Bees in My Bonnet

I'm not going to start off by telling you any reason why I have the right to tell you these things.  My thoughts should prove helpful regardless, I imagine.  If I were talking to a group of parents who are struggling with the challenges of raising a child with A.D.D. here are some of the things I might say to them: Before I get into all the nitty gritty, I want to begin with a basic premise - seemingly so obvious that it might be redundant to state it, but I believe it is a foundational starting point from which to parent any child - or even to interact with any human being, and it is this:  Your child was created by God, with His very fingerprints all over them.  God stamped His own image, His own self, into the very person you deal with on a daily basis.  Your child is created imago dei  - in God's image, by God Himself.  So we can all agree, God wanted your child to exist, and was intimately involved in the process of making and shaping this chil...

Four weeks ago today I could've talked to my Dad.  I had called a few times over the weekend but missed him - or got a few words before the concert he was attending began.  We had a couple conversations the week before.  Nothing of great significance crossed my mind, so it was the usual stuff - and he talked a bit with each of the kids. Today I cannot speak with him.  Four weeks ago, this evening, he was on his way to see us and had stopped for the night in a motel in Georgia.  He and my Mom had a nice visit with friends, then booked into their motel and headed for bed.  He was reading in the other room and seemed to fall asleep.  My Mom tried to wake him to come to bed.  But he wouldn't be woken.  His peaceful sleep had merely been a transition from this world to the next. I got the call at 10:30, and I was already asleep.  My mind could not take in or comprehend those words, "Dad is gone."  I refused to believe while grief sw...

An extra day - a breather; a pause. Crisp air, rushing winds, but deadness still sits on parched and empty branches. Just enough warmth to warrant hope and a hint of squishyness in the mud - To promise the dawning of spring. Lent is a season of austerity - a time away from what is our common lot.  I put off a habit and add one that requires discipline.  I wonder what it is really all about - the ashes, mourning, reflection on spiritual life.  Perhaps the last moments of this winter are a visual, experiential reminder of the deadness of soul, which without Christ's redeeming - and resurrecting - work, would remain our permanent condition. Winter's deadness seems to say, "Come, and sit a while in this quiet emptiness.  No life is visible in me, yet we know resurrection is at hand.  But, for now, wait in it - feel what the absence of vibrant life is like.  And wait.  Yearn.  Hope - while it is dark and bleak.  Be still in it.  Do no...

Recently a friend wrote me a lengthy explanation of how God wants us all to experience the victory of joyful living and that for a Christian to experience ongoing struggles of depression or other types of sadness is not what God intends.  It was an interesting read, and she asked for my response.  Since I am not posting her viewpoints here, and have probably overly simplified them above, I am possibly being one-sided and unfair in this response.  However, since I have something to say on the matter, I'll just put it here where I tend to just dump all my ramblings anyways.  I don't intend to respond to her point by point but just sum up some of my thought-process regarding grief, mourning, sorrow, depression, sadness, and general difficulties we face in life that can pull our spirits downward. Basically, the question came down to one of codifying the morality of sadness - is it wrong for a Christian to be unexplainedly sad?  I tend to not think in these areas ...

Pardon the poetry these days.  Sometimes it just spills out here and there.  Words emerge in mingled masses until I throw them on a scrap of paper, only to be lost somewhere along the way.  Here and there I may get them into this blog, for a more permanent chronicle of the gazillion thoughts that I think.  This one is mostly thoughts I am telling myself.  Am I the only one who talks to myself?  Hope not! Re- Re- tell, Re- write, Re- alize. Re-engage, Re-turn -  A turning again to what once was, that might have missed its place -  the place of significance, of priority, of impetus on your journey. Re-think, Re-new, Re-birth: Because these all flow,  each from the other. Re-open - open your eyes to see what has been there, but you never dared to see.   See reality.  See yourself.  See the love you haven't held. Re-visit - the things you tossed aside as useless - Gifts of heritage and faith...

Do not think much of me for the things I say. Do not think much of me for the things I do. In fact, do not think much of me at all. Think much of Christ - of His greatness, worth and love, and then, Only then... Think much of me as His broken child - needy, helpless and empty; Waiting to be filled by Him, To be soul-fed by His real food and bonded to Him by His real drink. I thirst, and am nothing but a hungry child. Think much of my want, my lack, my nothingness. And think much of the Christ I love; the perfect Treasure of grace and truth, Whose supply abounds. There is nothing much to think of me, And oh, so much to think of Him.

I fill my home with words - on windows, walls, microwave, fridge and oven. Volumes full of words arranged on shelves form libraries of verbiage to plow up in search of some novel nugget - to turn slowly in the polishing chamber of the mind. No room shall lack them - words tucked in hidden places, Not the least: bathrooms, where one might flee for solitude and reflection. Words here will not be meaningless - lifeless chatter to fill empty spaces... floating around us merely with their wisdom and wit - Much more than arrangements of letters and words: Grace, love and joy spill from crevices, catching the eye, and maybe the soul unaware; Prompting a thought yet unthought - An impulse not quite begun. For those with ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts ready to receive the seeds of truth will sit and wait - Beckon in their silence To all who enter.