The God of Wind and Rain

March 1985. I was a junior in high school. We lived in a very large twenties era house owned by a hotshot lawyer in town. The rent was a few days late and a sheriff came to the door to tell us we had to move in thirty days. This was on a Monday or a Tuesday. We thought we had plenty of time.
Friday, lunchtime. I was pondering participles in my English class when I was called out to the hallway. Somebody met me there and told me they had driven by my house and saw people throwing things out of the upstairs windows onto the lawn. I hurriedly ran to the phone and called Mom who came to get me. We frantically pulled up to the house just in time to see someone throwing one of my great grandmother's hurricane lamps out the window and onto the lawn below, which was littered with our belongings. The men were laughing at our anguish as they continued to toss things out the door and windows. Apparently they had been at it for some time because most of our things were outside. The refrigerator, the ancient upright piano, all of our clothes, record albums, food, everything thrown out on the lawn in a haphazard jumble. The men had been sent by the lawyer who had taken things into his own hands, unwilling to wait the full thirty days for us to move. They soon finished the job and drove off in a pick up truck, still laughing as we stood among the wreckage of our lives in the light drizzling rain.
By this time my sisters had arrived home from school and my mother had arranged for a place to move all of our stuff. Slowly, one pick up load at a time we began moving the things off of our lawn and into shelter.
In the early evening my aunt came over to help. We worked all night in the light drizzle until about midnight or one AM. My mom was off with the latest load and my sisters and aunt and I were standing together under the front porch awning. As we talked it began to pour. We still had a lot of stuff on the lawn and were very worried about everything getting wet. As we stood there my aunt began to pray. I will never forget it. "Lord, You are the God of the wind and rain and we ask You now to stop the rain until we can get all this stuff under shelter. In Jesus name. Amen." As we opened our eyes and lifted our heads the rain began to lift and then stopped. To say we were amazed would be a huge understatement. But there was more to come. A little while later the rain began to pour. She prayed a second time: "Lord again we ask you to stop the rain, in Jesus name." Again as we opened our eyes the rain stopped.
Mom came back; we loaded up the pick up for the umpteenth time and she left.
A while later the rain really began to come down. Again as we gathered under the porch she began to pray. This time though the rain did not lesson. Did God not hear us? Did He not choose to answer? Was our stuff going to be ruined? As we looked around we realized that every single thing left outside was now covered by plastic and not a thing was getting wet. Standing there under the front porch we were comforted by the presence of God in a very, very tangible way. In the midst of injustice and our temporary homelessness He was there.

This was a very difficult thing to write about. I really had to think about it before I began to type. It's very hard to relive the pain of that day; hard for me to relate it and I'm sure it will be hard for my family to read about. However, out of that dark, dark day came a revelation that God is who He says He is and it's worth the shaking hands on the keyboard and tears to let other people know. God is there. He cares. He loves. He IS.

