#thattrucktho

Years ago I spent the weekend with my grandparents.  On Saturday morning we attended a funeral for someone I didn't know.  Some people were standing around looking very gloomy talking about what things they wanted to have from the deceased's estate. I noticed when they were talking about their loved one and the special memories about their things the mood changed in the room. People started reminiscing and laughing. The result of that environment was me having this thought process: I love people, people I love will eventually die, when they are gone I want something really special to keep that will remind me of them too so I don't have to be sad.

Often during my weekends with the grandparents we would go to their beach property near Key Center. My cousins and I would run all over that place picking flowers, playing on the rope swing, and splashing in the spring that ran through the property. It was the most magical memorable place I knew. My grandpa would always let us girls help him unload gravel and dirt from his truck when he did work on the road. He would teach us how to roast hot dogs, feed us "awful" waffles (they were awfully good), and let us swim until we were exhausted. He almost always had a smile on his face for us and loved to tease us. I adored that man. 

So there we were Grandma, Grandpa and I flying down highway 16 on the way home from the beach on Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining, and all I could think of was how much I loved my Grandpa Bob. He was the best man I ever knew. He had built a secret safe behind a bookcase, and a secret storage room for my Grandmother's furs. He invented an electric lock for his workroom, and you could only open it if you hit just the right spot on the wall outside of it. He bought me ice cream and would always take my cousins and I down to the Sunday breakfast club to show off his granddaughters. That man made me feel like a princess and I loved him so much. So much so that as we were driving down the road I asked him a question my grandmother did.not.like.

"Grandpa, when you die can I have your truck?" 

Now remember earlier that weekend we were at a funeral? All I was thinking was how much I loved my grandpa and how much his truck reminded me of him. I wanted something really special to remember him by. I loved everything about that truck. The smell of it, the roar of the engine coming to life, the scratchy music on the radio, and having to be lifted into it.   Unfortunately at the time of my comment I didn't know that my grandpa had already suffered over 4 heart attacks and was not in optimal health. My grandmother came unglued  "Don't you EVER say ANYTHING like that again do you hear me?" she yelled. I immediately apologized. She was only responding out of fear, I realize that now, but at the time I felt so ashamed that I'd hurt her or my grandpa. The ride home was a quiet one while I buried the desire for that truck and never mentioned it again.

Years later my grandfather passed away. I could see that my grandmother couldn't bear to part with the truck then so I didn't push the issue. A few years beyond that she passed away as well, and there sat the truck in their driveway like it had for my whole life. 

Tonight that truck is in my driveway. It was given to me sometime after my grandmother passed.  My patient husband is out there in the dark of night teaching our daughter Gracie how to rebuild an engine. Together they are restoring the heart of that old 1978 Chevy Scottsdale right now. In a week or two that truck will roar to life better than it ever has, reminding me of the happiest times of my childhood, the most influential man of my youth, and the restoration of what it means to be a loving family.  Gracie has already announced that she wants that truck when she can drive. She never met Grandpa Bob, but it's so cool to think a part of his legacy will be passed on to her. 

Forgiven... whether you like it or not.

He Saw it All

He saw it all,

He knew before,

He realized what we would do

All the things we would regret

And so He lived

A life of love

The greatest sacrifice of all 

He gave His life away for all

And He forgives 

ALL

Every sin

ALL

There is no loophole

No escape clause

He came to set the sinner free

To lift the captive from imprisonment

He came to war on our behalf

And won the grave

He overcame

He covers shame

He saw it all,

He knew before,

He realized the sins of man

And still opened up the door

To be set free

Now I can see

His love is mercy, and it's grace, it is enough. 

I am...

Lyrics. 

They can be powerful things provoking strong emotions, memories, and ideas. They usually tell a story of some sort. Here's my lyric story.

Some of the first I remember go like this, 

"The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need, the sun the rain and the apple seed the Lord is good to me."

These lyrics were from a song they sang at my preschool during snack time. I love this song and still sing it in my head all the time. 

Later on more lyrics came through my father playing a Beatles tune on the piano. I absolutely loved it when he played...

"When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom Let it be."

As an angry teenager with a huge chip on my shoulder I hung on to lyrics like...

"Exit light, into night, take my hand, were off to never never land."

As an even angrier teenager I'll spare you the details of the songs I learned.

Currently I have a theme song and it's words connect so deeply with where i'm at in this season...

"I am, holding on to you, I am, holding on to you, in the middle of the storm I am holding on I am."

This is a song written by David Crowder. It's referring to God being there holding on to people through a storm. As I was singing it in my head earlier I heard it differently though. Like this...

I AM, holding on to you.

I AM, holding on to you.

In the middle of the storm, I AM holding on I AM. 

I AM is the name of God Jehovah or YHWH (Yahweh) in the bible. He is the great I AM. There is no one above. 

