Author: marettej

It’s kind of like long ago, in a world far away, when having a baby sounded like a great idea.

And then, the second push 9 months or so later, it’s like, remind me, don’t want to do it again very soon. And, yup- you forget. Three kids later, you kind of look at each other and say, “you were supposed to remind me, don’t want to do it again very soon.” There are moments we forget the pain, the agony, the big belly, the wonderful things that go along with having babies. No, I’m not pregnant! This 60 year plus mind is beyond that not to mention my body was over it 20 years ago… I am talking about remodeling!

Why not? We have had a leaking roof since we moved here in 97. Put my beautiful big grand piano in the front room and Jim’s comment was, “I think the roof leaks somewhere”. We found out the first time it rained. The leak was right above the grand. We moved the piano! There was no moving the leak in the roof. Fast forward to 2019 and there were moments when we had every bowl and a few pots and pans in the front room catching rain water. I would be sleeping, I love sleeping through thunderstorms, and suddenly awake thinking, “Gotta go put the pans out.” So, this was the year. After all, we had nothing else happening!!! Just kidding- two weddings, Baihley’s trailer, new septic system, well needed to be redone. Why not just put a new roof on the front room. My job was to gut the front room. Covid- no problem! We had lots of work to do. It was supposed to be a couple months. 6 months later, we see the light at the end of the tunnel, and thankfully it’s not holes in the ceiling! The dry wall is mudded, sanded and painted. We can move in and the floor will be finished when we get that far this winter.

I am tired of remodeling. We have done it with every house we have lived in, well I guess only 2, and the cabin. The kids used to crawl under the plastic to go upstairs to bed when we were working on the main floor. We have been living for 6 months with all the music equipment in the kitchen, big piano in the office, couches everywhere. If you lost your balance you would only have to lean back as there was a couch or chair every few feet. And now, it’s starting to look like a house again. The kitchen table is actually beautiful and not pushed back against the Kurtzweil. I can find my recording equipment, no longer hidden under plastic. And once again I said to Jim, “remind me, let’s not do this again very soon,,, or rather ever!”

There are some things in life that you just need to pull your big girl panties up and do it. We want the end result, but don’t want the middle moments. Living by faith, reminds us that there are lots of middle moments that we just need to zip the lip, put on the muck boots and walk through where God has led you to. We want to get to the other side of our faith challenge, but don’t want to get dirty, be inconvenienced or have to wait! There is a reason why the fruits of the spirit cause a bit of tension in our heart. More than once we are tempted to say, “God remind me, I don’t want to do that again very soon.” And it seems that God really doesn’t care. It’s not about what we want.

I wanted the remodeling done the end of March! Wasn’t gonna happen. Nope, the morning I drive my car out of the driveway to head for Tyler’s wedding (end of June) the remodeling begins. I missed the most exciting part. And it took longer because of this and that and then and because. Remind me Lord, in those moments when nothing is as easy as it seems, that I may not want to do it again very soon, but those days of waiting, those weeks of walking sideways to get to the couch make me humble. Guessing which place we put something we needed, and after four attempts to find it, decided we didn’t need it, reminds me that what I want and need sometimes changes. God will use these moments to give me perspective. I am appreciating the beautiful new room. Had I just walked out and walked back into my house and the work was done, it wouldn’t have been nearly as precious. Convenient yes! But we don’t deepen our faith with convenience. We need to be reminded that it’s daily walking or sidestepping and being thankful that we appreciate what it takes to remodel not just our houses but our hearts. It’s a slow process but well worth the struggle. Still, remind me that I really don’t want to do this again very soon.!

It was a day off. Saturday, was a long day at a horse show, then home to work before pizza and bedtime. I wasn’t dreading Sunday except Sunday is not Sunday anymore. And this Sunday? Well, I was going to hang with some friends.

Hanging- we don’t do it much anymore. Now to my kids, hanging is a much different. Their mode of ‘hanging’ is almost literally ‘hanging’!

The younger generation hang in hammocks. Get a couple trees, put up your hammock, string it tight and hang. If you don’t have two tree’s the front of your Jeep will work! Or anything study, so I have been told. I hammock, slightly, but today I hung and NOT in a hammock.