Mercy

I was twenty years old. The year was 1988. I was a super skinny, super tall girl with long curly hair who rode a motor scooter everywhere she went. That is until today. Now I had four wheels instead of two. I lovingly caressed the hood of my 1974 Toyota Corona Hatchback. (No, not corROLLA. CorONA.) This old car was going to take me places my little Honda Spree could never go. For one thing I could drive to work in comfort now and not have to worry about "helmet hair" anymore.
I loved my little car but soon discovered it had some potentially dangerous drawbacks. One thing was that when it rained the engine would die. No matter where I was, if it so much as sprinkled, I was out of luck. One time it was on Wycliffe Ave in Dallas, right in front of the Anatole Hotel. My new best friend, Tyra, without thinking a thing about it got out of my car and proceeded to push us up the hill in the rain in her flip flops. I will never forget seeing her face in the rain behind the car as long as I live. They just don't make true friends like that anymore. But that was much later. I digress.
Another thing about the car was that when the engine died, so did the lights. This was particularly dangerous at night as I soon found out.
I was working in a t-shirt shop at the mall. It had been a slow day (they all were at that mall) and it was about 930 PM. I was tired. I pulled out of the parking lot and out onto the highway in front of the store. As I entered the highway my engine stalled and died. It wasn't raining so for a second I was thrown for a loop. I looked at the gas gauge and realized it was completely, totally empty. I had forgotten to buy gas on my way to work. My next thought was of complete panic. I had no lights. On the highway. At night. I looked in the rearview and saw a truck headed straight for me at sixty miles an hour. I knew without a doubt that I was going to die. I knew it was going to be bad. I huddled up in the steering wheel, closed my eyes and thought more than said a prayer. "Jesus, Here I come. Just please don't let it hurt too bad." I heard the long squeal of brakes behind me and braced for the impact. What should have been the tearing, crashing sound of metal and glass was instead-complete silence. I tentatively opened my eyes. I saw somebody running for my car. He threw open my door and leaned in. I could see his eyes, huge with fright and astonishment in the lights of his truck beaming from behind. "Julie?!!" he said, his voice even more astonished than his eyes because we knew each other from church.
"Dale?!!" I replied, just as surprised as he was. "Are you all right?" he asked me. I told him in a shaking voice, "I ran out of gas, my lights don't work when the engine isn't on." Without a second's hesitation he and his friends began to push my car out of the traffic and over to the gas station across the street. They even insisted on filling my tank. What I didn't know, as I drove away from the gas station was how close we had both come to death or at the very least a terrible car accident that night. I had never seen how close his truck had come to my bumper. I saw him a week later and was telling someone about the near accident in his hearing. I said "He must been a foot from my car...", when Dale stopped me and corrected me. "A foot? No, Julie, it was an inch. One inch" he said. That got my attention. I forgot about the person I had been telling the story to as my eyes were riveted on Dale's fingers, measuring in millimeters how close we had come to disaster.
I never saw Dale again after that night. It has been twenty two years since that day but I can still see his face in the headlights of his truck as he threw open my door. We both knew. Absolutely without a doubt. That God had intervened in our lives in a very, very real way. It still gives me pause and makes me bow my head for a moment to thank God for His great mercy.

Providence

Thank you, Lord for your great care for me. You knew what I needed before I knew I needed anything. Your kindness never fails to amaze me. I will worship You all the days of my life. When I awake your praise will already be on my lips and I will continually praise you throughout the day. You will be my last waking thought before I sleep and I will rest securely knowing I am in your care through the night. I love you, Lord.

About a month or so ago I needed my daughter's car keys from her room. It was early morning and I was in a hurry, so I just glanced around the room and grabbed the first set I saw. Right away I realized that they weren't what I was looking for, so I set them down and then saw the ones I needed on her desk, took them and went on my way with never another thought about it until this morning.

I didn't want to get up when the alarm went off but the new washer was going to be delivered today and I had to get everyone moving so I could be back here and ready for the delivery by 8 AM. I wasn't actually sure they would be here at that time, they hadn't been specific about it, but Murphy's Law says whatever time you aren't there is the time they will arrive. So I left the house @ 730 with the intention of coming right back after I dropped my aunt off at her friend's house.
We stopped at the ATM by my house for some cash but for "some reason" it was out of order. I knew the drive thru bank across the street was open at 730, so I pulled in there, but for "some reason" the hours have changed. Now they don't open until eight.
I decided that we would go to the gas station on the highway across the street from the high school. They have an ATM and I could get gas there too. I pulled in and my aunt went in to pay for the gas. I got out and fiddled with the passenger side window for a minute. The passenger side window has an electrical problem and once rolled down will not roll back up. My kids all know to never touch that switch because the door has to be taken apart to fix it but Ally accidentally hit the button yesterday rolled it halfway down. The chilly morning air was making it uncomfortable in the cab; so I popped the cover off the door and then the plastic switch cover off the wire. I needed a little leverage and inserted my truck key as a wedge, because it was in my hand and handy. Before I could finish, my aunt was back and we had to go, so I decided to work on it later. I popped it all back on really fast, pumped the gas and got back in the driver's seat. I pulled out the keys and as my glance fell on them my mouth dropped open. My truck key was broken in half.
Right at that moment my mind flashed back into my daughter's bedroom. In my mind I was looking for a set of keys and as I glanced at the set on her dresser I saw the extra set of truck keys, the one we had never used, on her key chain. (I wondered why she had them, our truck is a stick shift, and she has never driven it).
Back in the present, I looked out the back window and realized that we were right across the street from the high school. She would be in class right now, but I could have her come to the office and loan me her car for a few minutes. I looked at my aunt; said "I will be right back" then got out and walked across the street. They called her to the office, I borrowed her keys, and drove straight home. I walked in her room and there they were, exactly where they had been when I had actually seen them weeks or months ago, and exactly where my mind had placed them. I picked them up, drove back to the gas station, moved the truck into a parking space and out of the gas area, got back in the car, drove it back across the street and then walked back to the gas station.
As I walked across the street from the school to the gas station for the last time, I had goosebumps that weren't entirely from the chilly morning. If I hadn't had to go into her room to find her set of keys all those weeks ago, I would have never known where to find the ones I needed today. As long as I could remember we had almost never used those keys. I would have been clueless as to where to find them. If the ATM hadn't been down, and the drive thru hadn't been closed I would have been too far away to walk. God knew. He knew long before I did that I would do something stupid this morning (keys as a tool, I should know better) and fixed it before I ever-even-asked.
As I inserted the key into the ignition I looked at my aunt and said "Well, this has been a lesson in the providence of God!" She replied "yes it has!". With that we were on our way.
God is so good. I can't say it enough.

