Category: Devotions

I sit looking up at the paddle. It started out by me asking if she would paint our cabin on an old canoe paddle. She said no, she gave up painting. We chit chatted a bit and then went on our way. It wasn’t more than a month or two when she called me and told me to drop off the paddle with her brother and a picture and they would bring her the paddle and she would paint the picture. I gave it to Jim for his birthday. He probably didn’t care but I did. It was a canoe paddle from my childhood. It had meaning.

Why did Mary change her mind? I have no clue. She has passed on so I will never know. I am very thankful she did.

We all have a “change of mind ” moment. No is such an easy word. It has become my word of choice this year. Once you do or say you will do, people expect. When you say no and then do, it’s a wonderful surprise. There is a Bible parable about the one who said yes and never did and the one who said no and changes their mind and did. I have been both.

As I sit and look at the paddle hanging in the kitchen of the cabin I see lots of things that have changed. We built on to the cabin, we painted the cabin, the ugly shutters are gone (they gave ugly a new meaning” and the trees in front have been cut down. What hasn’t changed is the love for the place, the love for what it represents and the love for the women who painted the canoe paddle; the one who changed her mind. May I strive to be the mind changer in people’s lives and not the disappointed who says yes and then does nothing.

Especially this year, when the daffodils bloom we will enjoy their beauty. I enjoy them every year but for reasons perhaps not always embraced by the heart. Today I will go and buy a bunch, or a plant or both. Today is one of those memory dates that one never forgets. When the kids were little, we had a party with cake and sometimes balloons. When Addlea was little she would release the balloons so her baby brother had something to play with in heaven. I guess she thought God hadn’t thought about toys for tots. March 23 many years ago we held our son as he died. We knew he may not be born alive or live for any amount of time after he was born, so being born alive was an awesome experience. It’s kind of odd to say that, but for us it was a huge answer to prayer. I simply asked God to give us something to love and he gave me a beautiful angel to hold for a couple hours before taking him back to heaven. Our second child was developing without bladder and kidneys which then affected how everything else in his body grew. They called it Potters Sequence: we learned way more than we wanted to know.

So March 23, though an awkward day in some ways has become a joy. Partially because it’s not my choice to give life or take life; that’s totally Gods. For me it would be arrogant to think that I should get all the wonderful things in life without needing an umbrella for a few rainy days. How self centered of me to think that God would only give me what I want: I never did that for my children so why would God treat me any different? God allowed me 8 months to carry a being and be “Jesus” to someone we would never get to know. To love, to protect, to sing to, to talk about and then to hand back; those things are simply pulling the wagon that God placed the handle in my hand. And interestingly enough, when God gives you a wagon to pull, he also gives you the strength to pull it and the wisdom to know where to pull it to.

I learned a few lessons that I still remember 27 years later. I can’t find my phone, can’t remember where my wallet is or where I hid the gift I bought someone so they wouldn’t see it, but this I will never forget. And when I see daffodils, it brings it a back, in a really neat way. My sister sent my daffodils when Normi was born and died. I planted them the next year and every year I plant more. I am not much of a gardener so perennials are the plants that have a chance to live in my world. Every year, depending on the winter, I get to relive a blessing. When I see the beauty of daffodils, I may shed a tear, but I see so much more. Daffodils are God reminding me words he put in my heart standing in the elevator at Methodist Hospital that changed how I thought of God and radically changed my faith walk forever.

I have been able to sit and talk to young moms who are walking where I walked. At those points of time, they think they can’t imagine going on. I did. I went on. I pulled the wagon. For them, although the circumstances are never the same, I looked normal and was living life. ( Please no comments about the normal part). For a heartbroken young mom, knowing someone else got through those trying times is a big part of moving on. And please don’t ever tell anyone you know what they are going through, because you don’t. Every circumstance is unique as us people who walk through them dragging our wagons through the mud.

So today I will decorate the house with the beauty of the daffodils. Baihley has already figured out how she and Hannah will make a cake. We will make the crazy 7 minute frosting, and lick the bowl and enjoy it; every bite! I will celebrate the ways God walked me through the mud, cleaned off the dried mud on my wagon wheels and kept my focus on what He did rather what what I lost. And I didn’t really lose anything. We say that, ” I lost a child”, or ” I lost my mother”; they aren’t lost. God has them right where they are supposed to be. We are just not in the right place to find them.

The sun is out and it’s a beautiful day here in Minnesota. For us, that’s the end of a really hard, cold, snowy winter. People are smiling. Snow is melting. Daffodils will begin pushing their heads out of the cold ground. And when they do, I will have the chance all over again to tell God how thankful I am for the chance to be right where He placed me so many years ago. And the daffodils, they are just beautiful.

I was the topic of a sermon. Not that it hasn’t happened in the past but it’s usually, “don’t do what she did” type of sermon. Today it was about answering a call, seeing God lead and being a miracle for others. Actually the sermon was about the loaves and fishes but it was tied into how we can be the miracle that God uses to bless other people.

