Rhythm Part 1

Rhythm.  The music is playing and for some of us, our feet can’t help moving, trying to feel that pulsating beat.  It isn’t a nervous foot jiggle, as my husband demonstrates, you know the one where when sitting with toes only touching the floor the heels start bouncing….aka the Motor.  No that’s the one that sets the dishes sitting on the table jiving making everyone hyper until the death look captivates the jiggler or someone goes over and physically places pressure on their knees to lower the heels and make it stop!  I don’t know, maybe in the jiggler’s mind they are moving to some beat, just one unheard by anyone else!  No, rhythm, as I intend to portray is of a different cadence.  Whether it be to a waltz or a jive; somewhere in its pace is a regularity of tempo.  Rhythm can build in its pulse, but then once it reaches its crescendo, drops back to its pattern.

Are you aware that life too has a rhythm?  Do you know when yours is out of sync?  If truth be told, I am only now learning to pay attention to life’s rhythm.  Before I was too frantic in my life approach to even think about it.  I have often remarked about life’s busyness and its ill effects on us.  The point I never fully explained was this point about rhythm.  I am in NO way a dancer, I’m much too klutzy for that, but I do fancy myself to enjoy music and be able to keep time at least moderately well.  The thing with me though, is that I have to hear the music.

Well, life doesn’t always play its music so that we can hear it, either that or we’ve become deaf to wanting to listen to it.  And that is  until something happens in your life that makes you slow down and pay attention to it, which in turns makes you wonder why it took so long to do so.  The rhythm in life is as soothing as you allow it to be.  Here’s the thing though, too often we aren’t listening to “our” life song, instead we are listening to someone else’s, because their beat sounds somewhat more appealing than ours.

In the Bible, Jesus comes to visit Martha and Mary.  I’m a Martha.  I want to be prepared, house cleaned, food warmed, everything just so.  The problem with that is that when the guest of honor arrives (in this case Jesus), Martha continues to fuss over the tiniest of details completely missing out on the enjoyment of her guest.  Mary on the other hand, stops what she is doing and dotes on her guest.  Martha gets PO’d enough to even try to convince Jesus to tell Mary to get off her ever loving butt and get to making things right.  Two distinct people, two distinct different rhythms.  Yet Jesus tells Martha, Mary’s got it all right, she IS doing what is important.  Whoa.  In Martha’s mind, Mary was being a slacker.  In Jesus’ mind, Mary was anything but a slacker.  She was honoring her guest by being present in the moment with Him.

As I age, I am becoming increasingly aware of life as an agenda.  Unfortunately, that agenda seems to center on everyone else’s time frame.  Do this, be there, look here and most often the word that follow those is the word…..NOW.  My husband and I are not independently wealthy, so I don’t have the luxury of thumbing my nose at life and saying kiss my grits.  I (we) do, to a certain extent, have to be responsible adults – only if we want to continue to enjoy having a roof over our heads and food on the table.  No, I’m talking about what comes after responsibilities have been met.  How do we allow ourselves to enjoy our own timely progressions?

Stay tuned….

Looking up!~

Barb

Steps along the Journey

Recently, in the mornings, I have had the privilege of sharing my morning quiet time going through my readings with a friend.  Said friend has been on a quest to better understand herself and the world as she perceives it.  Whether or not she is aware of it, something she said last night spoke volumes.  It is interesting, at least to me, that yesterday morning she “couldn’t wait” for our readings today, but last night she had made the first of many “right” steps towards independence and health.  Instead of joining me this morning via telephone, she opted to meet up with another and share, talk and walk with her.  In reading this, she might think she committed a faux pas, that is not how I perceive it.  I believe she is being led where God wants her headed.  She is blooming where she is planted!  And I applaud that!  Too often we rest where we feel safe, and while safety cushions are ever present, they don’t help propel us forward.  A journey is not stationary and each of us is on a path of God’s design.

