Time for Action

Have you ever needed to make a change? If so, I understand. Years ago, I waited for God to give me a new job. I wanted my two-minute prayer to be followed by a phone call with a wonderful offer.

While I waited for the miracle, I prayed and read the Word. One morning, I was drawn to Matthew 7:7–“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened unto you.”

I was struck by the words “ask, seek, knock” and realized those are verbs of action. My action. I was doing plenty of asking, but the seeking and knocking I had left to God.

Then I read the healing in Luke 17. As Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem, he encountered ten lepers.

They called to Him, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us.”

Jesus replied, “Go show yourselves to the priests.”

If I had been one of those lepers, I would have wanted a discussion.

“Uh, Lord, I know how this works. First, you heal me, then I go to the priests. They proclaim I’m healed, and I return to society.”

None of the lepers had my mindset, though. The rest of verse 14 contains seven powerful words: “And as they went, they were healed.”

They didn’t debate healing. They didn’t take two steps and say, “Well, that didn’t work.” They started their healing journey. “And as they went, they were healed.”

So just as the lepers had to take action, so did I. Thus, I followed up my prayers with these biblical truths and made calls and followed leads. And I landed happily.

How about you? What action do you need to take after you pray?

Life among the Dinosaurs

Have you experienced a moment when you realized you are older than you thought? I had one of those just the other night as I read a children’s book from the 1990s to my young grandson, Noah. One of the characters needed to call his dad, so he picked up the receiver and dialed the phone on a nearby table.

Noah leaned closer to the illustration. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s calling his daddy,” I said.

“But what’s that in his hand?”

“It’s a phone.”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Noah, believe me, it’s a phone—just like we all used to have. We’d pick up this part,” I said as I gestured to the receiver in the picture. “And we’d hold it like this while we pushed the numbers on the base. The older ones had a little wheel on front, and we’d put our finger over the numbers we needed, one by one, and turn the wheel.”

He stared at me, bewildered.

Then I remembered a local phone display. “Noah, next weekend, we’ll go to the museum, and I’ll show you what I’m talking about. Okay?”

He nodded and let me continue reading to him, but occasionally he glanced up at me as though wondering what it was like to live in a cave when the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

When I came home that night, I opened my office closet. I can’t wait to show him the manual typewriter used to address envelopes.

How about you? What everyday items do you have that amaze the younger generation? And after you make your list, come on over for a cookout. I’ll supply the dinosaur ribs.

On Tough Days, Focus on the Blessings

Does February 5 hold special meaning for you? For me, it marks the day decades ago when I stepped into marriage. My husband, Don, and I were filled with youthful energy and bright dreams. Additionally, we had deep faith, college degrees and a solid work ethic. A wonderful future was ours, and we marched toward our concept of the Perfect Family—complete with two beautiful children, the colonial house, two cars and a summer place. We hadn’t planned on brain cancer.

Our son was 10 and our daughter was 8 when Don died. The disease process had given me time to ponder a future without my funny husband and friend, but I resisted those scenes until the doctor put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m so sorry.”

In the days after the funeral, I wanted to withdraw from life. But I had two young children who needed me. They had lost their dad physically, I didn’t want them to lose me emotionally. Besides, I didn’t want to be one of those hand-wringing widows who insists her grief is greater than what anyone else has experienced. So, one dark evening, I picked up a pad of paper and forced myself to list blessings, beginning with my two young children. Then I listed my conviction that the Lord was with us, my education would keep us off the street, and friends and extended family were nearby. I finished the list with the image of our backyard filled with daffodils again in the spring.

Since that long-ago evening, events have occurred I didn’t anticipate—a career change and two cross-country moves because of job opportunities. But I’m grateful I didn’t know about those events the night I forced myself to focus on what I had left instead of what I had lost. Instead, without my realizing it, making the list prepared me for the good things to come.

How about you? I trust you aren’t dealing with grief or desperate loss. But even typical “blue days” can be brightened when we remind ourselves of our blessings. So grab that pad of paper and make your own list. I’m cheering for you!

The Single-Parent Family: Still a Family

My daughter, Holly, was in third grade when she came home one day in tears. The class room mother had handed out directions to an event and said, “Take these home to your families.”

Then undoubtedly remembering that Holly’s dad had died just a few weeks earlier, she glanced at my eight-year-old daughter and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I meant ‘take these home to your moms.’”

Now my little girl was sobbing against me. “I want to be a family.”

I hugged her. “Holly, we still are a family,” I said. “We’re just a family of three now.”

She leaned against me in relief. That was a turning point for both of us.

