Caught Dancing in the Livingroom

I had never done quite such a thing before--me, a nearly 60-year-old lady, 

cancer survivor, 

missionary,

caught dancing in my living room. 

But before you make any assumptions, let me hasten to add that I had just gotten carried away with joy. 

It was a joy that was totally out of place, sort of like the swans Jonathan and I discovered at Woonsocket, South Dakota, on our way home from De Smet last weekend, paddling gracefully and peacefully about in the foreground of tornado devastation that had happened recently. 

There they were, two swans, right there in the little lake we'd seen. We decided to veer over and park to take a walk and enjoy some sunshine on our long trip home. Only as we drove down the road later did I notice one shed or building after another totally collapsed, and then remembered hearing about a tornado coming through this area not long ago. 

But on this day, the sun shone, the swans swam, and a middle-aged couple married thirty-one years were walking hand in hand across a white-railed bridge to a little island and a gazebo in Woonsocket, SD (named after the little village of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, where the town founder came from). I was a bit cold in the chilly breeze, and I realized once again how weary and weak I still feel at times after over 3 years of cancer fight, a big move, trying to minister in native missions, and carrying personal burdens of new sorrows and concerns. 

But this morning, after some difficult weeks, I thought about a loved one who had been devastated recently, and yet how all of a sudden yesterday he had been given no less than three opportunities to minster to other devastated people--

a father whose own father was dying in the hospital, having rejected God and needing prayer;

an Amish man who had been fighting depression mostly because of a deep fear of not being good enough to get to heaven (none of us are, he was told, but then Scriptures were shared to show that faith in Jesus is the way to heaven);

and another husband and father whose wife is fighting for her life. That man called weeping. He did not call the person who had his swans in a row, or his act together, or his nose in the air.

He called someone who has also wept recently, who has also faced loss and pain, and who knew what the bottom of a deep and dark pit looked like. 

And I thought about the day only a few weeks ago when I was back at the hospital after my mastectomy surgery--a surgery I had desperately hoped to avoid--when we ended up touching three different people's lives that day including praying for a stabbing victim and hugging a young woman who had just lost her brother. 

I was seeing under my very own eyeballs God's promise coming true of turning everything around for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. 

Even when we fail, He remains faithful. 

Even when we make mistakes, he redeems them for our good. 

When we sin, He forgives.

When we humble ourselves, He lifts us up.

When we are broken, He heals us.

And when the devil wants us to wallow in pain and agony--

well, he just had to turn tail and run 

because this morning

all by herself with no one to see

a lady in a home in a no-name of a place in South Dakota was dancing around in the living room, hands raised to my God in heaven, 

dancing in utter joy and worship and bliss--

because God always, always works together even the worst of things for our good and His glory. 

He Shredded Her Beautiful Dress

 Today in the middle of putting away dishes and pouring organic hard red wheat berries into jars from a 50-pound sack, I was thinking many thoughts and feeling a deep grief for a situation. And I remembered a true story that Margaret Jensen wrote in her book about her Norwegian mother, a minister's wife, called First We Have Coffee, one of my all-time favorite books. 

It was about a time when Margaret Jensen's mother, now a widow, was gently rocking in her rocker, whispering, "Love and forgive. Love and forgive."

In her lap the Bible was open to the verse, ""When you stand praying, forgive." Mark 11:25.

"But, Bestemor (Grandma), there are some things you can't forgive," her granddaughter insisted. Margaret, standing nearby, knew the granddaughter was in for a story. And sure enough, Bestemor began.

"It happened a long time ago. We'll call the girl Mary and the man John.

Mary was young, filled with dreams of love for her husband John and her love for God and His service. John, restless and impatient in his new pastorate in the farmlands of Wisconsin, longed for the libraries and action of New York City or Chicago, where he had attended seminary. John's brilliant mind craved books. Mary saw beauty in everything: the smell of the freshly plowed fields, the song of a bird, the first signs of spring, crocuses and violets.