Yesterday’s readings spoke of this journey.  In Luke 9:23, Jesus implores each of us to come after Him and take up our crosses.  Well, it use to be when I read that passage it sounded like gobblety gook to me.  In the “Message,” the translation read loud and clear.  Simply stated, if we plan to walk the walk with Jesus, we have to let Him lead and sometimes the walk brings us to places of suffering.  The crosses we are to pick up, are those sufferings.  Why?  Some think that following Christ means they get to live a life of charm, still others (especially those who don’t want to begin that walk) are afraid that when they do journey on the path with Christ, they will only meet up with suffering and therefore resist Him because they are afraid.  As the song “Blessings” by Laura Story goes, sometimes our hardships are our blessings in disguise.

Suffering isn’t fun.  I can’t think of anyone, except Mother Teresa who would readily sign up for that.  Which brings me to another point.  Maybe Mother Teresa didn’t really want the hardships her life encountered, but and this is a big but (which does not mean BS), she truly wanted to walk with Christ and did what most of us can’t, deny ourselves and put others first!  At times I think I’m doing this, but at any given moment my selfishness points its incriminating finger(s) back at me and says “fraud!”

Moving on to what I read today, in Luke 9:48….For he who is least and lowliest among you – he is the one truly great. This scenerio was portrayed in Steven W. Smith’s book “The Jesus Life.”   I arrived at this same passage where he was depicting how he and his wife made a spiritual retreat out of a barn in Colorado. The place is called “The Potter’s Inn” and someday I hope to be able to go there! He remarked about how varying the stature of the clients who come there, for their soul care, and how no one knows who has made the visit, because of the cloak of anonymity.  I love what he says in regard to marveling at the situation “Somehow it became appropriate and often funny for me to look around and say, “Has my life come down to this, to my workplace being a barn and my pulpit a manger?”  Getting back to Luke 9:48, it reminds me that our status isn’t what God looks at, but instead what we do for one another out of love, regardless of its complexity and who or who may not know.

How do we aid those afflicted with disease, whatever the disease?  Do we repel them, because we are afraid that what they have we might catch?  Or do we strive to come closer, to gain an understanding of their suffering?  Does it depend on the disease or whether or not it is socially acceptable or whether or not it is deemed self-inflicted?  Humanity is a sea of complexities and I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t have the answers to the causes behind our sufferings.  I just know that I want to be part of the healing process, somehow, someway.  I’m not sure what that looks like today.

That process is never a more daunting plea than when your loved one(s) is (are) in the midst of their dilemmas of suffering.  They battle “the” disease, but those of us on the outside battle a different skirmish with them.  It can be an ordeal of unknown proportions.  They do the work we can’t even begin to imagine.

In conversation yesterday, my friend and I discussed how when reading the Bible, we don’t necessarily “get” passed the words.  The point was made, that in our approach, we need to ask that God allow His Spirit to read along with us and then stop us at the point we need to focus and learn from.  In reading this way, I came across this passage, again in Luke, this time 8:50, Jesus is talking with a father whose daughter is ill.  He says “But when Jesus heard [it], he answered him, saying, Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole.”   The fear mentioned is the opposite of faith.  Fear is doubt, created by Satan and is a choice by us.  Really?  We choose this?  Yes, resoundingly yes.  Again, why?

This stops me in my tracks.  This is the crux of the whole matter.  Everytime I allow myself to wander down the alley of fear, I’m saying God doesn’t have this(whatever “this” represents).  Our humanness embraces this fear, this is the stigma birthed to us from Adam and Eve and yet God PROMISES us, through Christ, that we do not have to choose this path.  So why do we?  Why do I?

A friend of mine, who battled breast cancer 2 years ago is profound in her belief.  She doesn’t say she is in remission, because that allows for doubt.  She professes to be cured.  She will have none of Satan stealing her joy.  I am uplifted when I hear her speak.  She lovingly corrects my mental sourness.  There is NO room for doubt if for no other reason than it negates God’s ability to perform His miracles.  The battle(s) waged are in our minds!

