More than just a famous painting...

Jesus didn’t have to go to the cross. 

For some of you this may not be new news but to me, it’s both fresh and profound and exactly what my soul needed to hear.  It's true.  Jesus didn't have to go to the cross.

Let me explain…  Jesus knew his coming death was the fulfillment of prophecy.  When he went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, he asked God straight out—if there’s any way you can let this pass me by, please do so.  And he was told flat out he would be betrayed by one close to him and that he would carry his own death piece, the cross, to the hill where he would hang.

Let’s be honest.  Jesus wouldn’t have been the first son in the world not to do what his father asked.  He wouldn’t have been the first person to disagree with authority and he wouldn’t have been the first person to experience a fear-based response and run from danger.  He wouldn’t have been the first person to take the easy way out.  He had a choice. 

To my way of thinking, the garden was middle ground.  When Jesus looked out over the city in one direction, he saw a land filled with people that would betray him and lead him to his death.  But I what I didn’t know, what I learned just recently (I’ve been a Christian for over forty years mind you), is that if Jesus would have just turned around and looked the other way, he could have easily slipped into the Judean wilderness and disappeared.  He could have walked away.  Prophecy unfulfilled.  Destined changed.  History altered forever.

When the call comes and it’s not a favorable diagnosis, it would be easier to run.  When the conversation starts with I don’t love you anymore, it would be easier to run.  When there was nothing else we could do is all that’s left to be said, it would be easier to run.  When we watch the people we love struggle and resist help, it would be easier to run.

Have you ever wanted to disappear?  Have you ever thought about just chucking it all and running?  I often joke that I’ve thought about running away far more as an adult than I ever did as a kid.  I think most of us have felt that way.  There are days it seems life is made up of a thousand flaming arrows headed straight toward our hearts.  If we responded how we wanted on those days, the freeways would become a parking lot as we each tried to flee to anywhere. But. Here.  Yet for the overwhelming majority of us, we don’t run.  Why don’t more of us run?

In my opinion today marks one of the most crucial moments in Holy week.  It was tonight, Thursday night, when Jesus sat down with his disciples and shared what would be their last meal together, Jesus’ last meal on earth.  To set the scene, you’ve got men from all walks of life who’ve become best friends.  While being called together for dinner probably wasn’t unusual, as Jesus begins to explain what’s going to happen and what he expects from those that choose to follow him in the days to come, it’s obvious this meal is like no other the group has ever attended.  In today’s terms the last supper is much like the final meeting before the team is dismissed and the real work starts.  The events that will unfurl over the next few hours will blow apart this close-knit group and life will become anything but ordinary.  Some will doubt--I don’t believe what I’m hearing.  Some will stand in dismay--why is He washing my feet?  Some will deny--I never knew him.  One will betray—it is he.  To think it could have all been avoided if Jesus would have only turned around and headed less than an hour the other direction.

Jesus knew there were flaming arrows aimed directly for his heart.  He knew his place in history was to obey his Father’s will and take the hit.  If ever there was a one-for-all moment, surely it was when Jesus decided not to turn and go the other way.

We’re all going to face days when the arrows come and we find ourselves asking exactly the same thing Jesus did--if there’s any way this can pass me by, please let it do so.  Doubt is going to creep in.  Dismay is going to come.  Denial is going to settle deep and betrayal may befall us.

Tonight when we set down to dinner and talk our way through the events surrounding the last supper, I’ll use words like integrity, loyalty, responsibility, honesty, hope, faith, and love to tell my son a few of the reasons I don’t run, even when it would sometimes be the easiest thing to do.  I’ll plant these seeds deep in his heart and pray when the arrows come his way he'll follow the ultimate example, that of Jesus, and decide to stay instead of running.

Spectrum Living...

If you spend much time on Facebook, you know that every so often Mark and the gang wax nostalgic and like to remind us what we were thinking/doing/posting "this time last year."  Such was the case for me yesterday, when this post popped up on my FB feed and instantly took me back.  As I re-read my thoughts from a year ago, I was struck by how different, yet exactly the same, so many things are in my household today...

“I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability—to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel.  It’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy.  You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make wonderful plans.  The Colosseum.  The Michelangelo David.  The gondolas in Venice.  You learn some handy phrases in Italian.  You book a plane flight and reserve a room.  You make dinner reservations.  It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.  You pack your bags and off you go.  You board the plane feeling more anticipation and excitement for this trip than anything you’ve experienced before.  Several hours later the plane lands.  Italy, what a dream come true!  You have arrived!  Then the stewardess comes in and says “Welcome to Holland!”

“Holland?” you say.  “What do you mean, Holland?  I signed up for Italy!  I’m supposed to be in Italy.  All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”  But there’s been a change in the flight plan.  You’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.  The important thing is that you haven’t been taken to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine and disease.  It’s just a different place.