The thought of the loves and fishes: I am now going outside the box for those of you would need to prepare to be led on a goose chase. The disciples found a boy with a lunch. Excuse me here but there were a lot of people. 5000 not counting women and children. That’s a lot of people. We tend to think about the breaking of bread off the loaf that never ended and handing it to the next person time and time and time and time again. I want to take it a different way. 4999 didn’t plan ahead. 4999 didn’t pack a lunch. I am sure there were reasons. I have rushed off in a tiff of excitement and forgot lots of things. I want to give major kudos to the mom of that young man who packed his lunch. She thought she was simply doing the mother’s job. Feed him, clothe him, wash him, ask him who his friends are, pick up his clothes, put his school books away, make his bed, find his lost homework and sign his permission slip kind of mother things. I doubt she had any idea she would be the source of Jesus performing a miracle. What if she had said, ” you can eat when you get home.” Or perhaps, “here are a few shekels. Grab something at McGalilee’s on your way home. ” She did what she felt she should do: pack a lunch. Her being obedient gave way to an incredible miracle.

We go through life doing the things we feel led to do. We do them because it’s the right thing to do. We are usually not aware that God maybe could use that little thing to perform a miracle in someone else’s life; or 4999 other someone’s lives.

I put in writing I was willing to help. Someone else had a need. They saw my note. They sent an email. I answered the email, that led to a visit that led to helping a church walk through a challenging time and get the joy back in music for them. All I did was put what I felt God leading me to do, pack a lunch, and that lunch did a lot more than any of us imagined,

Kind of mind boggling to think of what Jesus will do if we do simple things like packing lunches.

I stood chopping. Anyone who had never lived through a Minnesota winter probably can stop reading now and go to the last paragraph. However, if you have lived through 8 inches of frozen stuff with 15 inches of snow and ice on top you will relate.

I needed to open the gate. Gates are made to open, since our last little affair with winter, we have snow piles, frozen icy walkways and generally a lot of snow. I went to throw hay at noon yesterday and could not get in the gate.

I had two choices. I really only had one but I pretended I had two. Having a choice gives us the allusion that we have some control in life. I kicked at the frozen pile of white stuff mixed with black horse apples. It didn’t do much..ok, it didn’t do anything. I went back into the barn and got the shovel and the ice pick ax wedgie thing and began to attack the issue with a devoted heart.

I have been reading about the beginnings of Lent. The early disciples never forgot Good Friday. We seem to think that was Pope Gregory’s brain child. The council of Nicea observed fasting. I remember anniversaries of deaths. The early Christians would have remembered the next year when Friday came that Christ was crucified. They may not have made a lot of fuss, but they would have remembered. In a couple weeks we will remember. I won’t make a big fuss, it’s been 27 years but I will remember the day our son died. Those things you don’t forget. The Christians had their own way of remembering. Now, leading up to Easter, we have 40 days, not counting Sunday’s, that’s we remember. But if we remember without the sacrifice of the heart being involved, we are just observing casually an occurrence in life. Sacrifices only have merit when they come from a devoted heart.

I have chopped through ice and snow frozen hard before but the other day I had a devoted heart. I had purpose. I needed to get into the gate. My focus was stronger, my energy level was focused on one mission and every time I smashed the ice wedge and felt more frozen crud give away there was almost a bit of excitement. I said almost a bit. My heart was devoted and I was all in.

In 1 Samuel 15 we read about Saul doing something because he was supposed to and not because he had a devoted heart. And, he did it almost right. We don’t do things the right way if our heart isn’t in it. We do it almost right. But when we get focused and energized and our heart gets involved, watch out ice jams; we are breaking things up.

In that same chapter Samuel is telling Saul about God’s reasons for doing what he did; tore the Kingdom away from Saul because he didn’t put his heart into his actions. In the message it says, ” He (meaning God) says what he means and means what he says.”

Our hearts would explode with action, if we really believed that. If we remembered with passion and purpose and our sacrifices were focused on following what God said… with ice jammers and shovels in hand, our sacrifices would be energetically laid at Gods feet rather than flung from afar, not sure we are all in.

I can now swing the gate open; until we get another storm tonight that is. Then I will do it all again. Sacrifices sometimes seem to be one right after the other and we get our hearts tangled up because we just sacrificed: now you want me to do it again? Our life is a sacrifice. Our hours are simply minutes waiting for another way God needs us to sacrifice ourselves and pick up the ice wedges and shovels.

Lent..something I didn’t grow up observing. Do I understand it ? Not based on the cultural norms that were examples for me from those around me. Giving up for lent was a huge deal but it wasn’t about the giving up it was more about giving up and replacing it with something else. That’s really not giving up it’s just changing cars. Kids would make a big deal about not eating hamburger but instead of spending the time thinking about God instead of not eating hamburger, it was simply we eat fish. That never made sense to me. Things were given up for lent as a sacrifice simply of only giving up not giving more time to God. In fact God and Lent didn’t really go together. That’s the impression I got as a child. Was it right ? Probably not. Was it totally wrong? Probably not.

Studying about our response to things around us forces us to either participate or ignore. We always ignored. However as an adult, I am choosing to participate in a way that makes “Giving it more not simply giving up”. I want to give God more of my focus by lessening my focus on something else. That’s basically what Lent is. I choose to not do this today, and instead of not doing this I will read the passage of scripture and think about it before resuming my normal activities.

I will focus on the cross and how important it is to me and where repentance fits in but I will also keep reminding myself of the empty grave because that’s where my HOPE is.

So today, Ash Wednesday, I am having a normal Wednesday, but I am choosing to put God in place of a few of the things I would normally do. Instead of listening to my Merle Haggard (I did meet his mother in church once) on I-Heart radio, I will listen to the book of Joel being read from my Bible app. Simple, but will redirect my heart. I am cleaning the house. “Create in me a clean heart Oh God.” I have been listening to podcasts rather than cranking the I-tunes up. Little changes, one step at a time, one way to see God closer than you did yesterday.