Stupid

Along with my self worth issues, or should I say contributing to my self worth issues was how I viewed my intelligence. My whole life, or most of it, I considered myself stupid.
In third grade it became apparent that I had some math issues. I was put in a remedial math class with a teacher named Miss Maxwell. She had short dark hair and I did not like her. We were studying multiplication and she gave us instructions for an assignment. As she was speaking I began daydreaming, staring off into space, thinking about anything but math. Nothing interested me less than math. She finished speaking and I continued staring off into nothingness. The next thing I knew she grabbed me up and was marching me to the office. I didn't know what I had done, but as she pulled me down the hall, she informed that I was being punished for "daydreaming". I was wearing a very short green corduroy dress with a wide seventies white collar and I became very afraid as she pulled out a big wooden board and began paddling my bottom. The dress did little to pad the blows. Neither did my thin cotton panties. I never forgot her, the math class, or the dress. Or how stupid I felt.
Fast forward two years. Different teacher, different school. Same feeling of stupid. I was in my second year of violin class and I had a secret which I carefully guarded for fear of shame that anyone would find out. I couldn't read the music. For two years I had "winged" it, listening carefully to the sound of the song as played by others and according to how I knew the tune went and duplicating that on my violin.
One day though, she finally caught on to me. Unfortunately it was in the middle of class. When she realized that I didn't know the music for the upcoming spring concert she just kind of stood back and regarded me through those big glasses of hers and then at last she spoke. "You can't be in the program" she said. I looked down at my violin as the tears came. So much shame. Stupid closed in on me and made me feel so worthless. I think in the end she did let me perform with the class for the program but after the year was over a few weeks later I never picked up the violin again, and music to me was a closed world.
Fast forward again, about twelve years. Stupid has followed me all the way through high school and intimidated me into not going to college. Instead I take a job at Jack in the Box. After a year of working there on the graveyard shift I am offered the position of shift leader. I have to go to "shift leader school" and take some classes and tests. It is while I am there that the shackles of stupid begin to loosen and I finally realize that things might not be as I supposed all these years. I take a test and hand it in to the teacher. I am the first one done. The test was easy. I had been ready for it for a week. After I hand it in he takes a minute to grade it and then says to me "I have never had someone turn this in so fast and get them all right". He has no idea the cataclysmic bomb this sets off in my mind. Simple words, but all of a sudden I realize that maybe I'm not as stupid as I think. In my mind I see a bird fly out of a rusty cage. I feel free. Little do I know that there is more freedom to be had.
One day my aunt, who has inherited my grandfather's 1949 Flat top "Texan" Epiphone guitar, asks me if I would like to have it. I jump at the offer. I have always loved guitar, have always wanted to learn how to play it, but as I mentioned earlier, it was just a shut off world to me.
The guitar sat in my house for a few months until one day I picked it up and began to pluck the strings aimlessly. I realize that it is a useless gift unless I learn how to play it. I go to the store and buy "Guitar for Dummies" and check out some stuff from the library. At first I don't get it. I sound terrible and I'm slow. Can't make it sound like music. But I keep trying. After about a month I have learned three or four chords. I open the book and try a song. It sounds awful. I try another song, this one is Yankee Doodle Dandy. I pluck the strings, and all of a sudden I realize I am playing a recognizable tune! I am absolutely elated. Can't believe it! The doors of the music world, if not thrown wide open are at least open a crack. Stupid begins to lose its hold on me at last. But there is more to come.
Ten years later I begin to attend a church function. It's actually a weekly prayer meeting. I love the ladies. I love to pray with them. On this particular day, however, I make a joke that really isn't funny. It's...stupid. The joke falls flat. One of the ladies criticizes sharply and I begin to cry. I can't stop myself. I become hysterical and I don't know why. Two hours later I am still crying. I am at home. Still crying. Doing laundry I think to myself "I haven't felt this stupid since...since...violin class in the fifth grade..." All of a sudden it becomes clear to me. Stupid is from Satan. It is not just a word it is a tangible thing. And it's not who God says I am. God has never called me stupid, he calls me friend! The tears immediately stop. I am instantly OK again. Putting down the laundry I run upstairs and get on the computer. I look up the word and am amazed at what I read.

