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Posts Tagged ‘Hope’

He Who Began a Good Work in You

Posted in GOD, life, WONDER, tagged Bible, Christianiy, Co-workers, Devotions, GOD, God speaks, He Who Began a Good Work, Hope, Philippians, Philippians 1, Students, Work on January 26, 2012| 3 Comments »

As I was leaving for work one day last week, over and over and over in my mind I heard, “I thank my God every time I think of you.” It had been a day when, as a team of special education and learning assistants, we were one unit, working together, and loving each other. It felt good!

Then I awoke this Monday, and was preparing for work when I remembered that it was team devotions and meeting day, and that I was on for the devotions part … fear cursed through my body! Devotions are not an area of comfort for me, and my first instinct was to call in sick! Then I remembered that day last week, and those words were again remembered, “I thank my God every time I think of you.” I had it! My blood pressure began leveling out to a normal range.

I opened my Bible app. and searched for Philippians 1, the passage I would use:

“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.” Philippians 1:3-11

I used the emboldened part when doing devotions with my class later that morning. To be free to remind them that the one who gave them life does not give up on them, but that he has a plan that is not completed until the day of Christ, is to share a great hope.

And then today another teacher used the same passage for her class devotions …

I began thinking that maybe the message that I have been feeling and sharing, for others, might just be something that God wants me to hear too.

It has been a sucky, emotional, hormonal, week. I am tired and feeling worn down and discouraged on so many levels. And then today, I heard the words echoed back to me: “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” What a message to rest my head pondering!

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Twas the Forecast Before a White Christmas

Posted in christmas, WONDER, tagged Hope, J.B. Priestley, rain, Snow, Weather Forecast on December 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Twas the beginning of December,

And all through the Lower Mainland,

Not a creature was stirring, not even a louse (check out Nitpicking )

The children were nestled, all snug in their rain boots,

In hopes that Saint Nick would not be rained out of his route.

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But five sun shines in the the forecast … nothing but clear!

Seriously, I thought that the weather guy had lost it for good (or, maybe my weather app. was malfunctioning). It just is not a normal or predictable thing for the weather forecast to be for sun, here in the monsoon belt, for two days in a row, let alone five.

So I have gone to work for three mornings now, able to see the freshly fallen snow on the nearby mountains. It just makes me hum, ‘it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.’ I was even able to take a walk out in the fresh, crisp air after school yesterday … without a rain jacket. I feel like I am living in the midst of a miracle. And I fear that any moment I might wake up from this beautiful dream and see my reality for what it really is … a wet, grey, dull nightmare!

For the first time in years, I have hopes for a white Christmas (okay, it is probably a fantasy, but, a girl can dream). We had snow over the Christmas holidays about five years ago (wow! five years ago, and five sun shines in the forecast … that has to be reason for hoping), and it was glorious! Things got canceled, the snowploughs were not able to keep up, and people got stranded at home … it was perfect, heck, it was the perfect storm! I do not remember a more delightful Christmas, for our family. Lots of play in the snow, lots of nothing to ‘have’ to do, lots of visual beauty to be seen.

I do admit to hoping that my dream might come true. I do hope to go to bed on Christmas Eve, with snow falling softly on the ground. I do hope to awaken on December 25th with a blanket of snow all around to add to the wonder of the day. I do admit, that, the child within me just hopes for a show of enchantment this, and every Christmas season.

“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?” ~J.B. Priestley

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The Great Unknown

Posted in GOD, life, WONDER, tagged Control Freak, Faith, Fear., Hope, Isaiah 43, Surprises, Waiting on November 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Hi, my name is Carole, and I am a control freak. Those who know me well (family, no comment is needed, I am admitting the reality you live with here in print … again Control Freak) this comes as no surprise, and for the rest of you … it comes as no surprise … sigh.

Speaking of surprises, I do not like them. I am not fond of even good, or nice surprises (although if Canada Revenue would like to finish hubby’s tax return and send us a cheque before the end of the year, I could be very fond of that surprise … just sayin’), and I am definitely not fond of bad or negative surprises (like our car driving itself down our driveway and planting itself into our sweet neighbor’s planter … sigh).

