I came to it late in life – so many years wasted!  And I was amazed that something so wonderful could have been completely distasteful to me before.  I am, of course, speaking of my conversion to asparagus, which happened in my 50th year.  It actually began some years earlier when my oldest son (then 11 or 12) asked for asparagus to be part of his birthday meal.   I tried in vain to talk him out of it.  “Pete, it’s HORRIBLE stuff!  It always made me gag when I was growing up.  Seriously, you’ll hate it and you definitely don’t want to have it with your birthday meal.”   I really thought I was doing him a favor, and would have done a similar kindness if he’d asked for (shudder) lima beans.  However, the laddie insisted and I, having always granted the birthday meal requests, gave in with a sort of “you’ll be sorry” kind of sigh.  I bought fresh asparagus, steamed it, buttered and salted it and, just to show my exalted state of maturity, tried it too.  Hmm…not bad.  In fact, it wasn’t nearly as disgusting as I remembered.  I assumed it was a fluke and let it go for 8 or so  more years, at which point the lingering memory prompted me to agree to grow it in our back yard.  After tasting the first harvest, the conversion was complete.  Now I await the first appearance of asparagus spears each spring with joyful anticipation and haven’t been disappointed yet.  I’m always ready to extol its goodness (try it!  what have you got to lose?).

And so it is with Jesus.  I came to Him late, as well – in my 25th year.   Throughout most of my growing years I found Jesus distasteful.  I didn’t even want to say His name.  The concept of sin was unpalatable.  Don’t make me eat that stuff!  Then one day, like a fresh breeze blowing, the thought occurred to me “What if it’s all true?  What if there is a God who made the world, who made me?  What if Jesus really was who He said He was?”  If you knew the state of my heart, you’d know without a doubt that a breeze of that nature did not originate from within – it was Holy Spirit driven, all the way.  Still, I tarried and fussed over all sorts of objections – things that seem silly in retrospect.   And what’s all this about sin?  Really?  Not me – I certainly was a very nice, kind and altogether good sort of person.  I’m not saying I lived in a continual state of happiness and peace, but I just didn’t think the charges fit.  I blush to think about that first prayer in which I challenged God: “Okay, if I’ve sinned, you’ll have to show it to me – I just don’t see it.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever since had a prayer that was so swiftly and penetratingly answered. 

Over the next 24 hours I saw it all, the soul full of deceit, selfishness and pride, packed in a general mud sauce.  Yuck.  That fresh breeze blew up into a massive humbling whirlwind.   But after all my tarrying, there was grace, mercy and forgiveness, and when I said yes to Jesus, an unquenchable joy.  He has never disappointed me and I will forever extol His goodness. 

O taste and see that the Lord is good
Psalm 34:8

This is a post I wrote for my previous blog about 10 years ago. I’ve been doing a lot of writing today of other things, so I decided to make my blogging life easier by republishing an old one that came to my mind as we finish up asparagus season here.

Don’t make me delete this post!

My grade reports in elementary school frequently had the phrase “easily distracted” added. I can’t deny the charge.

I got on my iPad this afternoon to do something productive that’s been on my “to do” list. And then I saw that I had 8 Pinterest notifications. I don’t like to have my screen sullied by all those red notification circles, so I got on Pinterest to update my notifications and get rid of the circles. You’d do the same thing, wouldn’t you?

While doing that very short electronic task, I saw a few ideas for how to use dried flowers showing up in my feed. What a coincidence! I just dried some flowers last week! In reality, there are no coincidences in the world of computers and the internet. It regularly anticipates my need based on my browsing habits and I’d sound off in an outraged huff if this weren’t actually pretty handy sometimes. I might be like that frog in the lukewarm water that doesn’t notice the water is getting hotter and hotter until it’s too late.

So instead of tackling something on my “to do” list, I ended up doing this instead.

And voila – bookmarks! Okay, now I need to get back to my regularly scheduled activities.