So, you must go out and buy new guidebooks.  You must make new hotel arrangements.  Dinner plans will have to be altered.  And you must learn a whole new language.  You must make new reservations at new places.  And you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met if you hadn’t landed here.

To make matters worse, everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they have there.  They share Italy stories and offer Italy advice.  Little of it applies in Holland.  For the rest of your life you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go, too.  That’s what I had planned.”  And the pain of that will never go away because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.

Holland is a different place.  It’s slower paced than Italy.  It is less flashy than Italy.  But after you’ve been in Holland for a while you catch your breath, you look around…and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills and Holland has tulips.  Holland even has Rembrandts.

If you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to go to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special and lovely things about Holland.”

         **Excerpt from a story by Emily Perl Kingsley as printed in “Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul”

Trimester 2 finals will be in the books come Friday and it’s weeks like this one, when my family finds itself knee deep in the debris of train-on-tracks, spectrum living, that I long to run away with my ticket in hand, desperate to secure my spot in a country I long to visit.  Even though the opportunities are dwindling for me to remind my precious teen the benefits of study guides, reviewing material, eating well, and getting to bed on time if a not a touch early, I’m desperate not to let the topic drop but to say just one more thing in case it’s the right one.  An Aspie parent never knows when the next word will unlock a new wing of the kingdom.

Italy.  I was supposed to be over there, not here.  And while I’ve had almost fourteen years to adjust to living here and while Emily Pearl Kingsley is correct, Holland is incredible in its own right, a part of me sometimes wonders what I’m missing over there, in that other place.  But pining for Italy is a slippery slope and I know firsthand it leads me far from where I want to be.  From where this family and the child I adore need me to anchor myself.  Far from where God has planted me.

Holland is a beautiful place and while this season brings with it some grey days, I can’t let myself forget that this is right where I need to be.  After all, spring is coming.  And I’m looking forward to the tulips.

Me, the Lottery, and an old new book...

Love excluded, I don’t really believe in games of chance, which means I don’t play the lottery.  Yet just a few weeks ago, as many of you well remember, the Powerball jackpot grew to just over nine hundred and eighty million dollars and it was hard not to notice given everyone was buying a chance and talking about what they’d do if they hit it big.  

I was sitting at breakfast commenting on the fact I was having a good hair day.  Two seconds later I logged in to check the kiddos’ grades and what did I see?  A’s, including the math class we thought might be his Waterloo and that new foreign language I wasn’t so sure about.  That’s the moment I looked up and jokingly said “with an A in math, good curls and nearly a billion dollars on the line, maybe today's the day I should play the lottery.”  Which is how I found myself standing at a counter I seldom frequent buying six dollars worth of chance I never take later that very afternoon.

Once I had some skin in the game (six bucks isn’t nothing, people!) and stopped marveling over the fact that being worth a dozen some odd zeroes might just be enough to get me a seat at the big kids table for dinner with one of my business idols, I, too, took a turn dreaming about how I’d spend what a single winner would find to be just over seven hundred million dollars after tax.

There was a church and five charities that would receive a one-time gift to be used as they pleased as well as a trust to be created for each organization that would remain in place and help people long after I was a memory.  I liked it.  There were houses to buy for family and friends and gifts to give to the people I love.  It would be a good deal for everyone.  And apparently I need a new wardrobe since every time I go to the county clerks office to look up genealogy records, they ask me if I’m there to file for child support.  I’d have to see to that, too. 

But if you want to know the truth, what I was most excited about in the short term was buying a complete set of the Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy.  Yep, you heard me correctly.  I wanted to buy some old books.  Before you choke on your soda, let me explain that I’m not talking about your old encyclopedia Britannica’s here.  The Hinshaw Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy comes in six volumes plus index and costs nearly four figures a book.  First printed in 1936, the Hinshaws have only been updated two times since; 1948 and 1969.  The first set I ever had my hands on were leather bound, first editions kept under lock and key and could only be read if I made an appointment.  Imagine how excited I was at the prospect of owning my own set!

So the Powerball drawing has come and gone and as you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t win and I didn’t get to buy those first edition Hinshaws I was longing for.  But I did find another complete set housed in a local library recently and guess what?  They’re in paperback!   It seems reprints were authorized in 1978, 1991 and again in 2014, which means while they’re technically out-of-print (read hard-to-find), a few volumes of the newest edition are floating around out there.  While they aren’t cheap, they’re much closer to costing dinner for five at a nice steak house versus vacation funding for a four-day weekend.

