The Big Scary, Strange House and the Cross Behind the Gate

This is a little story that happened today. 

It is a humbling story, but also a sweet one.

A few weeks ago, I came home from picking up Rose or Timmy from work only to discover our gatepost broken clear off. We are quite certain that one of the crew working at the property next door backed into the post accidentally. 

Anyway, the driver never showed up or took responsibility. This bugged us.

It also reminded me about something that happened maybe three or four years ago, when our family went to watch fireworks about half hour away.

As we parked along the road with many other people and got out to watch, one of my younger children clambered up on a fence rail by the drive near which we were parked, and the rail promptly broke! 

I was mortified.

 I tried to prop the rail up, discovering that it was already rotten, and it went back together-sort of-- but it was still sagging and broken.

I looked up the drive to see lights of a big house far away, and I can't remember, but I think maybe the gate was closed. I was petrified of going up that dark drive to that big, strange house and meet some scary people and tell them that my kid had broken their fence.
In anguish, I had asked Jonathan about it. I figured maybe I was just being overly conscientious as usual. 

Besides, the fence rail was already rotten.

We had come to have a relaxing and enjoyable time, not spend the evening miserably trying to fix a disaster. (Another Fourth of July I had spent the entire fireworks show pulling prickly pear cactus out of Sammy's little foot while the rest of the family, except for little Carrie who was petrified of the booms, and extended family enjoyed the show.)

So I let it go.  Almost no one around me would worry about such a thing. I must be some nerd.

Until yesterday.

 I was just taking extra time to seek the Lord, and all of a sudden several things popped up in my mind. 

At least four things were overwhelming my mind and I couldn't draw close to the Lord.
Satan loves to bring up problems that we've tried to deal with already and find closure for, in order to keep us from drawing near to God.

I spent quite a while praying and thinking and considering. 

Finally, I put three of those things back to rest that had popped up, but this one thing surfaced as something it seemed that I should deal with and take responsibility for.

 Pretty embarrassing, to say the least.

I was almost as weak as water this morning, but I got in our van and drove down the road to the town where we had gone to see the fire works, and I tried different roads, but I couldn't find the place.

This meant I had to call Jonathan and explain what I was doing, that I couldn't get close to the Lord without this incident popping up in  my mind, and I had to ask Jonathan how to get there where he had driven us to see fireworks a few years ago.

He told me the road we had gone on, so there I go down that road, looking for this place with a fence and a gate and big, fancy house with scary, angry people in it. 

And yes, I found it. There was the drive with the fence and the gate and sure enough, a mismatched, new fence rail that had been replaced. But the dwelling way up the drive looked way too small, and then there was a second building with a high, stuccoed wall around it. It didn't seem like what I had seen up the drive that night three or four years ago. So I passed it at first, driving on a little to make absolutely sure this was the place, but I came back.

I was sure it was the right place. The rotted, broken fence rail had been repaired and replaced with a rail that did not match because it was new instead of weathered.

And the gate was open. 

So up the drive I drove. I wanted to stop at the little house that wasn't so scary looking, but I thought maybe it was just the caretaker's house and I should go straight to the big, rich, scary place to make things right. 

However, there did not seem to be any life or vehicle inside that fence. 

So, relieved, I drove down the winding drive to the little house. 

And I got out and I knocked.

And as I waited for someone to come to the door, I turned to look up the hill at the big house, and discovered a cross at the peak of it.

It was not a house. 

It was a church!

And then a little dark-haired, scary Oriental lady came out the door. 

"How may I help you?" she asked.

So I just started stammering out my story, how my family had come a few years ago to watch fireworks, had parked at the drive, and one of my children had clambered up on the fence before I could stop them and had broken the rail. 

I couldn't keep the tears back, and I was so humiliated and going to pieces that I could hardly speak, but in a weak and trembling voice I said that I wanted to take responsibility, that I needed to keep a clear conscience, and that I would like to pay for the repair.

She reached out and hugged me before I could finish my story.

"You know, I appreciate this," she said. "We have had so much trouble with this kind of thing. Our fence has gotten damaged so many times. Sometimes in the winter, people go into the ditch and damage the fence, but nobody comes to apologize or offer to pay. You are the first one who has ever come to us like this.

Are you...?" she went on, looking at my skirt.

"I'm a Christian," I told her. (How embarrassing, after waiting years to take responsibility for this.)

"A Mennonite?" she wondered.