All the other lyrics that God has made to stand out in my life make so much sense now.

The Lord is good to me, Let it be, Take my hand, In the middle of the storm I AM is holding on. I AM.

I know God speaks clearly in His word. Sometimes though, He speaks through life. So I try to keep listening to His amazing song, one lyric at a time. Each time He is faithful to answer.  

The Truth About Grief...

Grief.

Defined by Webster's Dictionary:

• Deep sadness caused especially by someone's death
• a cause of deep sadness
• trouble or annoyance

It's pretty inconvenient. In fact if you aren't aware of it's arrival it may scare the heck out of you, and everyone experiences it differently. I didn't realize until recently it had snuck up on me and I was trying to ignore it. Dumb things happen when you ignore how you feel.

As I looked over the last year and a half there was a recurring theme of things to grieve, not being who I thought I should be, and ch-ch-ch-changes. There was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream only to let it die again, a literal death, the reopening of some large wounds, homeschooling, driver's ed and driving with my teenager, several injuries prevented me from exercising, at the end of the year several more deaths and one huge bomb dropped over Christmas. Truth be told it was more than my heart could bear. It would be more than a lot of people can bear, and that's the point of this blog today.

There are going to be times in life where life itself is more than we can bear. So what.

Well if you are a Christian somebody might say something cliche like, "You know God never gives us more than we can bear." However, I completely disagree with that. In fact at a recent leadership conference speaker Jean Millikan agreed that God often gives us more than we can bear, but NEVER more than HE can bear. That statement made me mad as a hornet at first. Thanks a lot God that's super nice of you to give us more than we can handle! Then a verse came running into my mind,

"My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in your weakness." 2nd Corinthians 12:9.

Here's one way to interpret that during a season of grief: Change is our constant companion whether it is good or bad, sudden or expected. Change isn't simple and takes it's toll. If we try to bear the pressure of the ever-changing nature of our grief alone, eventually it will overcome us. It's when we remember who is truly in charge of things that relief begins. It is in the realization that while we may FEEL out of control in our daily lives God is in full control, and has actually given us control over some pretty big things. For example we have authority over the enemy. That is kind of huge. We have authority over the management of our own minds and bodies. We are privileged to have authority over our children and we have authority over temptations all because of the power of Christ in us. That's kind of awesome....He's awesome.

God allows us to endure seasons of hardship to come out of them closer to Him. It's a lot easier to focus on clinging to God when times are difficult and not so much when the road is smooth and simple. That's just my own experience. Our job during these seasons of grief is to cling to Him with all we are and live daily in the authority we have through Christ living in us. This is what draws us into seasons of victory in God's timing.

Perhaps grief arrived when the famous first couple got booted out of the garden. I'm sure that God himself grieved that humanity chose to question His motives, at the suggestion of a liar. He is only motivated in love. He loves us, and He is with us even in our grief. He will never leave us, and He will NEVER forsake us. Never.

The good news is that grief may be time consuming to work through, but with Jesus' truth over it, it eventually fades.

Checking The Band Aid

Sometimes I think about things like how when you put a Band-Aid on an owie, you don't sit around and wonder if it is healing underneath. Nope, you just trust that little piece tape and gauze to do it's job, and that job is to cover and protect the wound so it can heal. That reminds me of when we are wounded by life Jesus is the Band-Aid. I don't need to sit around worrying about whether or not he's doing his job, but trust that he is and that healing is happening.

Just like when you get a cut or a scrape it takes time to heal. I mean you can put neosporin on the wound to help it along, but still it can take days, months or years.  Even after the wound has healed it may start itching again tempting you to scratch it open and start the whole process over again. The best thing to do is just be thankful for the Band-Aid doing it's job and leave the wound alone with the band-aid to heal. You can't undo it, you can't run away from it, it just has to go through the process.

At 36 I really didn't think I'd be recovering from a wound like this. I thought I would be smart enough to pull the band-aid out of the box myself, but sometimes we need help. Sometimes the wound is so great you can't even look at it until it's covered by the band-aid. That's where i'm at today. The band-aid is on. I'm so tempted to rip it off and scratch that itchy healing owie, but I can't. I want nothing more than complete healing.

So there you are. Jesus is my Band-Aid. The Holy Spirit is my Neosporin, and the Father is the one who puts them both on.  This is where the healing begins.

January 13-15, 2004

It didn't rain that day. I remember the sun was shining, and unseasonably there were still two foxgloves clinging to life outside her window. She lay in her rec room, which had been converted into a bedroom,  in some kind of state between this life and the next.

I had been awake for hours. Preparing to feed my toddler and get my Kindergartener out the door to school on time. Before I left I went to wash my mother's face. In an exhausted stupor I got the water too hot but when I placed it on her face she didn't move. I called one of our hospice ladies and she came to sit with mom while I took Haylee to class.

