A drop of dew

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledgeof Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him -Philippians 3:7-8

So, the sermon was out of Philippians. We were celebrating communion, and I was singing a song I have sung dozens of times in church and at Campbell functions. It is a beautiful song, and today it hit me like never before.

Your broken form upon the cross, Your holy love expressed,
Stirs a passion in my soul, calling me to give my best

No sacrifice I could give for you could match what you've given me
For my everything is but a drop of dew, and Calvary is the sea
Calvary is the sea.

If I could take the love I feel and capture it with words
More than what my heart could give is so much less than You deserve

If I should ever doubt Your love, my only wish would be
That You would keep Your rugged cross etched upon my memory

No sacrifice I could give for you could match what you've given me
For my everything is but a drop of dew, and Calvary is the sea
Calvary is the sea.

I am not sure why the song hit me today, but I almost didn't make it through, very unusual for me. Maybe it was the funeral I attended yesterday. Maybe the other stressers in my life. Whatever it was, I was just struck with such a realization of how little I do for my Savior and all He has given for me. It is easy for me to be complacent and to feel all right working in my little church office, proud of myself for following God's call. Yet, I know that He is calling me to step out more, to not be comfortable. I know that whatever I do cannot earn His sacrifice or make God love me more, but I also know that I have to follow that calling...not sure exactly how that plays out right now. I just know today was a reminder...one of those random God moments which gives as many questions as answers.

thinking out loud

Ok, so I am sitting here in the house having a pretty cruddy evening after a phone call to my dad, who is not doing so well lately, and after speaking to a friend who is currently at the hospital awaiting some test results. I am watching Million Dollar Baby, which is probably not helping my frame of mind at all. I probably just need to sit and have a good cry, but I am not much of a crier, and it makes me mad when I do. I am sure this is not at all a healthy way to be, and, in all honesty I probably need to get out of the house and be social, but it is late, and no one to hang with at this hour. And so I am writing. Perhaps all the CUDS journaling has rubbed off on me after all.

I haven't blogged in a while, mostly due to busyness. Things are going well. The kids are good. The boy has started cub scouts. The baby is starting to sit and is very close to crawling. The girl is doing ok in school and has started to hang with some of the grad students at church, so she has a social life again. Hubby is Hubby, or rather Hubby on computer courses (you know, this is your Hubby, this is your Hubby on computer courses). It's a funny thing: after all these years of him teasing me about being an overachiever, he is mad as fire to not be making an A in his Spanish class. And he hates our computer. HOwever, new computers require funding which is not really available at this moment (something about a baby and a girl in college...)So, I come in regularly to find him yelling at the computer and calling it names. I am really enjoying the church I serve. I am excited about some of the things we are doing. I love the people I am working with and for (wow,ended that sentence with TWO prepositions!). I am starting to meet some other colleagues in town, which is cool. However, I am realizing that my extroverted self needs a social life. One of my favorite lunch friends (aside from staff and/or my Hubby) is moving today.She is off to OH to finish her PhD in microbiology, stuff beyond my understanding. My circle of buddies is getting geographically wider and immediately smaller (again!). Sad day.

I am extraordinarily stressed about my extended family right now. I have a dad who is dealing with a multitude of physical and emotional issues, a sister who is dealing with family issues, an aging grandmother, a brother who is just out of touch with the rest, and a wonderful sister who is in the middle of all of it as caregiver to all. I don't know how she does it. I love her dearly,and I know God has her where she needs to be right now, but I know she has to be stressed, because I am far away from them, and I am stressed. Maybe I am more stressed because I am here, but I also know myself well enough to know that I am not nearly the patient nurturer that my sister is. Maybe God knew what He was doing when He kept me away from the rest...imagine that.

Oh well, enough whining. God is good. I love my life, bumps and all...

