Honeysuckle trails

The fragrance assaulted me at the first bend in the walking trail. I succumbed immediately.

Inhaling deeply, I searched for the vines that surely grew nearby.

Ah, yes. Ahead on the left, white honeysuckle blossoms greeted me. I passed the vines, still inhaling the distinct aroma and revising the song TV cowboy Roy Rogers sang decades ago. Rogers crooned, “Happy trails to you.” I sang, “Honeysuckle trails to you.”

My honeysuckle trail stretched ahead, an unpaved four-wheeler path bordering three small lakes. That day, the path proved challenging. Recent rains had left the wheel tracks muddy, the center and sides needing mowing.

As my feet sought the best spots to tread, my spirit heard God - singing lyrics from Song of Songs 2:13: “the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.”

Past the third lake, I would step over a low gate. A few yards past the gate, I'd break out into a large, rolling field where the four-wheeler path gives way to a blacktopped walking trail. A fresh wave of honeysuckle aroma washed over me as I approached the gate. Walls of honeysuckle blossoms bordered both sides of the trail just beyond the gate.

Ah . . .

CRACK! A blast like the report of a rifle shattered my reverie. The source of the sound lay ahead – and close. “Surely someone wouldn't shoot across a trail where neighborhood children play,” I thought.

Unconvinced, I almost turned around. Instead, strangely encouraged by the fragrant vines ahead, I stepped over the gate. Treading between honeysuckle walls, I stopped humming and started speaking. “Someone's walking the trail,” I announced. “Someone's walking here.”

Tentatively, I stepped past the place where the flowering vines stopped. Looking to my right, where the sound had originated, I saw the backyard of a neighborhood home. Several men stood there. All looked sheepishly at me.

“What were you boys doing?” I wanted to ask.

Relieved, I stepped onto the blacktopped trail that takes an oval course around the field's perimeter. Topping a small rise, I saw three dogs ahead, playing at the back fence of another yard. I hadn't encountered dogs on the trail before.

The brown boxer and the white terrier spotted me at the same time I spotted them. “Aha!” their faces said.

As the two raced toward me, I slowed my pace, yet kept walking forward. Surely the owner would appear and call the dogs back. I scanned the yard from whence the trio had emerged. Not a person in sight.

The longer-legged boxer outran the terrier. The third dog, a chocolate lab, hesitated momentarily, then joined the race. The boxer reached me first. As I slowed almost to a stop, he jumped up repeatedly, front paws to my chest. The terrier nipped at my heels. The lab galumphed around us.

At last, the trio tired of me and raced back to their yard. I completed the oval trail, stepped back onto the four-wheeler path, trekked past the honeysuckle walls, stepped over the gate, skirted the three lakes and exited the trail, still inhaling honeysuckle scent.

The mud, the gunshot, the dog attack – all conspired to stop me from completing that walk and, even more, from enjoying it. Yet, complete it, I did. Enjoy it, I did.

“Love never gives up,” says 1 Corinthians 13, The Message. It “takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, . . . never looks back, but keeps going to the end.”

Beloved of God, honeysuckle trails to you.

. . . . . . .

1 Corinthians 13:4,6-7 MSG

Treed!

Sometimes you get into situations you don’t know how to get out of. Sometimes you run up a tree you can’t get down.

My husband Jerry stepped into the kitchen one evening as I poured chili into two bowls. Our cat Pewter, a Russian blue, sat on the doormat just outside the kitchen door.

As I set the bowls on the table, I saw a flurry of motion through the kitchen window. A large black dog ran onto the mat where Pewter sat. Pewter shrieked and bolted so fast I saw only a gray streak pursued by the gangly black dog.

Thinking Pewter had run around the house, I dashed to the front door, hoping to intercept her. No flurry. No barking. No Pewter. No black dog.

I walked around the house and met Jerry coming the opposite direction. Nowhere in our large yard did we see or hear dog or cat.

We’d never seen the black dog before. Now both he and our cat had vanished.

Then, Jerry spotted Pewter. She cowered high in the bend of a slender birch tree. The tree stood in an untamed grove of trees behind our neighbor’s fence.

Crossing our yard, we stepped through undergrowth and ducked under branches to get to the tree. Pewter sat high above our heads. Her eyes wide and black, she meowed a melancholy meow.

