Tag Archives: Bible

Been There, Done That, Don’t Want to Do It Again

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Have you created a bucket list? I’ve considered it.

Instead, I recorded what I’ve done and would rather not repeat:

Buy stupid shoes. At 20, I wore platforms with heels so high they gave me altitude sickness. Repentant, I then purchased “healthy” earth shoes — hideous footwear with nonexistent heels and built-up soles that tilted me backward. Either way, I risked possible surgery.

Attend the Indianapolis 500. Amazing, but the cars’ incredible speed and incessant roar made me crave 30 quiet seconds inside a refrigerator, away from sizzling heat.

Tour France without knowing the language. My French, limited to “bonjour” and “french fries,” invoked eye rolls, especially on Petite Street, where shops sold clothes that fit only Tinkerbell.

Other remembrances make me shiver. I never again want to:

Camp next to someone a sheriff greeted by name.

Read Ku Klux Klan recruitment posters.

Lodge in a Honduran hotel room with broken locks.

Our baby liked the red and orange shag carpet, but it wasn’t my first choice.

Accept rides with strangers.

Nor will I:

Endure red and orange shag carpet.

Allow a closet-sized kitchen whose fridge froze lettuce and melted ice cream.

Sample saki. It tasted like turpentine.

Finally, I won’t challenge anyone to a doughnut-eating contest. Ronnie, a street kid who attended my Bible club, claimed he could outeat anyone. I devoured twice as many. Humbled, Ronnie went home, sick. Humbled, I realized the Bible didn’t recommend this form of evangelism. I called Ronnie’s mother to apologize.

Silence. Then laughter. “Glad you called his bluff.”

Still, I couldn’t look a doughnut or bathroom scales in the face. God, either, but soon I realized He’d forgiven me and had taught Ronnie and me to engage brains before mouths.

God isn’t limited by clueless mistakes. Amazingly, the kid still attended Bible Club. Decades later, I pray doughnut disaster memories have faded. That Ronnie clearly recalls Jesus loves him.

In reviewing my once-but-never-again list, I realize God’s protected me big-time. I never fell off my shoes. I haven’t been abducted, joined the Ku Klux Klan, or worn French Tinkerbell clothes.

I now can look doughnuts in the face.

Scales? Still working on that.

And God’s bucket list for me.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s on your once-but-never-again list?

If My Christmas Tree Could Talk

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Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay.

Merry Christmas! I’m the tree chosen by the Phillipses. I’m decorated and lookin’ good, if I do say so myself.

Though, I wasn’t always so full of holiday cheer. You wouldn’t be, either, if you’d hung around Lowe’s while everyone critiqued your figure and bald spots.

Still, we trees looked forward to seeing children — despite sibling arguments. Those mostly ended with the famous parental line, “We’re getting this tree because I said so.” Plus, hot chocolate bribes, which parents wanted anyway to medicate away seasonal frustrations.

While I missed kids when these seniors decorated me, I’d heard horror stories about toddlers scaling tree trunks. However, older people own nosy cats and dogs that would over-hydrate me. Or would these seemingly normal Midwesterners allow a pet boa constrictor to wind around my branches?

Like I said, I’d heard stories. But saw no animals, not even goldfish.

I like life by their picture window. None of my fellow fauna outside are bedecked with colorful lights and ornaments of every size, shape and hue like me. I love being a Christmas tree — even if the lady piles too much tinsel in the wrong places. She doesn’t like looking fat around the bottom. Why should I?

Toddlers look so cute at Christmas, but danger lurks under that little Santa hat.

My owners bring coffee, tea and Bibles. Together, we worship our Creator, who gave Himself at Christmas. They pray for their family — 17 strong, who’ll arrive soon.

I can’t wait to see the grandkids’ shining eyes.

Their parents will breathe in my fragrance and memories. A miniature needlepoint mailbox holds a note in their great-grandmother’s handwriting. The figure wearing a serape was brought back from Spain. A one-of-a-kind collection of ornaments made of plastic lids, crayon-scribbled Nativity scenes and spray-painted macaroni reminds these grown-ups they can be children today.

