Journal entry: “Today I realized something really important. I do not want to serve God, I want Him to serve me. Somehow that makes a big difference. …One of my biggest problems with faith is that I find it so hard to believe certain things that are the very premise of Christianity, such as the immaculate conception and the resurrection of Christ. Wow- 2 biggies. My scientific mind wants a scientific explanation for these things, which is impossible. I cannot have both the explanation and Christianity at the same time. If I believe in one, then I cannot believe in the other. So here I am, a pitiful creature, begging for some help from God with my hopeless obsession and yet I don’t even believe the most primary of His miracles. If I have no faith in those, how can I possibly have faith that He can accomplish the miraculous in me? Ah…you see, that is the only conclusion that I can come to. He can’t. I have stalemated Him with my disbelief. How can I conquer this? It isn’t as easy as just telling myself that I have to accept the beauty and the truth of God’s miracles. Or is it? …I have learned things that haunt me with their persistent reminders of physiological necessity. Like how could there ever be a conception without both egg and sperm? And if God wanted Mary’s child to be the Messiah, the Christ, why couldn’t He have just put that in Jesus’s heart after he’d been normally conceived by 2 human parents? And when a body has ceased to function for 3 days, how could it have started working again? A brain would be mush by that time!

“I can see for myself how futile all these questions are. I am trying so hard to make human sense of non-human phenomenon. If I believe that God exists, then I have to believe that there are no scientific explanations for His existence, and I also have to believe that He created science, and that He created human beings to study and comprehend science. But I also then have to believe that the boundaries of science as we know them do not hold God in abeyance, since science is His creation. The final question that I have to ask myself to set this whole chain of ideas in motion is simple: Do I believe that God exists? The answer, as much as I’ve tried to ignore and avoid it, is YES, I do believe that God exists.”

Things were coming to a head, but I wasn’t quite ready to make it official yet. Just one week later I was writing questions like:

What’s all this talk about “fear” of the Lord?

What does it mean to be lost?

What does the Bible say about me, the uncertain, searching, possible Christian?

Christ died for my sins – I suppose that’s a good reason to love Him, so why does it stick in my throat?

I wondered why it was taking me so long to come to faith in Christ and derived comfort from some insight found in a fortune cookie: He who is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it. I really wasn’t sure yet about being identified as a Christian. It came with some bad PR in my book. I was concerned about becoming judgmental and self-righteous and did not want to make the same mistake as those who called themselves Christians but also dared to call themselves the Moral Majority (ha ha – I was pretty hard on that group!). But then I had to admit that I couldn’t stand in judgment of the Moral Majority either or I’d be a hypocrite. I wrote, “It is certainly true that Jesus’ most difficult command is that we love our enemies as we love ourselves. In theory it is glorious. In practice it is a herculean task.”

Take heart, we are nearing the end of my long journey. Unbelief had a few dying gasps left, but dying, it was. And resurrection was following close behind.

He who is most slow in the deleting of a blog post is most faithful in the performance of it.

My Story Part 1
My Story Part 2
My Story Part 3
My Story Part 4
My Story Part 5
My Story Part 6
My Story Part 7
My Story Part 8
My Story Part 9
My Story Part 11

Our fair little town hosts a “Winterfest” parade that my husband and I went to a couple nights ago. We walked up and down the downtown area looking at all the decorated windows, but looked in vain for any mention of the Christ of Christmas. Slowly but surely, nativity scenes have been replaced with snowmen, the word Christmas has been replaced with “Winter,” and Christmas hymns have been replaced by “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” The library still has a large crèche scene out front. I wonder how long before someone raises a stink about it. After a very nice fireworks display, the parade finally started. There must have been 30 or so floats, more than I expected. I was definitely feeling the cold in my fingers and toes by the time the last one rolled by. All the lights and colors and the excitement of children make it a very festive affair. There were lots of snowmen, a Grinch or two, a Star Wars themed float (complete with a live Wookie and an inflatable Baby Yoda) and three Santa Clauses. But the spirit of Christmas was a ghost at this parade with the exception of the men’s barbershop group that went by singing an actual Christmas hymn. Kudos, men! I definitely don’t want to see an inflatable baby Jesus floating around, but a manger scene or two would have been well received.