Was I going to delete this in the morning? I may or may not get distracted by something else.

I grew up in a house that used a dinner bell. In fact, I sort of inherited it once we started having children, but it’s not the bell you see above. It was old and falling apart, so at some point we bought this one that you could mount on a wall and had our last name engraved on it.

I derived a great deal of pleasure out of ringing that bell. If someone else was ringing it, the noise was irritating, but if I was the one ringing it, the sound didn’t bother me at all. At any rate, we didn’t use it for anything other than a call to the table for a meal. My mom used to ring it outdoors for us, since we might be somewhere else in the neighborhood at supper time. It was plenty loud and could summon us from where ever we were, within reason. What could be a happier sound than the one that tells you that food is ready to be eaten?

We’d come to the table, sit in our appointed spots, and then grace would either be spoken or sung. Our spoken grace went like this: “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food.” The musical grace was sung in a round. There were 8 of us altogether, so this was quite the performance. “For health and strength and daily food, we give Thee thanks O Lord.” It was always fun to be chosen to start the round and for some reason it felt awkward to be the one to finish it. We proceeded to eat and have lively conversation, punctuated with the occasional complaint from one sibling about not getting as many servings as another sibling who was being a PIG. Those kinds of accusations were frowned upon, of course. But mostly there was just a lot of happy chatter.

I sat on my Mom’s right and if I started resting my elbows on the table, she’d poke the nearest one with her fork. Ha ha – that’s table etiquette training for you! I didn’t like peas and found lots of sneaky ways to get out of eating them. Sometimes I put them in my mouth and then, pretending to take a drink, I’d sink them to the bottom of my cup of milk, to be thrown out later surreptitiously. That only worked if the milk wasn’t in a clear glass. Another tried and true method was to put them all in my mouth, and then put my napkin up to my mouth as if to wipe it and proceed to unload the peas into the napkin. I’d crunch the napkin up and either throw it away after the meal, or if I was worried about it being seen, I’d accidentally “drop” the napkin and push it under the radiator to be retrieved later. One time I went back for the napkin, felt under the radiator for it and pulled out a dead mouse. That put an end to THAT method.

Does anybody use a dinner bell anymore? Perhaps it is a lost tradition, along with eating meals together as a family.

I’ll probably spit this blog post out later. It tastes too much like peas, which I’m still not terribly fond of.

When our family of children doubled from two to four all at once, we decided it was time to look for a larger house. We were living in a two-bedroom house at the time and it was starting to feel squeezy. In an amazing providence, we ended up buying an old farmhouse on three acres out in the country, just a mile or so from my husband’s place of work. Perfect!

As soon as I could, I took a stroll around our large property to see what we had growing on the “farm,” as it were. To my delight I saw lots and lots of rhubarb sprinkled here and there. I hadn’t cooked with it myself, but remembered my Mom making various rhubarb items when I was growing up. I harvested a bunch of it and brought it in the house to prepare it for freezing. It was a little hairier than I had remembered, so I called a friend of mine to make sure it really was rhubarb. Also, the stems were sometimes hollow, which seemed odd. She and I talked it over and after describing the leaves, we agreed it must be the real thing. I cut up all of it and put it in freezer bags, looking forward to making many baked items with it.

The next day, I received a visit from someone who lived next to Kris’s research facility. It was just like you always hope – people in the country like to drop by with welcoming gifts. She brought me a large bag of rhubarb that she’d just picked. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d also just harvested and cut up a bunch of rhubarb, so I took it and thanked her and after a short chat, she went on her way.

I looked in the bag of rhubarb she’d given me and my first question was, “What on earth did I just cut up and put in our freezer?” I found out later that I had gone around our whole property harvesting burdock, a large-leafed weed. You can imagine how thankful I was that I hadn’t cooked anything with it right away. “Here honey, I made a rhubarb pie for us!” I may never have lived that down.