Mary had one secret longing: a new dress for spring. Not the somber brown or black, befitting a minister's wife, but a soft voile billowing dress with lace around the neck and sleeves and a big sash. 

There was no money. Carefully she laid plans: she would put pennies into a box until there was enough money to buy a new kerosene lamp for John and material for a new dress. 

The day came when the new lamp had a place of honor on John's reading table, and the treadle machine had purred as the dress was created.

In a playful mood, Mary pulled down her long brown hair and brushed it in the morning sun. Then she put on her new dress--soft pink voile with violets and lace. A sash tied in the back, and Mary swung around to the delightful squeals of little Louise. It was spring! She was young, just 23, with another new life within her to rock and love. She danced with abandoned joy in her new billowing dress.

With a flash of summer lightning, Mary was whirled around by an angry John, whose storm of frustration unleashed the fury within him. 

"Money for foolishness!" he said. "No libraries, no books--no one to talk to about anything except cows and chickens, planting and harvest."

Like a smoldering volcano, John erupted with rage and ripped the dress to shreds.

Just as suddenly the storm was over, and the galloping hoofs of John's horse broke the quiet terror.  As he rode into the wind, he unleashed the remainder of his fury on the passing fields and their wide-eyed cows and clucking chickens. He longed to gallop from Wisconsin to the heart of New York City, to his beloved library.

Huddled in a corner, Mary clutched Louise and the shredded dress. Trembling with fear and anger, she remained motionless. Too drained to weep, she was sick with an emptiness and an unutterable longing for her mother in New York. There was no one to turn to in that lonely farmland. Then she remembered Psalm 34:4, "I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears." Then she wept, long and deep, and cried unto the Lord.

Bestemor paused in the story. "Be slow to cry to man, Janice," she said, "but let your cry be unto God." She rocked slowly, then continued.

"Mary set her heart to seek a way of escape. She would make a pallet up in the loft and take Louise to sleep with her. John would sleep alone. Then she folded the shredded dress in a small package and hid it in her trunk. Pastor Hansen was coming to visit the rural churches, and Mary decided to bide her time, to quietly wait and show the dress to Pastor Hansen, then ask for assistance to leave John and return to New York.

With quiet determination, she put on her dark dress and combed her long brown hair into a severe knot, befitting a minister's wife.

When John returned late in the night, he ate the supper from the warming oven and looked for Mary. When he found her in the loft, he ordered her back to their bed and put Louise in her crib. Mary gently tucked Louise in her crib and obediently went to bed. John's storm had passed, but he was unaware of the debris in its wake.

Life went on as usual, but the song was gone and Mary's steps were weighted with bitterness. She quietly waited and thought out her plans.

The final service of Pastor Hanson's time was drawing to a close. But he was preaching from Mark 11:25, "When ye stand praying, forgive."

Forgiveness is not optional, he said, but a command. It is not a feeling but an act of faith, a definite act of the will to forgive in obedience to God's command. The feeling comes later, the feeling of peace. When we offer to God our hurts and despair, God will pour His love and compassion into the wounds, and His healing will come.

"Oh, no!" Mary cried inside. "I can't forgive, and I can never forget!"

The sermon continued, "Someone may be thinking, 'I can never forget, even if I could forgive.' You are right, you can't forget, but you needn't be devastated by remembering. God's love and His forgiveness can and will cushion the memory until the imprint is gone. When you forgive, you must destroy the evidence, and remember only to love."

The sermon closed with reciting together the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

While John and Pastor Hansen rode home with Deacon Olsen, on the way home in her own buggy, Mary's scalding tears poured. 

At home, she knew what she must do. She would obey God. Without waiting to unhitch Dolly, she fled from the buggy and placed sleeping Louise in her crib. With trembling hands she took out of the trunk the package with the torn dress, the package she had wanted to show Pastor Hansen.

But she couldn't let go. She poked the fire and added more wood. She put on the coffee pot and set the table.

"The evidence must go," rang in her memory.