If they spoke conifer, they could ask me what’s inside those packages. We Christmas trees eavesdrop, you know. We also could tattle on who’s shaking gifts, but why spoil the fun?

It’s a great gig. I work only a few weeks of the year. Afterward, I’ll stay in the garden, covered with food for hungry critters.

A short life. But if I live and give more joy in a few weeks than some people do in a lifetime — who’s complaining?

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: If your tree could talk, what would it say?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Please Nix the Gnats!

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O Lord, You know we love camping in Your wild, beautiful world. But this year, a gnat plague of biblical (Exodus 8:16-19) proportions swarmed us the entire trip. After we returned home, Hubby even sorted piles of dirty laundry in his truck’s bed, rather than let the pests infest our house. OMG, Pharaoh wouldn’t listen to You, but we want to know: was it something we said?

Classic OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer. O my God, Thank You for blessing our garden with squash. We have eaten sautéed squash, squash salad, squash fritters, squash in spaghetti sauce and tacos and desserts. OMG, is squash Your 21st-century version of manna?

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This prayer was originally published on August 22, 2016.

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: How Many Squash Recipes Did Adam and Eve Have?

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O Lord, Thank You for our garden’s superior squash production — I think. Anticipating dead-in-the-night porch gifts to unsuspecting friends and neighbors, I wonder how Adam and Eve coped with Eden’s abundance. OMG, maybe in that perfect garden, squash grew and ripened one at a time?

Classic Post: Loony the Lamb

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This post first appeared on April 12, 2017.

For years, I celebrated holidays by directing church musicals. One fateful Easter, I chose Watch the Lamb, which focused on Jesus as the Lamb of God. A live lamb would make the ancient story come alive.

During rehearsals, the cast greeted our lamb with enthusiasm.

Church janitors did not. “Do something before that animal pees all over — or worse.”

Why hadn’t I considered this minor complication? Especially as the lamb made entrances down different aisles.

Most Passover lambs in 30 A.D. did not wear Pampers^®.

What other option existed?

God provided the perfect solution: we would cover the stage and church aisles with the burlap-like backside of my recently discarded carpet.

However, God didn’t send angels to cut, arrange and duct tape the carpet throughout the sanctuary. After two unspiritual, aching-knee days, all my bases were covered. No worries now, right?

Wrong.

Loony the Lamb had his own ideas about entrances and exits. A hay bale helped keep him quiet, but for obvious reasons, we avoided feeding him too much.

The 60-member cast’s noise made Loony more nervous than your Aunt Nellie. Kids petted him without mercy. Bright lights and heat caused him to hyperventilate. During dress rehearsal, Loony the Lamb collapsed onstage in a wooly, quivering heap.

Watch the Lamb? No audience would want to watch this.

Two animal lovers carried the prostrate lamb outside while we prayed — and Loony recovered. One guy built a pen outside the stage door where our prima donna cropped grass between scenes. Visiting hours were restricted, with no autographs. We did everything but paint a star on Loony’s gate.

Thankfully, he showed no new signs of cardiac arrest. His brassy baaaaa erupted only once during performances — during solemn prayer after the crucifixion.

Our ingenious actors shifted and blocked escape routes, all the while looking very holy.

One child earned my special appreciation: “Loony was peein’ on my foot the whole time Jesus was on the cross, but I didn’t say nothin’.”

Even after Loony returned home, I couldn’t shake off sheep. Scriptures about lambs leaped from the Bible’s pages. Jesus frequently called his followers His sheep. After Watch the Lamb, I figured He didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Nevertheless, the King of Heaven volunteered to take on the title “Lamb of God.” It meant daily life with stupid sheep and deadly encounters with wolves in sheep’s clothing. What God in His right mind would do that?

Only a King who loves confused, clueless sheep more than His own life.

Even one dithery pageant director named Rachael — which, BTW, means “lamb.”