Just a Bible-believing Wesleyan Methodist," I said.

 "Is this a church up there?" I asked, looking up the hill.

"Yes," she said. "It's a church. Charismatic."

I pulled some cash out of my purse and tried to insist more than once on paying something to cover the rail repair, but she refused.

I said I would like to give something then to the church, and she absolutely refused. She did ask me for my name and address which I gave her. I had already started a letter which I had planned to leave in the mailbox if I didn't meet anyone in person.

I said I just wanted my conscience to be clear, and I couldn't keep the tears back.

"Is your conscience clear now?" she asked, looking me straight in the eye.

"Yes," I said.

She hugged me and we told each other, "God bless you!"

And I left.

The big scary people had turned out to be caring Christians, and the strange, awful house behind high walls had turned out to be a church with a cross standing sentinel at the peak. 

I called Jonathan to tell him about it.

When I got home, I walked in the pasture to try to calm my nerves, picking up trash that had blown in. I planted more onions in the raised bed by the deck.

 

 And after lunch, I went to read a Psalm

Could I get to God this time?

I couldn't, really, but instead, He came to me. 

He came to me as I read in my Psalm for the day. 

"In the multitude of my anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul."

It went straight to my heart and tears busted right out of my eyes.

(I know busted is not the right grammar, but that is exactly what happened.)

God Himself had drawn so near that He could speak right into my heart.

He let me know that my obedience had been accepted, that my anxieties could be at peace, and that all was well with my soul.

My friends,

if you go to God like I did yesterday, and you try to pray and to love Jesus 

and all you can do is remember a whole pile of things you failed at,

and you can't seem to get through to God,

take time to sort through the extra things the devil is throwing at you just to confuse and burden you, and choose the one thing that needs obedience.

Choose that one thing and take that one step, and make that one thing right.

I can not promise you that the people you might need to speak or write to 

will treat you as kindly as this lady,

but behind the strange gate and the looming walls and the scary people

there is a quiet place of peace and refuge at the foot of the cross.

It is a quiet place past the gate of humility and obedience--and it is called

PEACE.

Rhubarb Delights--Till It Bolts!

We have been delighted with the way our rhubarb is thriving! Part of it came from starts from Jonathan's mother when they moved a few years ago, plus starts we bought. This sunny south side of the house is a perfect spot for it.

I harvested a whole armful the other day!

There is something nostalgic about rhubarb, not just for me, but for many other folk who grew up with mothers or grandmothers who had a little plot of rhubarb and made pies and crisps with it.

When I was about eight years old, my family moved to South Dakota, and after attending service at a Wesleyan church there, a sweet elderly couple--well, they were probably in their late 40's, but to me they were elderly already--invited us to their home for dinner, and she served two strawberry rhubarb pies. She did this more than once in the years we lived near Custer, SD. 

I have never forgotten those flaky, delicious pies, or the sweet couple, Ed and Gertie Hartman, who reached out to a nearly penniless family and were so kind to us so many times.

(Or the way Mr. Ed Hartman stood on his head to entertain us children!)

I was nearly standing on my head in this picture, I guess, not just cutting rhubarb but also dealing with the big, tall rhubarb stem that was getting ready to flower.

I read that rhubarb might start to bolt and go to seed if weather becomes too hot or the plant is stressed.

So if you want to keep your rhubarb fresh, young, and fruitful, you need to keep the plant mulched and cool in early hot weather, and you need to snip off that stem of rhubarb that is bolting.

That stem shoots up fast and higher than any of the rest of the plant.

But guess what? 

When I cut it off, I discovered it was hollow inside!

There are a lot of things that might want to bolt too soon when things get too hot.

Stress and heat can cause early bolting in not just plants but also animals and people.

Plants react to hot weather that comes on too early.

Animals seek shade when the sun is too hot.

And people bolt when they get in hot water.

As parents, we watch over not only our rhubarb, but also our young sons and daughters--people who can be fruitful in our home, in our community, and in the service of the Lord.

We don't just watch them grow, but we feed them and nurture them and love them and teach them and counsel them and guide them, and yes, listen to them--a LOT. 

We pay attention when it seems that there are things that are getting too hot or stressful for them.

We don't want our children bolting with big heads and hollow hearts.

So we listen. We communicate. We are honest with each other. We pray. We counsel. 

We confess our faults to one another.

We forgive.

When they are young we discipline and teach and nurture them.