Jerry lamented our failure to teach Pewter how to come down from a tree. “Cats have to learn to come down the same way they went up,” he said. He told Pewter, “Back down the tree.” Pewter sat unmoved.

“Should we get the ladder?” I asked. “No.” said Jerry. “When she gets hungry enough, she’ll come down.”

We walked back to the house. As we stepped into the kitchen, Jerry said, “Maybe. It’s going to get dark soon.”

Leaving our now-cold chili, we retrieved the tall folding ladder from the garage, unfolded it, carried it across the yard and through the undergrowth and leaned it against the tree where Pewter sat. I held the ladder while Jerry began to climb it. The ladder wobbled precariously. The bottom prongs were firmly planted in soft ground, but the tree was so slender, the top prongs encountered only air.

Jerry asked me to get a bungee cord. I set off through the thicket and across the yard and soon returned with the requested item. Jerry wrapped the bungee cord around the tree and secured the ends to the ladder’s top rung.

Pewter watched with wide, black eyes and occasional melancholy meows. She showed no sign of recognizing us, no sign of trusting us enough to allow us to rescue her.

Speaking gently, Jerry climbed to the ladder’s top step. He reached up and stroked Pewter. Then, gently, slowly, he reached to pick her up. I stood, holding the ladder. We knew our cat might run farther up the tree. She might lash out at Jerry, causing him to lose his balance.

Uttering only a faint protest, Pewter let Jerry pick her up and carry her down . . .

One day, you may cower, moaning, in a place you don’t know how to get out of. I’m not sure whether God uses bungee cords. But I am sure of this: He’s gone to great lengths to help you. He says to you, “I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

You decide whether you will lash out, run or let him carry you to safety.

. . . . . . .

Isaiah 46:4 TNIV

You are not alone!

Monday morning came. I could not get up. Like a little child who has walked too far and plops down, refusing to go a step further, my body said, “Nope.”

I couldn’t blame exhaustion, nor illness, nor any other physical problem. For no apparent reason, I felt paralyzed.

Fifteen years earlier, a similar paralysis overtook me. My husband and I and our two elementary-age daughters had just moved from Mississippi to Indiana. While selling one house and buying another, we lived temporarily in a two-bedroom apartment.

For months, we faced all the tasks relocating involves. We made all the adjustments relocating involves. We experienced all the emotions relocating involves. We house-hunted, enrolled the girls in school and scouted out everything from a grocery store to a doctor’s office (Amanda got an ear infection two days before school started). Living in cramped quarters, learning a strange new world, we tackled the daily tasks that used to be simple but suddenly proved frustrating and complex.

Those months, I experienced periodic bouts of paralysis. The first time it happened, it frightened me. But each time I yielded to that feeling of “I cannot go another step!” – instead of fighting it – I soon felt replenished enough to get up and go again.

Since then, I’ve learned that relocation overload isn’t the only thing that can trigger paralysis. Other triggers include: fear, depression, feelings of powerlessness or purposelessness and unrelieved stress.

Monday morning, immobilized, I pondered the cause.

When at last I found strength to get out of bed, I made coffee and padded upstairs. Entering my office, I saw several booklets scattered in front of a tall bookcase. Our cat Pewter loves to climb behind the books in our bookshelves and then dislodge the books.

The top booklet in the pile displayed a single red rose and four words in large letters: “You are not alone!”

Reading the words from across the room, I heard God say them to me.

Intrigued, I sat in my rattan chair by the window, sipped coffee and read that booklet. A friend of mine, Pam Whitley, and a friend of hers, Pam Wanzer, had created the booklet four years earlier to help new widows.

“Grief can paralyze,” Pam and Pam wrote.

Monday morning, I wasn’t dealing with widowhood. Yet I realized: Grief had immobilized me.

Over the years, I’ve grieved a number of losses, including several that did not involve death of a loved one. In Indiana, grief over moving hundreds of miles away from family members and lifelong friends contributed to my bouts of paralysis.

Now, I felt mystified – and strangely comforted. I’d experienced a wave of grief strong enough to immobilize me, yet subtle enough that I still didn’t understand it.

Ah but God understood what I did not. To tell me so, he’d used a mischievous cat and a booklet I didn’t think applied to me.

When Pam and Pam quoted Hebrews 13:5-6 (AMP), he spoke again:

“He [God] Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. [I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let [you] down (relax My hold on you)! [Assuredly not!] So we take comfort and are encouraged and confidently and boldly say, The Lord is my Helper; I will not be seized with alarm [I will not fear or dread or be terrified].”