"I forgive you John," she whispered.

Finally she picked up the tattered dress with one hand, and the stove lid with the other. Tears splashed on the fire and the dress burned slowly.

"True forgiveness destroys the evidence" pounded so loudly in her heart that she failed to hear John's footsteps. 

"Mary, what are you doing?"

Trembling with sobs, she said, "I am destroying the evidence."

   To herself, she added, "My offering to God."

Then John remembered! 

Pale and shaken, he murmured, "Please forgive me."

Bestemor rocked quietly.

"Please, grandmother, what happened?" Jan begged. 

Bestemor waited. Her eyes followed the ducks on the lake, but her heart was somewhere else. Softly she continued, "Now John has gone home. Fifty-eight years together, and I miss him."

Wide-eyed with understanding, Jan wrapped her arms around her beloved Bestemor. 

"That was you and Grandfather!"

The chair rocked slowly in the quiet room as Bestemor's loving hand stroked the bowed head.

A few days later, Bestemor had a dream. Three angels appeared to her and said, "Come, we are going to a celebration!"

And over the arm of one angel was draped a beautiful dress. 

Our 31st Anniversary--and Realities of Marriage

 Today is Jonathan's and my 31st anniversary. Since Jonathan doesn't get to have free days just for an anniversary, we celebrated over the weekend when we had to go to Sioux Falls for medical appointments and a trip to the airport with a native young man heading to Bible College.

I asked if on Saturday we could visit De Smet, SD, where Laura Ingalls Wilder's pa's old homestead was. That was a real treat to visit that area and museum--including replicas of the dugout where Laura's family lived, shanties similar to theirs, and the last house Laura's pa built in town, the real thing still standing. 

Here is that house that Pa built, one section at a time over a period of years, still standing 150 years later. I found the visit fascinating and fun, but also overwhelming.

After visiting the homestead area, we took the tour in town, visiting the original surveyor's house that Laura wrote about in On the Shores of Silver Lake. That was the nicest house Laura ever lived in herself with her family. Above is the pantry somewhat like Laura described it in her book, and just as I have imagined it. 

And here is the main room in the surveyor's house, which is original, although the house has been moved from its original location. I loved this house, bright and clean, spacious (with the old fashioned meaning to that term) and cozy, just as Laura described it. This is what I wish all of life and marriage were like--clear and sparkling, neat and perfect.

But overwhelm hit me as we visited the dugout--the very real kind of place that Laura's family had to live in for a while on the banks of Plum Creek. How could a family of four possibly have fit in here much less LIVED in here?

This represented the tough parts and times of marriage--the way Laura's ma could hardly bear to put up with living under the ground like that, like a badger, to say nothing of the darkness, the dirt, the poverty. 

Laura wrote that her Pa wanted to provide better for the family, but they ended up like this for a short time. 

The walls were of sod, and the ceiling had white muslin stretched across to keep the earth from falling through. No wonder the ox that ran across the top of the dugout in Laura's book had its leg fall through!

Part of the beauty of Laura's stories were how her ma, despite her obvious overwhelm, disappointment, and hardship, consistently chose to make the best of things. She insisted on some things from time to time, especially when the children were old enough to go to school, for example, she insisted on the family living near a school. But she remained loyal to her husband and made every shanty, including the hovels, a home in the most real sense of the word. Simple items made every shanty a home.

And then there was the replica of the Brewster School, (above) where Laura taught through the winter at the mere age of fifteen. Where she had to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Brewster, and where Mrs. Brewster did nothing except prepare potatoes and bread for two meals a day. She did not sweep the snow off the floor, clean up the ashes, or even brush her hair. All she did was complain to Mr. Brewster about living there on the prairie and threaten him. And then there was the awful night when she grabbed a butcher knife and was threatening Mr. Brewster with it, and he had to try to talk her out of it while poor Laura watched in horror. How Laura wanted to get back home where her ma never provoked, fussed at, or threatened her pa! Never.