I’ll probably cut this post up and freeze it in the morning. But there will be no blog post pie.

On our walk around the neighborhood, we often pass by a house that has a sign by the front door that reads “Come In – We Are Awesome.” I’m old enough to remember a time when we weren’t throwing the word “awesome” around like so much confetti. My dad was a teacher and I recall the day he told me that the new word that everyone was using was “awesome.” He didn’t think much of the trend.

We have a reprinted 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster. I thought it would be interesting to see what Noah had to say about the word “awesome.” Guess what? It’s not even IN the 1828 dictionary. He has defined the word “awe,” however, so I think we can extrapolate from that word how he would define the word “awesome.” So here we go:
1. Fear mingled with admiration or reverence; reverential fear.
2. Fear; dread inspired by something great or terrific.

It’s somewhat amusing to contemplate someone putting that on their welcome sign. “Come In – We will inspire fear, admiration, reverence and dread in you!” Of course, the meaning used now for awesome is more in the line of “very impressive.” It seems a long way away from the original meaning of the word, though, doesn’t it? And furthermore, it seems to detract from the compliment if you have to say it about yourself, in my opinion.

Wait – that’s not just my opinion. Proverbs 27:2 says “Let another praise you and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips.” I set that verse to music and sang it with our children when they were growing up. I’ll tell you a little secret – I needed to hear it as much as they did. Maybe more.

I don’t want to be too hard on neighbors we’ve never met. In all likelihood they are very nice and welcoming people, especially with a sign like that by their door. But I’d hesitate to call anyone truly awesome, other than God.

“For the LORD your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the might, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe.” Deuteronomy 10:17

I’ll probably delete this AWESOME post in the morning! Just kidding about the “awesome” part.

I got a bee in my bonnet about pressing some flowers after seeing an ad for making bookmarks with them.

But the bee wasn’t done yet. It was buzzing around my head saying, “Write a poem! Write a poem!” So I obeyed the bee.

I picked some juicy bleeding heart
I cut a few of its leaves
The freshest pink, Creator’s art
Pressed between the sheaves

Next ‘twas boldfaced pansies
Colors of purple and gold
Delightful silken fancies
Flattened ‘til they’re old

Lily of the Valley!
With delicate perfume brushed,
The leprechaun O’Malley
Will weep to see you crushed

In flower press academic
These lovelies have been laid
Time will make them poetic
E’en as their colors fade

Be happy they were selected,
These denizens of the yard,
For they’ll be resurrected
On a bookmark or a card

I should probably delete this before leprechaun O’Malley finds out I used his name in a poem.

I woke up last night and starting fretting about something that was on my mind. It was hard to let it go. I thought about a Bible verse I’d memorized a long time ago: “When my anxieties multiply within me, Thy consolations delight my soul.” Psalm 94:19.

I was certainly doing some multiplication of anxieties, but what about those consolations of the Lord? Not only was the psalmist consoled by the Lord, but those consolations were a delight to him. A delight! It’s hard to think in those terms when you’re in the anxiety-multiplying mode, but there it is.

I reflected on some of the promises in the Bible that would console me in this hour of worrying. “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19.

That one hit the spot. I decided to spend some time ruminating on that. Better to sit on one truth than to go chasing a bunch of worries about what might happen. I was consoled. I found myself drifting off to sleep again. My soul was delighted.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning with a delighted and consoled soul.

As I have mentioned before, I went to college 7 years for my 4-year degree. Along the way, I was pressured to choose a major and started out with music therapy. I like music, I like the idea of helping people using music – seemed like a good fit. After a couple quarters of that, I decided to switch to social work although I don’t remember now why I rejected music therapy. I was still in the realm of helping people, though. During my brief tenure as a social work major, I needed to get some volunteer experience, so I decided to check out a place called Y.E.S., which stood for Youth Emergency Service. It was a 24-hour crisis help line. I didn’t like talking to strangers on the phone, I was the very last person you’d want around in a crisis, and I didn’t tend to handle unknown situations very well, but in an astounding moment of bravery or stupidity (probably both), I signed up for the training.