From Webster's dictionary. Stupid: Slow of mind. OBTUSE.

I wonder about the all caps word Obtuse. I look it up. Not pointed or acute. BLUNT.

But its what it says about the origin of the word that takes my breath away. This is what really got me.

Middle English, from Latin obtusus blunt, dull, from past participle of obtundere to beat against, blunt, from ob- against + tundere to beat

The words "to beat against" bring tears to my eyes because that sums it up exactly. All these years every single time I did something wrong, made a mistake, said the wrong thing I could hear the word STUPID STUPID STUPID pounding in my head. Beating me into dullness. Intimidating me into being less than I could be for fear of failure and being found stupid.

I realized that I had a spiritual problem. It began the day the teacher told me I couldn't be in the program. She laid a mantle of stupid on me even though she never uttered the word and I wore it all my life. For a long time I was angry with her for her lack of sensitivity. What kind of a teacher chastises a student in front of the other kids? But then I realized I bear a portion of the blame. I was a child when she spoke those words. But I grew up. And I still wore the label. I allowed myself to believe the lie. Bought into it without ever questioning it, never realizing that God had never spoken that over me.

I spoke to that spirit of Stupid. I told it to go away in the name of Jesus. I asked God's forgiveness for my belief in it. And I was free.

A few weeks later I saw a lady on TV who captured my attention. Completely. It was Intervention and she needed help. Oh how she needed help. She was shown on the previews hitting herself. Beating herself up with her hairbrush, her fists, whatever she could find to punish herself. As she beat herself she repeated the mantra "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" Goosebumps prickled my skin. I had empathy for that woman like I had never felt for anyone before. I began to pray for her. I know, I know, its TV, but another secret of mine is that I sometimes pray for the people I see on TV. My heart went out to her. If only she could know how much God loves her. If only we could ALL know how much God loves us. It would change our perspectives about ourselves completely and totally forever.

