Don’t Duck
I admit it.
I’m a poor brainstormer.
It’s not that I don’t ever have ideas.
I do. But I tend to overthink them.
The packing tape of my mind is just a little too sticky sometimes and I can’t get them out of the box.
And I’m even worse with somebody else’s ideas. They hardly have them out of their mouth and onto the table — or the whiteboard if you’re one of those — before I’ve figured out why they won’t work.
I’m a lot like Philip, not so much like Andrew.
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The Story of His Faithfulness
It’s a peculiar feeling, today.
I’ve deleted all my email, loaded my car, shipped my files and changed my voice mail to notify customers “I am no longer an active employee.”
I have nothing to do.
It’s 1:51 in the afternoon, only 13 percent power remains on my laptop battery, I have no unread items in my Google Reader and the meeting with HR is not until 2:30.
Again, I have nothing to do.
The thing about knowing for the better part of a year that today was coming is that the emotion has already been spent. The contemplation has already been done. I just need my paperwork and a place to turn in my key.
For, I have nothing to do.
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Bringing Down the House
Samson.
The world was not worthy of him.
So says the writer of Hebrews, bringing me back around to consider just how it was that Samson found himself amongst the honorable mentions in that great Hall of Faith.
For all the desire to which his eyes wandered, for all the rage that rushed through his veins, for all the destruction his vengeful hands wrought, and for all the self he was content to worship, Samson at last found his moment.
And then we see.
We see how this prodigal, shaved and shamed, unearthed faith before he buried the Philistines.
There came a day, Samson’s last, when in faith he brought the house down. (more…)
It Was Never About the Hair
Shocking, I know. But I’ve never been a girly-girl.
Photos like this one, with hair fresh out of curlers and frills on dress sleeves, belie the child who wanted blue instead of pink and chose hand-me-downs from a big brother over those of an older sis.
I played with dolls because we had them, but much preferred building forts and climbing trees in the woods behind our house. When I did play dolls with my sister and her friends, my make-believe role most often permitted me to take my assigned doll with me into the woods, making an occasional appearance just to stay in the game.
My sister had a much better grip on the doll thing. One year she received the coveted Crissy doll, a beautiful girl with stunning red hair. But Crissy also had a mysterious hole in her head and an unsightly button at the small of her back, there by design rather than defect.
The wonder of this doll was her growing hair.
A girl could tug Crissy’s hair, and long locks would emerge from the cavity in her head. Press the button on her back, the hair sucked back into her plastic cranium and she sported a pageboy instead.
Everything else about Crissy was pretty run-of-the-mill doll business. When it came to the Crissy doll, it was all about the hair.
But when it comes to Samson, it was never about the hair.
There. I said it.
I’ve been wanting to say that for months.
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Peace with a Massive Wingspan
I’m experiencing a little déjà vu these days.
Just over five years ago I was in the hunt for a job. The claims operation I was a part of was closing, leaving many folks like myself without work. Knowing my tenure with that company was winding down, I had an ambitious three-part goal: secure another job, reach my vesting date, and work until the end. This would have allowed me to collect my sixteen weeks of severance pay, take along my portable retirement benefits and walk straight into a new job.
I decided that two out of three wasn’t bad.
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Would I Know? How? And When?
Not long ago my son informed me that I was still talking about Samson out here. He pointed out that I’d been doing that since, when? Summer?
Yeah, something like summer.
“I don’t even read it now, Mom,” he said. “You’re not funny anymore.”
I don’t worry too much. I still catch him reading when he thinks I’m not looking. And blog or not, he never seems to run out of reasons to laugh at me.
But he’s right. Samson is starting to seem like forever.
The problem is, I can’t shake him off. Every time I think I’m about there, it’s something else. I finally got to give him his haircut, and there’s still more before he brings the house down in his big finale.
It’s like this: Samson never did ask a lot of questions after his riddle backfired.
But he sure keeps making me ask them.
Samson has become for me a looking glass. And every time I see something foul in him, I see my own eyes staring back. I see the work God still wants to do in me. Work I need Him to do in me.
And now he’s done it again.
Here’s the question: If all the fullness of God drained out and left me vacant, would I know?
How would I know?
And when would I notice?
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A Certain Uncertainty
From a certain uncertainty to a certain Hope, this was written with thoughts of Loren and Betty, and Scott and Jennifer. Gentlemen, start your engines. It’s gotta be time soon.
It’s been the beginning of the end for a long time now.
Seems everything I’ve done lately has been the last.
The last file jacket I set up for a new claim.
The last statement I took from a witness.
The last settlement I negotiated with an attorney.
The last mediation statement I drafted.
I traveled last week, charged with the bittersweet task of training the last of the new employees to take over my work.
