year old girl can be. I replayed all of the day's events in my mind.

Where had I gone wrong? Then I wondered how God could have thought I didn't deserve this position and the responsibilities that would come with it. I just KNEW I would have been the greatest class president in the world.

Actually, it turned out to be a blessing not to have been senior class president. There are too many duties after high school, such as trying to organize class reunions that I would have been unable to fulfill. However, at the time, I thought it a great tragedy to lose.

Time and again I have found myself in this position of confusion about events in my life. I often don't understand  what I have experienced or observed or why these things occur.

Yet, this is the reality of life, and as the Preacher in Ecclesiastes mentions, the sun will shine on both the godly and wicked alike.

For my part, I need to capitalize on my time here on Earth. I need to focus on my relationship with God. I need to work on my prayer life. I need to reach out to others. I need to be more positive at home and work. Time is too precious to squander, and I have to choose carefully how I spend it.

Ben Franklin once wrote, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."

Even though the wicked and the just receive the same time and opportunity here on Earth, how a person spends his or her time will make the difference for all eternity.

As for me, I choose to walk in sunlight all of my journey.

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Dear Lord, let me finish the race, battle, and my time here on Earth by making you proud of me.

The Woman Outside the Bathroom Window

A Rainbow

God's Promise of Love

2 Chronicles 32:7-8 KJV
"Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more with us than with him: With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the LORD our God to help us, and to fight our battles."

The woman outside my house had screamed for at least five minutes. Long, shrill, high-pitched cries came from outside the bathroom window as I prepared for my bath.

Someone help that poor woman! Why isn't anyone helping her? I wondered.

It was January 1989, and I was lost in my own thoughts in the bathroom as I listened to the woman outside. My son, who had been kidnapped by my husband in December, had been missing for a month now, and we still had few leads in our search for him. 

My last four weeks had been consumed with trips from Georgia to Ohio and Kentucky to pursue leads, to consult with my detective, to talk to old friends, to see if I could find any clue to the whereabouts of my four-year old.

At night, I would search city streets in Lexington, Kentucky, looking in vain for our missing van and hoping to stumble upon the man I most and least wanted to meet in a dark alley.

When I lay down to sleep, I was chased by nightmares fueled by my fears. Bloody images of my husband and son surrounded me as the story always resolved itself in my troubled psyche in tragic images of death.

I couldn't sleep; I didn't rest during the day, I had to try to teach when I was in Georgia, and when I was in Ohio with my parents, or in Kentucky looking for the man who would eventually become my ex-husband, my principal would call from Georgia to tell me he didn't know how long he could keep my job available for me.

I told him to do what he had to do. My son came first in my life, but then new fears arose in me.  How would I survive without a job?

Fear chased me all day for over two months during the search for my son. I didn't realize how much I had been broken by my fears and lack of rest and the stress and the pressure until the evening in my bathroom as I prepared for my bath and heard the woman's cries.

As I listened to her, I began to pay more attention to her voice. Then I began to pay more attention to me. I was sobbing. Sitting on the toilet, sobbing. Crying. Screaming. Outside of myself.

I was stunned when I realized I was the woman outside the window crying for help. I reached deep inside myself and pulled myself together as I prayed, Please, Lord, HELP me!

He did.

Fear is a horrible place to be in life. I know. I have seen its darkness. God helped me get through it. Now, whenever I get afraid, I look to God's hand first. I know now not to wait until I reach a breaking point to seek God for help.

I found my son a little over two months after he was kidnapped, but that didn't mean life was immediately a bed of roses for us.

God's mercy and grace carried us then and still carries us today.

I can't allow my fear to control me, and God has helped me fight fear through the years. That was a dark place in my life, and a night I rarely talk about; however, God is faithful and strong, and He can face whole armies.

What do I have to fear, if He is on my side?
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Lord, thank you for healing and restoring the woman outside my house that fearful night in Darien.

Help! I've Fallen, and I Can't Get Up!

A Butterfly at Calloway Gardens

James 4:10

"Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up."

It's not everyday you're lying on your back pinned like a butterfly to cardboard to the high school's gym floor by uneven parallel bars.

I had time to reflect on how I ended up in that position as the girls' basketball team worked on their "suicide" drill in the middle of the court.

Coach Hill had told me the uneven parallel bars was a two-person job to set up and dismantle, but I, as manager, wanted to pack up early that snowy January night because I had to ride my bike home, and I still had homework to do. It was already nine o'clock, and I knew I'd be up late.

The girls were behind the bleachers working on Isotonic exercises for muscle strength, so they couldn't see me. I had put up the vault and balance beam.  All I had left was the uneven parallel bars, which were anchored into the floor by four cables.

I examined the cables and bars. I figured if I could loosen each cable, then gravity would help me gently set the bars onto the floor, and I'd be set for home.

I easily unhooked the first cable but immediately realized my arms weren't long enough to steady the bars as I unhooked the cable. The bars began to lose a little stability. However, I was undaunted. 

I released the second cable, opposite the first one. The bars rocked more. I became more concerned. I reached out and grabbed the lower bar to try to steady the bars.

Wow! I thought, these things are heavy. They were also unbalanced, so no way to retrace my steps and undo what I had done. I had to finish the job.

I released the third cable. As soon as I unhooked the cable, the bars lost all stability, and I learned what Newton had discovered about gravity.

As the heavy bars descended toward earth, I tried to stop them with both hands placed on the lower bar. However, the weight of the bars pushed me backwards, straight as a board, until I was buried by both bars.

I pushed with all my might to remove the bars from off my body to no avail.

Eventually, I had to call for help. The girls at mid-court running their suicides paused to look, then burst into raucous laughter when they saw me pinned under the bars.

Several of the girls came to my rescue. They helped put the bars in the equipment room, and, of course, the girls' basketball coach told my coach what happened.

I learned about humility that night. I had to humble myself before my friends and my coach. I learned I don't know everything, and I disappointed my coach, which I had never wanted to do.

God has seen me in many ridiculous situations in life, but I wonder how hard he laughed when I was trapped under the uneven parallel bars?

I'm also sure He helped dry my tears on that long, dark, snowy bike ride home after I got yelled at by my coach.   
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Lord, thank you for loving me, even when I am so full of myself I can't see straight.