Self Worth

I have a little secret. I have been struggling with self worth. To tell you the truth I have been struggling with self worth since the day I emerged from my mother's womb and let out that first scream that said "Look here! Eyes on me! Tell me my life is going to mean something!" I struggled with it as a child, growing up in a broken home and as a teenager who sat on the sidelines at school and church and watched everybody else. I hated that I was so different. I didn't play by the same rules as everybody else seemed to. I didn't care about popularity at school, I was creative and artistic and I talked a lot. Way too much, I thought. I hated the way I looked. I had curly hair that would never stay in place. I craved control over every single part of my life and my curly hair defied me right down to the last little wiry strand. So as my teen age years slid by my self loathing hit an all time low. I wanted to die. Just check out. No point in this worthless life anymore, if this was how it was going to be. Suicide wasn't an option for me mostly because I didn't have the nerve (thank God!) but I thought about it a lot.
If I thought that I was going to find my worth in my twenties I was mistaken. I had some high years, I got married and had kids. For a while the kids held the feelings I had about myself at bay, but as they grew up and needed me less, the worthlessness returned with a vengeance. I was a stay at home mom, no job, no career, husband gone a lot of the time. I had lots of time to think. And I didn't like my thoughts. Who was I? I had to be more than just Mom to the kids and Wife to the husband. I needed to justify my breathing space on Earth and I wasn't living up to my own expectations. Or anybody elses, it seemed. Losing weight hadn't given me the self worth I needed. I felt better about myself but with every ounce that I gained back I felt a deepening depression that I wasn't even capable of doing that right. Didn't feel like I could do ANYTHING right. I had been a Christian for a long time. Well I called myself that anyway. One day all of my spinning plates(marriage, kids, finances, house) came crashing down around me and buried me under the debris of my own life. I sat out in my back yard and cried. And cried. And cried some more. I again felt worthless. I decided I wanted to go to California and open up a boutique on the beach and get as far away from here as possible, which was ridiculous, because aside from the fact that I would never leave my kids, I knew zilch about boutiques, or running a business, or even how I would get to California with zero money. As I sat out there under those trees I had a revelation. I was not a Christian. Maybe at one time I had been, but I wasn't living as if I believed in a Living God anymore. I did what I wanted when I wanted and God really didn't cross my mind very much. I realized that I had been trying to give myself worth through all kinds of things; my dieting, my art, my writing, my photography, my kids, my marriage, and my old house. And none of it was working. These things were all part of me, but I was trying to make them define me. I realized that these things are only temporal. What happens when I'm fat, when my writing, art, and photography are gone? When the kids grow up? If my marriage fails? If I lose my house? Am I still worth something? The answer is a whispered "Yes" in my heart. I hear God tell me that I am worthy of my space on Earth for no other reason than that He created me. And loved me enough to exchange his Son's life for mine. I don't have to do anything, prove anything, look a certain way, act a certain way, just be His; completely His. Some days I still struggle. I have had words thrown at me that wounded me deeply, made me question my worth, made me feel like I've lost it. But then I find myself driving down the road, CD blaring, singing "How Great Thou Art" at the top of my lungs and suddenly I know I've found my worth again. He thinks I am worth loving, He thinks I am worth caring for, He loves all my quirky ways, curly hair and freckles included. He knows I talk too much, and sometimes say the wrong thing, but He loves me anyway. Who am I to argue?
If your self worth has taken a beating lately, know this. You are valuable. No matter the circumstance you find yourself in, your worth is inestimable. You are not just a lump of matter, you have been formed by the hand of God. YOU matter.

God help me remember that my
self worth comes not from
my weight, my photographs
my writing, or how much
money I have in the bank.

Help me not to limit myself to these
Earthly things
but to look to Heaven
to properly see
my worth.

He's got the Whole World...In His Hands...

I hurried into the library to return a long overdue book. As I laid the book on the counter and turned to leave I was arrested by this month's featured display in the curio cabinet. It was of several different types of globes. There at the top was a small globe bank identical to the one I had as a child. I often wondered, out of all the toys I had, what happened to this one?
When I was a child it meant little to me. Just one toy among many. It wasn't until I was grown and it was long gone that I became attached to it.
I must have been about eight years old. I don't know why I was looking for it. I remember walking all around our suburban ranch style house looking here, looking there. I checked all the usual places, in the toybox, under the bed but it was nowhere to be found. Suddenly the solution came to me. I knew exactly what I should do in this situation. I stopped walking and right in the middle of the hall I closed my eight year old eyes and prayed. "Jesus, will you please help me find my piggybank". I stood there for a minute longer and then a picture came to my mind of where it was. I "saw it" under my dad's overstuffed naugahide chair in the living room. Without wasting another minute I walked straight over to the chair, bent down and retrieved the piggybank . I said a quick "thank you" under my breath and went on about the business of being a kid. There was no noise, no fanfare, nothing that would tell me I had just embarked on the journey of a lifetime with the One who had created me, although I'm sure the angels in Heaven must have been making a deafening racket in their delirium of joy.
It would be another year or so before I would kneel with my Auntie on the orange shag carpet (with hands folded on the shiny yellow vinyl couch) in her house and ask Jesus to "come into my heart" and another year or so after that before I realized the significance of that prayer. When I finally came to that realization my whole life turned upside down. Or should I say my upside down world suddenly turned right side up, just like that little globe when I was through shaking all of the pennies out of it.

