Graceful Summer: Autumn Slips in on Tiptoes {The Last Post}

 

Autumn masquerades as summer in scorching sun and dry heat. But I’m not fooled. Behind that tired, bedraggled costume, I see she has arrived and is waiting, patiently.

 

In the quiet of longer, slower days, bug-hunting boys now tucked into classrooms.

In honey locust leaves twirling like helicopter seeds, raining a golden sheet across the lawn.

In the grackle with the indigo iridescent head, cackling from the elm.

In the squirrel, crouching, one acorn clenched in its claws, another in its cheek.
 

In the carpet of brown pine needles pricking the bottoms of my feet.

In stripped-bare river birch branches and magnolia tipped with copper.

In sunflowers, dipping chins.

In open windows, misty veil over green, mornings draped in cool.

In scarlet tomatoes, butternut squash on tangled vines, soil turned, unearthed potatoes.

In one crisp leaf circling the fountain, a blanket crocheted across hammock cloth.

 

Autumn waits patiently. She slips in on tiptoes, so quiet I hardly notice.

But when I open my eyes, I see she’s nearly here.

How are you ushering in the change of seasons?

: :

The end of summer signals the end of Graceful Summer here. I have so cherished these Fridays! Thank you for helping me to slow down this summer, to breathe in the small moments and appreciate the many, many gifts. To all of you who participated in the community link-up, thank you. I hope you, too, found a bit of peace.

The last link-up for Graceful Summer:

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The Man in the Basement

A preface: My dad really wanted this story to be about Gray House and the incredible work they do in the community - in fact, that's really the only reason he took me on the tour when I was back in Massachusetts earlier this month. But I heard a different story that needed to be told: the story of the transformative power of God. So I went with it. Here's a story about my dad, the man in the basement:
 

 

We stand in the basement of Gray House, a neighborhood assistance center that provides food, clothing and educational outreach in the north end of Springfield, Massachusetts, where metal bars cover shop windows and graffiti is scrawled in wild loops across brick walls. “So this is where I spend my mornings twice a week,” he says, gesturing to the racks hung with donated clothes.

 

Initially my dad resisted the idea of pursuing a “personal ministry,” even though it was a requirement for completing the 30-week JustFaith program he’d enrolled in several months earlier. Like a lot of us, he’d formed opinions over the years about assistance programs and the people these programs support. “Social justice wasn’t my thing,” he says with a shrug. “I didn’t get it.”

 

 

“I had to do something in order to complete the program, so I figured delivering used clothes was good enough,” my dad tells me later, over coffee. “That’s service, right? I thought dropping off clothes in trash bags was service – pull in, drop off the stuff, I’m done.”

...The rest of my dad's story is over here...will you join me at the Journal Star? (because I'm so proud of him!)

Sharing with Jennifer and Emily:

 

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Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Two Words

 

Yup, that's Brad, slogging through the Mud Run.

I really wanted to go with Deidra and Jennifer to hear Ann Voskamp speak at the Women of Faith conference in Des Moines this past weekend. Really, really.

But I didn’t go. I didn't go because the Holy Spirit told me to stay home. {although for a few days I pretended not to hear}

You see, Brad ran in the Lincoln Mud Run 5K on Saturday morning – a race he’d diligently trained for over the past few months. {and yeah, it’s as gross and grueling as it sounds: slogging through knee-deep mud, scaling walls and squirming beneath obstacles on your belly}. And even though he told me, “Go, go! Really, go to Women of Faith, you don’t need to stay just for the race,” and I knew he meant it, I felt something else in my gut. I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to stay in Lincoln. To go to the race and support my husband.

Fast forward to Sunday morning, when I read this from Psalm 134:

“Come, bless God, all you servants of God!”  (Psalm 134:1, Msg)

In fact, I read it twice to make sure I had read it right.

Isn’t God the one who does the blessing, I wondered? Isn’t he the one who bestows all good things, and isn’t it our job to praise him and thank him? So what’s this about us blessing him? What kind of blessing can we flawed and insignificant beings offer the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-creating God?

These were my questions as I sat in the pew and listened to yesterday’s reading. And truthfully, I didn’t get much of an answer from the pulpit. Or so I initially thought.