What is even worse than surprise, to a control freak, is waiting. Being a control freak and being deficient in patience seem to me to go together perfectly.

I never so keenly notice my undiagnosed ADD as when I am in a place of waiting. If people could see what goes on inside of me while I am waiting in a line at the grocery store, waiting for the end of a boring meeting, waiting for others to get their act together (and do what I want them to do), or waiting for my favorite Wednesday night TV show to come on (Criminal Minds) most would be very surprised at how chaotic and troubled it is in that mind of mine.

I hate having to wait!

When I am in a state of ‘waiting’ then my greatly over-gifted imagination kicks into high gear, and that is not a good thing! I can imagination all sorts of possible problems or curses or other bad things that might happen, because if I am waiting, I am not in control, and if I am not in control, then how can God know what to do next?

Really that is the core of my problem … I seem to think that God needs my help. He doesn’t, He just needs my obedience and my faith in His control of the situation. So, I will do my best today to place the reigns back in His nail scarred hands.

“Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.

I have loved you with an everlasting love…I hold you in the palm of my hands.

In my sight you are precious…do not be afraid I am with you.” Says the Lord God

Isaiah 43, 1-4

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Dark and Stormy

Posted in GOD, life, WONDER, tagged Being Held, Dark Days, Feeling down, GOD, Hope, Life, Mandisa, Pain Relief, Stronger, Struggles, Wonder on September 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Like all people, I have had ups and downs. There are times when life is lived with exclamation marks, and times when it is lived with question marks. There are times of struggle and there are times when struggles seem a million miles away. There are times when we desire to live forever, and times times when we beg the Creator to take us now (I think I must have been reading Ecclesiastes lately).

Have you ever noticed that when things are going well, you rely on others less? It’s because your needs are simple, and can be met all by yourself … you don’t need anyone for anything.

And then when things are really not going well, we need others, we need help. But, for me, even if I need and even want to rely on others, I struggle to know who and how to ask for help. Heck, I struggle to even recognize that there is help out there.

I was reminded of this the other night when hubby and I were out to a restaurant for dinner. As we were talking to our server, she mentioned that she was having pain in her back, that had been keeping her from sleeping at night. When I mentioned a product that I had found to be helpful in the past, she said, “of course! I have used that in the past. I guess I was thinking so much about the pain, I couldn’t think of a cure.”

As she continued talking, I found my mind thinking about her statement, “I was thinking so much about the pain, I couldn’t think of a cure.” And I found myself thinking, isn’t that how it is when we have pain … any pain, in our life? When we hurt, physically, emotionally, spiritually … in any way, the pain takes over our thinking, our reasoning, our troubleshooting abilities. And we often fail to see the cure, the help, the solution for the pain (or at least ways to ease or lessen it).

When our pain is not a physical pain, we need a pain reliever that is specifically suited for that need. What we have to do to relieve our non-physical pain, is to allow ourselves to be held, to be embraced by someone … bigger, stronger.

For a child, there is no greater pain relief than the warm embrace of his or her mother, and father. It always amazed me how my child’s tears would disappear when I held them. In the same way our spiritual father can wipe away our tears, when we allow ourselves to be taken in by his warm and loving embrace.

Just like when I hold my suffering child, the holding may not take the suffering away. But what being held by creator God does, is that it allows one who is so much stronger, so much bigger, to hold us, comfort us and soothe our weary hearts. His arms around us, His presence in our lives reminds us that the Creator of heaven and earth cares about our heart aches.

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Football!

Posted in FAMILY, WONDER, tagged Boys, Change, Father and Son, Football, Future, Hero, Hope, Life, Model of Manhood on September 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Today I will go to see my son play football for the first time!

Way back in April, hubby was telling me how much our boy wanted to play football this year. I had my doubts … doubts that our son was the one who wanted to play football. You see hubby loves football! He played in high school. When we met, and were first married, he coached high school football for about seven years. And, he loved it, and he was good!

But, our son … although he physically looks like a clone of hubby, and his mannerisms endorse that cloning possibility, his interests tend to be different from his dads. And, I was really not feeling confident that it was our son who was understanding of the level of commitment and physical exertion that would be required to play on a football team.

I was pretty sure that dad was hoping to live vicariously through son.