Praise and Worship

I've been doing a lot of thinking about praise and worship for the last few days. Stuck in my bed for most of the last two weeks, I have begun to miss my daily guitar time with the Lord. I can't sing, my voice is shot, and my nose has been running nonstop and I have developed a terrible cough. It has been impossible for me to worship with singing. So this got me thinking. What other ways are there to worship God? How do you worship if you can't sing? My whole being depends upon the worship of my God. My peace comes from it.
I have always thought of praise and worship as one entity, ("P and W"). I began to realize that there is a difference. Praise is the verbal outpouring of our love for our God, whether in word or in song. Worship encompasses praise but is much much more than just a verbal word or song.
I began to think about those who could not worship with praise. Not just temporarily, like me, but people who could not sing EVER. People who are sick, or elderly, or handicapped. How do they worship the Lord? People like Corrie ten Boom, who was silenced by strokes the last five years of her life. The glory of God surrounded her right up until the day of her death, yet she could not speak a word, she couldn't talk, she couldn't write or communicate in any way.

I began to think I was on to something. I asked God to show me how to worship not just in singing and praising Him but in every single way possible. As the words left my mouth I remembered a verse from Proverbs, "In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths." (chap 3 vs 6)
I began to realize that the act of worship can be performed in every single thing you do. Your whole life can be an act of worship. You can acknowledge (and thus worship) simply by telling him Thank You for the things he has blessed you with. You perform an act of worship every single time you hear his voice directing you which way to go when a decision has to be made, and following his voice. You worship every single time you tell your kids a Bible story. Setting a Godly example for your kids is an act of worship. Even the smallest things, such as resisting the urge to watch that funny (but unGodly) tv show that you like so much is an act of worship because you are acknowledging that He has no part in that, and so you should not either.
Worship is not simply doing these things, however, it is the LONGING inside to please God's heart. You can do all of these things mentioned above mechanically and there is no worship involved. But when you follow that burning desire in your heart to acknowledge Him in ALL your ways, not just with your voice, then when your voice is gone His peace will still be with you.

"Embed"

I got out the old guitar and strummed the worn out strings. The sound was slightly off key and more than a little twangy. I tried for a while to get it in tune but I couldn't’t get it exactly right. After a few minutes I just decided to get on with it and let it be.
I began to sing and play some simple worship tunes on the guitar. After a few minutes the frantic feeling of “not having enough time for this” began to dissipate and peace took over, just as it had every single other time I made the effort to worship. I knew this was right where I needed to be at this minute, this hour, this season of my life.
I reflected on a conversation my best friend and I had been having the day before. We had both been talking about current events and how much it scared us to see how corrupt our country had become. How out of control the world was, with all of it’s earthquakes, and floods, and famines, and wars. In short all of the things that would happen in the end times. I had not had words to comfort either one of us. I asked the Lord to give me the words he wanted us to hear concerning all of this.
I closed my eyes and just strummed for a minute or two, and then I heard it. “Embed yourself in Me”, said a voice from within. I knew immediately that it was the voice of the Lord. It was not my voice, but a very calm peaceful commanding voice, a voice of authority. “Embed yourself in Me.” The meaning was very clear and concise, there was no beating around the bush, no guesswork in trying to figure it out,
I decided to look it up on the computer to see what Merriam Webster had to say about the word Embed. Here is what it said. “Embed: To enclose closely in or as if in a matrix. i.e. fossils embedded in stone.
I wondered about the word matrix and decided to look it up as well.
MATRIX. An environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure."
 What this meant was not exactly crystal clear, but I knew I was onto something. Later on I just "happened" to see a tv show in which a scientist (who was unearthing a fossil) explained in simple terms that a matrix was what the object was surrounded by, like a pebble dropped in a bowl of water. The water would be the matrix. In a fossil the earth or stone around it would be the matrix. When I heard that, the meaning of matrix became crystal clear.
I called my friend, who just “happened” to be having a conversation with her husband about exactly the things we had been talking about, at exactly the moment of my call. The timing was literally “out of this world”. “Embed yourself in Me”, I told her the Lord had told me. She became very, very excited and I swear at one point I heard her sniffling. I know my best friend well enough after twenty years to know when something affects her enough to make her cry. I wanted to cry too.
Then there is this. In order for a fossil to embed itself in a stone it has to die.
We have to die to ourselves and embed ourselves in the arms of our Father, from whom we have our being.

