Rainey Days

Saturday night I spent with the Severn River Church crowd having a fun night of bowling. My nieces were very excited; they had a blast, as you can see: Ellie couldn't really bowl, but she enjoyed the eats at the bowling alley. Roll the ball, Sydney! Roll! Wow! Look how many pins I knocked down! (Click on any picture to view larger)

Jan (Ignacy) Paderewski (1860-1941) a Polish pianist, composer, and eventual Prime Minister of Poland, once said of his musical skills: "If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it." I think the same could be said of our prayer life.

Have you ever thought about the fact that 90% of Jesus’ life was spent in utter obscurity? The gospels record the details of only a few precious years of His life, but there were approximately 30 years that unobserved, unnoted, and certainly unsung. In her book, Anonymous , Alicia Britt Chole uses the anonymity of Jesus’ experience in the desert to illustrate the difficult process of growth in a barren place. “People generally do not stand in line for a tour of our hidden years, which can be rather disheartening if we are in the habit of determining the value of our life’s seasons by ticket sales. Though unpopular, these hidden places are not unproductive; within them God houses the unglamorous guts of a truly fruitful existence. There in the poorly lit crawl spaces of life (transitions, prolonged waiting, new additions to the family, preparatory education, relocation, retirement, unexplainable loss, extended illness, irresolvable conflict, and all else that tends to hide us) God buil...

I had a conversation with my brother recently, while moving furniture, that Ethan Allen furniture is really great stuff. It's built to last forever, and it's worth the high price. Unfortunately, most people can't afford to decorate their entire home in one fell swoop from expensive furniture stores, so half of their furniture is hand-me-downs, a few pieces are high quality, and a few pieces are from places like Ikea. You can only afford to do so much at one time, and when you first move into a new home, you need things immediately--beds to sleep in, tables to eat on. You get what you need at the moment. The problem is that you get what you pay for; buying furniture from Ikea means you'll have to replace it in about three years. In the past few months, I've dealt with a few things spiritually that have been difficult for me. I was praying this weekend about it, and I questioned God about these particular trials. I was reminded of my furniture conversation. My faith ...

This weekend I took a break from the Internet by going to our district campground for a retreat for women in ministry. Typically, there aren't many women who attend--around 30 or 40--so we are able to enjoy a more intimate retreat, with a lot of time for fellowship and connection with other women. I came home with good ideas from other churches, and some unique ideas of my own. You can count on reading more about that throughout this week. I'm about to head out to run some errands, including returning a library book that I thought would be worth a mention. What Have You Changed Your Mind About? is a compilation of essays written by some of the nation's most high-powered thinkers. The essays were in response to the title question, posed on Edge.org, a website dedicated to "intellectuals in action." I picked up the book, thinking that it would be a thought-provoking read. Just the title alone grabbed my attention, causing me to question what I had changed my ...

I like that Severn River Church has little business cards made up with the church information on them. They contain the meeting time and location, complete with a little map. On the front they have a picture of a welcome mat; others have toast with the caption, “Burned out?” I carry the welcome ones in my wallet, because on occasion a conversation with someone will introduce the idea of church or religion or something I can use to mention the church. A card like that is a powerful visual aid and serves as a personal invitation. In recent weeks—exactly one month, really—I have had two such conversations. One was during Valentines week, when I helped out as day labor at my sister’s employer, A Blooming Basket. They had several thousand roses in stock for Valentine’s Day and needed day help cleaning the roses. I scraped thorns off and put little green plastic sleeves on the necks of the roses to keep them firm. It was monotonous and hard on the hands, but everyone kept cheerful c...

On Saturday, my brother was worried about getting sick and asked me to be prepared to preach for him on Sunday morning. The Lord was with him, though, and he was able to do the service himself, while I attended a special service at my home church. I did prepare, however, what I would have shared. My brother has been doing a series on The Family of God, which I find interesting because the majority of my family attends Severn River Church. Both of my siblings, their spouses, and all of my nieces go to SRC, and since I’ve begun attending there, the “family” sense of the church has taken on a whole new meaning to me. In my family, we make a lot of jokes about birth order. I have long maintained that some of my irritating traits (i.e. being bossy) are mostly a result of being the oldest and learning to take charge at a young age. We all watch my oldest niece do the exact same thing—bossing Livvy and Ellie around, directing them into playing games her way. My brother and sister have certain...

