Worth It?

If you received a special thank you like this, after driving 8 tense hours down and (another 8)back, time and again, in rain, fog, snow and slush, just wishing it was 3 instead of 8 hours -- wouldn't you also think it was entirely WORTH IT?!

Life Application

Learning is all about applying what you have heard or read. "Putting feet" to what you believe, as someone has said. Last Sunday I was privileged to listen to an "older" friend share about his life, the struggles in his wife's illness, and the opps he has to help people. He is thrilled to be friends with God, but his life is not easy.

This week I’ve noted several friends suffering. Sometimes a pot of soup helps, other times just prayer. Close friends I know have experienced loss, illness, personal tragedy, and even the unexplained.

Christ prayed passionately for his close friends, but he also walked with them through their struggles (like anger, death, business loss, injustice, illness). When he talked to God, he didn't ask that they (or we) be rescued from stress, but he offers his Presence, and Strength, and Wisdom, and wants us to try to do the same for others.

I hope you've been encouraged as you help a friend. It could be as intimate as checking all week on a sick co-worker, or even contributing disaster relief to the Japan Tsunami. We KNOW we need each other. Let's not foget it in our busyness.

Too Much Quiet

I spent the last two weeks with my girls, first in Nampa, then in Hillsboro. Great times! Just hanging out, watching late night TV, playing w grandkids, stringing beads, making earrings, eating in, and eating out--and enjoying sons-in-law as well.

The best part is getting to know my kids as adults. Seeing what they value, and how they live what they say they value. They are authentic, sincere, caring, patient. All of them. And they are not mats but models, for the rest of their families. They are growing, blooming, learning, sharing, seeking.

But sO good to get home to my mate, my good, good friend! I drove 5 hrs w only one 10 min break last Sunday. Weather wasn't worst imaginable, but far from the best. My greatest strain was the dark. My long distance vision in the dark is not what it used to be.

I'm home again, tired but catching up; thinking all this quiet is probably good for renewal. Yesterday morning a phrase from a Bible verse kept passing through my brain. "Your strength is in quietness and confidence." So I looked it up, read a lot that was before and after that part so I'd get more of a picture.

It was what I'd thought. Yuck. The quiet times have a purpose. Not just for falling asleep, or watching TV, or loosing oneself reading books or magazines. We can and should garner personal growth from the quiet times. The activities and noise of the not-quiet often keep us from really looking inward, but the quiet makes us--allows us--to do that.

First insight: I want to learn to be content wherever I am, under whatever conditions. If I don't make a decision to reach for that, I'll go crazy. God will help me all I want (not to say he will make it pure joy), but better that I set that goal now than be suddenly faced with walls of darkness that I had always fought.

Second insight: Everything will work out for the best. My quiet, my renewal, opps to connect with friends in-town and out, calls to aging parents, visits to aging friends. Seemingly too much quiet, but something I will find a way to use.

I hope you have the quiet you need, but even more, I hope you will accept what you don't have, knowing it has its season, its purpose. Everything is temporary -- at least on this side.

Enjoy the acceptance! Blessings!