We went home and watched the 1999 version of “A Christmas Carol” with Patrick Stewart. There are a couple improvements I would make on it if I could (the Ghost of Christmas Future looks silly), but in general, this has been our favorite version. It’s not only faithful to the book, but also it creates an ambiance that honors the Biblical Christmas story, using Christmas hymns, a church visit on Christmas Day, and references to the One who made lame men walk. I used to read A Christmas Carol to our children in the evenings before Christmas. It only has five chapters, cleverly called “staves” by Mr. Dickens. For those of you who haven’t a musical background, staves is the plural of staff. It’s only right that book which purports to be a musical “carol,” is comprised of musical staves instead of chapters. It’s hard to find any sort of Christmas special that honors Christ, isn’t it? We usually watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special just to hear and see Linus reciting from Luke chapter 2.

What are your favorite Christmas specials?

I’ll probably delete this in the morning while admiring the Christmas tree.

Ben picked up a small piece of parchment paper off the floor at the library and wondered who may have dropped it. Some words were written on it in beautiful, precise script. “Look for the gilded geese at the close of the day.” He looked around. Was this a joke? He wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Life had taken a very hard turn for Ben and though he continued to walk, breathe and eat, his heart was heavy with loss and dread. He looked at the note again and as he was walking by the wastebasket, he threw it away. At least that’s what he intended to do. His mind had clearly issued the command to his fingers, but his fingers were taking their orders elsewhere, apparently. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket.

He went mechanically through the rest of his day, marveling that he could so efficiently work and interact with people where he was visible, and yet be so despondent in the hidden parts where he couldn’t be seen. Every once in a while, his fingers would find the note, unfold it, and he’d read it again. “Look for the gilded geese at the close of the day.” The more Ben read it, the more he needed to know what it meant. It wasn’t just idle curiosity anymore. “What does it mean?” he asked aloud. But no one heard him and no one answered.

He left the library late in the afternoon, shivering on his way to the car. December had arrived with snow and cold, and darkness was encroaching more and more on the day. Even now, the sun was low in the sky and that peculiar molten light of winter with no warmth in it was infiltrating the horizon. Walking with his head down, lost in thought, Ben didn’t hear it right away. As the sound drew nearer, though, it caught his attention. Geese. Lots of geese, flying overhead, heading south. He stood still, hands in his pockets, gazing upward, realizing that it had been a long time since he had looked up to the heavens. He watched as the geese moved in beautiful, precise script, writing across the sky. Four stragglers broke formation, the setting sun reflecting gold from the underside of their wings.

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Ah, so the question had been heard, Ben thought. Heard and answered. And as the geese continued on the path laid out for them from the beginning of time, Ben heard something else, words that he’d always known but had forgotten. “Be of good cheer. I will never fail you, nor forsake you.” He stood watching the sky for a long time, until stars began their nightly dance. The healing had begun.

Watch for the gilded blog post, flying south for the winter in the morning.

Dear red, red poinsettia
I don’t mean to upsettia,
But folks have been messing around
With the colors your flowers expound
It might make you put up a stink
To know someone has made you pink
You could feel a little spite
To see yourself all dressed in white
And it’s shocking, but it’s true
That in some cases, you’ve become blue!
I see that you’re shaking your head,
For you really should always be red.

This blog post should always be read.

That’s the long and the short of it.

The blog withers, the blog post fades…in the morning.

Just prior to college graduation, I went to an initiation ceremony for an honor society and who should I run into but that guy from the public speaking class! He offered to walk me home and on the way inquired about spiritual things. I told him that I was reading a book about the Holy Spirit written by Billy Graham. He knew I wasn’t a Christian, so this raised his eyebrows a bit. We chatted for awhile and he got my phone number. Evangelism, right? He called and invited me to a Navigator dinner on campus (the Navigators were a college Christian discipleship group). He was participating in some sort of summer Navigator training experience and they were encouraged to invite the pagans on over. That’s not what he said to me, of course, but I was pretty sure that part of the proceedings would be some sort of gospel-sharing. I didn’t want to be pressured and was tempted to say no, but he was handsome and had a cute dimple, so I said yes.