There were a few training sessions and I was in a small group of about 4-5 people getting trained. We learned about the kinds of phone calls we’d likely be getting, we learned what kinds of responses would be appropriate, we discussed what kinds of situations would be the most difficult for each of us to handle. The training sessions ended with something I feared and dreaded most of all: role playing. I HATE ROLE PLAYING! I had told the group that I thought it would really be difficult to talk to someone who was harming their own children, so of course that was the situation I had to handle during role playing.

Somehow I passed the training and started to get assigned hours at the center. I think we worked 2-4 hour shifts. It was located in an old house on the second floor. There were always at least two people on duty, and we were required to fill out forms for each phone interaction that we had. I wasn’t a praying person at that time, but I used to fervently hope that the phone wouldn’t ring while I was there. In spite of that, I had to handle some calls. One young man called and was beside himself with grief because his girlfriend had broken up with him after he got a haircut she didn’t like. We had been instructed not to give out counsel and advice, but merely to serve as a listening board, giving helpful feedback when appropriate. It was hard not to butt in, though. I suggested that perhaps a girlfriend that could cut off a relationship because of a haircut was perhaps not that great of a prize. Since we weren’t a Christian center and I wasn’t a Christian, I couldn’t even give any sort of meaningful, life-giving encouragement either.

Another time I got a call from a fellow who told me his troubles and everything I said to him seemed to hit the spot. “Put me in, coach, I’m hot!” was how I felt. He was very appreciative and kept me on the phone for quite a while. I filled out my form feeling like I’d done something truly helpful in this sad and sorry world. The next time I came in, my feedback form had been written on by our supervisor. The guy I had talked to was a regular – keeping us on the phone however he could was his way of being manipulative. I’d been had.

The only other call I remember distinctly was when a young mother called because she couldn’t stand hearing her baby cry anymore – it was making her so angry she was afraid she’d hurt her baby. She was a single mom. I don’t remember much of what we said during that call, but I think I commended her for reaching out rather than lashing out. Just talking to someone else seemed to help her sort things through and get a handle on her emotions. She understood how important it was to get help. It was a scary call for me to take. I hoped I’d done something truly helpful in this sad and sorry world, but I didn’t know how her story ended.

Within a few months, I knew that this was not the work for me. I felt unspeakable dread every time I had a shift. I remember confessing to a co-volunteer that I hated hearing the phone ring, and he was surprised. For him, each phone call was an opportunity to help someone. Perhaps that’s when I knew I was in the wrong place. When I left, my co-volunteers and supervisor seemed genuinely sad to see me go, but I felt like an oppressive weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It felt good to say NO to Y.E.S.

Tuesday True Stories has returned! I haven’t forgotten about telling my story about coming to faith. Part 4 will be coming soon!

I’ll probably delete this – wait a minute – is that the phone ringing? Must go hide…

There’s a robin’s nest out on our balcony, right above the lamp fixture. Each spring, the nest gets rebuilt and then occupied. We don’t go out there much in the spring, which works well for shy Mother Robin who is apt to bolt at the slightest appearance or noise from us.

A few days ago I happened to look out and saw two little gaping bird mouths soundlessly waiting for their afternoon snack. Oh boy, I thought to myself. The mother wasn’t there so this was the perfect time for me to go out on the balcony, position myself near the door with my camera and just wait for Mama to show up with the goods. I’ve taken photos before, but always had to do it through the screen window which isn’t nearly as nice. This way I was already out there and could stand perfectly still, thus not bringing alarm to Mother Robin.