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you ever participated in a pageant/play that taught you more than you expected?

The Great Broccoli Debate

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Soon after our wedding, Hubby and I discovered crucial differences. A key divisive subject: broccoli.

I softened its presence in a casserole. Nevertheless, he turned up his nose. His extra-sensitive taste buds perceived broccoli as impossibly bitter.

I had grown up eating broccoli, pretending to munch trees like a powerful giant. I liked the taste. Broccoli was good for me and filling — important in a household with four siblings. What wasn’t to like about broccoli?

In Hubby’s family, no one competed for food or imagined eating trees. His father and brother also loathed broccoli. Drowning it in cheese sauce, his mother insisted they eat it occasionally.

However, my new husband formulated his own broccoli policy, namely, nada.

I adopted his mother’s.

The debate continued for decades.

Unfortunately, the elder President George Bush undermined me with his broccoli policy. “I’m President of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!’”

If my mother-in-law had cooked the President’s meals, he would have tried three bites or been sent to his room.

Like Steve, President Bush probably believed his DNA rejected broccoli. My husband even insisted God never created broccoli for human consumption.

Dragging God into a debate is risky, not unlike asking my mother to settle a sibling argument. Historically, both debaters ended up listening to a lecture and doing extra chores.

I’d never encountered Scriptures regarding broccoli, with or without cheese sauce. However, several commanded him to give thanks for what was set before him.

Hubby replied with Scriptures that discouraged quarrels.

One day as I typed, deep in Novel Land, Hubby leaped from the hallway, hands thrown open like a spotlight performer. “Ta-da!”

Not his usual morning routine.

He announced, “I’ve found scientific evidence that taste depends on a person’s DNA—”

“You interrupted my best writing time to diss broccoli?”

“Look.” He offered his laptop.

“I don’t have to look. That writer’s scientific expertise probably consists of blowing up science fair projects with his kid.”

Finally, I read the article. It stated a person’s DNA profoundly affects taste. The author, a bona fide scientist, didn’t sell snake oil or exploding science projects on the side.

I. Was. Wrong.

Daily I become more aware of Steve’s forbearance and generosity … because he reminds me.

Still, the more I pondered his broccoli triumph, the more I questioned: Should our DNA enslave us?

I take bitter-tasting medicines because they’re good for me. Hubby wants his patients to do the same.

Yet he can refuse broccoli, despite its nutritional value, because it doesn’t taste good?

The great broccoli debate rages on ….

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What food inspires debate at your house?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: What, Exactly, Is a Weed?

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O my God, why, when You plant hardy, luxuriant flowers, do we yank out those “weeds” and plant fussy replacements? Yet King Solomon, who topped biblical best-dressed lists, couldn’t compete with these. OMG, thank You for these lilies that make my yard look like a field.

Divine Doughnuts

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My church serves doughnuts. No surprise. As a pastor’s daughter and veteran of hundreds of ecclesiastical gatherings, I know “fellowship” is synonymous with “doughnuts.”

Some insist the tradition began when Jesus and his disciples made regular stops at an ancient Krispy Kreme. Despite intense efforts, I haven’t yet found that in the Bible.

Still, my childhood church’s divine doughnut ritual made a powerful impact. What kid does not feel her spirituality increase a hundredfold with a table-level view of big white boxes of fresh doughnuts?

The memory lingers: my favorite chocolate-frosted, Boston cream-filled confections; sprinkles, glazes and powdery sugar like sweet fairy dust. Even jelly doughnuts, my last choice, looked as heavenly as the fellowship they represented.

Today, doughnuts no longer symbolize fellowship to me. Alas, they remind me of a major miscue.

As a young mother, I started a kids’ Bible club in my neighborhood, often serving doughnuts.

One swaggering 10-year-old declared himself the world doughnut-eating champion.

I couldn’t let this untruthful claim go unchallenged.

I stuck out my hand. “A doughnut-eating contest. You and me. Next week.”

He sneered, but shook it.

The following week, my excited Bible club assembled. Robby and I stared each other down as a fifth-grader ran the stop watch.

