Real Life Reflections

We all have bad days, right? You're sick or running late or you have an accident or a flat tire (or maybe all of the above and then some?). Sometimes a bad day is as simple as getting bad news - news that doesn't stop with just the saying of it, the fact of it. Bad news that isn't just a statement but news that reaches into the heart and changes the scenery, colors the way you see things, makes you look into the future and see that your life will look different from here on out because of it. News that catches you by surprise and changes what you thought would always be, changes the status quo of your life. I got news like that recently. Then a few days later, I received a totally unrelated phone call the purpose of which was to rake me over the coals, make sure I knew how badly I'd screwed up. A few days after that, I got a letter from the IRS informing me that the organization for which I work and am responsible for much of the accounting and human resource complian...

Life is teeming with reminders of our need for God. Take today for example: I'm exhausted. I have this ridiculously sensitive body rhythm, and I messed it up yesterday. I went to St. Louis with a mother and daughter. The daughter is strongly considering an extended stay in Burkina Faso as a missionary. So the mother/daughter team that have been there/done that spent the day with the mother/daughter team in the early stages of going there/doing that. It was a great time. Ami and I both enjoyed sharing our experiences, and by their own admission, the time was profitable for the other mother and daughter; but for me, to talk for a full eight hours is waaaayyy past my conversation limit. "Conversation limit?" Yep. Conversation limit. A previous boss used to cite some statistic about how many words an average woman speaks each day as compared to the average man. He'd see me talking and joke that I hadn't reached my quota for the day. My quota, however, is much lower ...

My husband and I talked about parenting last night. We've been at it for a little over twenty-eight years. What I never expected was the constant change, constant adjustments that parenting requires of you all your life. As your child(ren) grow and move into different seasons of their life, so your parenting moves into different seasons and has to adapt. If we treated our twenty-eight and twenty-five year old children the same way we treated them when they were five and two and a half, we would be sorry parents indeed (and our kids would be even sorrier!). The past few years I've learned that now, more than ever before, I don't know what I'm doing as a parent. Fortunately, I no longer have to concern myself with preparing them to be responsible, independent adults. Unfortunately, this is where the problem comes in. I haven't figured out how to adapt to this stage of parenting. In their formative years, I knew what I had to do, my job was clear (although the best ...

I stood there taking in the sights and sounds: the water as it gently lapped the bank, the playful twitter of what I could only assume were birds of some sort as I couldn't see anything through the dense foliage, the tall - monstrously tall - trees, thick with leaves of deep green, gold, red, orange, and purple (I swear - purple leaves!). How had he done that? How had Mr. Throgmorgenson transported me here? This island shouldn't exist anymore. The Naterans took care of that hundreds of years ago, and yet here I am. I'm not complaining. I mean, this is amazing. Awesome. I scanned the landscape, but it was impossible to see anything through the pack of trees that stood at attention like a massive army. The center of the island could be mountains, or valleys, a huge crater, or maybe marshes, it could be forest all the way through to the other side. There was only one way to find out. I headed inland, but just as I began to walk, enjoying the peace and the time to t...

Oh January! That month of the year that has pushed me to the edge of early retirement every year since 1994. I don't want to jinx these last few days of said month, but I just may make it through without checking the balance in our retirement fund and calculating possibilities. So what's different? My task list is every bit as long in 2012 as it has been in previous years. This January isn't running any smoother than past Januaries. I've run into just as many problems (if not more) with my January responsibilities as in years past, but here we are with less than a week to the month left, and I haven't walked out on the job or even cried (though, I admit, tears did threaten to trickle at one point last week). I'm actually heading into the home stretch with a more positive attitude than when I started. I'm not complaining, but what's the deal, Schlemiel? In a word - God. God's the deal. I kind of have a thing for books (I know, big surprise for t...

Once we cleared the trees, we instinctively ran towards the river. I could hear them behind us. We didn't have much time. Our only hope lay on the other side of the water in front of us. We were going to have to swim for it. We had no other choice. Breathing hard from our escape, we stopped, both of us bent at the waist with hands on our knees as we tried to catch a breath. My lungs were usually the stronger between the two of us, and they didn't disappoint me today. Sam continued to wheeze, but at least, she was standing and not passed out or coughing uncontrollably as she tried to catch her breath. That's good. Her asthma was under control. She'd be able to go on. I stood up and breathed in deeply of the salt-water river smell. With my eyes closed, I could easily believe that we were at the ocean. I opened my eyes half expecting to see flip flops scattered along a beach and sun-bathers asleep on their towels, but instead I saw the dry banks of the river with dozens of...

Somewhere in my early years of faith, I read a little book entitled, The Practice of The Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. It's about being mindful of God every waking moment of your day. Many years later, I discovered Practicing His Presence by Frank Laubach and Brother Lawrence, which is the original work plus Frank Laubach's diary of his experience of following The Practice of the Presence of God . I'm now on my fourth reading, and it's getting a bit dog-eared, and the highlighting makes the pages quite colorful. Unfortunately, I've found that life continues to get in the way of being mindful of God with me, and I end up relegated Him to a corner of my life set aside just for Him.Then life goes from being in-the-way to overwhelming, and I remember that God isn't a part of my life, He IS my life. Out comes Practicing His Presence . Perhaps if I read it one more time, I'll get it. That's what I hope anyway. It's not easy to keep God in the for...