But, I was so wrong!

Although he is not yet twelve, and one of the youngest players on his team. He has been practicing three hours a week, since later June. And now that the game season has begun, practice hours are at four and a half, plus games. And he cannot wait to get to a single practice! And he watches the clock, so that he can be ready to go. And he comes home, totally exhausted, saying it was great (even when he gets knocked onto his behind regularly). And he loves his coach. And he loves playing with the guys.

And … he loves that it is just he and his dad :), because his dad, is also one of the coaches on the team.

His dad, more than genetic material, and disciplinarian, and caregiver … is his greatest hero. It is his dad whose opinion matters most to him, It is his dad whose every word, every step he watches, and tries to emulate. Even though their personalities are so different, he knows that it is in his dads heart and life, that he can see his own future.

In the past couple of years, as adolescence has been rearing it’s head, I have been silently mourning the loss of MY little boy. But, this summer, as I see the bond of father and son developing more strongly, more tightly, I am mourning less and celebrating more.

I can love my son tenderly and I can be the first to receive hugs from him (and wonderful bear hugs they are), but I cannot give to him the one thing he needs most … a model of what it is to be a man, and a model of what it is to be a man after God’s heart. It is in the model of who my hubby is, and wants to be, that our son can see hope for his own future, as he grows into manhood.

I am so thankful for the dad my son (and daughters) has. I know he will have the courage and wisdom to coach our son from the experiences (positive and negative) that he has had so far. And, he will also have the wisdom to tackle him into a bear hug, through the years to come.

And I will willingly sit in the bleaches, cheering them on, as he and our son grow and learn together.

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The Call

Posted in GOD, life, WONDER, tagged Called, Creation, Hope, On Christ the Solid Rock, The Call, The Rock on August 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Morning number two … of vacation, in this heavenly place.

My internal alarm goes off at 6:43am … it has obviously been adjusted to va-ca time, as it more frequently starts to go off before six. I hop out of bed, and am reunited with my sweats in the bathroom, where I prepare for the day without a ‘plan’ that I am conscious of … I am simply responding to the call.

At 6:53am, I kiss hubby, and tell him I am going out for a walk.

Less than a minute later, my feet move my body as though they are moving towards and with an invisible force. A force that is calling me from my insides … out. It it an inaudible, but undeniable call, and there is nothing within me that desires to ignore it’s persistent force.

I reach the beach, and want to run with everything within me. My heart feels as though it might burst through my chest, with eagerness to reach the destination faster. I feel a need to consciously, but wordlessly, remind my pulsating legs of the pain that running a little over a year ago caused, and how my meniscus would not allow that … but I am sure that even my knees were joining in the call for a physical response of eagerness to the call.

I reach the edge of the water, the waves crashing onto the coast, seagulls crying out all around me, and my soul is singing “Creation Calls” as tears fall, without sorrow down my cheeks.

Then, after a time of songs and sighs, I move on … the call continues.

This call has existed for me ever since our first summer here, four years ago. Actually, it existed far before then, far before I was born. But the metaphor it provides for my visual-learner being stirs such an innate need to fulfill it’s call on me.

As I move down the beach, I feel such an excitement with each step closer I get to it. I increase my speed, as I just want to be there, to reach out and touch it, symbolizing my need to go to it, to be close to it, to physically touch it to confirm my reliance on reaching out to it.

And then, I am almost there, and my pace slows, and I feel the need to just absorb the process of each step. And I am fully awake, and the call is no longer forcing itself on me, but I am conscious, completely aware and choosing to make each step. It is not longer the innate call that brings me there, but an act fully of my will.

And I reach out,

and I touch The Rock.

And although all of Cannon Beach, and it’s visitors, call it Haystack Rock, I just call it The Rock. And when I reach my fully human hand out, each year, to touch it’s barnicle-covered surface, I am reaching out my heart, as an act of my will, to recommit, and reconnect with The Rock.

^“The rain came down, the streams rose,

and the winds blew and beat against that house;

yet it did not fall,

because it had its foundation on the rock.”

