Monthly Archives: September 2008

Happy Birthday, Tristan!

Posted on by
9

Read Tristan’s birthday post from last year here.   I bawled when I wrote it and he may have sniffled a bit when he read it.   We’ll keep it cool this year.

Today Tristan, my first son-in-law ever, turns 28!

Happy Birthday, Tristan, superb son-in-law and waaaaay above average husband to my daughter, Stephanie.   Happy Birthday to you as we celebrate your life represented by faithfulness and trustworthiness in all you do.   Happy Day to a Hoosier who chose rightly to live in Colorado, for it set up a chain of events that made you one of us, a blessing we regularly praise God for!   Blessed and glorious Day of Remembrance for us all as we stop to honor you and the life you lead!

Tristan is a rare find.   Unassuming and humble, you might not notice genius in the room or divine the depth of talent and creativity, nor the well of of knowledge and intelligence if you were passing through a  space with him in it.   You  could be near and yet   miss the wry twinkle of a quiet, but wicked sense of humor, or fail to see the deep thoughtfulness about the powerful issues of the day in politics, religion, worldview.

No.    One might pass Tristan and see a kind person, a quiet man gently playing with his 3 children or engaged in a conversation with family or friends.   A person might say, “Doesn’t he play the drums?”   And not even realize that he is truly one of the best around, sought after by the best musicians, not only at drums, but at all instruments.   You might just see the best of him: an incredible and loving husband and devoted father, and still not get to see the rest of him.

But we, his family, are blessed.   We are blessed to see the giant of a man he is.   Tris is the big-brother of the fam, now.   He is some one we all trust and our go-to guy about anything and everything that ails us.   He knows our secrets, our faults and our failures, and yet, can be trusted with that information.   You cannot buy that kind of character or love.   He is a gift.   We are blessed.

 

So, today, Tristan, I bless you and I thank God for you.   These are the gifts I want you to open today and throughout this next year:

Grace to you, Tristan, and peace.   Be blessed with provision through your giftings and abilities, both the technological and the artistic-musician sides.   I pray that resources make themselves available and that your resourcefulness will become an even greater and valued comodity!

May you be preserved in blamelessness your whole life long.   May your beautiful wife bring you joy and your children, great delight.   May God hear all your prayers and your secret heart’s desires and answer   you in times of trouble.  

I pray that, while should it ever fall my lot –  I would defend you to the death, may the Lord be your defender and protector and  may He keep you safe on every side.  

I pray that you, planted firmly by living waters, will begin to see the fruitfulness of your faithfulness before God and that this next year will bring blessing on every side, provision, new opportunities and new open spaces.   I pray that we’ll see the explosion of the color of you all around,  for this new time and place and new year for you and you family.  

I am so pleased with you as my daughter’s husband and as the father of my 3 beautiful grandchildren.   They are the proof of the man you are.   I am so pleased to call you son, and thankful to your parents for sharing.   I am so blessed you were born to be a part of us.   I love you wholeheartedly, Tristan!

Happy Birthday, cherished one…Your very own (and hopefully not dreaded)  m-i-l   :)

NOTE TO SELF:   Make Tris a drum cake next year.

pictured: Tristan in the Hershey store in Times Square on a recent family vacation; Guini helping Tris open his presents yesterday; Tris and my other amazing son-in-law!

What were you saying?

Posted on by
7

I remember way back  in the day  when my favorite bumper sticker and mantra was “Hang up and drive!”      That was a long time ago and I have pretty much conceded that people are going to talk on their phones and  drive even if they are endangering my life at the same time and I should just shut up about it.   That is just the risk I take by leaving the house.   But technologically-powered discourteousness is making me crazy!

Phone calls.