In other words, I will conquer paralysis.

“Do the next thing,” Pam and Pam advised.

“You are not alone!”

. . . . . . .

To find most of the text of the booklet, “You Are Not Alone!”, visit Pam Whitley’s singlewivesclub blog.

Kiss the dogs and make them dance

I sat in the family room at a friend’s house, talking and laughing with several other women. We had prayed fervently that morning. In the process, we’d experienced an invigorating, almost electrifying sense of God’s presence.

Our prayer meeting now adjourned, my friend Tina opened the back door. In ran her black lab puppy, Scamp. Scamp ricocheted around the room, his tongue out, his whole body wagging. “Give us some of your energy, Scamp!” I cried. “Give us some of your energy!”

Sitting on a low couch, I leaned forward to reach for my purse. In that instant, Scamp ricocheted from the far side of the coffee table. His hind feet at my feet, his front feet on my knees, he lunged joyfully – and licked me right on the mouth.

“Scamp!” Tina cried.

Scamp bounded away as suddenly as he had bounded up. “Maybe he was trying to give me some of his energy,” I said.

To my knowledge, I’ve never before kissed a dog. But I did dance with one once.

Three years ago, I sat in the family room at a friend’s house. Pam and I had just attended a conference. It wasn’t your normal sit-and-take-notes conference. We’d experienced an invigorating, almost electrifying sense of God’s presence.

Describing the experience to Pam’s husband Carey, Pam and I weren’t as animated as Scamp – but almost. As we talked, Pam popped a CD into the stereo system. The song, “Days of Elijah,” by Robin Mark, began to play.

“These are the days of Elijah,
Declaring the word of the Lord . . .”

Suddenly, something remarkable happened – something that hasn’t happened in any visit to Pam’s house before or since. Spontaneously, the three of us stood up and started dancing. Within a few measures, Carey and Pam were dancing together. I danced solo.

Delighted by the music and the movement, Pam’s mixed-breed setter Toby bounded over. Large, red and long-haired, Toby doesn’t look a thing like Scamp, yet in his puppyhood Toby had that same boundless energy and whole-dog wag. Determined not to miss out on the action, Toby bounced around barking.

Then, unexpectedly, he reared up on his back legs, put his front paws on my shoulders – and danced with me.

“Georgie Porgie, Puddin' and Pie, Kissed the girls and made them cry,” says the classic nursery rhyme.

Laughing at Scamp, recalling Toby, I thought: If anyone writes a nursery rhyme about me, it may include the line, “Kissed the dogs and made them dance.”

Yet I’m convinced the catalyst in both instances went beyond the combination of a hyperactive dog, a family room and me. The people gathered in both places felt profoundly, divinely energized before the puppies erupted into action. Scamp and Toby entered an already charged atmosphere. Uninhibited, they expressed what we already felt.

How delightful to discover that The Message Bible speaks about such energy.

It announces from God: “The sun of righteousness will dawn on those who honor my name, healing radiating from its wings. You will be bursting with energy, like colts [or puppies?] frisky and frolicking” (Mal. 4:2).

It exclaims: “Oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him — endless energy, boundless strength! All this energy issues from Christ” (Eph. 1:19-20).

It urges: “Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God's energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure” (Phil 2:12-13).

Oh, yes! Give us your endless energy, God! Free us to express it!

. . . . . . .

“Days of Elijah,” by Robin Mark. Copyright © 1997 Daybreak Music Ltd. See lyrics at http://www.robinmark.com/Lyrics/daysofelijah.htm

Lyrics and info about “Georgie Peorgie” nursery rhyme at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgie_Porgie.

All Scriptures quoted from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.

Palm clues

Sometimes, God speaks in clues.

He doesn’t say: “Colonel Mustard did it in the parlor with a knife.”

But he does say, in Proverbs 2:3-4, “Cry out for insight and understanding. Search for them as you would for lost money or hidden treasure.”

Recently, I sat on my bed at a conference center in central Florida, crying out for understanding. Notebook in hand, Bible in lap, I prepared for great insights. No profound thoughts came – only the awareness that I sat, looking at a picture of a palm tree. The picture graced the wall opposite my bed. I had seen it, without seeing it, for two days.