Matthew 7:25 NIV

“Hurts happened, disappointments came,

Then, when you thought it couldn’t get any worse,

all hell broke loose.

but, you were not destroyed,

because you were planted, not just on, but in,

The Rock”

Matthew 2:25 CS-WV

(Carole Smith-Wheaton version)

“How can I say there is no God, when all around creation calls …”

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A Spectrum of Colors

Posted in canada, life, Nature/Creation, The Kids, WONDER, tagged Hope, House for Sale, Rainbows, Wonder on June 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I can only remember seeing one rainbow, as a child. I know they occurred more often, I just am too archaic to remember seeing them! Or maybe, as a child there are so many wonders that catch your eye, a rainbow is just not all that exciting?

There is something about rainbows, about the wonder associated with them. They give hope.

There are two associations with rainbows that are most common. One is the association with a pot of treasure at one end of it. The other is that from the Biblical story of Noah, and the flood, and how the vision of the rainbow was one of hope of the future.

About eight years ago, I/we had an encounter with a rainbow.

You need a bit of background …

We were living in a great neighborhood, with great neighbors. But my house ‘wanderlust’ had set in … okay, that is wrong … MY house wanderlust is always present. Anyway hubby and I were away for a weekend in March … just the two of us (so sweet … and, although we were just away not even a month ago, I am ready to go again … my, I know how to digress!). While we were away, I made a declaration, “we need to find a place to live that is a refuge for you. A place where you can rest, relax, and ‘get away’ from the stresses of life.”

I can only think of three to four times in our marriage when I have made ‘a declaration’. And each time I did so, my jaw dropped, as I ‘heard’ what my mouth said, because it was not a thought that I had previously entertained. It was as though the words of my mouth were inserted by someone else.

A few weeks later, hubby and I agreed to ‘just look’ at a house that I loved. But when hubby called the realtor, it had already sold. So, hubby, decided to inquire about another, and got a date to go view it.

I was NOT excited to see this house. It was west coast contemporary … blech! I come from the east where houses are old and character-filled … contemporary might as well be the f-word in my mind. And worse, when we pulled up to the house, it was perched on a driveway, so steep, I was sure if a car was parked horizontally on it, it would tip over! But I LOVED the neighborhood! Less than eighty houses on tree-lined winding streets, with beautifully manicured lawns, tall trees, and all in a neighborhood that is so hidden away, there are people who have lived in our Township for many years that don’t even know it exists!

So, up the driveway we all (all five of us) climbed. Once at the top (and we caught our breath), we rang the doorbell, and were greeted by the realtor. We entered the house, and looked to the left, an enormous, but cozy, family room … I was adjusting to contemporary …

Then the rest of the house …

Then, the kids found the in-ground pool (which we more frequently call the albatross), and we saw the hot tub, and the so very secluded back yard!

We went back home, from this appointment to ‘just look’, with rose-colored glasses firmly on all five of our faces!

By 9pm, that night, we had hired a realtor, made an offer on the house, had it accepted, and had listed our own property …

(kids, this is NOT how to do this)

The decision was not an easy one, just an impulsive one. I remember so well hubby and I discussing what to do, and saying, ‘I just wish there could be … a rainbow in the sky … I don’t need writing in the sky, just a rainbow to indicate ‘go for it’ ” … but, alas nothing but clear blue sky. We went for it, anyway.

We had two conditions to the offer … one was a home inspection, and the other … selling our property.We were not worried about either. The inspection would be done by a professional, who we had used at an earlier time. The second should not have been an issue, because houses were selling before signs went up on the lawns! It was a sellers market, and we were confident!

The sign went up two days later, and the viewings began (and the fast food dinners began with the showings). After six days, we had had thirty-five showings, and our realtor wanted to sit down and talk (that is realtor talk for lets sit down and lower your price, because ten to fifty thousand dollars less off the selling price only affects him by ‘tens to hundreds’ of dollars … just sayin’). We sat down, and got the report. Our house was showing well, no negative comments, and priced well … this all sounded good. Then the predicted statement … ‘I think we should lower the price.’ But we were confident of our price, and held firm.

A week later, our resolve was weakening, as were were down to six weeks until closing, and the thought of living with two mortgages was unbearable.