After the dinner, the leader of the group asked people if they wanted to share anything about their experiences during the week. One girl timidly raised her hand and proceeded to tell us all about how she was in a laundromat with a stranger and after praying for courage, she struck up a conversation with this person and was even able to share some sort of testimony of faith with him/her. The most astonishing thing about this story for me was that fact that she’d actually been afraid to do it. What? There went the stereotype of the pushy in-your-face Christian. Afterward in a private conversation, I confronted my handsome dimpled friend about the audacity of Christian missions. “How dare you go into another culture and tell them that their god isn’t the right god?!” We had a lively discussion during which he had the wisdom not to quote Scriptures at me and didn’t claim to have all the answers. I had to respect that. As with the Easter experience, I wasn’t a Christian when I went back home, but I had gotten rid of some important baggage and came back a little lighter in heart for the experience.

God was working changes in me – slow and subtle changes. I began recognizing that I couldn’t control my life, and more than that, that I needed to relinquish that incessant desire to control my life over to Him. I started to see circumstances differently, as part of His plan. To know that He was present in some way was comforting. He was checking my selfish impulses and giving me the ability to be more patient with others. Things that I used to consider harmless fun I was seeing in a different light. I was reading the Bible more and copying verses that I liked, especially verses that had to do with hope. My understanding of who God is was starting to be informed by what I read in the Bible, rather than by my own flawed imaginings.

But weirdly, I was still schizophrenic about God versus Jesus Christ. I couldn’t reconcile what I considered to be the strange and cultish behaviors of certain Christians. I was stuck in an awful middle ground and complained to God, “You are too much a part of my life for me to reject You, but I cannot accept You wholly either.” In my mind, I had an image of me twisting and turning to get away from an iron hand grip. Sometimes I thought it was me trying to get away from God, sometimes I thought it was me in the middle with Satan and God both pulling my arms in opposite directions. I was beginning to have a theology of Satan and I cried out to God. “He exploits every weakness and tempts every temptation. He is full of cunning as he beckons me with that damn all-knowing wicked smile. Why do You let him win so often? Everything he says makes sense to me until I have fallen and tasted the bitterness of his logic. So why do you let him triumph in my weakness?” I felt very much in the midst of a spiritual battle.

I went up north with friends and began reading a book that someone gave me called “Hinds Feet on High Places.” It was a fictionalized representation of spiritual growth that had my name written all over it. The main character’s name was “Much-Afraid,” and I knew her all too well. It was not the Bible, but gave me a different paradigm with which to think about Jesus as the Shepherd. Jesus, the elusive and uncomfortable Jesus, became more real to me as I read it. I had become acquainted with my sin, but still dug my heels into the ground at the idea that I needed a savior. “Why is it that faith in Jesus Christ and commitment to Him comes so easily to others and not to me? Every step I have taken in His direction has been as difficult as if my feet were made of lead. I stumble, I halt, I turn to run and finally fall, unable to move at all. Believe in Him, screams my heart. I can’t because I don’t want to look foolish, says my mind. Where is the proof? I demand childishly. It’s a no-win argument and I stalemate myself.” So went another rant in my journal.

You are no doubt frustrated with reading this constant dithering and dragging of my feet, but not nearly as frustrated as I was living through it. I could certainly make this a shorter story and cut to the chase. I could, but I will not. The way the Lord wooed me in spite of my doubts and vacillations, the way He patiently pursued me when I was afraid, the way He allowed me to think wrong things about Him on my way to learning right things about Him, the slow and steady way He brought correction, how He loved my silly feet of clay – you can’t see all of that unless I tell it all. He’s the hero of this story, surely you must know that by now. If not, I’m telling this badly.

Sometimes I think I might delete this in the morning and other times I’m just resistant to the idea.

My Story Part 1
My Story Part 2
My Story Part 3
My Story Part 4
My Story Part 5
My Story Part 6
My Story Part 7
My Story Part 8
My Story Part 10

First of all, I must vindicate my mother of all blame for my inability to turn out a good pie crust. She very patiently instructed me in the craft many years ago. I used to try it now and again, but usually fell back on buying those nasty frozen pie crusts that came in their own aluminum pan. To me, the crust is the least interesting part of the pie – it’s the innards that count, right? Still, being able to make a good pie crust is the mark of a good baker, so someone once told me. At some point I invested in a plastic rolling pin which you could fill with ice water and a plastic sheet upon which to roll pie crust that had a template printed on it to make the perfect size. These nifty gadgets did not work any miracles for me.