“Ready. Set. Go!”

We stuffed doughnuts with the ease of marathoners running the first mile. But my long-time conditioning began to win out. Robby slowed as I snarfed doughnut after doughnut. (How many? I’m not telling.)

“Ten! Nine! Eight! …” The kids counted down the last seconds.

I won!

I felt the rosy flush of victory.

Robby’s face, however, turned green.

“I don’t feel so good.” He went home.

Suddenly, I found my win hard to swallow — especially with a stomachful of doughnuts. What kind of role model made a kid sick? What would his parents think of my Bible program?

After repenting and praying for Robby — and my stomach — I mustered the courage to call his mother. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Silence.

She’ll sue me.

More silence.

Or have me arrested.

A howl of laughter erupted from the phone. Finally, still chuckling, she said, “He needs to be taken down a peg or two. Thanks!”

Robby showed up the next week. And the next. Apparently, I had earned his respect.

Although that scenario occurred 25 years ago, it replays every time I see doughnuts.

Writing about it now, however, my spiritual vision clears. Doughnuts do not have to symbolize my downfall. Instead, they recall God’s kindness in fixing even my dumbest mistakes.

Perhaps next Sunday, I should participate in divine Christian fellowship — especially if it involves the chocolate-frosted Boston cream-filled kind.

What’s your favorite kind of doughnut? Have they taught you a spiritual lesson, too?

Would You Marry a Writer?

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According to Jewish comedian Sam Levenson, God has played matchmaker ever since he introduced Eve to Adam: “Have I got a nice girl for you!”

The Almighty guided Abraham to Sarah, the Mae West of the Old Testament. He used thirsty camels to bring about Rebekah’s marriage to Isaac. He masterminded Boaz’s marriage to Ruth, the great-great-great-great-grandma of King David and, ultimately, Jesus Christ.

But finding a spouse who will stick with a writer? That task might make even God scratch His head.

Online dating services insist they can find the perfect partner for anyone — even writers. One website includes 29 dimensions by which future mates can be measured. (Why not a nice round number like 30? Just sayin’.)

These surveys never include correct questions for potential writer spouses. I submit the following in hopes of helping experts increase the reliability of the profiles they create.

Would you want to marry someone:

Who wears a baggy sweat suit and feather boa to work?
Whose house and yard officially have been declared a landfill?
Who will awaken you at 3:00 a.m. to brainstorm a dozen new book titles?
Who works 80 hours a week and nets 2.4 cents per hour, minus Xerox and Prozac costs?
Who invites poison experts and chain saw murderers over for coffee?
Who maxes out credit cards attending conferences where hundreds study “beats”?
Who crashes weddings, funerals and Rotary meetings to develop characters?
Who robs a 7-Eleven, crashes your car, and sleeps in a dumpster in order to research and “feel” a crime story?* **
Who needs years of psychotherapy to recover from her last fiction plot?
Who vandalizes signs with apostrophes in the wrong places?
Who drinks espresso to calm down?

*If a potential spouse boasts lots of rich relatives who can post bail money, the marriage’s survival chances increase exponentially. **Yes, I’ve listed 11 questions, not ten, for researchers who are all about 29 dimensions.

Some claim anyone who agrees to these conditions resembles the dependability of a JELL-O sidewalk.

Exactly. God, in His matchmaking wisdom, has designed special lunatics who voluntarily accept the impossible task of marriage to a writer.

Civilized society should be warned: these spouses often appear normal. My husband of 41 years eats Cheerios every morning. He serves as the rational voice on church and community boards.

Yet he regularly rescues my manuscripts from the Black Holes of cyberspace.

He attends my book signings, hauling and hovering as needed.

When I was writing biographies, he didn’t mind sharing my breakfast conversations with dead people.

Finally, he told me money and success weren’t important, as long as I was doing what God wanted.

And they say writers are nuts.

What special craziness in you or your spouse keeps you both sane — sort of — as you pursue an impossible occupation?