Then, a last minute showing, where the realtor could not open the lock box, and we needed to let the viewers in, ourselves. They looked, they liked, and, by later that night, we had an offer … for the price we wanted 🙂

A couple of days later their home inspection, followed a few more days by the final paperwork!

We were cleaning up, after dinner, waiting for our realtor to come with that paperwork. As I rinsed the dishes I looked out to see a sun shower … such a cool thing to see! Then I ran to the front window (the one I had looked longingly out a couple of weeks prior, for my rainbow in the sky), confident that our ‘answer’ had arrived, and there it was … big and bright with one end near our home, and the other going in the direction of our new home.

I admit, despite the snickers of my kids (who have compared me to the ‘double rainbow’ guy from the world popular YouTube video … how many hours of combined labor did I go through to push their fat heads out into this world?), that I love rainbows. I love their colors, I love the possibility of there being a double rainbow, I love the hope that is re-birthed in the end of the rains.

There is wonder in the appearance of a rainbow, and that wonder re-ignites an innocence within me that makes me feel fresh and clean, and new, and gives me hope for the future.

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Unfinished

Posted in canada, FAMILY, GOD, life, Love, The Kids, women, WONDER, tagged Aging, Distance, FAMILY, father / mother, Fears, Future, Hope, Illness, Life, Love, Unfinished., Unknown, Wonder on April 12, 2011| 3 Comments »

This one is gonna be a long one, because it is the culmination of a handful of blog entries that are still only drafts, they are … unfinished. So grab your coffee, or tea (from the unfinished blog entry ‘Re-Boiled Tea’, oh, and that’s for you mom … everyone who blogs knows that if no other person on the face of the earth reads your blogs, mom does … and dad, so get your glass of milk), and, of course, chocolate, and snuggle into your seat, it’s going to be a long one (if I get it ‘finished’)!

Now, where do I start? I know how to finish (I can finish the cake, finish reading the book, finish the chocolate, finish the yard work, finish the candy, but I digress). But starting can be more difficult.

I am not a news-lover! As a matter of fact, with hubby gone now for two weeks, the TV REMOTE is gathering dust! Oh, I spent countless hours enjoying reno. and do-it-yourself shows, but, my (undiagnosed) ADD (this is from the unfinished blog entry ‘My Daughter says I have ADD’) can stand TV for only so long!

I do love good news, though. And, recently I heard really good news.

My dad has been sick much of this past winter. He easily gets respiratory infections, pneumonia anything to do with lungs and breathing, he’s had it! He’s been admitted to hospital, drugged through the winter season with an assortment of medications that have been equally successful and failure in improving his condition, and had a butt-load of medical tests and procedures to uncover the root of his problems.

When there is ‘stuff’ going on in the lives of my family, I am so keenly aware of how far the east is from the west (from the unfinished blog entry of the same name). They live on the east coast, and I, on the west. They can watch the sun rise out of the Atlantic, and I can watch it set in the Pacific. They ‘get to have’ (they do not necessarily appreciate this privilege, as they got snow on April 1st this year … April Fools!) snow in the winter, and I suffer (and everyone around me suffers in my vocal suffering) with a season called Monsoon Season. On the East Coast you can buy coastal properties for under $100,000, on the west coast coastal properties are too expensive to hotel at! On the east coast the humor is dry and sarcastic (from the unfinished blog ‘We Have Sarcasm Themed Dinners’ … Seriously!), on the west coast, humor is … shipped in from the east 😉 And, I digress, again!

Truly, living so far away is a sucky bummer (from the unfinished blog entry of the same name … you’re gonna love that one). There is no popping over for a ‘mom talk’, there is no being there for birthdays, and Father’s Day, and bumping into brothers at the mall, and having a house full of my kid’s cousins. There is also no spending occasions with cheek squeezing auntie (where I come from aunts is not pronounced ‘ants’. Ants crawl on the floor, but my aunts … hum, maybe this reasoning doesn’t work so well!), or that creepy uncle (lets face it, every family has at least one relative that is the personification of ‘creepy’) … hum, there are some benefits of living on the opposite coast 😉 .