Suddenly, I knew in my spirit: God had given me a clue. I can’t explain how you know something in your spirit. It’s as if, deep in your gut, you feel a nudge. Your mind, which considers itself superior to your gut, often ignores the nudge. But if you pursue it, you find yourself on a treasure hunt.

“A palm tree,” I thought. I tried to recall Bible verses about palm trees. None came to mind. I looked up “palm” in the small concordance at the back of my Bible, only to find one verse about the palm of the hand. Making a mental note to explore further later, I let the clue lie.

That night, I left the conference center and drove to the condo in Kissimmee, Florida, that my sister-in-law Linda owns. When I arrived, Linda hugged me and waved me toward a bedroom and bath decorated in a palm tree theme.

Now I saw palm trees everywhere I looked. I triple-underlined my mental note to pursue this clue.

Two days later, back at home, I used my computer concordance to begin a treasure hunt. I discovered that the Deborah of the Old Testament “held court under Deborah's Palm.” Hmm. There, the people of Israel “went to her in matters of justice.”

I also learned that carvings of palm trees adorned the walls of Solomon’s temple, as well as the temple Ezekiel saw in a vision.

Ezekiel stressed how many palm trees he saw. He wrote, “At regular intervals all around the inner and outer sanctuary were carved cherubim and palm trees. . . . They were carved all around the whole temple. From the floor to the area above the entrance, cherubim and palm trees were carved on the wall of the outer sanctuary.”

Deborah the judge sat under a palm tree. Ezekiel the visionary saw palm trees everywhere he looked.

Psalm 92 reveals how you and I can enter into their experiences, and even go beyond them. The psalmist sang words the Amplified version renders this way: “The [uncompromisingly] righteous shall flourish like the palm tree [be long-lived, stately, upright, useful, and fruitful]; . . . . Planted in the house of the Lord . . . [Growing in grace] they shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap [of spiritual vitality] and [rich in the] verdure [of trust, love, and contentment]. [They are living memorials] to show that the Lord is upright and faithful to His promises; He is my Rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

Sometimes, God speaks in clues. When he does, he isn’t playing games. He’s inviting us to search for hidden treasure.

The clues lead to the treasure. The clues unlock treasure. The clues reveal him. Finding him, embracing him, we receive what he holds out to us.

Sometimes, God speaks in clues – and waits to see if we will seek.

. . . . . . .

Prov. 2:3-4 NLT.

Deborah. Judges 4:5 from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.

Ezek. 41:17-20 NIV.

Psalm 92:12-15 AMP.

Jerry-rigged

Our mailbox died an untimely death. A typical metal mailbox affixed to a 4x4 wooden pole set in a concrete base, it served us well for a year – until the night a woman pulled into our driveway by mistake.

She arrived to attend a party happening next door. Five minutes before she drove up, I stepped onto our elliptical exercise machine. When the front doorbell rang, I groaned. Who would come calling, unannounced, after dark on a weekday? I wondered. I decided not to answer the door.

Half a minute later, I had second thoughts. What if my husband had arrived home from work and, somehow, had misplaced his keys? I stepped off the exerciser and started toward the front door just as Jerry entered through the garage door.

“Did you ring the front doorbell?” I asked.

“No, but someone is parked at the top of our driveway, and I saw three ladies with gifts walking across our yard toward the neighbor’s house,” he said.

Turning toward the door, he announced, “I’d better help the driver back down the driveway.” Our driveway takes an unexpected dogleg at the bottom. Already, we had lost three solar lights to people trying to back out.

Jerry stepped outside to see the woman’s car leave the driveway, smash a solar light, jump the ditch and continue across blacktopped road, grinding loudly. Finally, the car stopped. The woman opened the door. She asked innocently, “What did I do?”

Her bumper had snapped our wooden mailbox pole at its base. Her car had dragged the pole and attached mailbox backward, almost hitting the mailbox of our next-door neighbor opposite the house hosting the party.

The woman promised to pay to have our mailbox replaced. The broken pole could not be re-used, nor could the mangled box. We needed to buy a new mailbox and pole, then hire someone to dig a hole, pour concrete, stand the pole upright in the concrete, let the concrete set and, finally, attach the mailbox to the pole. We could not schedule this project immediately because of subfreezing February temperatures.

Not wanting to visit the post office daily to retrieve mail, Jerry devised an ingenious plan to continue using the old mailbox temporarily. He bought three concrete blocks with holes in them and set them atop each other, the holes slightly offset. He hammered out the dented mailbox.