Sure enough after a couple minutes, Mother showed up with a tasty worm, but she detected my presence immediately and perched on the railing on the other end of the balcony instead of going to the nest. I told myself that a little patience was all that was needed. I’d stand still and she’d overcome her objections. Five minutes went by. I was holding the camera up and had it all focused so there wouldn’t be any sudden movements when she came. The camera got heavier and heavier. I took the chance of moving it ever so slightly in her direction so I could get a photo.

She stood nervously in place, making regular “chip” sounds. Then she moved ever so slightly as well, but showed no signs of flying up to feed her poor hungry children. What a dilemma I had placed her in! Two instincts were at war now: the instinct to feed the babies, and the instinct to keep them safe when danger was lurking nearby. I admired her, I was frustrated with her. I waited five more minutes, ten more minutes…then I conceded defeat. I went back in the house and within 30 seconds she was up in that nest and I was taking photos through the screen window.

Well, in the new heaven and the new earth things will be different. Isaiah 11:6-8 says that:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.

…and the robin shall not be frightened by me and my camera.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning while the robin babies eat their wormy breakfast.

There’s really no reason why the sight of an indigo bunting should bring more excitement than the sight of a sparrow. But it does, doesn’t it? Would you go running to the window if someone said, “Look, a house sparrow!”

The only context I had for “indigo” as a child was in the colors of the rainbow: ROY G BIV. That’s a handy acronym that I’ve never forgotten. All those colors were very run-of-the-mill except “indigo.” It had a special mystique about it, if you’ll allow colors to have a mystique. Remember the Crayola Crayon boxes of 64 crayons? It was a pure delight to open up a new box of those; all those beautiful colors! I had a favorite, though, a crayon with such a wonderful color that I savored and favored it: midnight blue. Most of the 64 colors in the box were identified in the most purely prosaic terms: red, red-orange, red-violet, yellow, yellow-green, etc. But in amongst all those plain colors, midnight blue rose to poetic heights, calling to mind that evening color of the sky after the sun has gone down and only the stingy light of the stars remains. I can just imagine the Crayola Crayon employees jotting down names of the crayons very sensibly until the dreamy, poetic member of the team says, “let’s not say dark blue for this one – it reminds me of the sky at midnight. How about midnight blue?” Perhaps there was discussion at this point with some fool saying, “We don’t want to confuse the children with fanciful descriptions.” There will always be fools like that and they must be resisted and ignored.

I’ve gotten a little far afield from our indigo bunting. I think it’s our new red bird feeder that attracts it. Every time I see it, I’m thrilled all over again.

Where have you gone,
my sweet little bunting –
Your indigo feathers
I’m continually hunting.

I guess I’ll be bunting this post to the curb in the morning.

Some of you might be interested to see how I finished out the flash card set I was making for our granddaughter.

If it weren’t for the word “xylophone,” every alphabet book for children would be in trouble. I guess you can say “X as in Fox, or Box,” but it feels a little like cheating. My sister and I made an alphabet book in 1982 for our nephew using made-up words. We could have made up ANY word we wanted for X, but we gave it up as a lost cause. The X page simply said “X is a impossible letter which is meaningless and without worth.”

The best part of making these cards has been watching our granddaughter trying to pronounce them. She does a really good job and if there’s a word that’s not very familiar, she gives it her best shot. There’s something so adorable about that stage in which kids will try to pronounce pretty much everything you throw at them. I discovered when we had children that age that the word “ruler,” was one that brought endless entertainment…for me, anyway. “Woo-wah” was that way it came out. I still remember trying to teach the twins how to say the word “yellow,” which they pronounced “lellow.” Here’s how it went:
Me: Say “Yay!”
Twins: “Yay!!”
Me: Yay!
Twins: Yay!
Me: Yellow!!
Twins: Lellow!

Now that I’m done with the flash cards, I can get back to the watercolor classes and starting the next felt creature, which is a snail that delivers mail. Unless I get distracted with something else…

I’ll probably measure this post with a “woo-wah” in the morning and find it wanting.