The problem wasn’t with the sermon, per se. It was simply the fact that I couldn’t understand or hear the minister well. Pastor Mmanga, who is visiting from our sister church in Uswaa, Tanzania, has a beautiful, melodious voice and a thick accent – and as Brad will attest, I do not do well with accents. That, combined with the fact that my left ear is almost entirely blocked from an infection, had me leaning forward in my seat, squinting (because that helps with hearing, right?) and straining to hear the sermon.

When Pastor Mmanga returned to his seat, I realized I’d gotten just two words from his sermon:

Obey. And trust.

But those two words were more than enough. Those two words made all the difference in my understanding of how we flawed and insignificant beings can, in fact, bless God himself. Those two words got me thinking about that crazy Mud Run race again, and the fact that when the Holy Spirit told me to stay home, I actually listened.

Crossing the finish line

You see, when Brad crossed the finish line filthy and soaked, Rowan and I cheering under our umbrellas as the rain came pouring down, I couldn’t have been prouder of him or happier that I’d stayed in Lincoln to watch the race instead of going to Women of Faith (a race in which he finished first place in his age division and in 14^th place overall out of more than 700 runners!). And when I heard those two words in Pastor Mmanga’s sermon I knew why:

When we bless God through our obedience and trust, God blesses us, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

“Come, bless God, all you servants of God! You priests of God, posted to the nightwatch in God’s shrine. Lift your praising hands to the Holy Place, and bless God. In turn, may God of Zion bless you – God who made heaven and earth!” (Psalm 134)

Have you ever imagined that you, yes you, can bless God?!

 

Welcome to the "Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday" community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you're here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in -- thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

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Weekend Meditation: Roots

Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. (Colossians 2:7)

 

 

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Graceful Summer: An Hour of Quiet Every Afternoon

I announced it nearly every day at half-past two. “Quiet Time!” I’d trumpet. “Time for siesta!”  And lest you assume it was to benefit the boys, let me set you straight: Quiet Time was purely to keep my own summertime sanity intact.

Rowan’s reaction to Quiet Time was always the same. “What???? Nooooooo!” Shock and betrayal written across his face, as if this ludicrous, offensive notion of Quiet Time was a brand-new idea. Next he’d erupt into a level of bellowing that should only be reserved for emergency appendectomies and the like. Then finally he’d stomp to his room, flop on the bed and commence low-level moaning. Occasionally he’d flip through a Magic Treehouse paperback or construct a Lego battleship. But mostly he moaned.

I didn’t care. I grabbed my book and plunked into a patio chair out of earshot with a glass of iced tea, the air stultifying, mere hint of breeze rippling the river birch leaves. Sometimes Noah joined me with his own book, although it bugged him when I rested my bare feet on his chair. Sometimes he spent the hour in his room with Finny, his fish.

Out on the patio I read Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. I pretended I lived not in Nebraska, with 104-degree heat that baked everything in my backyard to the consistency of a Pringle, but in Tuscany, amid rolling vineyards and olive groves. In Tuscany, where it's perfectly acceptable to sip wine at noon on a weekday.

Throughout the summer, In an hour a day I read through Circle of Quiet (Madeleine L’Engle), Escaping into the Open (a writing book, one of the best I’ve read yet, by Elizabeth Berg), Still (by Lauren Winner - I'm enrolled in a writers' workshop with her this fall and am scared witless!), and, most recently, Wild (a memoir so good it made me almost quit writing altogether, by Cheryl Strayed).

I tell you, that hour every afternoon on the patio? It saved me. It may have saved the boys, too.

What saved you from certain insanity this summer?


::

So next Friday is the last installment of Graceful Summer. We're actually back in school here in Nebraska, but since August still feels like summer to me, I decided to continue the series until the end of the month. So come back one more time next Friday!

1. Write a post about a quiet summer moment and link it up here on Fridays. 2. Visit someone else and leave a little comment love - you might get a new creatively quiet idea!3. Please include the Graceful Summer button or a link in your post, so people can find us if they want to join in.

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Blessed are the Less-Than

Today I welcome Shawn Smucker, a writer I've long-admired for his perseverance, his generosity and his love of adventure. Shawn leaves tomorrow for a World Vision bloggers trip to Sri Lanka. Will you join me in praying for Shawn and the rest of the World Vision bloggers? God is up to big, big things through them! {And Shawn's words here today? They happen to be exactly what I need to hear.}

It is the 71^st morning in my parents’ basement with my wife and four children. 71 days since we returned from four months on the road in a big blue bus. I wake up early and creep from the dark bedroom, trying not to wake Maile or our two youngest children asleep in the small bedroom with us. The door creaks behind me.