Where her ma kept the home neat and clean as possible, where her pa worked every day and was respected in town, and where her sisters behaved themselves (thanks to Pa's firm but loving hand in her early years).

This shanty was a little better than the dugout, with a pot belly stove and a small loft. I stood there wondering how I could survive in this small house. I shake my head. 

We wish marriage was just a merry ride in a replica of a covered wagon--not a real one, of course, all crowded and heavy and moving along a few miles a day for weeks at a time while we must sleep under the wagon or under the stars, rain or shine. 

We even visited the graves of the Ingalls family, all of them except Laura (who is buried in Mansfield, Missouri with Almanzo and daughter Rose), at the cemetery outside town. I wanted to see those, and Jonathan was so kind to go with me. 

As I got out of the car, I was afraid I'd cry at Pa's grave, but somehow I managed not to. 

I suppose Laura may have made her pa look better than he was, but maybe not. He was who he was, and he wasn't perfect. He wasn't even a Christian and he even swore every once in a while--when things were really, really bad. But 150 years later, a nearly 60-year-old lady who has read Laura's books over and over through the years, stood by the graves and remembered a man and a woman, a family of pioneers, a ma and a pa, who stood by each other through thick and thin (mostly thin). 

A ma who made all of Pa's houses, whether shanty, dugout, or real board houses, into a home;

a pa who would bring out a violin after a hard day of work, and fiddled his heart out

while his little girls danced and sang. 

Jonathan and I--we moved along after visiting De Smet. Our marriage isn't perfect. We have our faults and failures. Probably we won't have a set of books memorializing us like Laura's pa and ma, but we came back home to our house and chiggers, our mission and ministry and days of sweaty work--

and for better or for worse,

for richer or for poorer, 

in sickness and in health,

until death do us part,

once again on our 31st anniversary,

we cherish each other as again, we say "I do."

Heart Split in Half--and Made Whole

She's had her heart split in half too many times to count--yet with her good arm she pushes her wheel chair toward me with a smile in the nursing home when I go see her--my miracle friend--the one in whose broken heart God worked a miracle of grace.

Every time I spend much time with her, she relates more of her story. It doesn't seem to be anything she hides or merely confides--just relates rather matter-of-factly.  

How she has had three husbands, the first of which was her high school sweetheart, but who died of OCD. Then her second husband died in a brawl. She had gotten him to go to church with her, though he was an atheist. 

 

"He and I were homeless on the hill across from Gus Stop," my friend told me, remembering years ago as if it were yesterday. Only two days earlier I had stopped and taken a picture of this very Gus Stop, because this is the store in town that the natives frequent most. The street next to it is almost a demarkation line. From that point, it's more white man's territory, with ranchers buying gas at Dino Mart just across the street from Gus Stop, while natives buy at Gus Stop. 

My friend's third husband died of a heart attack, she said, after getting home from prison. He had tried to help a woman in a brawl, and when he hit the man, the man fell and split his head open on the concrete and died. Her husband went to prison for it.  

 

All her first three husbands were related to each other. Two were cousins of each other, and one was an uncle to them, and they were all about ten years older than she was. Now she is married to a fourth husband, and he is in prison, too, she said. 

Her twin brother died, as did her first child at age 4, as if there were not enough deaths and broken hearts in her life. 

"I've had a rough life," she admits, "but now I walk with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Ever since the day, after her second stroke, that Jesus came to her in the hospital room and transformed her life, she has been a different person with a transformed life. 

She asked me to read more than one of her favorite Scriptures, and I did, including the one in 2 Corinthians about weakness, she said. She knew the reference, chapter 12, better than I did--the verse talking about God's grace being made perfect in weakness. 

 

I read her a story, and then we prayed together. She prayed, too, thanking God that when she was lonely that day, God sent someone to keep her company. 

 

She made my day--this lady whose heart, broken into a jillion zillion pieces, has, through the love of Jesus, been made whole again.

Patterns in the Fog--Is There Purpose in My Distress?