When they are older, we sometimes have to permit consequences to happen rather than trying to rescue them from everything we've warned them about.

Sometimes we cling and we hug and we love each other. 

Other times we let go.

We don't want either them or us to end up being a hollow rhubarb bolt that isn't worth anything,

that won't produce fruit to make into something sweet. 

Lord, thank You for lessons that even rhubarb bolts can teach us!

Rose Passes her Driver's Test

Yesterday I took this picture of a wheel in front of lilacs at a little thrift shop in a prairie town on our way back from Rose taking her driver's test to get a driver's license!

(Does that sentence contain enough prepositional phrases?)

 It's  my fourth child now to pass the driver's test and obtain a license. 

But she just squeaked by. The officer said that she had made two "incomplete stops," and if she had made one more, she would not have passed the test. Everything else she did right. 

I had her drive around nearby the courthouse ahead of time so that she knew the area, where some of the stop signs were, how to stay in her lane when making a left turn onto the four-lane road just a couple blocks from the courthouse, etc. 

I think each of the children has made one or two mistakes on their driver's tests, but this time it was about not coming to a very full, complete stop at the stop signs.

 I thought later how we tend to rush through life, staying so busy or distracted, that we seldom come to a complete stop. 

The officer let Rose know that the full, complete stop is necessary to "look for any hazards."

But we are in too big a rush.

It's easy to see there aren't any semi's barreling along toward us or even any cars in sight.

So let's just make it a rolling stop.

And Vrooom! again.

 We're in too big a hurry to take time to stop at other big red STOP signs, too.

STOP--Deception is lurking.

STOP-Temptation is in your blind spot.

STOP-It's time to renew your heart in the Lord, lest you face spiritual depletion. 

STOP--We need to take time to pray.

STOP--People are warning us about potential problems with a decision we are making.

STOP-But we are in a big rush and want to hurry and reach our goal. 

STOP--But waiting is painful.

STOP-the Lord wants to talk to us. Will we stop long enough to listen?

Jonathan's Sister's 50th Birthday Party Brings the Snow!

Nobody was expecting a huge snowstorm the evening of Jonathan's sister Esther's 50th birthday party.

Jonathan's brother Dave and Ruth were in, and his sister Barbara had flown in for a couple days.

Paula and Janet McVey (Esther's sisters-in-law) were supposed to have hosted the picnic at a park, but the weather turned cold and wet.

So we ended up at Esther's home.

 

The drizzle was turning into snow when our family arrived,

and while we visited and enjoyed the good food and the beautiful cake, the snow piled up outside.

Blissfully unaware of how bad the roads were becoming, we crowded around tables and sat wherever we could find a spot.

Hannah played with their bearded dragon, a lizard.

About eight o'clock, several of us decided we had better be on our way before the roads got any worse.

Let's just say that the trip home that usually takes 45 minutes took us a grueling one hour and 50 minutes. 

I was driving our van, followed by Jonathan in his 4-wheel drive work truck. 

I think it was only angels that kept clearing the way for me, because of the dozens of stoplights I crept up to, only about 3 or 4 were red, so I was able to keep going instead of stopping and then not being able to start again on the slick, slushy roads.

I drove by or crept around one car after another that had spun out, and I myself spun out more than once. One hill was closed. Finally about 12 miles from our home, I was so exhausted and tense and shaky and the road was so terrible that I pulled into the driveway of our ranch store, Big R, whose gate was closed, but there was room to park.
Those of us in our van squashed into Jonathan's truck. Sam and Carrie had gone home another way in his 4-wheel drive truck.
We were thankful to arrive home safely, but as you can see, there was close to a foot of snow already at our place, on the 20th of May.

Nearly everyone went out to help take care of animals and bring in as many of the plants from the greenhouse as could be brought in. A few tomatoes planted in barrels or a big planter had to be left out there, and froze even under the blanket we threw over them in the greenhouse, as the greenhouse isn't airtight or heated yet.

The next morning, we realized we'd forgotten the  6 hanging baskets on the front porch.
I do believe they will make it as they were sheltered and were mostly pansies which are hardy.
Here you see a tiny hummingbird that came in under shelter and hung out on a flower basket that morning!
It was amazing!

The storm brought snow and slush and problems, but it also brought in so many birds, as I wrote about in another post a few days ago. It was absolutely amazing!
Danny took many pictures and wanted me to help him submit a few pictures to Birds and Blooms magazine.
The storm also brought problems, like muddy driveways near us. This is right next door.

