For Young Mothers Everywhere

I remember being a young Mom who felt like she wasn't accomplishing enough when "all" she did was hang out with her children. When the house was a mess and supper was sandwiches and the laundry wasn't folded and and and ... I remember. On those days, I would sometimes go back my "Favorite Quotes" binder to remind myself that what the world called success and how I had prayerfully decided to define that term would always be at odds with one another.
Here's one of those reminders (a gift from my mother-in-law).

I Took His Hand and Followed

Author unknown

My dishes went unwashed today,

            I didn’t make the bed.

            I took his hand and followed

            Where his eager footsteps led.

            Oh, yes, we went adventuring,

            My little son and I …

            Exploring all the great outdoors

            Beneath the summer sky.

            We waded in a crystal stream,

            We wandered through a wood.

            My kitchen wasn’t swept today,

            But life was gay and good.

            We found a cool, sun-dappled glade

            And now my small son knows

            How Mother Bunny hides her nest,

            Where jack-in-the-pulpit grows.

            We watched a robin feed her young,

            We climbed a sunlit hill …

            Saw cloud-sheep scamper through the sky,

            We plucked a daffodil.

            That my house was neglected,

            That I didn’t brush the stairs,

            In twenty years, no one on earth

            Will know, or even care.

            But that I’ve helped my little boy

            To noble manhood grow,

            In twenty years, the whole wide world

            May look and see and know.

A Poem for those who Grieve

Cocoons

by Stephanie Grace Whitson

A lifeless shell (to earthly eyes)

Can open, freeing its surprise

To dance on a garden leaf.

Gossamer wings gently hesitate

To fly. And then, as wind abates,

It flutters toward the sky.

Out of sight, it yet exists,

And, dancing on, its wings persist

To unseen garden leaves.

No less alive, though out of sight,

It testifies to each man’s plight;

A common destiny.

For each of us must leave behind

A lifeless shell. And earthly-minded

Men can think, “Life’s done.”

It isn’t true. Although unseen,

We flutter on to gardens green

With joy, alive in Christ.

Alive in Christ, whose dead cocoon,

Though buried in a garden tomb

Arose to give new life.

Here’s hope for all in facing death:

A lifeless shell (to earthly eyes)

Precedes the birth of butterflies.

9/11

I was at home alone. My husband had died the previous February, and so learning to be alone was part of my new job description. Not one to watch much television, I had gotten in the habit of having it on "in the background" ... just so there'd be noise in the house. So now I share the collective memory. Those images live alongside my memory of the day JFK died.

But I have one more personal memory that lingers of 9/11. My daughter crying for all those people "who have to feel like we do ... because they lost their Daddy."

Contemplating and remembering today has turned my thoughts toward heaven, thanks in part to author friend Randy Alcorn's morning e-mail, which shared a list of quotes on heaven.

My husband once told someone who was expressing sympathy at the concept of his "terminal" condition, "You're terminal too, you know. It's just that I'm more aware of it than you." He'd already turned his heart toward heaven.

So today, in remembrance, I thought I'd do the same. The verse below was one of my mother's favorites. She died in 1996, and when my husband entered hospice care early in 2001, our nurse shared it with me. Both versions said "author unknown."

If you are grieving a loss, today, I hope it brings you comfort.

I am standing on the shore. A ship at my side spreads her sail to the breeze and starts for the ocean. She is an object of beauty and I stand and watch until she hangs like a speck of cloud where the sea and sky meet. Then, someone at my side says, "There! She's gone."

Gone where? Gone from my sight is all. She is still as large in mast, hull, and spar as she was when she left my side. Just as able to bear her load to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

Just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

... And that is dying.

I'll post another poem tomorrow, one I wrote back in the 1980s.

Proverbs 31 and a Perpetual Sense of Failure

If you are like me, there are days when you read Proverbs 31 with a sinking

sensation. "I don't do that." "I need to do better at that." "I don't do that." "I've never done that." "Okay ... I try that, but I'm not very good at it." 

Isn't it just like the Enemy of our Souls to take one of the most beautiful tributes ever written and use it to create a perpetual sense of failure?

Some friends and I have been discussing the woman who inspired Proverbs 31 (you can read about her here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2031&version=AMP

To be quite honest, there are days when we are tempted not to like her very much. She's just too perfect.

                                                                                                               

The phrase that always gets me first is "rising before dawn." I've never been able to establish that supposedly perfect and ideal routine. I cannot count the number of times I have promised myself that I will get up at 5:00 a.m., read the Bible, pray, work out, and have a piping hot breakfast ready for the family when they awaken.

I fail. Failed. Have failed. Will fail. Failure. That's me. 

It seems to me that the Enemy too often takes my honest belief that the Bible is literal truth and twists it into something that, instead of producing good fruit, produces an unholy sense of abject failure ... a temptation to "just give up, already, you're never going to get a gold star."

I've spent the last few years trying to find a balance in my faith walk that doesn't leave me feeling like a perpetual failure God is about to whack over the head. 

I think this passage provided a lyrical way of saying a good woman works hard. If I don't "rise before dawn," it doesn't necessarily mean I'm doomed to be a failure in God's eyes (and honestly I have felt that way). 

I think it's okay to envision the actual woman who inspired Proverbs 31 being just as amazed as I am when I read about her today. I envision tears rolling down her cheeks as she looks at her son, the author, and says ... "Really? You see me that way?" Sort of the ancient version of me when I read one of "those" Mother's Day cards. You know the ones I mean.

