JADED!

Buffaloes!  There is a field near me that has buffaloes in it.  There is even a white one.  I have been driving by them for 15 plus years.  I remember when I first saw them.  I was so excited.  I couldn't wait to show my girls.  It made me smile every time I passed them.  I wanted to stop and take a picture but I haven't.  I wondered why the owner had them and if they were happy in that field. It seemed a little small.  Did they have enough room?    You know buffaloes roaming and all.  Yes, I thought a lot about them, than.

But I've grown accustomed to them now.  They are old hat.  Been there, done that, have the T-shirt.
OH NO!  I've become JADED!  No longer excited.  No longer want to share the joy of them.  Yawn!

As I was thinking about them I thought, Have I become that same way about Christmas?  Don't get me wrong I'm the type that listens to Christmas songs in July but....  This year has been so busy and I'm so behind.  I feel a little over it.  Counting the days till its over.  Lord forgive me.  Than I have to ask myself, Why?  I think I know before I get the word out of my mouth.  I'm not focusing on Him.  Jesus!  Yes, I'm still showing up and praying each day having a lovely time of fellowship.  But I've been looking at all the trappings of Christmas;  the hustle and bustle, the shopping, the stress of getting the "right" gift etc.  Not stopping and looking at the wonder, the joy, the pureness of the love that came to the world that first Christmas.   I've become JADED!  Looking at Christmas but missing the true spirit, the true meaning.

I'm going to stop and breathe and enjoy!  Going to enjoy the joy!  I may even take another look at the buffaloes and the wonder of them and the wonder of their creator who sent His son for me!

Blogging? Oh Yes, I was doing that, wasn't I?

So if a person has a blog, we can assume they have a lot of thoughts floating around in their head.  Maybe even rushing around in there. Round and round! Thoughts chasing thoughts. Right?  Than why have I only blogged once since July?  Let's see....my best ideas happen when I'm away from my computer or in the middle of something else?  Sounds like an excuse.  Perhaps I want to share my heart, my thoughts, my conclusions but I'm afraid.  FEAR!  That loathsome enemy that plagues us so often.  But I can see why.  What if I share my heart and you, my dear reader, stomp on it?  What if you thing I'm crazy or stupid.  Don't know if you know this about me but I was diagnosed with  A.D.D. 15 years ago and though I'm at peace with it and don't find myself lacking (that is a whole other post to explain about that).  I did grow up feeling stupid because of it.  So fearing feeling stupid comes easily to me.  And once you hear my thoughts that are in my head some might think I'm crazy.  
But what do we encourage our children to do?  Face the fear and plunge in anyway.  I know that growth doesn't happen without some fear involved.  I want my children and grandchildren to be brave and try new things.  I want them to never be paralyzed by fear.  Be brave and go forth and live out loud!  That's what I want for them. 
I've been learning the last few years that what I want for them I also need to want for me.  How else can I role model and inspire them?  
So on that note.  My utmost apologies for not blogging more.  I would promise to do better but let's just watch and see how I progress.  
Oh and thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading my blog.  
One more thing.  What have you been neglecting out of fear?    QUICK name it!  We usually know what it is if we are honest with ourselves.  Now that it is in your mind, go do it!   Or at least take a step in that direction.   Be like me and take a small step.  

Finally He's Here!

This has been quite an amazing week.  My middle daughter, Carla loves watching the show, The Voice.  She is a staunch Team Christina member so her friends wanted to tease her.  They gave her a hot pink Team Blake shirt as a joke.  I think I should have a Team Jack shirt. Well, Mandi, Bill and I should have Team Jack shirts. 

Who is Jack, you ask?  He is the new love in my life.  My new grand!  Born on Tuesday at 5:48 A.M. 7 pounds 7 ounces, 20 and 1/4 inches.  Long little feet.  Bright intelligent eyes.  Beautiful!  Strong lungs wailing out right away!  I know because I had the extreme pleasure of being right there with my strong amazing daughter and her loving husband during the labor and delivery.  She was born to be a mom.  And all my experience of having 3 sweet baby girls made me ready to help my Mandi as she was in labor.  It was empowering, intoxicating, exciting and tiring!  You know that kind of tired that is laced with joy.  The kind a marathon runner must feel at the finish line?  The kind the music director feels when the last word is sung of the last production of the Christmas play.  That was the tired joy I was feeling.  I told Paul "Do you know how empowering it was?  Have you ever felt that way?"  He answered, "Yes, three times!"  I laughed.  I forgot.  He said that when I called (Yes, you can call and text right from the labor room). I was laughing giddy with excitement.  It was wondrous!  If you ever get a chance to be at a birth, I recommend it highly!