This arrived in the mail today because someone who loves me a lot knows I love books and that I’m more than a little obsessed with my genealogy work.  It’s Volume I, part B, which means I’m missing part A, but I don’t mind a bit.  Part A’s out there somewhere along with volumes two through six and the index, waiting to be discovered just like so much of the history of my family.  Good thing I’m determined to find it.

The genealogy journey continues...

This morning my genealogy quest took me ten minutes from home where I got to spend hands on time with several gorgeous old record books.  To date this journey has cost me countless hours of research leading to wrong connections and dead ends, numerous teary, late nights spent chasing tangents that landed me in someone else's family tree altogether and a ridiculous amount of self doubt.  Is this information correct?  Does he/she belong to me?  Can I prove it?  Each time I've been wrong, I've been a bit embarrassed that I got a little too excited a little too soon.  Imagine me doing that.  And every word I've ever heard about genealogy research rings true.  It's frustrating, it's confusing, it takes too much time and can be expensive.  While librarians are usually nice, certain clerks in counties we won't mention can be nasty and even rip books right out of your hands. Then there's the fallout on the homefront... Dishes have sat in the sink longer than reasonable, laundry has gone undone more times than I should readily admit and our carry-put bill has doubled.  Honestly it would be far easier to quit than move forward.

All of that said---I wouldn't change one minute of this journey.  I've met an incredible group of researchers, historians and society registrars along the path that have challenged me to go further and research through a different lens than I used when I first started.  I've traveled to places I would have never seen and I'll never look at an old document or census record the same.  Best of all, I've had an amazing cohort in crime standing right beside me, encouraging me not to give up when I hit the wall.  Thank you, Stacy Ziemer Green​.  You know we're really just getting started, right?

Marriage records--Hamilton County, In.

1800's marriage records--including that most necessary book A.

Four days and counting!

Four days and counting!

Surely by now everyone has received at least ten of these types of emails advertisements this season, right?   Only ten days left!  Hurry in!  You might miss out on something incredible!  What are you waiting for?  Hurry!  Hurry!  Hurry!  Only eight days left!  Are you stupid?  Where are you?  HURRY!  You’re going to miss it!

If you’re anything like me, by the time you get done reading an ad like the one above, your heart’s racing and you feel a building anxiety over the fact you might just miss something if you don’t indeed hurry.  Even if all was well in your world before you even knew that ad existed.  Even if you had things well in hand this holiday season, the ad most likely did its job.  Have you ever noticed how marketers play on emotions that sit way too close to the surface for many of us?  They unsettle you (Am I ready?).  They place doubt (Did I get the best deal?).  They might even play on fear (Is what I’ve done good enough?). 

I’m the first to admit I can easily get caught up in this hurry frenzy.  As the baby of five kids, I never wanted to miss out on anything growing up and I can proudly say in just over forty years, nothing’s changed.  I still hate missing out.  I’m the first one up on Black Friday and I’ve even been known to follow a certain big brown truck to a nearby game store on release day for a kiddo I happen to adore.  I can hear you laughing but don’t judge me.  My guess is you’ve probably done this same type of thing, especially if you have children.  Whether it happens to you during the holidays or at some other time of year, like a birthday or special occasion, it doesn’t matter.  Even though my kiddo is older now, I can still hear his pleas from past holidays ringing in my ears.  But mom, you have to hurry!  They open at 4am on Saturday but you only have an hour.  If you aren’t one of the first three in line, they’ll sell out and I’ll be the only kid without a copy of the game!  It’s a boatload of pressure, I’ll tell you.  Yet there I went, running around town in a constant panic, wondering if I was going fast enough, afraid I’d miss out.

The morning I shared the details of the delivery man stalking incident to a good friend over coffee was right about the time I had the good sense to hit the pause button and insert a little sanity check into my life.  I heard the words coming out of my mouth, my confession if you will, but honestly, I couldn’t believe what I was saying.  I did what?  Why?  And then it hit me.

There’s a truth out there advertisers don’t want us to know.  Save for one or two new electronic items you might not even want or need, there’s nothing new this season that you’re going to miss is if don’t hurry.  While it’s true you might save a few dollars here and there, research indicates that stores only deeply discount a small handful of items banking on the hope you’ll fill your cart with other regularly priced merchandise while waiting in line to grab one of only five Hero Princess figurines being sold in the next ten minutes for fifty cents.  They’re counting on your trip to snag Hero Princess for under a buck costing you closer to a hundred dollars before you leave their fine establishment.