Since when is every single possible person who might call us more important than the person with whom we are having a meeting, or lunch, or coffee?   Yes, there are emergencies.   There are super-important business calls that you must take or lose your job.   There are reasons to occasionally take a call when you are with other people, but is your entire life really that much of a crisis?   Must all the time I spend with you be listening to conversations you are having with other people?   Yes, it was really great to get to catch up with you, while I listened in on all those other calls…

AND-please do not schedule a meeting with me with one of those ear-phones hooked up.   I cannot stand finding out that the reply you just gave me was a totally different conversation with some one else and that you had disconnected from our conversation without so much as a ringtone or an “excuse me.”   Yikes!

Don’t get  me started on call-waiting.   I have loathed it for as long as I can remember, especially when some one calls ME and then takes other calls.   Are you kidding?   And  after 20 years of enduring it, I have never known one horrid emergency I was put on “waiting” for, not one.  

Text this.

Texting in public  is the newest way to be rude, to “whisper” something in front of other people.    Remember the old saying “Secrets don’t make friends”?   Now it is “Texting doesn’t make friends.”   Unless, of course, you’re the friend getting the text.  

My son-in-law, Tristan, told me that the new business protocol says to look at texting like doing a crossword puzzle.   If you’re in a situation where it would be inappropriate to do a crossword puzzle, then it is also not the right time to be texting.   That would include a job interview, a meeting at work, and when you have set up a time to hang out with a friend, for crying out loud!   It is the newest way to scan the room for some one better to talk to.   Lately, a lot of people are doing crossword puzzles while they are talking to me.   I fantasize having them over for an evening of me doing Sudoku.

I am not totally without a sense of humor about this.   Just mostly.

Text Messaging is Rude by Rick Reyes  

 

These things: ignoring people, paying no attention to others, taking no notice of people close by, disregarding, overlooking, discounting, turning your back on people, snubbing, disrespecting, being indifferent, being disdainful, neglecting, being bad-mannered and acting indecorously – these are all rude, whether you are doing it the old-fashioned way or using the latest techno-powered gadgets to accomplish it.

She rants.

The Convivial Table

Posted on by
1

“The convivial table is where it all begins,” I once read  with immediate agreement  and wish I could remember where and to whom it should be attributed.   Naturally I liked the word “convivial” because it denotes lively feasting and banqueting with loved ones, being in good company with lots of good food for all.

I was perusing an old issue of Architectural Digest   recently, a lovely magazine I try to pick up from the annual library clean-up sale,  when I  saw an ad for Electrolux appliances which said,

“In my kitchen: I preheat a memory.   I fold in old friends with new.   I bake a good laugh.”  

I enjoyed the clever marrying of cooking and baking terms to the meaning of life.   There’s an ad person with a poet’s heart, methinks.  

And isn’t the kitchen truly the lifeline of home and family?   Is this not where we experience unforgettable laughter and memory, the aromas of love and home-cooking?       Isn’t it in the kitchen we hear the music of the percolating coffee, the sizzle of the bacon, the the beep of the timer signifying the wait is over, the promise has arrived?     Is this not where we see the garden’s burst of  color  and taste of life itself?  

The convivial table is life-giving.   The convivial table is a place of gratefulness and feasting.   “The convivial table is where it all begins,” and the place we keep hoping to get back to and should visit often.

I my kitchen I…what?

Eat, drink and be merry with some people you love…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Tomorrow the table will be laden with fish tacos and fruit pizza for Tristan’s birthday (hey it is his menu!), and with love for him and loud talk and laughter amongst all.

pictured: a table spread for Christmas cheer moments before the lively and much-loved guests arrived

 

 

Chapter 12: No Place Like Home – Just Jeanie today…

Posted on by
2

These are the observations both deep and lighthearted from The Sacred Romance – Drawing Closer to the Heart of God (by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge) among a few friends.   We are drawing to a close here as we begin to think towards heaven – a very important part of the story God is writing for us.   We hope you’ll let us know what you are thinking, too…

Posts by the other book-bloggers to follow.

Chapter Twelve: Coming Home

 

Jeanie on Chapter 12:   Besides the Epilogue, this is it-the final chapter in this now-classic book by John Eldredge and Brent Curtis.   I was sort of resisting this chapter for two reasons.   One,  the book  has been so impactful that I don’t want it to end, and two, I knew we were going to focus on heaven.