Even though the incident took place several years ago, I remember its lesson: Holly, her 10-year-old brother and I would have to establish a new sense of family. And it was up to me to lead the way.

Tomorrow, as a veteran parent, I’ll share the above scenario with young single mothers at a local church. I’ll encourage them not to panic. (Oh, the sad stories I can tell of those who looked for rescue from wrong sources.) But my major theme will be for them to draw on the Lord’s strength, which He readily offers as we ask, and allow themselves to discover their own strength. They can travel this road. And they can raise their children to be solid, godly citizens. After all, single-parent families still are families.

Would You Really Want to Be 30 Again?

Recently, over coffee, friends and I discussed our being of a certain age in this youth-oriented society. Soon the invariable question came: Would we really want to be 30 again?

Amazingly, none of us wanted to go back in time. Oh, sure, we miss the figures we had then and the natural hair color and wish we had done a few things differently. But all of us are content with our present age. And all agreed we wouldn’t want to go through those earlier years again unless we could go through them knowing what we know now. We laughed at that concept. After all, our present understanding has come from the experiences we waded through then.

We talked about our young years—raising children, facing unrealistic expectations from ourselves and others, getting established in our careers. And we talked about the national traumas we had witnessed—the Cuban Missile Crisis, which threatened to plunge us into World War III, the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, the Civil Rights struggle, Vietnam. The list and the memories grew by the minute.

But even as we revisited those long-ago events, we pondered what we had learned from them. Soon we confessed what we wish we could do over. One woman would have taken her health issues more seriously. Another would have been more forgiving toward her sister. Another regretted spending so much time housecleaning instead of playing with her children.

Yes, we wished we could re-do and un-do some decisions. But even those regrets come from our mature understanding of life and ourselves now. And perhaps we were incapable of such understanding then.

How about you? Would you really want to be 30 again?

Jesus Wept

I had planned to write three Christmas blogs–about creative gifts and typical stress and the antics of extended family at holiday dinners. Then the horror of the Newtown shootings burst through my car radio as I drove home from a meeting. I called out a prayer of “Oh, Father God. Help those folks. And help the rest of us, too.”

I’m two thousand miles from that East Coast atrocity, but all I wanted to do was drive to the local school and hug my 6- and 10-year-old grandsons. I forced myself to pull into my garage, instead.

Inside my house, I started to turn on the national news, but my mind was filled with unspeakable images, so I numbly sank into my easy chair. My table-top Christmas tree is positioned nearby with gifts for my grandsons underneath. And I wept as I thought of presents in Newtown that never will be opened by excited little hands. I wept as I thought of those precious lives in their final seconds. I wept as I thought of the parents rushing to the fire house near the school, praying their child would run into their arms—-and sobbing when that little one didn’t appear.

In those moments, I didn’t ponder gun laws or angry young shooters or our nation’s need for better mental health care. I could do nothing but pray for those families, for our nation, for my own teacher daughter and her assistant principal husband and their sons. And my only comfort was the image of Jesus welcoming the slain into heaven. But I wonder if first He didn’t wipe tears from His own eyes.

Remembering a New York Elevator Operator

Do you ever wonder if your day-to-day activities matter? Ever think your job is meaningless? Let me assure you, folks DO notice. And you ARE making a difference.

I still carry the sweet memory of a New York worker who didn’t know the example he provided. My two teens and I had moved away from all that was familiar a couple years after my young husband’s cancer death, and I had taken an editorial job an hour north of New York City. At the end of our first year there, we ventured down to Broadway to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was a memorable day of cheering and clapping along with thousands of other families as we watched floats and marching bands and giant balloons that long had accompanied our holiday, but only through TV. The best part of the day, though, was the lesson I learned from a subway elevator operator.

For long hours each day, he was trapped in that box under the city streets, breathing air thick with fumes and dirt. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d been grumpy as we boarded his elevator. But he greeted us cheerfully and asked where we were from.

As he delivered us to our requested level, he cheerfully wished us well and asked us to come again.

As we boarded the subway train on the lower level, we could hear him singing hymns as he strolled in front of the elevator and waited for his next passengers.

I was amazed that rather than allow himself to be bitter about his job or his lot in life, he chose to bring freshness and joy to those who shared his day, even for those few minutes.

What a gentle challenge for me! What if, instead of fretting about my struggles, I chose to be like him? What if I gave others reason to smile?

Have you ever had YOUR day brightened by someone who just was doing his or her job? Have YOU found a way to make a difficult task more bearable? What do you hope others see as they watch YOU at work? Remember, moment by moment, we DO make a difference.