Next up was the opportunity to be involved in a group that was sponsoring the showing of an evangelistic film called “Heaven’s Heroes” in Rochester. Local churches were being asked to participate in all aspects of bringing this film to town: fundraising, prayer, logistics, advertising and general PR, etc. “Me! Pick me!” I said in my newfound zeal to say “yes” to everything. I had hoped to be slotted into the organization as a minion taking orders. Instead I found out that I was to be in charge of advertising and PR. Oh boy. I had to take hold of that adage again and remind myself that “God is more interested in availability than He is in ability.” I had never been involved in promoting anything before and I’m not a tremendously outgoing person either. My idea of sales is to say “You probably don’t want that thing that I’m trying to sell you. I’m sorry I asked.” So, ability level zero. But I was very available!

We started out many months in advance of the one-day showing of the movie. A group of us met with the local contact from Mustard Seed Productions and the plan was to meet regularly with updates on our progress. Somehow I accrued a couple minions for my committee and we met separately to put together a strategy of PR. It was a big job and we spent some time making lists of things to do, people and churches to contact, media resources, etc. So far, so good.

Then we all went to a sneak preview showing of the movie. I don’t know how else to say this: it was awful. The production value was embarrassingly bad, the plot was overly simplistic, the script was phony sounding, and the acting was worse (excepting perhaps the main actress who was a professional and had appeared in a series on TV). The best you could say was that the intended goal of reaching people for Christ was a sincere one. I was filled with a heavy ambivalence about the whole thing after watching it. On the one hand, people kept saying, “If even one person comes to the Lord it’s worth it all!” Yes, I could see that. I was a relatively new Christian and hesitated to stick my neck out with opinions about the quality of the product. But it was going to make my role in promoting the film a difficult one. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I felt I should keep my negativity to myself. I couldn’t just quit after I’d committed to it anyway. Right? I needed to let my “yes be yes and my no be no.” No way out of this one. Sigh.

Then I went to the Urbana Missions conference and connected up with a fellow named Kris whom I’d known in college. He had approached me shortly before the conference with an interest in dating me, so ooh la la! I was happy to meet up with him there and eventually told the whole story to him about my involvement with “Heaven’s Heroes.” He was a much more mature Christian than I was and I was pretty sure he would sympathize with my plight but urge me to stay faithful to my commitment. After I finished talking about it, he said, “I think you should quit the project.” WHAT???? A little ray of hope sprang up in my heart. He went on to explain that I had committed to it before seeing the movie and in view of my personal distaste for the movie, I wasn’t doing the team any favors by sticking with it out of a misplaced sense of duty. His own conviction was that Christians need to have a culture of excellence in everything they do and we should not be characterized by shoddy workmanship.

It all made sense and lightened my heart considerably, but I was still faced with the problem of how to exit graciously. He agreed that I shouldn’t just walk off, but counseled me to pray that God would provide a replacement for my role, which would be a confirmation of my decision to leave. I prayed about it and then after I got back, I asked one of the guys on my committee if he’d consider stepping up to the job. He agreed to it enthusiastically without the slightest hesitation. Truth be told, his personality and skills were far better suited to the task than mine were. I had decided that rather than tell people that I hated the movie, I would just let everyone know that I was unable to finish out my part on the project due to some other commitments in my life (which wasn’t an untruth, it just wasn’t the whole truth).

I went to one last group meeting and explained that I’d be leaving, apologized for backing out of the project, and introduced the new head of PR. The man in charge of things could tell I felt bad and mouthed the words “We still love you” which made me feel better (and yet worse because I hadn’t told them everything). I was grateful for God’s provision of a substitute for me, grateful to be freed from what had become a real burden, and truly grateful for the lovely group of people committed to bringing the gospel to Rochester, albeit through a flawed medium.

I was long gone out of Rochester by the time the film came to town, having gotten engaged and moved to the city where we’d be living after we got married. I don’t really know what impact “Heaven’s Heroes,” had on the community, but I hoped and prayed that the Lord used it in spite of its weaknesses to draw others to Himself. And although I wasn’t done volunteering for things, I had learned a good lesson about being more careful and discerning about what I said “yes” to.

I’ll probably delete this bit of shoddy workmanship in the morning!

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, here you go:
Adventures Part 1

Next adventure:
Adventures Part 10

I guess that’s what we’re calling the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum these days: The Arb. Whatever. I’ll let the photos from our time there today do all the talking.

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Don’t tell my family members that I stuck a photo of them on my blog without asking permission. Shhh…

I’ll probably delete this in the arb.