It was so sweet seeing Mandi and Bill first meet little Jack Reese Lynch.  They laid him up on Mandi and she was taken back for a moment.  After all that labor and after months of waiting and days late...there he was!  A real baby! Arms and legs failing.  Little lungs wailing!  And she smiles and says softly..Hi!  One of those moments in life I will never ever forget.  So precious. And I look over at Bill and his eyes are tearing up.  Team Jack had done a great job!  God was surely good to us that morning. 

Welcome to the world Jack Reese Lynch!  Welcome to the family! 

You Put This Love In My Heart

People are busy these days.   There is all the responsibilities of life:  work, home, family, church, volunteering, staying healthy...  Just to name a few.  I don't know about you but I think it can be quite overwhelming.  Then you throw in one of life's curveballs:  a divorce, an illness of yours or a loved ones, a death, a financial setback.  Other setbacks big and small:  a change at work, a broken pipe, your car breaks down, your parent falls, your fridge breaks, deadlines, a child goes off track,  it can on and on.  Sometimes just catching your breathe can seem impossible.  And in the middle of it all you realize that you need to be a good christian, a good person, live a good life, obey God.  Whew! What a lot of stress.   Your plate's full!

I've been thinking  lately about that last one though.  Obeying God and what His word says to do.  Also my friend brought up at a meeting at church that we should pray for other people to come to our church and come to know God.  Which, of course is true.  If you love Him and realize how much He loves you it's only natural that you want others to know that too.  And when they know that truth your church will grow.  These two thoughts, obeying God and new people coming to church have been swirling around in my mind.   Which have led to some other thoughts.  One way to obey God is to love others.  In 1 John 4 in the New Living Translation it says


9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.


11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.


...we surely ought to love each other!  The New King James version says: "Beloved, if God so loved us we also ought to love one another".  And in an earlier verse,  verse 7  It says:  "Beloved let us love one another".  The word ought sounds like the word should.  And I truly hate the word should it conjurs up in my mind guilt and fussing and disaproval.  And that makes me want to resist.  But if it's coming from a loving Father, God himself perhaps I need to lay those preconceived biases aside.  This is an opportunity to obey, right?   But when you put that with the idea of loving people hmmm, it becomes a challenging opportunity to obey.   Because loving people whether they are new people in the church or people in your family or people at your work place or people you have to interact with in the many areas in your life  isn't an easy task.

My same friend also said a long long time ago in a prayer meeting that having new people come into your church would make you uncomfortable.  It would be inconvient.  I say even at times annoying.  You see, don't know if you've noticed but people are not always likeable.   And on top of all the stresses and annoyances of your already crowded life, God wants you to love new people?   The thought makes me want to run away and hide.   In that prayer meeting we actually prayed to be made uncomfortable.  It was a good prayer.  A sincere prayer.  But lately I've been thinking.   It sounds so virtuous, so wonderful.  Did it please God?   Or were we a little like a teenager dreaming of a fast car.  Only thinking of the wind in our hair, our friends riding with us, having fun,  life being perfect.   Not really knowing that having a car has responsibilities with it.  That it is a powerful machine that you may be too immature to control.   And that caution and time spent learning to drive it must be a big part of owning it.  

Yes, loving people is what we are to do.  Reaching new people is what we want and need to do.  But once they are there we have the responsiblity to love them.   And wow that is a huge thing.   Because new people at a church are like the other people in our lives. Imperfect.   I am a dreamer and when I think of loving people I think of this perfect little world where people all think like I do and we smile and get along and life is simple and sweet.  POP!!!  

Dream worlds only exist in our minds.

I have found that people rarely agree with me.  Life is anything but simple.  And we all have issues.  We all have unresolved stuff.  We are all, as believers, in the process of being made in His image.   And we rub against each other.  We get on each others nerves.   Often we find God and we become a believer and as a work in progress we come to church where we believe we are supposed to be and what do we find?     Reality.  Imperfection.  Sometimes everything but what we thought we would.  But for those of us already at the church our responsibility is to love the new ones and those already there.  But loving one another is far from idyllic.  It's honestly, very hard in ourselves.  Ahh that is the key.  In ourselves.  

