When I shopped for a new business computer a few weeks ago, aside of the basics of RAM, hard drive and processor speed I had one other primary requirement. Without it, no matter the alluring price and mouth-watering features, I would reject it.
It must have an optional downgrade.
My business applications aren’t grown up enough to run on Windows 7 yet. I require old reliable, Windows XP.
As I worked with retailers over the phone in search of my downgraded machine, I could hear their eyes roll into their head when I said, “Okay, one more thing.”
The consistent response: “Sure, whatever you need. Just don’t ask me for XP.”
I asked anyway.
Eventually I found one. My shiny new Dell (still available with the downgrade, if anyone is looking) is on its way.
I will confess the “move backward to move forward” process left my straight line, orderly mind just over on the mushy side.
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Categories: High Calling Blogs · Loving Monday · Work
Tagged: High Calling Blogs, Loving Monday, Work
It seems a constant in my life that the best things God has for me are those same thing I at first resist the hardest.
Take my husband. He can probably tell you the number of years, to the day, that I resisted before I succumbed to his charm.
And what a good thing God had in store.
I’ve done it with churches, jobs, ministries, friendship, even writing.
My first answer is No.
And then He pushes me forward from behind.
Sometimes a gentle nudge. Others a full-force shove.
One day, with my heels dug in deep, He threw me headlong into it with a friend that now I can’t imagine life without.
And today is her birthday.
(I sure hope this doesn’t backfire.)
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Categories: Friendship · family
Tagged: birthday, Friendship
To look at them, words seem little more than odd shapes, lines and curves strung together on paper. Sometimes, if I look at them too long, they don’t even look like words any more.
But those squiggles and scratches, lined up in good sequence, have the power to create and move.
Take this one.
Throw together an m, a few i’s, some crooked letters and a couple of humpbacks, and out pours a river that rages through ten states.
Words wield razor edges that cut through soft flesh as well as dry bones. They drop anchor and hold us fast when fears threaten to overturn our boats.
Words sow seeds of doubt in the soil of restless souls. They wrap comfort around wounded and aching hearts as a down quilt.
Words light fires and inspire action even from ones prone to sit still.
And sometimes, for me, words haunt.
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Categories: Courage · Obedience · sacrifice
Tagged: Lamb of God, Paris Reidhead, radical obedience, sacrifice
My head dropped into my hands as I hung up the phone.
We are few, yes. But was no one else available? No one?
Really?
I dragged my feet down the steps to change, not just a little surly about the Sunday nap I would not take. But more than that, my chest pulled up tight, making my heart rap hard on the backside of my ribs.
As I turned the car down the alley behind the sheriff’s office, the sign slipped past my window: Detention Street.
Perfect.
Translating for a worship service or a Bible study? No problem. In the ER? I’m on my way. I even stayed around for a couple of hours after my kids faced the needle to help out at the immunization clinic the other day when they were short of bilingual hands.
But at the jail? My insides preferred to stay in the car.
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Categories: Walking with God · faith
Tagged: ordinary, translating, walking in faith
As a university student, I made a practice of closing my eyes and imagining the enormous contribution I would one day make to saving the world. Once, when I still knew how to handle a paintbrush, watercolors and I even made the dream take shape on paper.
The image is a little faded now, the thick textured paper gone and the memory of it no better than fuzzy.
But I do remember this: that picture did not leave room for thing I do now.
It did not consider that one day I might be clicking the green arrow.
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Categories: God's Plan · God's Provision · Work
Tagged: dreams, God's Plan, job, Spanish, Work
Poor Laish.
Not only did it burn to the ground in a merciless attack by the tribe of malcontents Dan, I keep pushing it around from one place to another.
I schedule writing on my calendar, marking days I intend to post here (don’t start with me). When I know, I’ll note what I intend to write on.
Laish has now appeared on at least 10 separate days, including today.
It will move again, because this post is not about Laish.
Mostly not, anyway.
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Categories: Humility · Jesus is Enough
Tagged: Jesus is Enough, Judges, Paris Reidhead, Ten Shekels and a Shirt
Saturday afternoon when the men paraded out the door, a beautiful sound rose up from the hush they left behind: January thaw.
I heard snow settle, water trickle . . . and the clomp clomp clomp of three pairs of feet on my roof.
This is what kids in South Dakota do for fun.
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Categories: Fear · Maturity · My Kids
Tagged: Fear, growing up, My Kids, snow, south dakota, winter
A funny thing happened on the way to my rant this morning.
Well, several things.
One: I watched the news. A correspondent asked a 12-year old Haitian girl, “It’s a hard time to be 12 here, isn’t it?”
She replied, “It’s a hard time to be any age.“
Two: I had my usual anti-capitalist mental hissy fit (it became more of an out-loud hissy fit once the house emptied) while I brewed coffee, loaded a dishwasher, checked email and glanced at Facebook in my warm house with a roof, four walls and sealed windows.
I wondered aloud why it’s easier to give when given something in return — why do I need a t-shirt or a CD? Why don’t I ask Tom to give away both pairs of shoes? Where’s my tax deductible receipt?
Why do I look at my excess to determine my capacity to give?
Three: I took care of business with Samaritan’s Purse. (Always good to have that done before starting a rant about giving.)
Four: I burned my PopTarts. Burning food is a regular thing when I’m in the kitchen. It is no joke that the smoke detector goes off when I make Jell-O.
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Categories: Giving
Tagged: blessings, Giving, Haiti
“Hey, I can see Orion’s Belt!”
Laying across piled blankets and coats, JP watched a star-splattered sky from the back seat. Constellations pop on these brutal South Dakota nights. It seems that the colder the air, the blacker the night and the brighter the light.
He turned his gaze to the windshield and saw whisps of white powder scamper and swirl across the highway and asked, “Is this a white-out?”
“No,” I said. “Just a ground blizzard. Good thing it’s not warm enough to stick or we’d be in a real mess.”
A while later, after he spotted “one of the Dippers,” he looked through the front window again.
He may have noticed conversation in the front seat had dropped to a hush, and words were chopped off as crisp as the bitter January air.
“So . . . is this a white-out?”
“Yes,” someone replied. “This is a white-out.” I don’t know if it was me or his dad. About that time, everything sucked into a world of white.
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Categories: God's Protection · Trust · dependence
Tagged: blizzard, guidance, light, protection, safety, security, south dakota