Home alone

Ok, I am not really home alone. I am currently typing and listening to Rebecca alternate between talking to her toy and falling asleep. She has a very definite going to sleep pattern which consists of sticking her thumb in her mouth and rolling over to her side then rolling to the other side and sticking her other thumb in her mouth. She will do this and fuss a little and fall asleep. However, she is laying on her play mat, and I stuck some batteries in a part of it which has never had batteries before. So, everytime she rolls over she kicks the mat, and it starts a light and music show. So, she sings back to it. It is very cute.

She is also very much occupying herself, which gives me time to type. Normally that would not be enough to give me a few moments, but my two other children are gone, Melissa for the summer and Christian for the next couple of weeks. Jamie is working nights, so it is unusually quiet around the house. I have already done my workout, and I am fixing to ruin it by eating homemade blueberry cobbler. I have folded clothes, and now I am typing despite the fact I have nothing really to say. And now she cries, and it is time to go...good thing I had nothing to say!

It's the little things that make it all worth it

So, I thought I would share a beautiful story with you. I hope it touches you like it did me...

Last week, I was getting ready for work, putting on my jewelry. Now my jewelry box is about a foot tall with a flip top, pull out drawers and a little cabinet on each side where my necklaces hang. Anyway, I opened the side door of my jewelry box and there was a pair of underwear in there. Superhero underwear. Since they were superhero underwear, I was pretty sure this was not some strange flirtation from my husband. "Well," I thought, "That's a little weird." However, since there is a clothes basket near my dresser, I just figured that Christian had thrown his underwear at his basket, missed, and they had inadvertently gotten closed up in the drawer. So, I threw them in the basket and went on.

I don't wear too many necklaces these days due to the little one, so I did not open the drawer again until this week. Once again, underwear. This time, Star Wars underwear. And I suddenly knew: the underwear were no accident...

Later that afternoon, I asked my son, "Son, is there any reason why I keep finding your underwear in my jewelry box?" The response? Hysterical, side-splitting, couldn't talk laughter. Finally, Christian said, "I thought it would be funny." Well, he was right. It was funny. I can't help it, I've laughed repeatedly myself. It is funny in a seven year old kind of way. Later he said, "I'm not sneaky. I'm just good at practical jokes." I'm pretty sure he gets that from his father...

Christmas season ramblings

Ok, so, as usual, this Christmas season has been crazy. I realize that that is true for most people, but for me it is a bit of a job hazard as well. Well, this year has been even more so. On top of the usual bevy of rehearsals for upcoming worship services, extra bulletins, locating advent readers, etc., this year I was asked to sing & speak for no less than 3 events not in my usual realm of responsibility. So, I sang my testimony through Christmas music (an interesting challenge, let me tell you) for an event Saturday morning. Next up was a WMU circle meeting at the retirement home near the church on Monday. I really wanted to give a Christmas lesson that was something different than what you normally hear. Ended up, I taught a lesson on being humble as we are shown in the Christmas story (When visited by the angel Gabriel Mary's response was humble; Zechariah was humbled by being made mute after his lack of belief; finally, the humility of Jesus as we are encouraged to have in Philippians 2). Oh, and we had the first of our Christmas programs Sunday night at church.

Tuesday morning my senior ladies' choir sand their cantata at a memory care facility full of alzheimers patients. I think there were 4 or 5 awake out of the 25 (patients, not singers). However, this is the 2nd concert we have done this year where there was a fight between residents. We have been avoiding our usual mosh-pit inducing music, but, apparently, it is not working. I do want to say the ladies are holding their own in their golden years as both times, a woman let a man have it. I am not sure what that means...