Yesterday morning a summer fog blanketed everything in sight of our kitchen windows. Moments after Jonathan and Danny left for work early to beat the 99-degree heat coming later, Jonathan texted me suggesting that I take a little walk down the driveway to see all the stunning spider webs jeweled with the heavy dew.

I took him up on it and started off, past the barn and down the driveway.

I could not believe how many cobwebs there were! Not just hundreds but thousands. Many were connected with silken threads, woven by the master weavers of the field--the lowly spiders.  

Fog lay further down by the river the morning before and the morning after yesterday's fog,

 

but yesterday, the fog--as the sun rose--revealed thousands of intricate designs.  

 

Patterns in the fog!

The next morning, without the fog, I could not find more than one spider web. I'm sure they were there, but they were invisible in the light and sunshine without the wetness of the fog.  

During sunny, dry mornings, the patterns are invisible. But when the fog and clouds rolled in, that is when the Master Weaver's patterns emerged, delicate and breath-catching. 

How often we walk through the sunny parts of life unaware of the pattern God is weaving, and when trouble comes and fog, clouds, and storms roll in, we mourn because all seems dark and we cannot see ahead. 

Just wait for the dawn!

The rising sun will reveal that even in the fog, even in the darkness, even in the storm, God is weaving more of His plan for our lives. 

 

Elisabeth Eliott wrote, “Sometimes we need to simply endure the emotional turmoil and the painful crown of thorns, whatever that may mean in our lives, because such things prepare our hearts as God’s dwelling place.”

 

Just as the dampened, intricately woven spider webs were catching the light of dawn, so God will reveal, sometimes best in the fog and darkness, His purpose for our lives.  

Through fog, storm, heat, and battles, may we see His light and learn His love and rejoice ever in Him. 

 

Raves Over a Mere Sandwich

"David just raved about the sandwich you sent yesterday," Jonathan told me this morning. "Sewell wasn't at work yesterday, so the sandwich you sent for him we gave to David. He loved it! The goat cheese, cucumber, homemade bun--he didn't think he'd ever eaten anything like it!" 

Well, probably not.  

 

Every weekday morning, my first job (aside from getting presentable and having my morning drink) is to make lunches for my hubby and son.  I know just what each of them like--ketchup on Jonathan's, mayo on Danny's, and I use mustard on one half of each for zest and because it's one condiment that has healthy ingredients. No GMO oil like mayo has, and no sugar like ketchup has. 

 

Sometimes I make extra sandwiches if Jonathan thinks a Lakota work guy will be on site without a lunch. Yesterday I sent four sandwiches altogether, and again today.  

It doesn't feel very spiritual, or missional, pulling mayo and sandwich meat, cheese and cucumbers or lettuce out of the fridge drawer every morning, making extra sandwiches when I don't even know but what sometimes they will be brought back home hot and soggy and only fit for the garbage by evening because the expected workmen did not show up. But as my mom reminded me on the phone last evening as we chatted, the ideal woman of Proverbs 31 doesn't have much "spiritual" stuff in the list of her qualifications. Nearly all the list were simply good works and the common, ordinary duties of the day, done with extraordinary skill, love, and grace--although I had to hasten to reply that it was all based on the single statement at the end, that she was a woman who "fears the Lord."  

 

It is because I honor and revere God that I make goat cheese every other day to make healthy food for my family and myself and others.  To be honest, I'd rather sit around and read books.

It is because I fear the Lord that I expect my children to have responsibilities such as milking the goats and caring for chickens and gardens and each other. (To be honest, they'd rather be lazy, too, especially when it comes to the goats.)  I fear the Lord, therefore, as Proverbs 31 says, I look well to the ways of my household, providing food and clothes and clean, (sometimes) mended laundry.

 

I'm not sure how I compare to the Proverbs 31 woman about wisdom, but it makes me happy when a neighbor calls and anxiously says she has a question. Someone else had criticized her for the way she had handled Jehovah's Witnesses that came to her door. Had she really been wrong after all for choosing kindness and trying to relate to the one woman as a human being instead of telling them they were part of a cult and promptly praying for them to get out of the cult as another Christian she knew would do?

