Dregs

Just a little bit of this-and-that, tidying up loose ends, gathering up flotsam and jetsam and filling in some of the missing pieces you've been, well, missing from previous blog posts:

This is the picture that I should have included in yesterday's post about childhood Sunday School memories.  Here my older sister, younger brother and I are dressed in our Easter Sunday best and on our way to God's house.

I'm the cute one with the really bad haircut.

We have another brother, the youngest in the family, but he doesn't show up in a lot of the pictures.  He's also the one who never had a birthday party, never got piano lessons, and didn't get braces.  Each year the kindergarten teacher in our elementary school made silhouette cutouts of her students to give as gifts for their mothers.  My mother has silhouettes of each of the three of us in this picture.  The year our youngest brother started kindergarten, she stopped making them.

It's safe to say he's got a little bit of baggage.  But he's okay.  It's not like we kept him out back in the shed feeding him mustard and biscuits or anything.  Mmm hmm...

Since I was scanning pictures anyway, I decided to post this one of my dad and his brother marching together in the Memorial Day parade in their hometown of Tidioute, PA.  (Yes, it's a real place in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania and, yes, preteen boys do snicker when they say that name out loud.)

This picture should have been posted along with item #327 on my Gratitude List in this post.

Other random items of business:

I have now enabled the comment do-wa-diddy-thing so that any and all persons named Anonymous can leave messages in my little corner of blog reality, without having to have any sort of account and password thing.  Feel free to identify yourself in anonymous comments though, as in:

Hi!  It's me, crazy old Leroy who used to chase you home from grade school and throw worms in your hair, commenting on your blog.

And, yes, there really was a boy named Leroy who used to do this.  I assume he was crazy because who in his right mind would throw worms at a skinny, defenseless, stringy-haired girl on her way home from school?

Also, I should mention that I've lost complete control over the format of my text fonts.  I used to import them from Word and they would show up in nice, neat, consistent type print with spaces between the lines.  Now when I copy and paste, I have no idea what kind of font I'm going to get, nor whether it will remain consistent throughout my post.

And, I no longer get updates in my sidebar from one of my favorite blogs.  Now, I just changed web browsers, and the above-mentioned blog just went through a re-design so these two things may just be technical difficulties.  Or maybe there really is a ghost in my machine, in which case:

As a duly-designated representative of the blogosphere, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin, or to the next convenient parallel dimension.

That should do it, I think.  And, yes, I am scattering movie references throughout this post, solely for the benefit of Jodi @ Curious Acorn.  But feel free to play along and look for them yourself, if you like.

And this is my last completely disjointed comment about a previous post:

I came home from Bible study to find my pumpkin tower looking like this, testament to the sticking power of Plumber's Goop, I should think.

It occurred to me that, if Veggie Tales ever wanted to make a cartoon movie version of Dagon, the god of the Philistines, falling on its face before the Ark of the Covenant, it might look something like this.

I told you I was well-schooled in Bible stories.

In any case, if any of you reading this are close personal friends with the good folks at Big Ideas and want to pass along my picture as a movie suggestion, have their people get in touch with my people so they can give me appropriate credit.

Especially since, by the time I finished writing this post, Dagon the pumpkin tower looked like this:

I also have an idea for a Veggie Tale version of the boys taunting the prophet Elisha about his bald head and having some rather unpleasant business with a bear.  But I think I should save that idea for another post.

Long Ago, Far Away, and Right Now

Sometimes--okay, often I wonder if it is worth it, me sitting here tapping at my keyboard, wrangling with technology that gets uppity and tries to prove that it's smarter than me, trying to navigate the world of networked blogs and figure out what on earth a Blog Frog is.  I wonder if I'm being self-indulgent, wasting my time at the computer, telling my stories on the internet, and pretending that any of it matters to anyone but me.

And then, I get a hand-written letter in the mail from a long-ago and far-away friendship.  The words say that she has received the gift of time catching up with another friend from that long ago time.  They have broken bread together and shared each others joys and sorrows.  They have born witness to God's faithfulness in each other's lives.  And somewhere in the conversation, one friend tells the other about this ridiculous little blog of mine.

The friend reads and she writes to me.  Some stories have struck familiar chords, and so she writes offering out of the abundance from which she herself has received.  She tells of struggle and how God has provided, and I hear my Father's voice reminding me that He does not leave us alone on this pilgrimage.  We are one body, and each of us is His gift to the other, His blessing.  And this is just one example from the past few days in which I've received the gift of hearing from friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, from long ago and far away.  Some blessed me when we walked together the streets of my hometown; some walked faithfully with me on my college campus.  Today, they bless me still.

