The Loop

I've been out of the loop for awhile, it seems.  Life has been changing for me of late.  Life has been changing for many of my friends and family as well.  There are times when we just do what we can do.
My mother has been here with me for a little over a week.  It's difficult for her to be away from her world.  She has been changing a lot in the past couple of years.  This year, the changes were even more evident, but then she is almost 94.
I took last week off from classes so I could be with her.  I don't have a huge schedule of classes right now, but it seemed important.  It was.  She has lost a great deal of mobility and function in the past 6 months.  It saddens me, yet I have had this time and am grateful.  We didn't get to do all the things I wanted to do.  I'll take her home on Thursday.
A simple trip to the store can tire her extremely, and yet Sunday we took her to Siloam Springs to see some friends and visit daddy's grave, and she had a great time though she was tired.  Yesterday, she came outside for a bit to look at flowers and interact while we were working in the back yard.  While I wasn't looking, she tried to pull some grass growing beside my foundation close to the door.  It was tough grass, and she pulled the muscles her hand and arm and spent the rest of the day in great pain.  None of the plans I had for the rest of the day developed.  It may be that none of the other plans I had for the next two days will be possible either.  It saddens me - mostly because I feel that a good visit will end with a bad memory and feeling.
I tried to get her to look at pictures and even interact a bit on the computer this past week, but she doesn't really like that at all.  She wants to look in faces and feel hugs and tell the old stories again -in a new way, of course- and see and feel the reactions.  Some of it she gets wrong, but in the end, she is just one more human desperate for love and interaction.  She's trying to do things for others that will leave her a place in their heart and memory, and yet, she feels it is in vain most of the time.  Unwanted, discarded.  I don't believe that is true, but what I believe is not really important. She is a part of my history, my becoming.  She is my mother.
So she didn't get into the pool, or up the hill to see the garden.  She really wanted to do those things.  The hill we were going to try with Louis and I on either side.  The pool, though warm enough for me, is a little too cool for her to get in anyway.  We were going to get her out onto the deck yesterday afternoon to visit with Jackie and Aaron when they came to get Olivia and swim a little, but she was hurting and slept most of the time.
Her visiting is mostly about past events, bodily functions, and limitations.  Sometimes it's hard to hear, but then you realize that it is what it is and there may not be a lot more.  She loves to discuss the Bible sometimes, but she doesn't want you to mess with her belief because she is desperate to mentally hold onto that as well.  Her life deserves that patience.  So I will take what is available for the next two days and then deliver her safely to her own world again, God willing, realizing that there may be another visit, and there may not.  As I look at it, I realize my time is coming more quickly than I might wish.  That is one loop I will not escape.

The Numbers Game.

Years ago, we had a phone number that was one number off many local city numbers including the police department, juvenile intake, and an all night drug store.  Oh, the stories I amassed during that time.  Once I even told a friend who worked at juvie that I was going to start charging them for my answering service.  I actually had one woman reply "Could you just connect me to them?" after I told her her mistake and that this was a private residence.  ??????
Once Louis listened to a long rant for the police dept and then said, "Thank you for calling."  He looked at me after he hung up and said "They didn't need to hear that."
So finally after years of all hours phone calls, we had our number changed and for many years it was better.  But in the past few years, new relationships are being formed!  We are now one number off the hospice from Sparks Hospital and a used car dealership with a foreign name, that caters mostly to people who speak broken English at best.  Now a new relationship has been formed with another business entity that I've not totally pegged, but it's there none the less.
A few days ago, I got a call from a Bentonville number.  When I answered, the woman seemed confused and asked for a specific office and person.  What, no long list of options to connect to the right list that would point her to the right office that would give her the option to leave a message or listen to muzak??  I explained that this is a private residence and she hung up.  But, in the past few days, I've gotten probably 10 calls a day from that same Bentonville number.  When I answer, I get the open line silent treatment: you know the one where you can hear the breathing and feel the unasked questions over unfamiliar background noises.  It's like when your spouse or teens stand in front of the open refrigerator looking to see if something has materialized that wasn't there 10 minutes ago.  I'm really curious to find out just who this person is trying to reach.
I have a creative mind and have come up with all kinds of scenarios.  When I'm busy, sometimes I don't answer, but most times, I just can't help myself.  I've thought about making a list of numbers she could push that would lead her to more numbers to push that eventually would lead her to the fact that this is a private residence in another city.  But so far, it's just in the planning stages.

Righteousness and Peace have kissed.

Since Easter, I have had these verses rattling in my brain.  I am reading in Jeremiah right now.  I am amazed by God's desire to show mercy and I am amazed at man's ability to avert it.  I see God new, yet the same.  I am not all knowing, yet I do know he has been speaking to me of mercy and truth.

Psalm 85:
7 Show us your unfailing love, LORD, and grant us your salvation.

8 I will listen to what God the LORD says;  he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants—
   but let them not turn to folly.
9 Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.

10 Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.
11 Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven.
12 The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest.
13 Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.