Each of us has our own issues where we need God’s sovereignity.  Make your choice, faith or fear, the outcome should not come as a surprise!  With every ounce of my being I’m choosing faith!

FEAR not, BELIEVE only!

http://www.pottersinn.com/ check out the link!

 

Looking up!

Barb

Wedding countdown

This weekend is my daughter’s wedding and up to this point, I have not been stressing out. Last night though life started taking its frantic grip and lo and behold, this morning finds me stuffing my face with ice cream for breakfast. I could very well rationalize this as my attempt to clean out the freezer because I need to store bags of ice there….maybe I will just do that.  The beer and wine does need to be cold after all!
On top of that, knowing that I need to fit into a dress I tried on 2 months ago, isn’t stressing me out a bit. No, not at all…yeah, right! The temperature on Saturday will not be conducive to my wearing a sausage skin, because hot flashes in 90 degree heat will make my hair wilt! Oh, the things we women try to do to appear to look as if we have it all together! To that point, I’ve just applied self-tanner so that my bat wings blend in better rather than remaining lily white so as not to point out to the world that the last time I exercised was last year right before my son’s wedding. I just couldn’t afford the "Malibu Barbie" tanning experience again this year. Funny thing is, the aroma from the self-tanner is exactly what I remember! No one better point out to me on Saturday that I missed a spot!

Upon gazing in the mirror this morning, hoping that Christy Brinkley was gazing back, aw shucks….I then had the realization that my hormones aren’t sure what they should be doing. Just the other day, my son thought I had something on my lip and he tried to brush it off….unfortunately it doesn’t brush off, the old "hormones" are giving me both pimples AND a mustache, adding to my "nan, nan". Life isn’t fair. On top of that, my "plucking" abilities are fouled up because I had lasik eye surgery 6 years ago and at the time I thought it prudent to have a "near" eye and a "far" eye. This enabled me to be able to read both a phone book and see in the distance (not the future obviously, or I would have seen the necessity of investing in a scary as hell make-up mirror that magnifies EVERYTHING, even the stuff not supposed to be seen!) As I stand looking in the mirror, tweezers in hand, I keep attempting to find that stray hair, I keep plucking at air and have gone as far as thinking I should just take Bruce’s razor to try and hunt it down. Thing is, I don’t want to then end up with a chinstrap in the future! Sorry, to my future son-in-law, who looks good with one!
　
All in all, I would have to say we are as ready as we are going to be. One would have to expect to be unnerved if 60+ people were about to descend on one’s home don’t’ you think? And that is just the rehearsal dinner. With my luck, I will have forgotten to change out that one roll of toilet paper that had one square of TP left on it and the one who will find it, will be the one friend who always seems to find it and I never leave it that way on purpose! But mine is a mind that sees the humor in life and I try to just roll with it! Get it, roll, TP….ah, forget it.

These are the things running through my mind, 3 days before the big event. I can’t say whether or not this is normal. What I am not worried about however, is whether or not the kids are right for each other. I have watched them in the four years they’ve known one another. They are committed to each other and have already had to see that life is not just a bowl of cherries. (Why cherries, I’d rather them be a different fruit….who came up with the cherry idea anyway?) But I digress, both Brooke and James have dealt with moving, job changes, illness, and even death and in each instance they have withstood the challenges together. They know that married life isn’t going to be any easier than it was the day before, but in making their vows understand that before God and their families they promise to work together through it all.

In opening our hands and releasing our daughter’s hand to his, we are gaining a young man we consider worthy as a son. We appreciate the lessons they have taught us and hope they can appreciate our lessons in return. We look forward to this union and the joy that it brings both now and in the future. So, no it isn’t about the stuff I’ve been joking about, I do understand that, but the picture wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t share the imperfections that allow for us to be human.

Looking up (and forward)!
Barb