“Embed yourself in Me”.

When there’s no money in the bank.
“Embed yourself in Me”.

When you lose your job.
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When your children are rebellious and you don’t know what to do with them,
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When they are talking about holding your daughter back in school and you don't kow how to tell her and it's ripping your heart out.
"Embed yourself in Me."

When your teenagers don't return your love...and it's ripping your heart out
"Embed yourself in Me."

When you’re afraid your husband is going to leave you…and he does…
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When your beloved grandmother passes away
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When you find out your nine month old niece has cancer and has had it since birth
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When you hear that faraway voice on the phone telling you there has been a car accident…
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When your house is falling apart and you can't fix it
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When you find yourself consumed with anger, hurt, resentment…
“Embed yourself in Me.”

Likewise:

When the money is flowing
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When your kids turn their back on their rebellion…
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When they bring home straight “A”s from school
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When they put their arms around you and tell you they love you
"Embed yourself in Me."

When your husband comes home and your marriage is renewed
"Embed yourself in Me."

When everybody is healthy
“Embed yourself in Me.”

When you couldn’t be happier
“Embed yourself in Me.”

In Everything you do “Embed Yourself in Me.”

Your Love Broke Through

The music takes me back. I'm forty years old, but in my mind I'm ten years old again, and laying on the orange carpet listening to Auntie Kathy play the piano. It's 1978 and the music she is playing is Keith Green. I don't know it yet, but the melodies will be with me for the rest of my life. The music wrapped itself around the four of us, the three kids, and my aunt, and created a bond that has yet to be broken. We have had many disagreements, but the one thing we have never disagreed on is that music. It was real. Down to Earth. It reached out to where we were and picked us up, and took us to another level. It told us there was a life to be lived. It spoke of hope, and peace, and healing. Things I desperately needed were offered. I reached out and took the offering, and it changed my life.

Many years later, after we were all grown up and married, my aunt decided to give the piano to my youngest sister. The only hitch was, that my aunt lived in Texas, and my sister lived in Arizona. My middle sister, Heather had a moving van, and had volunteered to bring it to her, since her new home was now close to my youngest sister's house.  Heather's husband, Ian, Heather, myself, and Auntie Kathy spent three hours moving the piano from Auntie Kathy's front porch out to the moving van, over broken sidewalk, mud, and grass. It was a monumental effort. After we got it in, everyone piled in the car, and we all went to my house, to spend the night.
The next morning, Heather and Ian loaded up their car, and prepared to head to Arizona, to drop off the piano at my sister's house, and then head to their new home. After everything was loaded we persuaded Auntie Kathy to climb up in the back of the van  and play us some music. She began to play. It was Keith Green. As the sound flowed around us and down the quiet street, we were overcome with emotion, and Heather and I stood in the street with tears flowing down our faces. The music was so haunting, taking us back to our strife ridden childhood and the peace found, laying there on the orange carpet. There was an overwhelming feeling was that this was the last time we would ever hear the sound of Auntie playing her piano. Other pianos were not the same. It was this piano, this music that had embedded itself inside of us, and become a physical part of our flesh and blood.
So tonight, on a whim, I got on Youtube, and typed in Keith Green. Out of the speakers began to flow the music of my childhood. Everything around me fades...Back, back, back I go, to a time before kids, before marriage, before the house, before the cares of growing up consumed me...

