"We Are Not Pigs!"

"We are not pigs!"

That is what moms say when they discover one too many dirty sinks, messy bedrooms, sloppy vans, and indescribable garages.

Even pigs get baths sometimes--like at the Great Western Stock Show. 

There were hundreds of pigs there, and I guess they all take turns getting their showers before getting showed.

Even the big black bulls get baths, Sam told us. 

They shower the bulls off, scrub them down, comb and curry and spray and fluff their hides like 

you've never seen.

And here's hoping they don't make a cow pie at the wrong time, like one did right in front of us as we were leaving the sheep shearing.

The one responsible grabs the tail, is handed paper towels or wipes of a great sort, and proceeds to take care of the incident while others pretend nothing happened.

What combing and currying and touching and tapping with their long sticks or wands, or whatever they call those things they keep the bulls in tow with.

Once inside, the bulls take turns going into the arena as groups, to be judged. 

I couldn't believe how gentle all these bulls were.

 

Below, the first place winner bull is being led out of the arena.

First place winners get their photos snapped in front of special curtains.

But no matter how great you are, 

or what a champion you are,

you still need to take showers, comb your hair, and clean up behind yourself.

At least that is what moms try to teach their kids.

Pigs have to be cleaned up behind by other people.

So do cows, goats, chickens and dogs.

That is why good moms will teach their children how to clean their own sinks, 

do their own laundry,

scrub their own socks,

and pick up behind themselves in the van.

Because Mom is not going to be there the rest of their life to see that they are not pigs.

Line upon line,

precept upon precept, 

year after year, hopeless try after hopeless try,

you teach and admonish and example and insist.

And someday you will be rewarded with neighbors, one after another, calling you and letting you know that they were blessed with your kid's cookies,
or their Christmas caroling,
or their well-mannered help at the Stock Show.
They will tell you that you have some good kids. 
And you will know that all those weary years of teaching and training and failures and victories
were all worth it.

The Great Western Stock Show is Not My Home, but He Makes Me Ride Upon My High Places

And so, as I wrote earlier, our family with a couple other youths, made some quick rounds of the Great Western Stock Show in Denver on its free day. 

It was one mega event over a huge area of buildings, including the Denver Colisseum.

Most of the events are in the evening, except for the events that require judges,

where various stock win first and second places.

The champion bull last year, we learned, earned $100,000, while the champion pig earned $36,000, the champion sheep was about $40,000.

No wonder people go to the trouble to take their animals to such shows.

It's hard to wrap one's mind around such figures.

We couldn't even wrap our minds around these $300 horses that children can ride around on wheels.

You pump up and down on the stirrups with your feet, and your seat goes up and down and you "gallop" around to the tune of $300.

Totally loved them. 

$300 anyone?

Of course there were hundreds of vendors set up there for the three week shindig,

but this one topped them. Many of these charming horses had "Sold" signs already on them.

And I couldn't resist this cute, wee cowboy and cowgirl climbing the fence at the bull competition.

While wandering about, we discovered the horse arena and for half hour or so watched several riders practicing gigs with their horses. 

This one was incredibly trained to prance almost in place and to step high.

That's Jonathan at the bottom of the picture getting a video to put on Facebook.

The white horse tried, but it was not as good as the black one.

Ever felt like prancing quite this high?

Maybe if you had one of these snazzy horse trailer/RV combos at the nice price of $50,000 cash or about $500 a month for the next 15 years, you would feel like stepping pretty high....

or would you?
We shook our heads and went on.
The Great Western Stock Show did not appeal to us very much,
we said goodbye to every last vendor,
and drove home to invite a family of friends for supper.
Because what gives me the energy to walk on my high places is
stooping to serve others,
not striving to win acclaim with bull or pig championships.
"If you want to be champions," our Lord said, "find someone to serve."

When Your Wool Becomes Someone Else's Doormat

Last week, Sam was hired to help a neighbor load bulls to take to the Denver Great Western Stock Show. Sam was leaving well before six o'clock, and was away all day, helping carry stock pen material into place at the show, herding bulls, etc.

The children were curious about the stock show, and when Jonathan found out that admittance this Tuesday was free and that there was going to be a sheep shearing for children,

we hustled about to pack a lunch and make a field trip with two friends.

Unfortunately, we had a lot of hiking to do when we got there, and the shearing was all done already!

They had just finished and were loading the forlorn, sheared sheep into the back of a jeep.

Just one sheep

In the back of the jeep--

leaving behind one solitary sack of sheep's wool,
and about three moms and three or so kids who had been there to watch.

We were disappointed. 

I had envisioned a whole little flock of sheep being sheared by perhaps several capable shearers

with hundreds of people crowded around to watch.

For pictures of wool, I found this corner with many sacks of wool somewhere far away at the show.

And it would be nice if our imperfections could be sheared, along with a whole flock of others, in front of lots of admiring people when the too fluffy wool of various sorts of humanity and other dross gets sheered off of us.  

But instead, it seems God chooses sometimes to single us out for more than our share of indignities

to be heaped upon us,

in front of a very few people

who do not think very highly of us when the shearing is done.

And who stand around judging how much worth our wool is

(usually not much)

based on their own personal standards of judgment.

Or better yet, they grade your wool against their personal interpretations of their pet portions of God's Word--

and you come up wanting.

 And you feel like your comfort zone wool has been sheared on purpose

to make doormats for other people to step on.

But it's okay. 

If you've got to be a doormat, 

be the best doormat around. 

Colorful, variegated, soft, comfy, useful, versatile.