When we went out West for two weeks recently, I carefully packed up almost all my watercolor painting supplies. They came with us everywhere and came back to our house feeling rather ignored, although I did get them out once to finish the last page of the watercolor travel journal I attempted in 2021, which took me about 15 minutes. Two years’ procrastination for a 15-minute project – not bad for a professional procrastinator such as myself.

I promised to do a small watercolor for those who are participating in the “Lazy Artist Initiative” and I shall fulfill my end of the deal, even if it takes me awhile. Here’s one for my friend Barb, which coordinated nicely with her birthday.

Inspiration for that little painting came from something similar that I saw on Pinterest – kudos to the original artist!

Next up: paintings for Teresa, Lori and Sherri – I have not forgotten! I appreciate the motivation and inspiration to paint, which I really do enjoy in spite of my lack of momentum. Onward!

The basil-eating bunny will eat this post in the morning.

We have a beauty contest going on in our yard without all the usual fanfare. There’s no press coverage, no assembled guests, and no ordinary music (we allow for the general music provided by the Great Conductor in the form of birds, insects and gentle breezes). Vying for the title of Miss Best Apple Tree are our three contestants: Miss Crabapple (who begs you not to be put off by her name), Miss Zestar and Miss Honeycrisp. Let’s listen in as these three beautiful contestants are interviewed by the emcee.

Emcee: Miss Crabapple, what can you tell us about yourself?
Miss C: Unlike these other two ladies who are alike enough to be twins, I have a unique presence in the yard. My brilliant pink blossoms are profuse and fragrant and in a much larger array than my competitors (God bless them, of course). Please note that I have also thoughtfully and with no apparent effort provided the pink carpet for this event.
Emcee: Can you tell us something about your fruit?
Miss C: As you probably know, I’m an ornamental fruit tree; my talents lie in other directions.
Emcee: Such as…
Miss C: I’m very proud of the fact that I play a big part in pollinating the flowers of these “little sisters” of mine so that they can bear fruit.
Emcee: That’s quite an accomplishment! Thank you, Miss Crabapple.

Emcee: And now we come to Miss Zestar, wearing a lovely white gown. Miss Zestar, how do you differentiate yourself from Miss Honeycrisp? As Miss Crabapple pointed out, you two look enough alike to be peas in a pod!
Miss Z: Well, to the discerning eye (no offense to my bulky friend Miss CRAB-apple), we are quite different. Although Miss Honeycrisp wears a fine plain white gown, it has none of the flair which attends mine in the form of these lovely pink highlights at the edges.
Emcee: I see. Do you have any particular talents that you’d like to mention?
Miss Z: I’m not just an ornamental tree, that’s for sure. Say what you will about the flowers, the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, in the fruit. I don’t like to brag (like SOME), but I was specially developed to bear fruit in these sometimes harsh northern climes and I’m known for my early ripening season. My deep red apples are crispy, light and sweet. Eat them fresh off the tree or use them in baked goods, desserts and salads. And people praise my apples for having a long shelf life. But I’m still just a humble little tree for all that.
Emcee: Depends on how you define “humble,” I guess. Thank you for your time.

Emcee: And now for our last contestant. Miss Honeycrisp, are we saving the best for last? What can you tell us about yourself?
Miss H: Thank you for including me in this illustrious contest. I feel a bit like the country mouse who came to the big city. I also want to thank Miss Crabapple for her efforts in pollinating my flowers. I couldn’t do what I do without her. As for Miss Zestar, she certainly dazzles with that pink accent on her flowers. I feel almost ashamed to come before you in my simple white gown. Perhaps the best thing I can tell you about myself is that I deliver the goods.
Emcee: What do you mean by that?
Miss H: Year after year I’ll give you fruit that’s consistently large, well-shaped, crisp and honey-sweet, and mostly blemish free. I’ve often felt bad for poor Miss Zestar who tries so hard but yet still ends up with misshapen fruit that is sometimes a little wormy, through no fault of her own. I know that her best efforts are quite good indeed.
Emcee: Do you ever encounter hardships yourself?
Miss H: Oh my, I could make you shiver with horror to describe the two years in a row that both Miss Z and I were positively ravaged by Japanese beetles. It was quite shocking and ruinous! Fortunately we were made to survive and I thank the Lord of All Apple Trees for His kindnesses to us.

Emcee: Well, that wraps up this portion of the contest. Let the votes come in!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning unless I’m too busy counting votes.