We watched the Passion of the Christ for the first time in a few years on Thursday before Easter.  Each time I watch it I gain a new perspective and God changes my heart a little.  This year the above passage was placed in my frontal lobe, coupled with the readings in Jeremiah and the strong upheaval of my family. I have struggled to see, to hear, to pray.
Then, as God so often does, he pulled it all together in my head this morning during my devotional time. 
In my reading this morning God stressed his ability and plan to restore once more.  He showed me that he will not allow evil to go unpunished, but he will restore.
The cross reveals to us the stupidity, selfishness and irrationality of mankind.  A man who gave amazingly, a faultless man was beaten and publicly humiliated and savagely killed while onlookers mocked, ignored, or deserted him.  There is no beauty in mankind at the cross.
God the Father and Jesus allowed injustice that justice might be satisfied.  The cross reveals the extent to which God will reach to redeem and restore.  There is no flaw in God at the cross.
Righteousness, with all its demands and condemnation of evil, and Peace, with all its solution and resolve met at the cross and kissed as long separated loved ones might.
To us then, comes the chance for redemption and restoration.  How can God fail us if he is that same God?  No ugliness of man could stop his hand.  In fact, it made God's perfection complete.  The cross was a very dark time for believers.  I have said that I feel trapped this year between the crucifiction and the resurrection.  But my faith still sees the resurrection.  My spirit knows that redemption is near, even if I've not seen it yet.  I will continue to pray with tears and concern for my immediate and extended family.  Yet, peace has come to kiss the righteousness that the Son supplied.

It would make a wierd movie.

When I read the Bible, my mind creates visuals.  I'm made that way.  So my mind is creating the strangest video ever.  My reading today was Jeremiah 40 through 45.  Why so many?  I couldn't stop: such a story!  So now I have this 'Book of Eli meets Taliban' thing in my head.  They did eventually catch and kill Ishmael before he could get back to his country.  Jeremiah was dragged off to Egypt while he kept saying "Don't go there."  Poor Baruch lost everything, but God said "Don't pursue stuff, this isn't the time for it and I will protect you."  Jeremiah was protected, but went through unimaginable stuff while he was being protected.  He didn't seem very affected by it.
 Call it diversion, or maybe strange, but I am seeing way too much.  Makes me want to be sure I'm on God's side in all this stuff of my life.
Today, my neighbor awaits her husband's funeral.  We went to see her between downpours yesterday.  I bought her this braided azalea with large white blooms.  I found one with a good number of blossoms fully open and a good number of buds yet to bloom.  She said she'd never seen one like that.  The braid was fully integrated about 2/3 the way and had a spacer at the top to hold them apart.  She can plant it as a memorial to her lifemate.  I was pleased that she was pleased.  He was a good and godly man who loved to preach and loved to sing.  He was a wood carver delux before he developed Alzheimer's.  The past few years have been difficult for her.  There is a combined sence of relief and sorrow.
Last week, some of my friends were affected horribly by the rains.  My heart breaks for them and now we have more.  The cleanup was not even finished and now there is more.  I ask for mercy and protection from this round of the deluge.  They are good people of faith who have looked for the humor in it and have been shown love and help.
Today is a milesmarker for a family member.  My heart is both extremely concerned and at peace.  That may sound like a contradiction, but really it's not.  I know God is about redemption and restoration, but how long?  I know truth is the right path, but how much hurt will be endured at it's out flow?  I know we will be healed, but who will reject God's powerful hand.  Don't tell me we cannot reject God's hand.  I am reading Jeremiah!  I know who wins in the end. I will continue to ask for grace and mercy.  I will call for redemption and restoration.  I will yell and cry a little and then say "You are God; your will be done."
One of my girls is walking through a valley and growing from the experience daily.  I see it in many ways.  Once she was a slave to darkness and God told me flat out during one of my screaming, crying, pleading sessions that it was done, that she was redeemed.  Many years and tears later, the redemption came and the growth started.  Birth and growth are messy - sometimes hilarious, sometimes humiliating, sometimes devastating - processes.
One of my girls is walking through a shakey terrain.  Which direction will the mountain fall.  Will her feet slip in the bog?  Are there unseen predators lurking?  There is so much to go through before the ground is solid.
I stand and cry "Heal us O LORD and we shall be healed."  I care so much.  I know I have much to do that would hold my efforts and thoughts, but I am scattered and pieced out right now.  In transition from one job to another, my mind is once more captured by my direct and extended family and I find I am once more in prayer.  "This I know: that You, O LORD, are loving and You, O LORD are just."  Righteousness and peace have kissed.  It was called crucifiction and it was no easy thing for Jesus or his Father to go through.  Yet it was the only way to have both mercy and justice and it lives on for those who believe.  I believe, LORD, help my unbelief.

AJ Michalka - "It's Who You Are" Music Video

Who you Are from Secretariat


We watched this movie. I'll have to watch it again. I thought the video was cool and there it was on UTube.