The same neighbor had earlier called me Saturday just glowing with how she had felt the Lord helped her to be a witness to the JW team that showed up at her door. She had gone out on the porch rather than inviting them inside (which I told her was proper and wise) and while she let them know she wouldn't take the literature, she discussed some Scriptures with them. She had actually encouraged the younger lady to get into God's Word, believing that if she would, it would help her know the truth. 

But since she hadn't treated the JWs roughly and sent them packing, was she wrong? 

I felt my neighbor lady had actually handled the JW team better than I would have. I always try to be kind, but I don't take time to discuss anything. They are trained; I don't have time to refute it all. 

 

"I think you did just fine," I told my neighbor. "I could hear the joy in your voice Saturday. The devil likes to steal our joy after we've been able to witness to someone. Don't worry about the other people. They were trying to protect you from getting influenced by JWs, but you handled the JWs just fine!"

I am seeing growth in our neighbor lady--who shows me up sometimes by her desire to get into God's Word.  She cared for her mom so many years and was overshadowed by her, but since her mom's death, she is gaining strength on her own two feet in her walk with the Lord.

So whether it's making goat cheese and cucumber sandwiches or dealing out comforting advice, following the pattern of Proverbs 31 is a good aim.

Needles Eye Tunnel--Am I Poor Enough in Spirit?

  A few weeks ago I wanted to tell about Needles Eye Tunnel on our way from Rapid City to Custer. Only one vehicle at a time could squeeze through here. Crystal told us that when she drove a vanload of Amish last year for their vacation trip to the Black Hills, she had to fold in the side mirrors of the van to get through this tunnel. We had to wait for one motorcycle or car after another, and then when we found a gap in oncoming traffic, we still ventured only very cautiously through this tunnel, while another vehicle waited on the other side.

Needle's eyes are super small and narrow, so narrow that I can hardly successfully thread a needle anymore. But it was a needle's eye that Jesus referred to when He talked about rich men making it to heaven--saying that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to make it into the kingdom of heaven. 

Now I have heard that this reference was likely about a gate often referred to as the "eye of a needle" where camels would enter Jerusalem. It was a gate so low that camels had to be unloaded before they could squeeze through, and commentators speculate that Jesus was meaning that rich people have to unload their dependence on their riches in order to trust fully in God. Another train of thought is that Jesus was actually meaning that it was, in fact, impossible for a rich man to enter heaven, while following that statement up with the profound truth that "with man this is impossible; but with God, all things are possible."

Am I poor enough to make it to heaven? What side mirrors need to be folded in to make it through the Needle's Eye of the gate to heaven?

I was just thinking this morning of some people I know who recently were put into a high position in a situation. I thought about how classy and good-looking those people were, how their appearance, dress, actions and attitudes exuded dignity, class, grace. And they got the vote. 

Instinctively people seem to recognize these things in others--and vote for it. We recognize when others "got the goods." But is that what gets us into heaven? What if I have all that--even right doctrine--but don't have love? What if I have all my t's crossed and my i's dotted, but am not walking in charity and mercy to my neighbor?

Am I carrying baggage of self-righteousness and spiritual pride? Am I turning more to my money, possessions, hobbies, vacations, relationships, church, or even work for satisfaction than to the Lord? How rich am I? Am I poor enough, Lord, to value only You and eternal issues?

Or does my head become big and my spirit bloated while I look down my nose at others--the classless, less "spiritual," sinful, and needy?

O Jesus, You Who became poor that we might become rich in You, help us to lean wholly on You today, stewarding all You give us, waiting on others to go through the tunnel before us, and living in humility and grace, choosing obedience to You and Your Word over our pet loves.

Is there something today that You are asking me to "sell and give"?

https://www.fh.org/blog/what-is-the-meaning-of-a-camel-going-through-the-eye-of-a-needle/