Needless to say, I was looking forward to Tuesday night, which looked to be my only night at home this week. You know, occasionally pregnant women are supposed to rest. Well, I got a call at 4:30 Tuesday from a desperate church member. Their Sunday school class was to have a party at the country club in an hour and a half, and their entertainment had just cancelled. I knew she was desperate because when I said that it was just me and Christian for the night, she told me to bring him along (to the country club!! Has she met my son?) Anyway, being so good at saying no, I ran home, got dressed, tried to find a song or two that I had not already sung for everybody this Christmas season, and ran out the door. Well, after a few moments prep time, Christian and I ran out the door. He did wonderful at dinner (another Christmas miracle!!), and it was time for me to sing. Well, there was another group just down the hall from us that was having a very lively time with much hooping and hollering (Christian said they must be watching football!). Well, about the time I got up to sing, the karaoke started. I did my best to sing over their sound system, but the preacher said he couldn't turn around and look at me because it was the first time he'd heard "O Holy Night" and "Californian Dreaming" together, and he was afraid he was going to lose it. Probably good he didn't, because I would have lost it with him. So, God reminded me of that humility lesson I'd taught earlier this week...

Anyway, all this to say...I don't know. It's just been a funny week.

I think that I shall never see...

Ok, spring has officially arrived, and I received the most wonderful gift. Having bought my home in the fall, I knew I liked the yard and trees. It is a pretty yard, nothing special, but I like it a lot. However, this week I got the most wonderful surprise- I realized those trees in my yard were cherry trees with the most fabulous blossoms on them-like large, puffy clouds in my front yard. Then, when I had about gotten over the cherry trees, I realized that the other tree in my front yard is a dogwood, fixing to bloom. Well, I have wanted a dogwood for several years. Most of my neighbors in johnsonville had them, but for whatever reason, when they cleared my lot, I did not have one. Jamie has planted several over the years, but they need to be planted a particular way, and none of them lived, but now I have one, and it is beautiful! One of the ladies in my senior ladies' choir said, "see, God knew you needed to be here." Too funny!

Coincidentally, the cherry tree I planted in Johnsonville 12 years ago bloomed for the first time this year. Yeah, I got the irony.

Silence

Ok, anyone who knows me knows that I do not do silence, rest, pauses, quiet, or reflection like I need to do. Someone sent the following to me, it appealed to me on a couple of levels, and I thought I would share it with you.

The Sound of Silence
Betsy Childs

I recently attended an elementary school talent show. Among the variety acts were several young pianists; listening to them play brought back memories of sitting through many long piano recitals. I remembered how prone young musicians are to rush their songs. The underlying assumption is that faster is better, and in their haste they plow through slow or meditative portions of a song, failing to give full value to the rests. I remember my piano teacher physically restraining my hand to keep me from hurrying ahead as she audibly counted out the full value of the notes.

It was only as I grew older that I learned not to just read the notes but to hear the music. I came to see that the rests and held notes in the music are every bit as essential to its beauty as the song's progression. What would Schumann's "Traumerei" or a Chopin nocturne be with out their pathos-laden pauses?

You may have noticed that God is not one to rush things. He isn't compelled to fill the silence for the sake of moving things along. Between the Old and New Testament, there were roughly four hundred years during which the people of Israel were without prophecy or revelation. Yet this silence, uncomfortable as it must have been for those believers who lived and died under it, only accentuated the crescendo when the Word became flesh.

Perhaps you are going through a period when it seems as though God has grown silent in your life. Silence tries the soul. Try as we might, we cannot explicate it, and the noise of nothing threatens to drown out faith. But consider for a moment that such a noticeable silence actually testifies that God has not always been silent. The fact that we can recognize an absence in fact bears witness that there has been a Presence.

I don't know anyone who would claim that the rests are their favorite portions of a song. But those silent beats are necessary to accentuate the other notes and allow the music to tell its story. So also in our lives, I believe that we will one day be able to see the value of the silences that give shape to our stories. We can take comfort that silence is hemmed on either side by a song.

Throughout the scriptures, prophets repeatedly cry out, "He who has an ear, let him hear!" We need to learn to listen in the silences as well as in the climaxes, for the silence itself may be what God wants us to hear. The silence will not last forever, and it will make the sound that follows even more glorious.


Betsy Childs is associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.