Today, old hearts crashed. We crashed into a home we have all crashed into before. Long before I was married, long before life happened to all of us and long before God changed us into who we are today, we hung. So today, we hung once again. Brunch, coffee and love. We talked about life. What life has done to us. How we have responded. Kids, families, sadness, God, lessons, life back in the 70’s and early 80’s and we laughed. Our lives weren’t clean white picket fence lives without a blemish. There were more than a few dents in our families, jobs, cars and things tried and failed at. We laughed about how young we were, the perspective’s we had that may or may not have changed in the years. We talked about the culture and what it has done to our faith. We talked about the good old days, and we laughed about the moments when we fell flat on our faces. We laughed about getting old, cried about watching the ones we love age in front of our hearts and nothing we can do except love them. We hung! We spent time together, with no agenda’s, no plan, no purpose except to catch up. And in the midst of hanging we discovered a few things.

Friendship is priceless. Love doesn’t diminish with time. Jokes that were funny back then, are still funny except in a different way. Pictures don’t capture love but we tried anyway.

The people we love, we talk about. So if some of you felt your ears burning, it was because you were being loved with our fond memories. We loved your relationship to us. We loved the foolish things you tried and failed. We loved picking you up and we loved simply saying, “remember when?” Surprises were there, of course. There were a few, “did you know” or an awkward question asked that the answer was more awkward but friends don’t really care about awkward. Love somehow just falls in the cracks and then the ultimate, ‘how can we pray?”

I listened to people today. A couple of these “people” I have known my whole life, or rather their whole life as they are a bit younger. We talked about moments when our life stood still and how we perceived things as a child. We listened to each other tell about their lives: moments when we showed the best parts of our hearts, and then the times when our hearts were a bit on the ragged edge. So were any of us surprised when someone mentioned the clock said 1:45? We began talking at 9:30ish when the brunch began. We weren’t done. We had to leave, but we weren’t ready to leave. Hanging takes time. In our busy world people don’t stop to hang. It brought to mind 1 John 3:18. “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue but in deed and in truth.” There is something about giving your gift of time, hanging, that shows love deeper than any other act one can do. I could buy an expensive gift, but the gift of hanging and loving is priceless. For all of us, the morning of just listening, learning, loving and hugging were priceless gifts. Hanging is love in action- word and deed.

I left for home feeling full. You know the full that you get after spending way too long at a buffet. I needed a couple things at the store so walked into the local grocery store. Halfway down the fourth row, someone looked at me and said, “mask or not, I know it’s you.” And, as God would have it, we hung. We hung right there by the toilet paper and paper towels across the row from the zip-lock baggies. We did move a few times when people needed what we were standing by, but it was another moment to hang. Hanging can’t be done in a microwave. You know when you have been hanging too long. Someone’s husband comes to the grocery store looking for them! I’m glad I had nothing else to do with my Sunday but to listen to people’s hearts. We can say we love people and we can say we care, but when we take the time to hang, people will believe we mean it.

My day is almost over and it’s been an odd Sunday but a wonderful one. Usually I listen to four sermons. Usually I take notes and think about what God had to share with me. Today- I hung. And I will go to sleep very fulfilled and very much thankful that God gave me hearts to love, arms to hung with (social distancing went out the window pretty quickly) and I am blessed beyond words to express.

It was an abrupt wake up. The alarm didn’t go off; the gradual, I am waking and thinking about rising. Nor was it a beautiful sunrise coming in the eastern window. It was a sudden crack of thunder and lightning piercing my closed eyes and jarring me from a dream.

I love rain. I love to hear the rain especially at the cabin on the vaulted ceiling. It was about that time that I remembered I now have a vaulted ceiling downstairs. I can listen to the rain. That brought me downstairs long before I would have preferred, to sit in the new, not finished room, and listen to the rain, read through my prayer book and think. From where I am sitting there is a window to the east and I can see lightning bolts shake the eastern sky, somewhere near Rochester. Amazingly beautiful and kind of scary at the same time. That’s kind of how I think of God a lot of times: amazed and yet a little scared. The power that God has within his voice to create and move a Mountain is the same power that reaches down to rescue a bird and move a bunny. The same heart that will rebuke the winds also calms the heart of a child, reassures a mom, and walks with a lonely soul through a valley in their life. The lightning seems frightening, but watching it from afar is breathtaking. In the middle of the storm, not so much.

God wants me to quit looking at the lightning and start seeing what the lightning illuminates. We tend to focus on things that are often blurry and it doesn’t make sense. But when we step back, we can see what is being lit up all around us and God has things for us to see that we won’t notice if we are focused only on the lightning. God always has something to say. Sometimes I get caught up in the words he is using and miss the meaning. So it sit in the quiet, sight the thunder rolling and the lightning off in the distance. I smell the fresh air that comes after the rain. I hear the drops on the roof. My stomach is growling, and no supper last night made it a bit more pronounced. There is a calm in the morning… a very peaceful calm and I am listening to see what God is saying. The distractions can wait: they will always be in life. For now, the rain, the lightning and distant rumblings of thunder are very soothing and comforting: in an odd and interesting way.