Mid-way into my home cooking career I decided to ask a couple of older women at our church how they tackled the pie crust problem. Virginia said she had a fool-proof easy way to make it and proceeded to give a thorough exegesis on the subject that included rolling it out between two sheets of wax paper. It sounded very doable and I couldn’t wait to try it. I turned to Donna for her pie crust secrets and she said her recipe was even easier. She told me of the availability of rolled pie crusts in boxes in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. What is this wondrous product that had hitherto been unknown to me? Virginia’s recipe crumbled to dust before my eyes and Donna’s recipe had a shining aura around it. Sold!

I have used Donna’s “recipe” for many years now, but last week when I went to the grocery store to buy a couple for our pumpkin pies, I was dismayed to see how much the price had gone up. I really couldn’t justify buying pie crusts when I had all the ingredients at home to make them. Sigh…time to return to the basics.

I’ve learned that there are no shortcuts to making a good pie crust. It’s a craft that can only be perfected with practice. The recipe could not be simpler: flour, salt, water and shortening. But there are so many nuances: how much you work the dough, how much water to put in, how cold the water is, how much flour to roll it in, how to roll it without the dough catching on your rolling pin, how to avoid all the tearing and splitting, how to pick it up without ruining it, how to flute the edges, etc.

My pumpkin chiffon pies turned out well in spite of the fact that the crust didn’t look very professional. Sadly, I neglected to get a photo of them after filling them. There’s a surprise ending to this story, however, a real plot twist! I made two pies and kept them both out in the garage with a cover over them. We polished off the first one easily with our guests and had gotten a small start on the second one. When my husband brought in the second pie from the garage a couple days later, we were all set to plate them and cover them with whipping cream when I noticed tiny little marks on the pie surface. Little marks that looked like they could be tiny prints. Then we noticed that the pie crust on the edge had been eaten away. Some horrible little varmint had pushed its way under the cover and defiled our pie! No doubt this was a happier ending for our waistlines.

I’ll probably dump this post in the wastebasket in the morning, where it will join the rest of that pumpkin pie. *shudder*

What’s been calling your name, lately? I have a feeling that tomorrow, the great Thanksgiving feast day, there will be a positive din of wonderful foodstuffs saying, “Lynn…Lynn…Lynn…”

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, that I will.

I’ve gotta tell you, the word “sinner” always really stuck in my craw. It made me bristle with indignation. It’s just religious guilt-mongering, I thought to myself. On top of that, I was a nice person – not perfect, mind you, but a very decent human being. So one day I threw the gauntlet down to God in a prayer that was so filled with hubris, I’m surprised I wasn’t struck down on the spot. “If I’m a sinner, God, you’re going to have to show it to me because I just don’t see it.” This was probably one of the most swiftly-answered prayers of my life. The scales were removed from my eyes and over the next 24 hours I saw what He saw: a deceiver of people, a manipulator of emotions, an out-and-out liar, an irresponsible and selfish creep. I had been on a binge which could be titled “The immediate gratification of all my whims and desires.” There’s no need here to go into detail of all the sins that paraded before me; suffice it to say that a very stiff wind had just blown through and whisked away all my pretensions. I had been corrected, educated, rebuked and humbled. I was (and am) a sinner.

Wouldn’t you think that was the end of the story? Don’t underestimate my double-mindedness, my desire to be counted as wise in the world’s eyes. And still struggling with compulsive binging and overeating, I was also bargaining with God: “You fix this problem and I’ll love you.” In fact, I really wanted Him to use that area of my life to prove Himself to me. I wrote: “I need something concrete to hang on to, or I find it impossible to justify all this madness. But how could it be madness? Am I saying that half of the world is insane? No, I’m saying that I am insane.”

And so it went: back and forth, back and forth. I chided myself to “Let go and let God!” Sometimes it seemed like me and God were really connecting. But I knew I was holding back. I copied Matthew 17:20 in my journal: “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” I wrote underneath it: “Lord, I am the mountain. Move me.”

Reading more of the Bible, I came across Isaiah 40:31 and also copied it into my journal: “They who wait for the Lord shall RENEW their strength, they shall MOUNT UP like EAGLES, they shall RUN and NOT be weary; they shall WALK AND NOT FAINT.” (Yes, I capitalized all those words) and underneath it, another poem:

I followed a slow sidewalk
Like an angry windswept story
Scurrying with dried-up leaves
Til everything was still
And I could clearly hear my anguish.

I’m tired of trying to love you
When I fail either with or without
Your hand in mine.
I can be stubborn, too
And stare into the evening eyes
With defiance and with longing
And with desperation.