I'm intrigued by the social website www.meetup.com . I first read about sites like that one in France, where I was a solitary person trying to find a social group where I could find friends who shared common interests. Since I've moved back to Maryland, I've used this site often to search for (and find) others in my area who want to connect for scrapbooking, or speaking French, et cetera. When I started "The Right Fit" group on Monday nights at my church, I listed in on the website as a weight-loss support group, for those in the area that might want to join. I'd like to see more people from the community--not just church folks. In the past several weeks, there have been a handful of people who have indicated that they would like to join. Eagerly, I look for them each week, but none of them showed up until last night. A lady named Joy came, and while we were all welcoming her, I thought she looked really familiar. "Do we know each other?" I a...

I have a good friend who lost her job just after I resigned mine. We've spoken on the phone recently, since in many ways, we are going through the same process of beginning a new season in our lives. Her situation is different, though, in that she didn't choose to change jobs--it was forced on her, and in a very public way. She still has to see all of her former clients all the time, with all them knowing what happened to her. It would be very easy for her to give up in humiliation, slink off to some other town or state, and settle for less than God's destiny for her life. But she has chosen to get back up again, after being knocked flat, to continue on in God's promise for her life and ministry. I'm proud of her! Courage is hard thing to wish for. Like patience, courage only comes from difficult circumstances that force you to act, even when your heart may be quaking and crying inside. Like the cowardly lion of The Wizard of Oz, wishing for courage doesn...

It is a standing joke that some members of my family are procrastinators. For Christmas I found a joke gift for my brother, a "To Don't" list, complete with categories like "to pass off," "to ignore," and my favorite, "to sabotage." While we all had a good laugh (at the gift and the fact that my brother modeled his gift's red bow), the fact is that my brother is very organized. He is a visionary with very specific goals for the future. I am goal-setter, too, always have been. I like the clarity of sitting down with a fresh list of things to do, how to accomplish a specific task, or maybe even all the things that need to change in order for me to facilitate my goals. Those lists and charts (I love Microsoft Excel!) help me feel more motivated to achieve my objectives. I need all the motivation I can get some days.

This week has been a busy one. I spent all day Monday on the phone dealing with my health insurance, and yesterday I spent filling out paperwork for a job application that was very intensive. I was trying to fax it today, but it wouldn't go through correctly, and I finally had to go to the church to fax it from there. I arrived a little while after the mail had come, and our church secretary Debra had sorted it on a side table. I figured I would leaf through one of the magazines, The Potomac Connection, while my fax was going through. I was surprised to see a testimony printed in the back by my friend Michelle Keller, about the blessing of her son Joshua. She praised God for His answer to prayer for another child--11 years after her son Jacob. I have heard Mark and Michelle testify many times, and their thanksgiving to the Lord is neverending. I'm very proud of Michelle for writing this testimony in to the magazine, which serves as a communication for ministers and ch...

We got coupons for Friendly's in the mail last week, and they were such a good bargain that we ended up taking my grandmother there two weeks in a row. Everyone's happy--from the youngest kid to the great-grandmother at the same table. At Friendly's many dinners come with a free sundae: two scoops and one topping, plus the whipped cream and cherry. Very tempting! The waitress brings out the sundaes with special long spoons, designed to fit all the way to the bottom of the narrow glass, so you can get every last drop of that ice cream. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal is attributed with the concept of a "God-shaped hole" in the soul of every person-- it other words, a profound need for God that is so deeply wired within us that nothing else will satisfy it. "What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain t...

For the past few days, I have enjoyed the warm breezes that indicate spring is just around the corner. Everyone digs out their short-sleeved shirts and sandals as if they are headed for vacation; the same sense of excitement and anticipation is in the air. Spring is certainly worthy of the attention we give it: a feeling of freshness, new beginnings, and life itself is defined in every bud on the trees and in every crocus pushing its way up through the earth. I appreciate the look of flowers and manicured landscapes, but I have never been any kind of gardener. I like to see the daffodils come back each year in my mother's yard. We used to have tiger lilies, too, that you could depend on each summer, all along the steps to the driveway. It's a miracle to me that a root can lie dormant for months (even years!) and then suddenly burst forth into a new bloom. I was thinking this morning about bitterness. I haven't been much of a grudge-holder in my life. Close friends and famil...

Ahh! The perfect amount of snow for sledding and fun!