A truck full of sand slid off the drive, and a big semi tow truck had to be called to pull it out.

I was thinking the other day about how the storm brought snow and cold and misery and problems to many people and animals,

but it also brought dozens of birds!

The storms in our life bring us problems and struggles, misery, pain and heartache.

But God is faithful, and every storm that blows through brings 

birds of grace,

songbirds of hope,

hummingbirds of peace,

tanagers of beauty,

larks of redemption.

We spent hours chugging through snow to get home, and hours taking care of chores next morning with 14 inches of snow to wade through, 

but the children also spent hours watching out the window at one bird after another that came to perch in our trees or on our flower baskets or on our birdfeeders. 

If we had not looked out our windows, we would not have seen them.

Had we not watched for birds, we would have missed most of them.

Look for the beauty around you even after the storm.

Watch for God's messengers of hope and courage.

They are there. 

 

Unexpected Snowstorm Blows in Dozens of Birds

Apparently the birds felt in their bird bones that this unbelievable May snow storm was coming.

The day before the storm hit Danny and Hannah kept busy watching, finding, photographing, and identifying several different birds around our place.

This was an exceptional sight--a pair of goldfinches eating dandelion seeds in our yard!

The male goldfinch perching in our austree.

Danny got several pictures of hummingbirds that day before the May snowstorm.

They seemed to be looking for a place of shelter.

This ruby-throated hummingbird liked to perch on the flower basket.

Different hummingbirds had different colored throats.

"May I be your overnight guest?" this one seems to be saying.

What a bright throat this one has!

This  hummingbird's "beak" is extra long!

 Now by the next morning, we knew why the birds were coming around!

We got about 14 inches of snow that night!

(The story of our harrowing trip home that night from Jonathan's sister Esther's 50th birthday party is for another post!)

The next day Danny and Hannah spotted and identified probably dozens of birds.

This is a house finch at our feeder.

Here is a rough-winged swallow.

Look at all that fuzz!

And later in the afternoon, we were sooo excited to see a western tanager!

A closer look.

Even a sea gull seemed to have become totally disoriented by the sea of snow!

Here it is, wading through the snow at the other side of our pasture.

A flycatcher.

A pair of lark buntings, the Colorado state bird.

I couldn't help but pause from time to time as my children would holler over and over for me to come to the window to see a new bird (or flock of birds) they'd identified. It was definitely a science class, or maybe ornithology!

But what I couldn't help pondering was how it took a storm to bring so many birds to our sight.

Usually they stay further out of sight, but the snow storm drove them to find food at our feeders and shelter in our trees and porches and eaves.

There they perch, while the wind howls and the snow whips around in the air.

At a bird-friendly home, feathered fowl of all kinds of species find food, shelter, and fellowship.

True, the storm sputters about them, but God has given them feathers

and a friendly family admires and welcomes them.

Not all feeders are alike. Some are boughten, some homemade.

Some are built from plastic bottles and some from a half of a grapefruit (below) filled with suet and bird seed. 

The birds don't care, so long as they are fed.

And for us, God's sons and daughters, there is a shelter in the storm

in God's people-friendly heart,

a shelter in the time of storm.

There is a place of provision--if we are willing to accept sustenance from His hand from unconventional places and in unusual manners.

Not all of us are bright golden goldfinches that stand out in a crowd.

Some of us are just small, unimportant hummingbirds that need daily nectar and love beauty and brightness--and God provides that, too.

Lord, all of Your children sense that there is a great storm coming our way. 

We do not know how soon the waves of anti-Christian pressure will roll over us, 

or when the blinding sleet of persecution will sting our souls,

or when the storms that are too strong for us alone will prevail. 

We fly to You, like this Swanson's thrush, for refuge ahead of time. 

We search Your Word for promises to cling to;

we bow in prayer to ask that You lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil;

we sing and play hymns to lift our hearts out of discouragement and fear;

and we find, ever and always, the feeders of Your truth, Your promises, Your strength, and Your provision.

(A white-crowned sparrow)

 We know that even more than Danny and Hannah care about and love the birds and want to identify each one by name, 

You know each of us by name.

You know our needs and burdens and weaknesses.

You are our strong shelter and safe resting place!

O Lord our God, creator of all feathered and flying things,

shelter us under Your wings not only throughout these days of calm before the storm,

but through every day of future storm!

May we be hidden in the nest of Your love and grace!