Now ... don't take this too far. I'm NOT saying I give up and I won't even strive for the mark. God's Word is powerful and it accomplishes what it was meant to accomplish. Proverbs 31 is the ideal. I should strive for the mark. But sometimes I should also give myself a break, already. A perpetual sense of failure isn't what it's about. 

When the future looks scary

Some people I love very much are facing some scary health-related times, and this morning I prayed for them and then came in to read my devotional and because it lead me to some other thoughts, I'm posting here instead of on my Facebook page.

What is the hardest thing you've ever had to give up? For me personally, it was the future. Giving up my dreams of life with a guy named Bob, because Bob had non-Hodgkins lymphoma--not the curable kind. Somewhere in my readings about the life of Amy Carmichael, I read about a convert to Christianity from her ministry who shared the mental image of taking whatever we have no words for and envisioning it in the palms of our hands and then holding those hands up to God as a silent offering. 

At some point in the 5 1/2 years of the cancer journey with a man I called my "best-beloved," God enabled me to do that. To hold up the broken pieces of life as I knew it to God and to say "yes." All I could manage at the time was to refuse bitterness about those broken dreams. 

And so, this morning, if you are facing scary times and what feels like a life-shattering reality, my prayer for you is that God will enable you to hold up those broken pieces. 

Here is the excerpt from Streams in the Desert that spoke to me this morning:

 Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son... I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven; …because thou hast obeyed my voice (Genesis 22:16-18).
And from that day to this, men have been learning that when, at God's voice, they surrender up to Him the one thing above all else that was dearest to their very hearts, that same thing is returned to them by Him a thousand times over. Abraham gives up his one and only son, at God's call, and with this disappear all his hopes for the boy's life and manhood, and for a noble family bearing his name. But the boy is restored, the family becomes as the stars and sands in number, and out of it, in the fullness of time, appears Jesus Christ.
That is just the way God meets every real sacrifice of every child of His. We surrender all and accept poverty; and He sends wealth. We renounce a rich field of service; He sends us a richer one than we had dared to dream of. We give up all our cherished hopes, and die unto self; He sends us the life more abundant, and tingling joy.And the crown of it all is our Jesus Christ …We sometimes seem to forget … that the only way to the resurrection life and the ascension mount is the way of the garden, the cross, and the grave.

_________________________________________

We don't often get to "see" the results of our fearful offering up of lost things, but in the case of my greatest fear, God did allow me to receive a very specific blessing. Apparently I shared the "broken pieces" analogy with one of my children, and about four years ago it came back to me in a song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LkrlFdY85k

Humbling. Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow.

And now ... now I have new things to place in the palms of my hands and lift up to the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. 

Life. It never gets easier, does it.

Spool Furniture

Have you seen the vintage shelving & etc. that's made of wooden spools? I tend to think it must be from the depression era (use it up, make it last, make it do, do without), although I don't really know, and looking around a bit on the internet I've seen some pieces that are called "nineteenth century," so perhaps my recently acquired treasure is older than I thought it was.

I have yearned from some little something made from spools over the years ... probably because I love old sewing stuff in general. Mostly I love the tactile connection to the woman who used the stuff. Which is why I litter my office with things like tatting shuttles (don't tat), needles for filet crochet (don't crochet), pin cushions (how many does one woman really need), and assorted other sewing gadgetry that is easy to store but still evocative of another time. I even have a metal box of attachments for a New Home sewing machine. But I don't have a New Home sewing machine. Go figure.

At any rate, this past month I took my annual pilgrimage to Nashville with my best road-dog friend. We made all the usual stops at this quilt shop and that flea market, and the corner shelf/what-not joined the other treasures in our over-full rented SUV. Now it sits right here to the left of my desk. And it makes me smile. Over 100 wooden sewing spools ... put to very good use ... at least I think so. Recyling isn't new!

Here's a spool lamp: http://www.laurelleaffarm.com/viewitem.htm?itemNumber=u2825#.Ud3URPm7KAg

and a table:

http://branfordhouseantiques.com/cgi-bin/p/awtp-product.cgi?d=branford-house-antiques&item=53839

and a chair that looks more like a throne:

http://www2.ljworld.com/photos/2009/sep/27/178088/



I remember using very large spools as step-stools when my children were little ... but I don't know what they were orignally used for (wire of some kind, I suppose) or where they went. Now that I have grandchildren, a little step-up would come in handy, and those things were untippable!

What example of recycling do you treasure?

Name This Character

Names are my nemesis.

I can find faces. I spent a lovely couple of hours yesterday finding faces and "auditioning" them on the toile-covered board in my office.

 ... but names. ARRRGHHH. 

The fact that I've already used so many names in past books complicates things immensely. 

So many of the women's names I like have already been "taken." 

So here's "her" photo. The clothing is wrong, by the way. It's only 1861 in the book and this is probably more 1890s, but that face---perfect. 

This is my leading lady. 

Do you see Jenny, Lydia, Madaline (I suppose she would be called Maddie?), Rosalie,or some other name I haven't considered?

By the way, I collect names from historical documents and tombstones, just to make sure it's a name that was in use. 

In this case it would have to have been in use in 1843 when my leading lady was born. 

It isn't a contest, but I'd appreciate your input. And if I choose the name you suggested, I promise to thank you when I write the acknowledgements ... and I'll send you a free book when it's available next spring (this book doesn't release until spring of 2014). Well, there you go ... maybe it is a contest, after all.

Blessings!