Whether you’ll be spending a quiet evening curled up with a good book this Christmas or circulating a room filled with family and friends, my guess is what you most need to hear you won’t find in any advertisement set to hit your inbox in the coming days.  Friends, you don’t need to hurry.  In fact, if you can find a few hours, let yourself rest and try hard not to feel guilty about it.  Remind yourself that most likely, you’re ready.  And if you’re not, force yourself to make a sane to do list you actually have a shot at accomplishing rather than a manifesto that will leave you feeling inadequate when you fall short.  Trust that you got the best deal.  If you learn that Hero Princess is going to be on sale for a quarter for five minutes on Christmas Eve, say a prayer for the sucker that’s going to be standing in line rather than diving for your wallet and coat.

Is what you’ve done good enough?  I bet it is.  If you share your heart with someone this Christmas, if you reach out and make vulnerable a bit of yourself you otherwise keep guarded, you’ll ace Christmas 2015.  And if you don’t find yourself chasing a delivery truck?  That’s some serious extra credit.

Oh Christmas Tree...

“So someone asked about our Christmas tree and I said which one?’  The kiddo stated this morning on the drive in to school.

“Right,” I agreed.  “We have several.”

“Mom, we have twelve!”  The kiddo corrected me.

“Are you sure, I thought it was like five or six,” I countered, truly unsure of the actual number given several are seasonal/themed trees that stay up year round.

“Trust me, there are twelve.  I recounted as soon as you got done decorating last week.  You should know by now these are the kind of details that hit my radar.” 

Of course they are, I thought to myself.  After all, he’s the reason I have twelve trees. 

When he was little, the kiddo was afraid of dark spaces, particularly the shadowy corners of rooms.  This was before we realized he would be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome a short year later, back in the days when we offered patented phrases like oh well, that’s just the way it is if there was something he didn’t like or understand.  That same year when I was taking down our Christmas decorations, I was on the last small tree when he commented that while he liked our big tree best, the smaller trees I put up throughout the house helped light up the corners.  Several days later it dawned on me, I usually put our smaller trees in dark corners because that’s where I have space.

So this morning I smiled and watched in the rearview mirror as the kiddo finished his statement and grinned at me before taking a sip of his coffee.  I’m in awe of the young man my son is becoming—my actually fourteen, looks likes he’s eighteen, forever stuck at four in my heart little boy.  Every tree in this house is for him.

As for me...

If you can see this post because we're Facebook “friends,” it means I know you in a way that connects us enough that I don’t mind sharing parts of my life with you. It means I don't have a problem explaining to my husband who you are or why we’re friends. It means I don’t mind telling my son why you’re on my Facebook feed. It means I don’t care if my parents see what’s posted here. If I care about you enough to read what's going on in your life when you post, it’s safe to say I care enough about you to pray for you. So I want to tell you what I did for you today but I need you to know straight off it really has nothing to do with me and everything to do with what I believe.

Today we hit our knees at church and we prayed for a world in need of hope. Of peace. Of a Savior. We prayed for a local family whose lives were torn apart and we prayed for a government of leaders that have rendered themselves useless in their attempt be politically correct. When time grew quiet and we had a few minutes to pray over our own concerns, I want you to know you crossed my mind. I know you're struggling with aches and pains and some days it’s hard to get out of bed. I know you're struggling with your finances. I know you're struggling with your grown child battling addiction. I know infidelity has ripped your marriage apart and you don’t know what’s coming next. I know you're struggling with a new business venture. I know you’re wondering where you fit in at your current job. I know you're worrying about the coming empty nest as your child decides on a college. I know you feel the anxiety that comes with your high schooler starting a new trimester. I know you’re battling life-changing illness. I know you're exhausted working three jobs. I know you're wondering how you're going to put a Thanksgiving meal on the table then turn around in less than a month and pull off Christmas. I know you’re disappointed at the report card your child recently handed you. I know you’re trying to fit in at school. I know you're struggling with a family member that you’re not sure you want at the table this holiday season. I know you're struggling with your weight and self-image. I know you’re worried about your child’s diagnosis and that upcoming IEP. I know the situation with the move across country is extremely exciting and equally terrifying. I know you’re worried about being rejected by someone you want to like you as much as you like them. I know you have bills you can’t pay. I know you're struggling with pending retirement and downsizing. I know you worry if putting your mom in a memory care facility was the right choice. I know you're struggling to understand what's going on in the world and you’re worried your little corner might be next on a terrorist’s checklist. I know you don’t have health insurance although you’re sick, again. I know someone close to you betrayed you.

I believe we live in a broken, fallen world and as such, I believe the promise wasn’t that life would be Heaven on earth. I believe that hurting people hurt people and we stand in the paths of the broken everyday. I believe the Devil is alive and well and he has one end game in mind for us, to kill, steal and destroy.  But I also know that my Redeemer lives and in the end he will stand upon this earth (Job 19:25). 

So whether you believe in what I believe in or not, whether you pray or not, whether you think it's all just bogus or not, know that I believe enough for both of us.