Tribute to Corrie ten Boom

I am really, really tired. I climb into bed and turn on the TV, to lull myself to sleep. Flipping through the channels, I run across the movie "The Hiding Place". I am a big fan of Corrie ten Boom, and decide to stay up and watch it. Having seen parts of it before, though never the whole thing at once, I knew at the end, the real Corrie talks for a minute or two. This is my favorite part. I love to hear her talk.
I watch most of the movie, although at the worst times I have to close my eyes. I doze off, once or twice, although I am wide awake when the Gestapo storms into the old house and begins beating the women. WHERE ARE THE PRISONERS!!? WHERE ARE YOU HIDING THE JEWS!!? The sound of the beating is the only sound in my room. My eyes are closed, because I can't stand to watch it.
In the darkness, there is a terrible feeling that assaults me. It is the same feeling that I got when I read Pat Conroy's "Beach Music". I was halfway through the book, when I had to put it down. I sat frozen in my chair, with nausea in my stomach. The scene in the book was a description of torture to a Jewish couple, by the Gestapo. Pat Conroy set it up very well, in that you have had half a book to get attached to the characters, before they are horrifically killed by the Nazis. I finished the book, but the feeling that came over me, the one that I felt as I watched this movie, stayed with me for a while. It was almost tangible, this feeling, a Horror, that was three dimensional. It was not a concept, it was a real, touchable live thing, this Evil. Something that I in my safe home, in my safe town, in my safe country, had never felt before. I have always felt protected by my government, like this could never happen here. But what if it did?
What if the government was out to get me, and kill me, because I had the wrong parents or grandparents? Where would I hide? What if the coin was flipped, and I saw all of my friends and acquaintances being rounded up and shipped off to die? Would I have the courage that Corrie and her family did, to stand up and defy the government, and risk separation from my family and home, imprisonment, torture, starvation, sickness, and ultimately death?

I salute the bravery of Corrie ten Boom. The number of people she and her family saved from death staggers me. Not just the original eight hundred or so, but the generations of people that came after, who would never have existed without the help of the Ten Booms, and the Dutch Underground Resistance.
She was in her fifties, when she and all of her family were arrested. She brought light and hope to the darkest place on Earth, and after all of her family died there, she continued to bring light and hope to those around her. After she was released, by a clerical error, (all the women her age were killed, shortly after she left) she spent the next thirty years traveling around the world, telling people that "There is no pit that is so deep, that He is not deeper still." .

At the end of the movie, pictures of each cast member are displayed on the screen, and then they fade out into a photograph of the real person. Everyone except, Corrie, that is. She is the only one left alive, at the time of the movie, so you get the privilege of hearing her speak. She walks down the famous street where it all happened, and into her childhood home, and sits down and begins to tell you in her broken English, about the love of Jesus. I am arrested. I am drawn to her. Something in her eyes holds me to my chair listening to every word.
"I promised my sister I would tell it, and I tell you." with a slight uplift of her voice, on the word, "you". It's as if she is talking personally to you. You want to know more of what she is talking about, you could listen to her soft broken English, forever.

Sitting there in my room, I could feel a Presence emanating from the TV, as she spoke the words. Words that brought peace into the room and washed away the darkness I had been feeling just a while before. And then she was gone, but the peace she spoke remained.
I was just a little girl, while Corrie was still "Tramping for the Lord", and just a teenager when she died. I never met her, never saw her on TV, never even heard her voice, until I saw the movie. Nevertheless, through her books and her ministry, she has had a deep and abiding effect on my relationship with the Lord. Every single time I pick up one of her books, as I am drawn into the pages, I find the Lord speaking to me in some way or another, bringing repentance, forgiveness, and healing.

So that is my tribute to Cornelia Johanna Arnolda ten Boom, very first licensed woman watchmaker in the entire history of Holland.

Coincidentally, I realized while watching the movie, that she was arrested on Feb 28, 1944. I literally jumped out of my skin, when I realized that TODAY was Feb 28, sixty four years to the day. I also realized, while thinking about it, that it wasn't all that long ago. I tend to think of this as having happened in another dimension, because I wasn't born yet, but It came to me, that on the day Corrie was released from prison, Dec 28, 1944, that my dad was three days old. THAT puts things in perspective.