So this week I heard good news, after all of the tests my dad has been going through, the results are in, and he is okay. No cancer (a relief, as his dad suffered with lung cancer before he died), no pneumonia, no nothing really, except for a virus that he had picked up while in the hospital, at some point. Apparently this virus will be residing in him, as long as he’s residing on planet Earth, and is not problematic unless it flares, but there is good, reliable medication for it that.

Ahhhhh! Good News is so Good!

And so, we all continue living our unfinished lives, in our temporary homes (from the unfinished blog of the same name). It makes me wonder, as I always do when confronted with news (good or bad) … what is the lesson, what is there to learn from this? I figure if something is going to get my heart rate up, or cause me to sweat, or make me laugh hysterically, or cry from the depths of my soul, or make me shake with anger … there must be something to learn from it (whatever ‘it’ is), that I can benefit from. Sometimes it is so much easier to see the ‘benefit’ than others, when it seems to only be a lesson, and a hard one at that.

It’s sort of like when a child touches something hot, after being told not to … that is a hard lesson, and, for the child, who is crying because her hand hurts, the idea of ‘benefit’ from the lesson goes unseen. But, as an adult, we can see that the lesson, although painful, has benefit, as the child will not enter into that danger again. Hum, I guess our experience provides a bigger perspective.

Kind of like our lives. But we are the child. We have ‘stuff’ in life that burns our hands, that burns our hearts, and hurts like crazy. We think there is no tomorrow (or wish there was no tomorrow, so that the pain, the agony the hard ‘stuff’ of life would be over). But, what we ‘children’ think we see as complete and whole … God, the bigger-picture seeing parent, sees as unfinished, and He sees a bigger picture.

I wish I had His lens!

But, for now I am thankful that my dad is okay, that his days are unfinished … I guess there is a lesson, something to learn from this … for me, for him, for all of our family. I guess we need to seek out the answer to that, until it is … you know, finished.

^“We don’t yet see things clearly.

We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.

But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!

We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness,

we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation:

Trust steadily in God,

hope unswervingly,

love extravagantly.

And the best of the three is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:12-13

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A Hiking Story

Posted in canada, GOD, life, Nature/Creation, women, WONDER, tagged Adventure, Fears, Hiking, Hope, Retreat, Snakes, Wonder on April 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

So, I told you yesterday that I had a hiking story. And it comes from the retreat that I wrote about yesterday … so, this could be “Retreat … the Sequel”

On Saturday the weather was … west coast (aka. rain, showers and sprinkles, followed by monsoons).

We started the day with a delicious breakfast of Belgian Waffles, Oatmeal, Fresh Fruit, etc., etc., etc. … none of which did we have to make :D.

Then we had our study time on what is really awesome, and learned that to use the word awesome to describe waffles (no matter how mouth-watering good … mainly because we didn’t have to make them) is really not the way to use ‘awesome’.

The study time was followed by lunch, and it was ~~awesome~~ really good (and we didn’t have to make it).

The afternoon was open to ‘free time’, but there were the options of a craft …

OK I need to segue …

crafts … this is an area of failure for me, in my life.

And, what’s worse, one of my kids LOVES to do crafts.

As a matter of fact, once, after hubby and I had been away,

said (crafty) child says to me, upon our return,

“Mom, look at the crafts our babysitter taught me to do,

do you think that she could teach

EVEN YOU

how to do crafts?”

(my, silent, response, ‘NO’)

… and a hike, and a nap, and games to play, and (because it was a ‘woman’s’ retreat … chocolate to eat). So, I did the craft (photo of that tomorrow), had a nap, ate the chocolate, and took a hike, because the sun had come out.

The hike was described to me this way, ‘it take about an hour and starts out muddy, it’s pretty easy in the beginning, then gets more steep towards the top’. I was up for the challenge, besides, the sun decided to shine and it gave me the opportunity for an intake of Vitamin D. Besides, I love the great outdoors! I just have a problem with the great outdoors that is fast enough, big enough and hungry enough to eat me (is this sounding familiar from my post “Walking Alone in a Wonder-filled Life”?). So, hiking with a group should eliminate this fear … right?

Because I have such strong feelings towards … wet weather, I donned my water-proof jacket, to ensure that it would, indeed, not rain (had I not brought my jacket, Murphy would have guaranteed a 60 minute down-poor, equal only to Noah’s flood).