I sit at the small table in the main area of the basement without turning on the light and open up my laptop. It is the moon, and I make a list of the things I need to take on my upcoming trip to Sri Lanka.

Eye drops.

Bug spray.

Small gifts.

The list goes on.

The refrigerator hums loudly behind me. I think about something I read recently by Henri Nouwen:

How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: "What is my poverty?" Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That's the place where God wants to dwell! "How blessed are the poor," Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.

We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.

For the last 71 days I thought my poverty was being in a challenging financial situation. As I wait for a few new projects to start up, I’ve had weeks where I’ve made a grand total of $160, or had to get by with putting $5 in the gas tank, or delayed paying a bill so that we could buy groceries.

But as I sit here in the dark of my parents’ basement, waiting for the tide to turn, the quietest of voices hints at a truth I’ve been trying to ignore.

Your poverty isn’t in your finances. Your poverty is that you want to have your own way, and I’m telling you to wait, and you can’t deal with that right now. That’s where your poverty lies – your inability to trust.

And I know that it’s true, because I want the new projects to come through NOW and I want to find a new house and move out of my parents basement NOW and I want my life to begin looking the way I want it to look.

NOW.

So I make a conscious decision to embrace this poverty of uncertainty, and to seek out God somewhere in the midst of it. I prepare myself to meet people in Sri Lanka whose poverty will be so much more obvious and outward. And I try to be okay with my own less-than-ness, because, to paraphrase the Apostle Mark:

Blessed are the less-than…for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

* * * * *

Shawn Smucker, author of Building a Life Out of Words, leaves for Sri Lanka tomorrow to blog for World Vision. You can follow his trip HERE or learn more about the difference you can make by sponsoring a child HERE. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Why Can't We Just Get Along?

How wonderful, how beautiful, when brothers and sisters get along. (Psalm 133:1, Msg.)

It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? It sounds easy and simple and true.

Yet the reality is, so often we don’t get along. We nitpick about differences in doctrine. We point fingers at others’ flaws. We decide who’s a sinner and who isn’t. We vow to boycott chicken sandwiches or to not boycott chicken sandwiches, and we judge those who don’t do the same.

Really? Is this really what God wants from us? To separate ourselves from “others?” To hang with the “in” crowd and avoid everyone else? To notice the sliver in another’s eye and ignore the log in our own? To bicker and gripe and tear down instead of build up?

Yesterday, right in the middle of Pastor Sara’s sermon on Psalm 133, I heard a commotion toward the back of the church, and when I turned to look over my shoulder I glimpsed an elderly man being carried down the aisle and out into the lobby. Two men gripped the man’s arms and two men carried his legs, as the man’s wife (I presume) hurried behind. A few minutes later I heard a siren just outside the sanctuary windows.

I don’t know for sure what happened to the man. All I know is that when he showed signs of distress during worship, four men, undoubtedly strangers, jumped to his aid and literally carried him to safety.

And that, I thought, as I sat in the pew, is the perfect metaphor for Psalm 133.

That is exactly what God expects from each one of us – and not just with our fellow church members and our own friends and family, but with every one of our brothers and sisters in our neighborhood, in our nation and in our world. He expects that we will stand in the gap, come to one another’s aid, lift up and encourage, support and pray for.

In short, God expects that we will carry others when they are unable to carry themselves.

As I write this blog post, my prayer journal is open next to me on the bed, and I read the verses I jotted last week as I studied 1 Thessalonians. Next to the verses I’d scrawled: lessons for living --

Live in a way that pleases God. (4:1)

Encourage each other and build each other up. (5:11)

Live peacefully with each other. (5:13)

Take tender care of the weak. (5:14)

Be patient with everyone. (5:14)

Always try to do good to each other and to all people. (5:15)

These are the basic human principles Jesus cared about and it’s what God wants us to care about, too. And while this list from 1 Thessalonians is more specific, isn’t this the essence of Psalm 133? Isn’t this what God has in mind when he praises us for living harmoniously with our brothers and sisters? Aren’t these the instructions for how to get along?