And so right now, today, I continue to write, to tell my stories, to tap out my thanksgiving.



501. Husband who gives the gift of a train trip to visit a far-away friend.

502. Making train connection at DC.

503. Friend willing to pick me up at train station at 2 a.m.

504. One last fling at the beach.

505. Meeting her new friends, the ones God has given her to bear burdens, bind up and bless.

506. Free concert and fireworks on a perfectly warm late summer evening, given as gift to military families.

507. Getting matching t-shirts made to wear to the concert and laughing ourselves silly.

508. Sitting with friend in evening salt air, eating crab cake sandwiches, talking about husbands and children and failure and grace.

509. Fish jumping in the surf.

510. Sharks in the water (and viewing them from the shore)

511. Pelicans

512. Reconnecting with friends from high school, college, and adult married life all within the same week. Introducing them to one another and knowing that our lives are all woven together because we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

513, Knowing that each one of these friends is God’s gift, ordained to be a part of my life because of the goodness and kindness of my loving Father who knows who and what I need most, and when I need them.

514. Handwritten mail—words flowing from heart to hand to paper.

515. Being met at the train station by husband and son when returning home.

516. Returning home.

517. Brother willing to invest time in nephew, to teach him, train him, bear with him, and appreciate him.

518. RUF campus minister investing time in son.

519. Getting through wisdom tooth removal.

520. Pain medication.

521. Enjoying a movies miniseries together as a family.

522. Receiving the invitation from the women in my church to the shower for my baby girl.

523. A walk with my neighbor and an invitation to be a blessing.

Love Notes From My Father

At times, God speaks to me through hummingbirds.

Now, before anyone goes running off to report my suspect theological leanings to a member of my church's leadership or refers me to a mental health professional for evaluation, let me explain.

I can't imagine that God created hummingbirds for any reason other than that it simply pleased Him to do so, knowing that they would bring us joy.  I know hummingbirds pollinate flowers, and so they are useful;  there's probably also some science involved.  But I prefer to think that their primary mission is simply to bring us joy.

And because I know that we live in a world with devils filled that threatens to undo us, I sometimes let my heart be troubled.  And on more of those occasions than I can count, I've been prompted to look up just in time to catch a glimpse of a hummingbird.  It seems to me that hummingbirds are sent to cheer and encourage me whenever I most need to see them.  I consider them love notes from God.

This past week I had to take the beloved teenage son for the ASVAB (military qualification) exam, which felt a little like handing him over and granting permission for him to be led into clear and present danger.  My friend and guru (which I mean in the most respectful, presbyterian and reformed sense of the word imaginable) asked me how she could pray for me as I left to pick my son up from school. I asked her to pray that God would peel back the curtain ever-so-slightly to give me a glimpse of His presence with me along the way.

After leaving my friend, I stopped at a local nursery to pick up some plants for my window boxes, and guess what caught my eye just as it darted through an opening in the greenhouse?  Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe I really am crazy.

Or, just maybe my heavenly Father really does love me and truly does answer prayer and sent me a love note to remind me as I was on my way to do something hard.

In continuing to count the gifts from my Father's hand, I open more love notes:





310. The hummingbird, sent as a love note from the hand of my heavenly Father to remind me, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

311. First draft of the senior project completed; the finish line in sight.

312. Getting to drive a car full of four of my favorite teenage guys to the music festival.

313. A day away from homework and tests and papers replaced by one filled with music.

314. Hearing the beloved teenage son shine as accompanist.

315. Mother-of-the-bride joy.

316. We are weak, but He is strong.

317. God is gracious, God is great, God is good; therefore, let not your hearts be troubled.

318. The prayers of many for miraculous healing; reason for hope.

319.  Window boxes filled with flowers.

320. Graduation parties.

321. Summer food: burgers and dogs and pasta and potato and Jello salads in abundance and shared with friends.

322. The light shining in the darkness in New Haven, CT, overcoming evil and transforming lives.

323. Lakeside lunch with the beloved Swede.

324. A perfect Sunday afternoon of floating in the pool with family and Ethel.

325.  Veterans and those who serve.

(My grandfather, Henry Fischer, who provided veterinary services to the cavalry in WWI)

326. Memorial Day parades.

327. Memories of Dad in uniform. (Gotta digitize this photo)

328. Those who tend the graves of loved ones and remember.

329.  A trophy and a smile.