No one answered
And still I waited, trying
To be one of them who
WAITS FOR THE LORD.
For a long time now
I’ve been waiting
But not without stamping feet
And curses of a child.

Do you still love
A spoiled child…
Even on the worst days?

My Story Part 1
My Story Part 2
My Story Part 3
My Story Part 4
My Story Part 5
My Story Part 6
My Story Part 7
My Story Part 9
My Story Part 10

This blog post will be swept away by a very stiff wind in the morning.

If you want to consult an expert on classical music, it wouldn’t be me. But over the years I’ve learned a thing or two. When I was in college, somebody introduced me to “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber. I’ve listened to it at least a dozen times over the years and it has never failed to grab hold of my heart and bring me to tears. Tears for what? I don’t know, but Mr. Barber summons them forth as reliably as the the Lord summons forth the sun each day for its carousel ride over the horizon. Whatever there is within you that aches, grieves, or feels any strong emotion, expect it to rise up along with the violin crescendo. Here’s what I want you to do: find “Adagio for Strings” on your favorite music streaming app, set aside your petty distractions and have a listen. Close your eyes if necessary. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about what happens next. But don’t turn it off before the end. The furnace of emotion that Barber stokes up, he also takes gentle care to extinguish, saying “peace, peace…” to your soul. You dare not miss that part, or you will be stuck in the State of Verklempt without an exit.

I might dip another toe into the Classical world on this blog sometime, thus adding to its eclectic nature. Why not, right?

I’ll probably delete this while listening to Adagio for Strings unless I get too weepy to see the keys.

The Smiths and the Joneses lived next door to each other on Maple Avenue in the small town of Anywhere. These two families had been neighbors for many years and their lives seemed very similar. They each had three children, two dogs and one hamster. If the truth be known, their hamsters were related, the Smiths having purchased one fat hamster that suddenly got thinner and had a baby to raise. After the celebration was over and Junior was deemed old enough to go it on his own, the Joneses did their part and took him. So, to all appearances, the houses of Smith and Jones were like mirror images on Maple Avenue.

But then something odd began to happen. It was so subtle at first, no one else on Maple Avenue really noticed. But one day, Mrs. Peterson from across the street said to her husband, “Bud, take a look at the Smith and Jones houses. Do you see anything different?” Bud, a newly retired man in his 60’s, stood at the window looking carefully as directed. Mrs. P. was known to be very observant and discerning, so he took it seriously when she picked up a nuance missed by others. After some reflection, he ventured to say, “Well, it kind of looks like the Smiths are starting to add something onto their home -can’t really tell what at this point, but there’s something there. The only thing different about the Jones house seems to be a couple pieces of siding missing. I wonder what happened?” They stood together in silence pondering this mystery, but it seemed too inconsequential to waste much of the gray matter on it.

A week later, Bud was out mowing the lawn, always a happy labor for him. He stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat off of his brow and as he stood there, both Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones came out of their houses. They greeted one another and then Mrs. Smith began working industriously on some sort of brick construction in the front of the house. He was curious enough to walk over and ask her what she was doing. “I had this idea of building a small enclosed front porch area for our house,” she told him enthusiastically. “Mr. Smith is busy with work and the kids are in school, so this seemed like a perfect time to do it.” As they were chatting, they heard some loud wrenching sounds and looked over to see Mrs. Jones tearing siding pieces away from their house with her own hands. “What’s with that?” Bud enquired, seeing now that in a week’s time, many more pieces of siding had come down. “I’m not sure,” Mrs. Smith answered, “but it makes me sad to see it.”

Over time, the difference between the two houses became more and more stark. Mrs. Smith continued to build until one day the front porch on the Smith house was completed, a graceful and beautiful addition not only to their home, but an adornment to the neighborhood as well. Mr. Smith was bursting with pride at the accomplishments of his good and wise wife.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Jones had continued the odd work of demolition that she’d begun. By now, she had finished taking the siding off of their house and had knocked out the front windows for good measure, making their house an awful eyesore. And if that weren’t enough, the foolish woman had figured out how to start removing the foundation stones of their house. Mr. Jones came home one day to find his house toppled to the ground, and great was his grief.

Proverbs 14:1 A wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands.

Ah, now ‘tis time for the proverb about the one who contemplates deleting her own post.