Harmony, God tells us, is a precious as oil and as refreshing as dew. And it’s no coincidence that there, right in the midst of harmony, God pronounces his blessing:

How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony! For harmony is as precious as the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron's head, that ran down his beard and onto the border of his robe. Harmony is as refreshing as the dew from Mount Hermon that falls on the mountains of Zion. And there the Lord has pronounced his blessing, even life everlasting. (Psalm 133, NLT)

Writing about the practice of relationship...with Ann Voskamp:

 

Welcome to the "Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday" community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you're here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in -- thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

Thank you -- I am so grateful to have you here!

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Weekend Meditation: The Secret

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Graceful Summer: On the Shed Roof

“Hi Mommy,” says the quiet voice, and I whirl around, looking right and left for the boy.

“Up here,” he says.

“What are you doing? Be careful! How did you get up there?” I shield my eyes from the setting sun, squint at Noah perched on the lawnmower shed roof. “I climbed,” he says. “Up the fence. Come on up. Come sit with me.”

I hesitate, eyeballing the listing fence, the height of the roof. I'm already in my pajamas.

“I don’t know, honey. I’m not much of a climber anymore.” I place one turquoise flip flop on the wooden rail, press into it. The fence lurches, peeling paint raining like confetti onto the cement. “Hold on a second,” I say to Noah, “I’ll be right back.”

I drag the rickety step ladder from the garage and position it as close to the shed as I can. It wobbles on the uneven pavement. Noah peers over the edge of the roof on his knees, one palm on the top of the ladder.

“I’ve got it, Mommy,” he says. “I’m holding it steady.”  

I’m almost to the top. On the highest rung I pause, gripping the side of the ladder with one white-knuckled hand as I push my sunglasses up over my hair with the other. I place one knee on the scratchy shingles, my other flip flop foot still on the ladder, my body spanning the cement. “You can do it; you’re almost here,” Noah encourages. And then in one groaning, awkward lunge, I pull myself onto the roof.

It feels higher than it actually is. We are, after all, only about seven feet off the ground. But it’s a whole new perspective on the neighborhood. We sit with our knees pulled to our chests and watch, quiet.

Across the alley, Marian brushes Archie, clumps of white fur blowing onto the golf course like milkweed fluff. Partially camouflaged behind the elm tree leaves, the golfers don’t spot us either, clubs clinking as they lumber into the hot haze. Next door Gary sweeps the patio, the rhythmic swish of the broom like a snare drum brushing the still air.

Noah gives me a tour of the roof. His favorite area is under the overhang, where the lichen patterns the speckled shingles like a Rorschach blot. He tells me the brittle grey greens up after a rain. “It’s always living,” he says nodding, eyes solemn, “even when it looks dead.”

I vow to return to the roof again. We’ll bring our books, I tell Noah. And maybe a blanket. We’ll come up here in our pjs with snacks after Rowan goes to bed. It will be our Mommy-Noah time.

I have big plans for that shed roof.

I spot Noah on his rooftop perch from time to time over the summer. Sometimes he calls me to come up, and I always answer the same, “I will…in a minute. When I’m done watering the garden.” Or folding laundry. Or loading the dishwasher. Or putting away the groceries.

Summer passes in a flash. The boys are back in school. There's homework to do, choir rehearsal, soccer practice, lunches to pack.

And I wonder, as I water the basil in the evening sun, if the lichen on the roof is green or grey.

Do you {or did you as a kid} have a secret spot?

{and yeah, for the record, I did climb down the ladder to get my camera and back up again to take these pictures!}

Welcome to Graceful Summer, a link-up community here on Fridays through the end of August. We're sharing stories about the smaller, quieter moments of summer - will you share yours, too?

1. Write a post about a quiet summer moment and link it up here on Fridays.

2. Visit someone else and leave a little comment love - you might get a new creatively quiet idea!

3. Please include the Graceful Summer button or a link in your post, so people can find us if they want to join in.

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Sometimes A Small Sea of Green is Enough

I hear the sound before the “Uh-oh.” The distinctive suctioning of a sandal wrenched free from reeking pond mud.

“Mommy, you do not even want to see my sandals,” he warns, calling from across the dry bed, cracked uneven in the blistering sun. “You are going to ground me for a week for sure!”

{Like I’ve ever grounded him for a week or even a day. My dramatic, hyperbolic redhead.}

We’re at Pioneer’s Park the day before the start of school, soaking up every last bit of summer possible. Because even though I’ve been counting this day down for a couple of weeks now, it’s still bittersweet. Even for me, my fingers itching for the keyboard as I’ve dashed out words between backyard badminton and afternoons at the city pool.