Page 179: “If…we believe that this life is our best shot at happiness, if this is as good as it gets, we will live as desperate, demanding and eventually   despairing men and women.   We will place on this world a burden it was never intended to bear…”

You may be wondering, What?   A Christian who doesn’t want to talk about heaven?   Well, kind of.   It isn’t that I don’t want to or that I don’t hope to go there someday.   But  I grew up in Christianity that seemed very focused on escape – let’s get out of here and get to heaven as quickly as we can, seemed the metality.   People would gut-sing songs with lyrics like “This old life is filled trouble…trials and sorrow fill the ‘morrow, but someday soon, I’ll take my flight…some morning I will leave it all behind.”   They would belt out these words as if they were hoping God would just transport them right to heaven if they sang loud enough.   Yes, I grew up among Chrsitians who lived their lives in a beam-me-up-God, PLEASE! metality.

So, I have swung the direction of figuring out how to live in the here and now as a Christian.   I think there is a good scriptural basis for this, “On earth, as it is in heaven.”   The Word of God as a whole is filled with wisdom to get us through this life.

But I also know I have discounted, at times, the beauty of what awaits.   I have wondered about heaven.   Fully aware that it is not going to be a bunch of little cherubs on clouds with harps popping grapes into their mouths, I still have wondered: what will it be?   And it has been hard to fathom, for I am very practical and boxed in and linear at times.   I admit I have read John’s Revelation of Jesus Christ (The Book of the Revelation) and quickly glossed over his attempts to describe the indescribable.   In so doing, I know I have missed what may be.

Quoting C.S. Lewis on page 180, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Though it is full of theological inconsistencies and truly ‘just a story,’ the movie “What Dreams May Come”  was one person’s attempt to comprehend what might be.   The tag “After life there is more.   The end is just the beginning” certainly capsulizes what most of us believe.   In the movie, the man dies and finds out there is a heaven that was more than he could have imagined.   Surprisingly, for a movie, it was beautiful and fantastical and colorful.   How do you communicate that?

Eugene Peterson, the  interpreter of The Message, piqued my interest in introducing Revelation:

“The Bible ends with a flourish: vision and song, doom and deliverance, terror and triumph.   the rush of color and sound, image and energy leaves us reeling…we find ourselves in the multidimensional act of Christian worship…John’s Revelation is not easy reading,   Besides being a pastor, John is a poet, fond of metaphor and symbol, image and allusion, passionate in his desire to bring us into the presence of Jesus believing and adoring…the demands he makes on our intelligence and imagination are well-rewarded…for our worship of God {when we receive the Revelation] will almost certainly deepen in in urgency and joy.”

So, in The Sacred Romance, we arrive at the topic of heaven and though I’ve sometimes neglected it, I am open.   Let’s talk heaven.

Quoting Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft from Everything You Wanted to Know about Heaven (pages 180-181):   “Our pictures of heaven simply do not move us; they are not moving pictures…Our pictures of Heaven are dull, platitudinous and syrupy; therefore, so is our faith, our hope, and our love of Heaven…Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of of faith…”

The author, in reflecting on 1 Cor. 2.9 (“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him”) reminds us “we cannot outdream God.”

He goes on to quote theologians and philosophers trying to make sense of what we cannot fully understand, like John the revelator, who tried to explain in words what we don’t yet have words for, “…it was like jasper…the streets were like…glass like crystal…” etc.

Reading these things, I could see how lifeless my imagination of a future with God, and seeing Him and being like Him will be.   I have read of the worship of heaven and, with my great love of worship have just envisioned myself some where in the crowd, far away from Him, unnoticed.   I have secretly wondered how that could be heaven.

