Tag Archives: Pastor

Rachael’s Resolutions

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay.

In 2012, I revolutionized the practice of making New Year’s Resolutions. Instead of lying through my teeth about diets, exercise and tiresome niceness, I included only promises I could keep.

Still, I didn’t accomplish all my goals. I kept a pair of gloves intact, forgetting to lose one of every pair. I remembered to charge my phone before it quit four times that year. Despite my efforts to destroy the previous Christmas’s poinsettias, one still lives. I didn’t kill it completely, though judging from its appearance, it probably wishes I had.

Given these failures, an attack of perfectionism prevented me from attempting resolutions again.

But I’ve recovered. Noble aspirations for 2024 are listed below:

I promise to harmonize with background music in stores. Singing is gluten-free, contains zero calories and harbors no toxic substances (if on key).

While I may not be the best snow shoveler, I find ways to have fun.

Shoveling snow, I’ll throw half our driveway’s gravel into the yard. Come spring, I’ll pick up 15 percent and let Hubby’s lawnmower retrieve the rest.

I’ll wear only mom jeans, sparing myself and the rest of the world any attempts at wearing skinnies. Instead, I’ll move up a pants size. Moving up is a promotion, right?

I will not label freezer items. Plus, if I’m careful to maintain its chaos, a ten-pound unknown will tumble out every time I open it.

Image by Maayan2007 from Pixabay.

I’ll continue to laugh too loud at our pastor’s jokes on Sunday morning. Sorry, fellow church members, but my laughter comes in one-size-fits-all.

I will growl at the gas gods, whether they zap my pocketbook or lower prices and mess with the world economy.

I’ll never open the front window at drive-throughs without opening a back one first.

I will introduce my grandchildren to a new form of sugar their folks have banned.

I’ll bore my grandkids with “when I was a girl” stories. (The last time I did this, one grandson asked if I knew Betsy Ross.)

I will hand out free smiles, no limits, and no coupon needed.

I won’t change a single light bulb, even if we’re cast into outer darkness. Hubby needs to feel needed.

Finally, I will leave at least one cell phone unmuted, one car horn braying for no reason, and one zipper unzipped at the worst possible moments of 2024.

Too lofty a list?

Sigh. Perfectionism strikes again. …

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Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What doable resolutions will you make for 2024?

End-of-Summer Confusion

Recently, my pastor, instead of dismissing the congregation after the benediction, seated us.

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How could he? Everyone had closed their Bibles and grabbed their purses.

“We have a problem,” Pastor said.

A million-dollar error in our building project? Heresy in the articles of faith? The closing of Cracker Barrel?

He said, “We don’t know when summer’s over.”

For weeks, the church staff has trumpeted program changes in bulletin, website and email. Though Pastor performed the parental equivalent of holding our faces in his hands and articulating new schedules s-l-o-w-l-y, we’ve asked spouses. “Um, what time does church start?

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Past decades, summer exited after Labor Day. As for equinoxes — spring never arrived in March, so why bow to September’s equinox for summer’s departure?

Opening school early has shaken our culture. Back-to-school sales start before the previous school year ends. Indiana’s General Assembly passed school-excuse legislation so county fair winners could participate in the state fair.

Once upon a time, children sent to bed during broad daylight assumed they’d committed major sin, or their parents suffered from psychosis. Now, kids consider such craziness normal. Soon, they’ll consider cleaning their rooms as natural as microwaving pizza bites. No wonder everyone worries about this generation.

Image by 1195798 from Pixabay.

This summer’s weather has reinforced bewilderment. Droughts during June fried Midwestern fields and gardens. Unheard-of July rains rescued us and produced bizarre green August lawns.

Early last week, night temperatures fell into the 40s. Before Labor Day, they soared into the 90s.

Should we rev up the air conditioner or the furnace this morning? How about this afternoon? This minute?

Covering all seasonal bases, we snuggle under blankets every night. Turn on air conditioning, start ceiling fans and open windows. No wonder we’re befuddled. We alternate hot chocolate and snow cones.

Besides all this, baseball, basketball, tennis, golf and football blare from screens. Aaaaugh!

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay.

Let’s switch from Daylight Savings Time now, instead of November — absorb maximum confusion like a sucker punch and be done with it!

Or next year, we could once again mark Labor Day as summer’s end. But 100-degree heat waves might bake us for two more months.

We’d be more confused than ever.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How do you handle summer’s supposed end?

Dad Was Different

No one will ever forget his laugh.