Rowan wants to catch a frog so we head to the marsh that’s nearly dry after these long weeks without rain. The water has receded so much only a sliver remains, grey and stagnant, grasses on the bank dried to crisp stalks, leaves curled brown.

But as I get comfortable on a bleached log and the boys approach the water’s edge, the forsaken earth jolts into wild life as hundreds of frogs leap. They go off like firecrackers, chiming cheeps and chirps and jumping one after the other in rapid fire, fast and furious in their zest for survival. White bellies glinting in the dazzling sun, they look like sardines flipping wildly on shore. Even the boys, quick in their mud-slogged sandals, can’t capture them, save a single, tiny baby weary of Noah’s pursuit.

Later we rest our chins on the wooden rail and peer into the watering hole as the frogs croak a symphony of groans and the turtles swim silent. We don’t see them at first, but as we stare longer and harder into that green gloom, a world springs to life and suddenly the dismal hole is a plains tidal pool, teeming and swarming and slithering.

Somehow, in this barren, rainless season, when leaves crunch autumn brown beneath our shoes and the scorched front lawn prickles bare feet and the sun beats relentless from the ceaselessly blue sky, hope springs fresh from this small sea of green.


 

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Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Obedience is a Gift

Last February, knowing it would probably be the last time he would see his dad, Brad asked me to go with him on his final visit to the hospice in Minnesota. The trip was only possible because my mom had flown in from Massachusetts to help with the kids. The plan was that Brad and I would travel to Minneapolis on Saturday and be back in Nebraska again before school on Monday morning.

I wrestled with whether to go or not. I knew what the right decision was. I knew what I should do, what I needed to do. I felt the answer as clear as any I’d ever felt in my heart.

But I didn’t go.

I stayed home with my mom and the kids while Brad traveled to Minnesota alone. It was the last time he saw his dad. Jon died four days later.

I told my mom, Brad, my friends and anyone who would listen that I didn’t go to Minnesota because of the boys. They were acting out more than usual, I explained. They were clearly anxious and grieving their grandfather’s terminal illness and impending death. I needed to stay home with them, I reasoned. Two grieving, unruly boys were too much for my mom to handle alone.

This was all true. The boys were suffering; their behavior was more volatile than usual. But that wasn’t the real reason I didn’t go to Minnesota.

I didn’t go because I was afraid.

Afraid to face death, again, just 15 months after losing Brad’s mom. Afraid to face my father-in-law, with his ravaged, emaciated body. Afraid to say goodbye, to say thank you. Afraid to witness my husband’s raw grief. Afraid I wouldn’t know how to comfort him.

I didn’t go with my husband to Minnesota to be with him when he said goodbye to his father because I was afraid. I didn’t get to tell Jon how much I loved him in person because I was afraid.

And that is, hands-down, my biggest regret thus far in life.

When Pastor Michael preached on the theme of obedience yesterday after we read Psalm 132, this story, a story of disobedience, is the one that sprang almost instantly to my mind.

You see, I knew without any doubt what the Holy Spirit was prompting me to do that weekend. I felt the answer in my heart. I knew it in my innermost depths. And yet I disobeyed because I felt the calling was too hard, too ugly., too terrifying. I was weak. I faltered in my faith. I doubted that God would see me through.

“Obedience is a gift, a gift of faith,” said Pastor Michael during yesterday’s sermon.

Back in February I let fear instead of faith prevail. Instead of trusting God, I fled. Instead of obeying the Holy Spirit and surrendering to the will of God, I relied only on myself. I thought I would have to face fear and death alone. I forgot God was with me. I turned away from the gift when it was offered to me.

In the end, my disobedience was a grave disappointment. I know that Jon didn’t hold my decision against me, nor does Brad. But I still struggle to let it go. Now that time has passed I’m able to see more clearly how God would have held me by the hand, in spite of my fear and hesitation. In spite of my weakness.

God would have led me through that terribly difficult visit. If only I’d had the faith to obey.

"When you are disobedient, you are trying to keep some part of your life under your own control. Somewhere in your heart you are refusing to listen to his call." -- Deitrich Bonhoeffer

What about you? Have you ever learned a hard lesson about obedience and faith?

Welcome to the "Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday" community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you're here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in -- thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

Thank you -- I am so grateful to have you here!

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Weekend Meditation: Freely Give

And at a new spot this week: Fresh Brewed Sundays.

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