But as I pondered the possibilities, after reading this chapter, it seemed God gave me a glimpse: me, as a 10-year old girl on a tire swing, just having moved “far away” from family and friends and church and all I had ever known, but in those lonely times, with lush, green Iowa grass beneath my feet and a corn field and streams round about, I would sing the songs of heaven – sing to Father.   The melodies came easily and His Presence soothed my fears and lonliness and it was just Him and me.   God reminded me that He has already been giving me glimpses to keep me on the path.   I am pretty sure in heaven, I will have my own tire swing on grassy meadows and there’ll be no crowds between us….

What can you tell me about heaven?   I want to know more…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Today I am closer than yesterday to where “real life begins.”

 

I won! I won!

Posted on by
6

Carol Ann did this to me.  

She has “awarded” me this symbol and names me a blog she hearts.   And truly it would be a wonderful prize, except that I have to WORK for it.   I have to award it to 7 other people and have them pay it forward.   And so on.   And so on.   And so on….

The waters feel choppy, here, Carol Ann.   How am I, a person who loves soooooo many blogs, to pick only 7?   Some are so great, but they only actually post 3.2 times a year, so I sort of have them on “probation.”    I wish all my kids blogged-by default it would be easier.   But I must select.    Well, here goes, in no particular order.   The  I LOVE YOUR BLOG AWARDS go to:

 1.

Carol Ann-you win again.   The other lady that awarded you talked about your joy and fun shining through and it is true.   You were the blogger  I most looked up to when  I started blogging   because you did it so well and so honestly.   You won again!   You have to do it all over!

 2.

Stephanie’s Place – you win because you write so well about such tough stuff.   I am honored to have the secret password.   And one day (soon, I am thinking), I will be standing across the bookstore watching you sign copies of one of the many books you have in you, and I will say, “I knew her when it was just a blog…”

 3.

Robin, my sister-in-law.   Sometimes she and I write these amazing blog posts back and forth in the form of emails, and I think: what are we, crazy?   The world should be reading this amazing material.   Robin is pretty new at it  and hasn’t found her posting groove (she thinks it should be really important first-ha-then I’d never post!), but when she writes, it is good!

 4.

My husband’s.   He has 3 websites and 4 blogs, but I’ll just mention one.   We write for each other really.   If you read us both, you are in on the corny conversations that are our life.   We like each other a lot. :)

 5.

Tara’s.   She doesn’t write enough, but I love when my first-born does!   She is a passionate young woman, full of zeal and optimism, truly in love and inspirational in her walk with God.   I always tell her if she weren’t my daughter, I’d be trying to find ways to be friends with her.

 6.

Jovan’s, my daughter-in-love.   She is better to me than 7 sons(Ruth 4.15).   I have known this girl for at least 1/3 of her life and she is only 21!   She married my son almost 2 years ago and her exhuberance for her husband and baby bless my heart.   She writes of love in every post and gives me lots of pictures to look at!

 7+.

Pearl and Bryan.   These are two, but they are kind of connected by marriage.   Bryan is clever, witty and wry and uses my blog to write tormenting things on his, sometimes.   He is the brother I already have too many of. :)   Pearl is artistic and thoughtful, deep and sincere.   She writes about family and beauty and things of the heart.   They are good friends who’ve seen me at my worst, and yet, are good friends.

OK winners, there are AWARD RULES, here is what you have to do:

  • Tell the winner to put the award logo on their blog.   It is their prize!
  • Link to the person from whom you received your award.
  • You bestow the award on 7 other blogs and link to them!
  • E-mail or leave a message on the bloggers you have awarded letting them know.

Keep the love going!

 

Cease from Your Labors

Posted on by
2

Labor Day is a day off for the working citizens of America.   Stop working.   I mean it.   Cease.   Stop it!   Quit working right now!   This is a fedreally mandated day off, for crying out loud!   Plus, God wants you to enjoy time off, too.

Jesus, as quoted in Matthew 11.28-30 (Amplified):

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease, and relieve and refresh your souls.]

Take My yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle (meek), and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (relief, and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.

For My yoke is wholesome (useful, good – not harsh, hard, sharp or pressing, but comfortable, gracious and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.