Well, the great day came when I finally graduated from the dietetic internship. I got a temporary job right away at St. Mary’s Hospital covering for the menu planning and food purchasing dietitian during her pregnancy leave, which meant I was going to be staying in Rochester for a time. A few friends had gotten a 2 bedroom apartment nearby and graciously allowed me to be the fourth roommate. I had been so busy during the internship that I hadn’t had a lot of time to do anything else for God and the church, so I made an expansive promise to the Lord that I would say “yes” to everything that came my way. This is the kind of promise that immature and undiscerning Christians make and I was to learn that the hard way.

I was still interested in doing a Bible study with the dietetic interns, so I invited a group of them over to our apartment to give it a try. I still didn’t really know what I was doing, but I’d been around long enough to hear the adage “God is more interested in availability than He is in ability.” So there! A few of the interns took me up on my invitation, which was exciting. I have absolutely no memory of what Bible study we did, but what did get seared into my brain at the first gathering was something one of the interns said during the discussion. She told us she wasn’t a Christian, but “when someone tells me they are a Christian, I watch them especially closely to see if how they live matches up with their claims.” Gulp. She had a way of staring at you that added to the whole feeling of being scrutinized. It was a bracing statement, but not an outrageous one. I have never forgotten that when I identify with Christ, I had better not take His name in vain by speaking or living in a way that dishonors Him.

Next up: a Petra concert was coming into town and various churches were looking for volunteers to help on the day of the concert. I found out that the band, Petra, wouldn’t come to a town unless they knew they had the prayer and support of local churches and they always made their concerts an evangelism opportunity. Look no further – my hand went up and I said “Yes.” I met with the group before the concert and discovered that volunteers were expected to be available to counsel, pray with and keep in touch with anybody who responded to “altar call” at the end of the concert. Gulp. Really? I was tremendously nervous about this. We were given information on what kinds of things to say and pray and then were sent on our way (I’m liking the rhyme scheme in that sentence, by the way).

On the day of the concert, we met in a separate room to pray before the concert started. The band started playing while we still in the room – it was so loud that I could feel the music and drums reverberating in my chest. What had I gotten myself into? That was my inward thought, but outwardly, I was pretty cool about the whole thing. We went into the auditorium and fanned out so as to sit in different places throughout. To be honest, I was kind of dreading the end of the concert at this point, the whole altar call and my part, which was still a little fuzzy in my mind. Time doesn’t stand still for hesitant people, however, and after the last song, one of the band members gave a short gospel presentation, followed by an invitation to come forward. Kids started making their way up front and I was paralyzed in my seat. One of the other volunteers, Myla, was made of better stuff than I – she went by, saw me sitting still and exhorted me, “C’mon – go grab one!” I got caught up in the forward motion and found a couple high school girls waiting up front for someone, so I prayed for courage and “grabbed” them. They were very earnest in their desire to follow Christ and after speaking briefly to them, I helped them through some sort of prayer, or maybe I prayed for them. We exchanged contact information and I found out they both lived in Wisconsin. I felt pretty exhilarated after the experience – my first time helping someone come to Christ!! But in my follow up calls (which I also dreaded), I discovered that there was big difference between the emotional moment of the altar call experience and the follow through after some time went by. Both of the girls were fairly lukewarm by the time I talked to them a week later and seemed embarrassed to be contacted by me. After a couple awkward phone conversations, it was clear they really didn’t want to pursue this new “faith” that they’d claimed to have. I quit calling. That was a big learning experience for me in many ways, but I still hadn’t learned to be a little more discerning about what I volunteered for. More stories to come!

I volunteer to delete this in the morning.

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, here you go:
Adventures Part 1
If you want to go to the next installment:
Adventures Part 9

I spent all my summers as a child running around barefoot. At the beginning of warmer weather, my winter-softened feet always needed toughening up, but by the end of the summer, I could tolerate just about any kind of surface – with the exception of burning hot asphalt.

I’m trying to remember when I stopped going barefoot outside in the summer, but I’m sure it was well into adulthood when I started feeling like I needed sandals on every time I went outside. My feet are in a permanent state of wimpy tenderness and I suppose I don’t have the patience to toughen them up anymore.

Recently a friend told me about something called “grounding,” which I’d never heard of. Within a week, I ran across a couple more references to it and then last week when I went for a walk barefoot with my husband, some young neighbors of ours called out “Oh, I see you’re grounding!”

Clearly there’s some sort of trend going on. I looked it up and here’s some information:
“Grounding, also known as earthing, is when humans make an electrical connection to the earth’s energies. The simplest form involves walking barefoot in the grass, dirt or sand.” The benefits of grounding are that it may:
Reduce inflammation
Reduce cortisol
Increase energy
Increase healing speed
Decrease pain
Restore balance to the body

I’m not sure if there are any rigorous studies to back up those claims, but I kind of like the idea of having some barefoot time outside every day again. Except on burning hot asphalt.