Next, he and I lifted the broken-off pole holding the hammered-out mailbox. We stood the pole inside the semi-aligned holes of the concrete blocks. Jerry used small pieces of wood to wedge the pole, so it stayed upright.

Since the mailbox door would not shut properly, Jerry attached a bungee cord to the pole, ran it around the mail flag and attached its other end to the mailbox door. He tightened the cord so that, when pulled, the door would open, when released, it would shut.

To jury-rig, or jerry-rig, something is “to rig or assemble for temporary emergency use; improvise.”

In the words of Hebrews 9:10, “It's essentially a temporary arrangement until a complete overhaul could be made” (MSG). In another translation, the same verse says the temporary is “imposed until a time of reformation.”

We enjoyed our Jerry-rigged mailbox for two-and-a-half weeks, until temperatures warmed up enough to have a new one installed.

I’m thrilled my husband had the ingenuity to use concrete blocks and bungee cord to improvise a working mailbox. I’m thrilled we knew when to abandon the temporary and welcome the new and better thing that superseded it.

. . . . . . .
Heb. 9:10 from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Heb. 9:10 from New American Standard Updated.

jury-rig. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/jury-rig (accessed: February 20, 2009).

The gorilla in the room

Just before waking on a Sunday morning, I dreamed I attended a party given by a Christian woman I’ve met only once. People chatted in small groups on her spacious, well-manicured lawn.

During the party, I spotted a door that led into a hill. An empty lounge chair sat in front of the door. People stood talking near it. I moved the chair, wove through the people and found the door unlocked. It opened easily.

Once inside, I descended a long flight of wooden steps, then walked down a stark hallway, my footsteps clicking on the bare floors. Reaching a closed door, I opened it.

Before me lay a long room, empty except for a loose weaving of massive ropes near the far end. The ropes dangled from ceiling to floor and intersected in a giant crisscross pattern.

Standing in the doorframe, I peered across the room. A massive black thing dangled from the ropes. The black thing began to climb. “It’s a gorilla!” I shouted.

The gorilla jumped to the floor. Deliberately, it lumbered toward me. I slammed the door and began searching for the latch. To my surprise, the door had three latches. To my dismay, all were flimsy. Securing latch number 1, I wrapped a piece of leather around a nail. Fumbling with latch 2, then 3, I knew: If that gorilla challenged those latches, none would hold.

“There’s a gorilla in here!” I shouted, running down the long hall. A young girl with blonde hair passed me. “I want to see the gorilla,” she said cheerfully. Then, the girl’s blonde mom ran past. I didn’t try to stop the girl, but I did tell her mom, “The door won’t hold that gorilla!”

I bounded up the stairs, shouting, “There’s a gorilla in there!”

Then, I woke up.

You’ve heard of “the elephant in the room”? It’s not a literal elephant. It’s a truth that looms so large, people cannot miss it, yet is so awkward and uncomfortable, people refuse to acknowledge or address it.

I saw the gorilla in the room.

In my dream, the people at the party didn’t intentionally overlook the gorilla. They couldn’t see him because he was kept below the surface. The gorilla stayed in the hidden room with rickety locks until he saw the way out.

FYI: Gorillas are endangered and typically not violent. They have more to fear from humans than humans do from them. However, adult gorillas weigh a lot, and on rare occasions a gorilla has attacked people. When one came my direction, I didn’t wait to see if he came in peace. I ran to warn, not so someone could eliminate the gorilla but so that, when he emerged, people wouldn’t get hurt.

You want to know what else I’ve seen? Truth locked away generations ago is emerging. We, the churched in the US, have stood atop this truth all our lives without seeing it. Now, it rips through doors that cannot hold it. Some run, childlike, toward it. Some flee in terror. Some try desperately to shoot such big, weighty, scary truth. After all, it disrupts our party.

Yet this gorilla can neither be dodged nor shot. “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known,” says Luke 12:2-3. “What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.”

In my dream, I saw the gorilla in the room. I ran to announce, “It’s coming out!”

. . . . . . .

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, Today’s New International Version™ TNIV ®, Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society ®. All rights reserved worldwide.

You too can learn more about gorillas at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla, http://www.un.org/works/OLD/environment/animalplanet/gorilla.html, and
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4558461.