It's better to be a sheared sheep,
helpless, trembling, shorn, thrown upside down into someone's jeep,
than a cocky, unsheared ram with dirty, unkempt, or fancy wool
getting caught in all sorts of thorns and briers and bushes of pride, prejudice and scorn.
Better to be a shivering, shorn sheep in God's pasture any day
than a fattened steer waiting for its final butchering!

Salty Popcorn or Hollow Candy

Sunday evening's popcorn is one of our favorite treats.

We like it with butter and lots of salt. 

Jonathan is usually the one to make the popcorn, and to butter and salt it, too.

"Ye are the salt of the earth," Jesus said.

Popcorn tastes so much better when it is salty.

And lives are so much more attractive when they are lived with something that actually tastes--

passion, glow, ardor, love, joy, faith, purpose!

Jesus didn't say "You are the sugar of the earth," because He wasn't teaching that we be sweetsy people pleasers. Saltiness requires the grace of authenticity, honesty and vulnerability,

 the grace of being accountable to others and holding others accountable,
the grace of choosing to deeply love,
to love when it is tough,
and to have a tough love that is firm as well as gentle.
Sometimes genuine love hurts others' feelings, or our own.
That's when you have to decide whether to grow up or remain stunted in your version of love.

Just being sweetsy and having a shallow love that is merely civil when necessary

but does not love deeply or speak truth

or seek to understand

or reach beyond what is convenient

 ends up like hollow candy that Danny complained about Sunday evening.

"It's hollow!" he exclaimed in dismay as he took a bite off the top of his snowman candy.

"Have salt in yourselves," Christ said, "and be at peace with one another."

It is a blessing to be at peace with others.

Especially in your own family, and also with others.

A few days ago we drove to some friends to find out how to take care of their chores while they were gone.  The girls and friends (and the boys, too), had a great time with each other exploring the family's new property on the prairie.
I snapped this lovely silouette of four girls coming back from a winter walk

talking to each other.

 They were coming back from a walk among the cedars and very old cottonwoods.
And their mom was out drinking in tree trunks and crumbly old leaves around the house.

It is a blessing to have friends who respect each other, who are honest and open with each other,
and who trust one another.
We can trust our kids with parents who respect others.
We do not have to agree on every detail of our beliefs or our lives, but where there is mutual respect,
where there is honesty and openness and genuineness between us,
there is also trust.
The popcorn has been salted deliciously!

A Table in the Presence of Our Enemies

Saturday we had the delight of having a late afternoon dinner with Jonathan's uncle and our 

new aunt, along with Jonathan's parents.

Aunt Irina had a lovely table spread.

Jonathan and I reveled in the familiar flavors of the Russian borsch, complete with dill and a dollop of sour cream.

I so appreciate hot, flavorful broth on a cold day!

Aunt Irina dipped and dipped ladles of borsch into bowls and bowls for everyone!

Grandma and pa had brought a long folding table and several chairs, 

and we had taken a couple folding chairs, too, which were set up in the living room.

 This is the delicious Russian salad made of cooked potatoes, carrots, beets, peas, cucumbers, onion, and vinegar. I really enjoy this typical Russian salad.

What a surprise to see her pull a big pan of baked salmon out of the oven!

It was one of the best salmon I'd ever eaten--

not soaking wet, or slimy, or too dry.

It had been wrapped in foil, and it was delightful!

And then there were fruit filled bars to top the meal, with hot raspberry tea if we wished.

I chose a lemony bar.

Mmm.

It was literally a feast!
Such a blessing to a mom who spends a lot of time trying to manage meals and come up with menus and oversee leftovers and just keep everyone in the family fed!
We had never expected them to invite us for a meal like that!

And then Sunday afternoon after taking Uncle George and Aunt Irina back home after service,

and after Sunday dinner in our own home (not quite the same feast as the day before!)

I was reading Psalm 23 

out in the field under a little pine tree in the warm sunshine 

where I was just sitting thinking, and meditating, and listening for the voice of God.

I'd been reading in Psalm 22 about the bulls of Bashan:

"Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. 

They gape at me with their mouths, like a raging and roaring lion...

Save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen."

And yes, there behind me a ways in the distance (zoomed in) was our nutcase steer, piously chewing his cud, horns and all, 

actually in the pasture instead of out of it.

And we all have those bulls of Bashan that surround us at times,

the roaring lions who sometimes stare us straight in our face

and sometimes snap at us from behind our backs. 

All the troubles and the trials and the testings and the problems.

And we end up crying out, "Save me from the horns of the wild oxen!"

And we take refuge in God,

and in His Word,

in the Psalm favored throughout the ages,

"The Lord is my Shepherd...He restores my soul."

"He makes me to lie down in green pastures--"

even when all around you is dead, dry, brown grass.

"He leads me beside the still waters--"

Even when all you have is a make-shift water bottle converted from a plastic molasses bottle.

"He restores my soul--"

even when you are surrounded by problems.

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies--"

even when Bashan's bulls lure 

and the lions roar,

still He prepares a feast for us--

and our enemies' mouths water. 

The notes in the Maxwell Leadership Bible Jonathan uses says this about Psalm 23,
titled "The Leader and Stress"
"Have you discovered the difference between problems and facts?
Problems are things we can do something about; we can solve problems.
Facts are things we can do nothing about; therefore we do well not to worry about them.
We apply energy only to those things we can change.
We can feel peace and act with poise, because we no longer beat our heads against an unbreakable wall."

And yes, this crazy steer of Bashan came clear up to our door one day!
But there was a wall and a door between us and this crazy beast
(which is going to the butcher this week)
and God will be a refuge for us,
and a wall for us,
and He knows how to restore our souls and prepare a table for us in the very presence of our enemies.
So eat your feast that God has prepared for you, and let your enemies drool!