“Happy Father’s Day, Dad. It’s Rachael.” Holding the phone, I’d picture his ornery grin.

“Rachael who?”

“Your daughter, Rachael. Your own flesh and blood,” I’d retort, and the fight was on.

If we’d been polite, each would have suspected the other was up to no good.

A pastor for nearly six decades, Dad radiated his own style. Even his conversion sprouted in atypical soil.

A Depression child, he scavenged Louisiana pinewoods to supplement his meager diet. Dad hid outside churches where African-American worshippers sang joyous music.

Dad as a child. During the Depression, his search for food to fill his stomach led him to spiritual food.

Their lives were even harder than his. How could they celebrate Jesus? Dad couldn’t stay away.

Eventually, he graduated from a Bible institute, where he’d met my mother. They married and worked at a Navajo mission in New Mexico. Throughout decades, they planted/pastored small, independent churches in Mexico, Indiana and Oregon. Sometimes they lived in for-real parsonages. Sometimes in churches’ back rooms, a grass hut, and a mountainside, snow-covered log shack.

Even if churches paid him — a rarity — Dad worked construction to support five children. We counted off in the station wagon to ensure nobody was left asleep on a pew. I was number two.

Ahead of trends, Dad shrugged off ties and other unnecessary protocol. Having taught himself to play guitar, he led singing with his three-blocks-away bass voice.

Dad loved to baptize new believers.

Dad ministered as much outside church walls as inside. He drank coffee with troubled diners at Denny’s and introduced them to Jesus. He made Cracker Barrel servers giggle and hugged lonely Hispanic and Chinese restaurant owners, far from home. When someone was in need, he opened his thin wallet.

Once, in Oregon, he picked up movie-mad English hitchhikers who asked if Indians were on the warpath. Dad promptly arranged with local ranchers to stage a cowboy-Indian fight, complete with flaming arrows.

Image by WikimediaImages from Pixabay.

Even more dangerous: Dad used a fishing pole to cast a jelly doughnut among his church members’ weight-loss group.

I said, “In Heaven, you’ll be perfect. What will you do then?”

He looked genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know.”

At 91, Dad did go to Heaven. His family — and his guardian angel — all stopped chewing our nails.

Dad and me on his 90th birthday.

But we miss him. So much.

Someday, I’ll stand at Heaven’s entrance, too. Jesus will know my name and give me a huge hug.

Dad? He’ll wiggle his mustache and say, “Rachael who?”

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How was your father unique?

Church Lady Complications

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Sunday, when I worship Christ with His family and grow in my faith, is my favorite day of the week. However, even a confirmed church lady occasionally experiences a Sunday that makes her wish it was Monday.

Those tough Sundays happened more frequently during my years as a church music director.

One unholy morning, my pastor met me at the door. He’d changed his sermon topic on the way to church. Would I please restructure the service in five minutes? Thank you.

Half the choir music had disappeared. Who steals church choir music?

The regular accompanist had left on vacation. Our substitute struggled, but she played loud to make up for it. During practice, I sneaked a signal to our young sound man, Dylan. Turn the piano down.

Image by WikimediaImages from Pixabay.

I fastened a microphone to my lapel and hung its little black box on my waistband. Dylan usually did a good job, but this morning, the sound system hated us both. After squawking and squeaking sound checks, I quickly made a restroom stop before heading downstairs to warm up the choir. Without warning, the microphone leaped from my lapel and dove into the toilet, followed by the clunk of the little black box.

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay.

I screamed, clearing the restroom of primping churchgoers.

Did I really have to fish the mic out of the toilet?

Ewww. …

Its green power light no longer shone. I wiped the microphone with a dampened paper towel, then tried to dry it. As I headed to the sound booth, I pasted on a toothpaste-ad smile and avoided shaking hands.

Dylan was also a church board member. What could I say?

In a microsecond, I evaluated my fib files. None came close to explaining this.

I held out the still-damp, $200 device. “Dylan, I dropped the mic in the toilet. I’m sorry.”

He stared, then whipped around to test a second mic. “Hurry! Service starts soon.”

No threats of dragging me before the Inquisition. Or the budget committee.

Image by Valerie from Pixabay.

The little green light on this second mic shone like a candle of compassion. I rewired myself, incredulous at his forbearance.

Decades later, I remember that complicated Sunday, when I wished with all my heart it was Monday.

Thanks to a fellow Christian’s maturity, not so unholy, after all.

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Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you ever experienced a complicated Sunday?