I returned today to find lights out in a few more cubicles. A dumpster stands outside my door, overflowing with outdated manuals and unwanted reference books. Eery silence and the occasional echo replace the voices and bustle that drove me to distraction just weeks ago.
Fool Me Once, Shame on You — Fool Me Twice, Call Me Delilah
Samson has a new girlfriend.
And now we can understand why those Sunday School lessons were so adamant about students learning to stay away from sneaky girls.
Only, really? I’m not so sure that Delilah was sneaky. She seemed pretty forthright about her intentions. Oh, sure, she didn’t tell Samson that the Philistines had offered her a bulging purse and were hiding in the room every time she tied him up. But she left no question that she sought the secret of his strength only to ensure his capture.
She told him so.
So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.” (Judges 16:6)
What about her motive remained hidden?
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Sleeping with One Eye Open
It’s good to sleep with the lights off.
At my house, it helps dispel that nagging sense of being watched.
A few years ago I saw my ophthalmologist for a solution to some headaches that seemed to originate behind my right eye. I rejected the notion that they were tension related or migraines, more out of defiance than anything else.
He reminded me of how people my age start to have trouble focusing, and set me up in some old-people glasses. I was as defiant about the bifocals as I was the migraine. When I pressed him because I was not having any vision changes except when my head hurt, and that mostly related to an eyelid that couldn’t support itself, he dug a little deeper.
I left his office with a bottle of goo to squirt into that eye to help bring moisture to a dry band running across my cornea.
As it turns out, one of my motherhood trademarks is not just figurative.
I do, in fact, sleep with one eye open.
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With Empty Hands (a walk through the tabernacle)
When I was a kid, I never understood why we had to study all that crazy detail about the temple and the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant in Sunday School.
Oh, who am I kidding?
As an adult, I never understood why we had to study all that crazy detail about the temple and the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant in Sunday School.
And you know how I am, I actually get into stuff some people think is just boring Old Testament detail. But the temple and the tabernacle? Come on. Let’s move on to the next lesson.
A friend of mine has been studying this though, voluntarily and on purpose. And she’s convinced me that it’s not boring, mind-numbing stuff that has nothing to do with where I live today.
It has everything to do with where I live today, if I have any interest in all in a certain Great High Priest who entered the Most Holy Place by His own blood.
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Halloween’s Over — Take Off the Mask
My dad posts again to round out the series of the past week. His thoughts here relate to the Legends post from earlier in the week, so we’ll call it Part 1.5. If you missed Dad’s earlier guest spot, you can pick it up here.
Meanwhile, Delilah is just dying to cut Samson’s hair, so I’ll be back in Judges 16 this week if you care to join me.
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by Paul Willingham
Rambo and Homer. Hmmmm! Superman and Casper Milquetoast. Babe Ruth and Casey (at the Bat). Sgt. York and Sgt. Bilko. The James Gang and the Apple Dumpling Gang. Rambo I know, having watched “First Blood” several times. Rambo II and Rambo III fell sort of flat, as most sequels do. I know who Homer Simpson is but have never watched even 5 minutes of “The Simpsons”. But I digress. My TV/movie viewing preferences are not germane here. What you were really saying as one wag put it long ago, we want to be legends but we only end up being “legends in our own mind”.
When I was in college, an annual event was the “Speech Banquet”. After the meal, the program consisted of speeches by several students. The speakers (mostly male students as they were pursuing careers as preachers) on the program were selected by the Speech Professor. I agreed to serve as toastmaster for the event and thus escaped preparing and delivering a speech. Following years of tradition established by those who had gone before me, plus my own idea of what an emcee does, I introduced the various speakers with a short and what I hoped was a good joke (a good joke being defined as one that folks actually laugh at).
I introduced one of the students (We’ll call him Bob) as follows: Bob had a date with his long-time girl friend. When he arrived at the door and rang her bell, she appeared at the door and greeted him with the question that every male dreads. “Bob, do you notice any thing different about me?”
What to Do with Our Hearts Online
When I was in college, a good friend and roommate stopped talking to me for a couple of weeks. When I realized it (only because she pointed it out to me), I asked why. Turns out she’d shared with me that she was struggling with some unresolved anger and my response was unsatisfying.
The offending conversation went something like this:
Her: I’m struggling with some unresolved anger.
Me: Really? Hmm. Get rid of it.
Seems I then moved on to something much more compelling, probably strategies of nuclear deterrence if I remember myself right.
I was puzzled.
How could such an incisive, definitive and obviously helpful response have made her stop talking to me?
She described a problem; I proposed a solution. And a darned good one, I thought.
Book open, book closed.
Where’s the problem?
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The Conversation