In ourselves.....We need the Lord to help us.  We need the Spirit to guide us.  We can't love or at least I know I can't love like He asks, like I desire to, without Him.   People who come into church or into your life or maybe even the ones still there are annoying sometimes.  They whine.  They look different than me.  They make me uncomfortable.  They are immature.  They argue.  They are snippy.  They have messes.  They have baby mommas and absentee dads.  They have money woes.  They have purple, pink or blue hair.  They are unforgiving.  They are irresponsible.  They have tattoos.  They are rich.  They are poor.  They are everything in between.  They are set in their ways.  They dress in ways that offend me. They won't listen.  They are full of fear.  They are full of tears.  They are imperfect.  They are indifferent.  And they are all God's children.  They are loved by Him.   They are us.

And the only way I know to love them or love us is to spend time with the Lord. Spend time getting to know Him better and better.  To meditate on His goodness and His forgiveness on His love so that I have His love to give to others.  So that I can know I'm beloved and forgiven.  When I know that deep down inside I than can receive His love and I than have real love that I can give to others.  Otherwise my love I want to give runs out.  My trying is pitiful.  My grandiose illusions of being a loving person fall down on the ground just a heap of broken intentions without God's love, without his help.  

The Keith Green's song keeps going through my mind.  I wish you could hear it with me.  He is singing to the Lord, "You put this love in my heart"  and he is amazed by it.  I think when we become amazed at God's love, at His acceptance of us, at His forgiveness than we have some love left over and we can love people a little at a time a little here a little there.  Just slowly day by day, moment by moment, without fear or dread without trying or straining.  His love reaching out and touching lives and returning and blessing our own life.   Than people will stay at our church.  People will be able to overlook each others faults and grow together not as a "church" but as the body of Christ.

Here is Keith's song:

  I found it hard to believe
Someone like you cared for me
You put this love in my heart

I tried but could not refuse
You gave me no time to choose
You put this love in my heart

I want to know where the bad feelings go
When I'm depressed and I get down so low
And then I see you coming to me and it's alright

I want to tell you right now
I'm not afraid to say how
You put this love in my heart

There are sometimes when I doubt
But you always find me out
You put this love in my heart

Cause when I see all that you've done for me
It's hard to doubt, I just have to believe
Cause you followed and proved it all of your life

Well I know
the loneliness I had before
Is gone now
I'll never feel it anymore

Cause your love has released me
From all that's in my past
And I know I can believe you
When you say I'll never be forsaken
Your love is gonna last

There's so much more I should say
If I could just find a way
You put this love in my heart

Is all this real or a dream
I feel so good I could scream
You put this love in my heart

I want to know where the bad feelings go
When I'm depressed and I get down so low
And then I see you coming to me and it's alright

You put this love in my heart

You put this love in my heart

You put this love in my heart

Pastor and Bekki

Last Sunday at church my granddaughter Bekki saw Pastor Mike across the foyer.  She started pulling on my hand.  "I want to see Pastor Mike!", she cried.  She broke free calling out "Pastor Mike" running towards him.   He heard her and bent down to her level with arms wide open, a big smile across his face.  She ran into his arms and he gave her a big bear hug and started talking with her.  She twirled around and he commented on her pretty dress.  She than stuck out her pink high top converses.  When he liked those she started to dance.   Bekki and Pastor were having a fine time.  After a couple of minutes she ran back to me and was very happy.  


First, I love that we have a Pastor that takes time for even the least of our congregation.  As her grandma I left feeling blessed but later in the week I got to thinking.  Wasn't that a beautiful picture of Jesus?   Shepherd and a little sheep.  She knew him and wasn't afraid to run to him to give him a hug.   We should have that childlike trust that we can run into the Lord's presence to love on Him and to receive His love.  Children are fearless, aren't they?  Why aren't we when we come to talk with the Lord?   The way she twirled and danced was so sweet.  Little girls twirl for those they love.  In the book Captivating, author Stasi Eldridge says they are asking, "Do you see me?"  "Am I important?"    Pastor was symbolizing  the love, the acceptance that the Lord shows us.  Symbolizing we are important to God, He  sees us.  Pastor was in the middle of talking to a couple of grown ups.   But seeing a little one coming over he stopped a minute to talk with her on her level.  


The Lord is rather busy, I imagine.  But He always has time to talk with us.  He wants us to come to Him to share our joys and our sorrows and cares even just to check in to see if He still sees us.  This world can mess with our minds and sometimes we forget or we doubt that He see us and that He loves us.  


 We need to just remember Bekki's childlike faith and follow her example and run into the waiting arms of our savior.  Take a minute through out our  day to be childlike and to check in to say Hi, to say,  See me?  I see you!  

Matthew 19:14

New Living Translation (NLT)

¹⁴ But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.”