Sure enough, the path was muddy, in the beginning. But certainly passable.

Then it got steeper and steeper … a good challenge to my ‘maturing’ body. I enjoyed the increase in heart rate, and oxygen intake. And I was having a delightful conversation with a young woman (when I was still able to breath … huff and puff … from the steepness of the path) … life was indeed … good.

Then it happened. The worst thing that anyone could EVER say to me (next to, ‘there is a bear behind, in front of or beside you’), “watch out for the snake.”

Well, if you have ever wanted to see fear personified, you should have been on that hike with me.

I looked up, not down, because I knew that if I had actually seen the snake at me feet, I would have fainted, and then it would, certainly, have crawled on top of me and waited on my chest, peering into my eyes so that, once I came to, it would have killed me, so that I would know it was killing me.

Then I moved my feet in a manner similar to a leprechaun’s dance on St. Patty’s Day, while, of course moving forward, in hopes that my forward was the snakes backward.

OK I need to segue …

I HATE snakes!

If you ask hubby, he will tell you that

when I am having a dream/nightmare/night terror

about snakes

you DO NOT want to be the person sleeping beside me.

What is ‘just a dream’

to him

Is VERY REAL to me,

and I will do, and scream, what I must to ensure

that I get freed from the snake.

… enough said …

(but, this might be a future post)

Then I stopped, a good many feet ‘forward’ looking to my companion, who at about the age of sixteen, was laughing hysterically (probably wishing she had caught all of my antics on video so she could broadcast them on YouTube, or enter the video into an Americas Best Video Contest. She laughed even longer than my psychosis lasted!)

Finally she pointed out the snake, and it was … dead! (I was hearing the Hallelujah chorus all through my being). The snake was headless! … now, it didn’t have to be headless to be dead, but, in my psychotic episode, God knew I need undeniable proof that the snake was really dead, otherwise, I might still be up on that mountain!

So, back to the hike …

Once our four fellow hikers arrived, and ‘admired’ the dead snake (I am confident the only snake to be admired is a dead one), we continued on. Our leader said, ‘now the path gets steep’.

Well I thought my head would spin like in the Poltergeist movie. Because I was pretty confident that I had already done the ‘steep’ part of the trail! My heart rate actually had no where to increase when I experienced the fear of the snake!

So, off we trod … after all I had faced the fear of the snake, whats a steep hill?

Well this hill needed a bungy cord! It was a path that has trees along it … so that you can grab them and pull yourself up. Man, was I missing my ‘eager beaver beast’ who would have hauled my sorry butt up that hill!

But, we made it, and it was spectacular! There was an, enormous hawk glide by … but I was thinking eagle (I have a rather vivid imagination 😉 … like you didn’t know that already) …

“those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.”

Isaiah 40:31

and that, is what retreat is all about.

P.S.: For those who understand what a fear of snakes is like, would you believe that, even though it was headless, and must have been dead for awhile, it was still moving a bit when we came down the mountain … now that is the stuff that nightmares are made of!

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Just a Regular Day?

Posted in FAMILY, GOD, life, Love, Marriage, The Kids, women, WONDER, tagged Hope, Life, Regular, Wonder on March 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

It has been ‘just a regular day’ today …

6am – alarm goes off (but what if it hadn’t?)

7:30am – kids awaken (but what if they hadn’t?)

8:30am – start work (but what if I had no work that I love?)

3:30pm – purchase produce (what if I had no means to do that?)

4:30pm – prepare dinner (what if the cupboards were bare?)

5:30pm – eat dinner with family (what if I had no family?)

10pm – dream bedtime (what if I had no bed?)

There are many ‘what ifs’ in each and every ‘regular’ day. They are the what ifs that, if they were different, if they altered, my regular day would be catastrophic, disheartening, life-changing. I spoke to a teen today, whose uncle (with young children) is dying. No day is ‘regular’ for him, anymore. Today his wife and children wish for a ‘regular’ day again. As an excitement junkie, I can easily become bored with all things regular. But today reminded me that ‘regular’ can mean real, beautiful, satisfying, worth-living-for … LIFE. And it’s better than the alternative.

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