That question is not as important as the questions, “where is your wallet?” Not that I misplace things, lose things or otherwise have no idea where I put something, but it’s at the time that incident might reveal itself is usually quite inconvenient, if not embarressing.

I have left the groceries at the store because I had no wallet. I was checking out: I checked myself out and came back later with a wallet. And then there were a couple times when I had my wallet but somehow the card I needed had taken a road trip to somewhere and not come back to rest in the comforts of the black zippered wallet. It is a very humbling experience when you are forced to show empty hands. It’s also embarrassing. It’s not nearly as powerful in Rochester where the chances of people knowing me are slim but probable. Kasson, Erdmans- I either taught their mother, played for them in the band competition or they know my children. I can’t get away with looking like a fool and someone not reminding me weeks later, “Aren’t you the lady who (fill in the blank)?”

I don’t have a fear of failure- I do it quite well. I don’t fear being embarrassed, I also have come to handle that often and well. The older I get the more I realize that putting on my shorts inside out, having no clue where I am going down a wrong way, or mistaking someone’s identity, this is a regular practice. Should I wonder where my brain is? No, it’s right where it should be but it just sometimes takes a hiatus when it should be engaged.

I wish there were more “duh” moments recorded in the Bible just so I could feel better about my “gears slipping” and my tires going flat with a full load on. However, since I can’t seem to find Peter wrapping his cloak around him upside down, or Jesus turning water into eggnog, I need to remember that laughter is a good medicine and being humble gives us the chance to relate to people in ways that just may love them more than our prideful moments.

Ephesians 4:2 “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” It’s no wonder Paul put the word humble before gentle, patient and bearing one another and tying it up in love. We tend to be prideful, jerk people’s hearts around while tapping our foot in total “I’m ready to move on” moments and forget the love: it went out with the pride. I am not always in a hurry but it seems that when I am I get behind an old Buick (sorry) with a silver Sneaker Sister driving. It used to bother me, now I just think that’s someone’s grandma. I can back off and give her lots of room and time. I see an old hat sitting in the front seat with both hands on the wheel staring at the road ahead going 35 in a 60 and I think, well could be Grandpa Frank. Nah- he would be going 67 in a 60. It changes my perspective when I put the name of someone I loved in front of the thing that may frustrate me.

So perhaps the lady in front of me has so many coupons she can’t find the one she wants, or forgot her wallet, or it’s me pulling a “moment of total loss of anything sane”, the importance is knowing that God lets us be just us. There will be day we won’t have anything in the wallet and days we can’t find it. And it’s ok! Tomorrow will come and I will forget where I am going and meet new people in the u-turns I must make. It’s a wonderful thing losing your mind!!!

It’s not a great picture. You don’t get many standing in a kwik trip parking lot. Driving home the other night I watched a moment of wonder for about 45 minutes. A storm had gone through. I sat in the safety of the sunroom and watched the rain come sideways. Over an inch in a short amount of time caused puddles everywhere. As I drove home I drove by trees downed, ditches full of water and involuntary rivers connecting puddles to ditches to peoples front yards.

The moments of wonder as I drove included a rainbow. When I first saw it I asked God, what promise did he have for me? Seems these past four years most things that were important to me have been taken away. People, places and things. Promises are given not removed. The rainbow changed. It made me wonder why life changes- a never ending question in search for meaning in life. For miles I drove watching the rainbow seemingly turn from one part of the sky to the other always keeping right in front of my eyes: and I was keeping my eyes on the road most of the time. I pulled off once to take a picture but pictures don’t satisfy the eyes of the heart some days.

Then I pulled into kwik trip and from one horizon to the other the rainbow stretched seemingly to reach as far as God is. I got out of the car and just stood and watched it . I backed up across the parking lot in an attempt to capture it all and there was not enough backing up to capture the width. I had to be content with a mediocre photo that filled my desperate longing for completion. That seems to be life. We back up hoping to just get some satisfaction. Just some Lord, I will take just some! I don’t need the whole rainbow but I want it. I don’t need the answers but I long for them.

For a moment and many moments later as I drove home that rainbow stretching the entire sky left me speechless and longing for God. Maybe it was to be truthful, longing for the promises God has for me that My heart hasn’t discovered.