I’ll be stomping on this post with my bare feet in the morning.

I’ve spent my whole life not having the experience of being on a motorcycle and I’ve always considered that to be the best default position to take. I’ve never watched someone on a motorcycle and thought, “Yes, that’s the thing I want to do someday.” It’s not been on my bucket list unless you consider it being on my bucket list to keep away from motorcycles for the rest of my life.

Then my husband bought a motorcycle. That took some getting used to all by itself. But then he started hinting that he’d like me to try riding with him as a passenger. Inwardly I said, “NOPE.” Outwardly I also said, “Nope,” but not with all capitals, so as to soften it. Nevertheless, he persisted. I realized that it was really important to him that I give it a chance, so “nope” became “okay, if it means that much to you.” Then came the fateful day that he enrolled the two of us in an advanced motorcycle class with the goal of him learning how to ride with a passenger and of course me learning how to be a passenger. I marked the day on my calendar and devoted some time to both dreading it and praying for peace about it. I’ve been at this crossroads between fear and faith before. When you pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the everlasting way,” you better know that the Lord is going to do just that. (It’s not my prayer, by the way, it was written by King David.)

Yesterday was the big day! That’s a spoiler since now you know that I did, in fact, survive the class. We had a cheerful instructor named Jed who said in all his years of teaching, he’d never before had someone in his class that had never even been on a motorcycle. Nice to know that I’m breaking new ground in more ways than one. Also I was the only one there as a passenger, I was the only woman in the class and the oldest person. Yay for me!

Here’s how I thought the class was going to go: I’d get on the back of the motorcycle and we’d ride back and forth in a nice straight line making the gentlest of possible turns to come back around. Ha ha ha ha ha!!! What was I thinking? Instead, we did “S” turns, “U” turns, swerves, weaving in and out of markers on the pavement, hard stops, leaning turns (Lord, help!), etc. I did a lot of praying. Each time some new maneuver got explained it sounded like we’d be taking our very lives in our hands to try it so I’d try to back out, but my patient and gracious husband continued to encourage me to keep on with the experience since the whole reason we were there was so he could learn how to do all those things with a passenger.

I’ll be honest: it was a rather stressful experience. I’ll be honest again: I’m glad I did it. When I explained to the class afterward that it had been a big deal to me and I’d had to face my fears, one of the other students, a fellow closer to our age said, “And who better to face them with than your husband?” Who, indeed?

I’ll probably lean into the curve on this one in the morning.

Something bright yellow caught my eye as I was going by a stand of arborvitae with a wheelbarrow full of the castoffs from last year’s hostas. There, nestled in the grass and weeds, a feather had fallen. As I got closer, I saw another, and even more, scattered in the shadows. I half dreaded finding the corpse after finding so much of its clothing, but all I could see were the feathers. It doesn’t take much detective work to figure out what happened to the rest of the bird. Nature, red in tooth and claw, that’s what happened. While I cannot get worked up to weep over a dead bird, I felt a moment’s sorrow while gathering up fragments of its pretty cloak. I don’t begrudge the meal to the creature that killed it – I mean, predators gotta eat, too. But those beautiful feathers, once imbued with the glory of movement were now stilled. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

This blog post will soar away with golden wings in the morning.

Some of you may have noticed that the blog posts have been a bit absent lately. I always think I’m going to continue these while we’re gadding about, but it doesn’t often happen. Traveling is a full-time activity, especially when you get to be amongst the people dearest to you that live so far away.

On the way back, we spent a day driving through Wyoming and somewhere along the way, a poem emerged.

Wyoming. Oh, Wyoming.
A state designed for introspection
As the miles fade away behind us
And stretch out to infinity before us,
Wild, and stark beauty on every side.

Cattle stand with noses to the ground
Building muscle and bone from the grass
Thinking their placid bovine thoughts,
Unhurried and untroubled by the rain
Hanging like a dark curtain up ahead

There’s a regular rhythm
Of telephone wires dancing gracefully
As they go from pole to pole
Telling stories and carrying secrets,
Whispering all along the line.

The wind was born in Wyoming
And spends its days roaming
Seas of sagebrush on undulating fields,
Picking up tumbleweeds and hurling them
Head over heels, head over heels.

Wyoming, Oh, Wyoming.
Stop trying to woo me with your
Mountains, your long winding Wind River,
Your ranches and your red sandstone cliffs.
I belong to another state. Farewell.

And that’s the end of that story.

I’ll nip this one in the bud in the morning.