When I returned the nurse told me my mother was dying. These were her final hours, and even though I knew they were coming, something in me refused to acknowledge it. I called my brothers and sister to let them know what was happening. I don't remember who or how but someone came and took my children. I sat by her bed from that point on. My older sister joined me and we sat there vigilantly waiting for her to wake up. Since I had taken CNA courses I had to administer her meds and bathe her. This is the hardest thing I've ever done, to see my perfect mother broken and helpless this way.

The three moments that stand out most for me over the next two nights she rallied were: once she sat straight up looked right into the eyes of myself, my niece, and my sister and said, "oh you're here, well then I guess its ok to go." I remember my sister reading her the end of a book she had called Shepard's Abiding, and I remember that I got to hear her last words. This is my favorite memory.

Three years before that moment my mom let my family of four move in with her to take care of her. Every day she would tell me she wanted the same thing for breakfast, "Just a piece of toast with a little bit of peanut butter... lot of butter."
She ate that almost every day for the 22 years of my life I could remember so eventually I would tease her about it.
"What mom, you want an omelette? Steak and eggs? You got it."
My other answer was, " I know mom, I know."

So there we were... in her room...sun shining through the window down on her bed while I held her hand and sobbed to her, "Mom, I just want you to know that I love you so much!" She replied...
"I know, I know."  Those were her very last words. They are precious to me.

That woman was my world. She was my best friend and my biggest critic. She was the most gentle and fierce woman I ever knew. She was crazy at times, imperfectly perfect, artistic, a lover of books and music. She was the most loving human being I ever knew. She was my mama.

I miss her so much. I am sad my children will never get to know her the way I did. I know i'm not the only one who lost her. I'm not the only one to lose a mother even, and I know i'm not the only one who hurts that she is no longer with us in person.

She loved her sons. She loved her daughters. She loved her nieces and she adored her grandchildren. She was 4'11' and I loved being taller than her. Now my kids, and everyone else's kids, love boasting when they are taller than me. I pretend to be annoyed, but really I love it. I think secretly my mom loved it too.

My Name Is Leslie Reed

Good Evening,

My name is Leslie Reed. I am 36 years old, the mother of 2 darling daughters, married 17 years to my high school sweetheart. I have a chocolate lab, two cats, and a 900 sq. ft. house with one bathroom and four dishwashers. I have a nice big backyard covered in mud currently due to the rainy season (and the dog).

I was born to my parents in Tacoma, Washington on what I can bet was a gray afternoon in September of 1978. I weighed 2 and 1/2 lbs. and lived in an incubator for the first week of my life. I came into this world dearly loved by some and hated by one.

I remember as a young child being fascinated with the world around me. I had a vivid imagination with which I would entertain myself for hours on end. I loved my family. Especially when they were happy. I remember my world mainly as bright and cheerful for a good long time. 3 years exactly

My mother used to tell me the story of a time when I slipped out of the house at 3 years old only to be found 3 blocks away in a field sleeping surrounded by the neighbor dogs. I was brave and adventurous.  Then something happened to me. Someone I loved proved untrustworthy and unsafe.

I really want to tell you all of this story, but I can't. Too many people's integrity and emotions would suffer. I really want to tell you all of this story so I can tattle on the one who hates me. I want you to know about the depravity that ravaged my life as a child so that you could understand what a miracle it is that I still chose to love Jesus Christ. What a miracle it is that i'm even alive.

I want to tell you about the destiny i'm certain my enemy wishes I would have fallen into that was only avoided by the redemption of a God that cares for me. I want to tell you so badly about the depths to which i've sunk so that you will know the price that was paid for my life to be ransomed specifically.

Instead I will share this with you tonight... some have had it worse than me... some better either way we share a common enemy and he has a goal. That goal is to steal our joy, kill our hearts, and destroy our hope. The truth is that he is a liar and a thief and a cheater and he is loudest when throwing an unholy fit usually right before something awesome is coming, and something is coming.

Someone actually. A Savior has come to give us abundant life with whatever may be left of it. He has come to give us hope, joy, and love to the fullest extent it can be experienced. He is greater than the one in the world and has given us a great testimony to live out from wherever we may stand.

From The Depths of The Pit....

I love the darkness, especially on a cool summer evening all wrapped up in a blanket on the patio. I love when Greg and the kids and I sit out there waiting patiently for the sky to blacken, because somewhere in that darkness, one at a time little lights appear until there is a glorious blanket of stars across the sky. One interesting thing though, they don't just sit there. They move. Some of them shoot across the sky dissolving like a snowflake in the process. Why the fascination with the darkness? Because I know that sometimes God allows us to enter into places of darkness or into a desert season so that we will hear Him more clearly. I'm in the middle of one now. I'm trying to get out as fast as I can, but in the meantime He is doing a work in me. He's taking me to a new level of faith, one I didn't think I needed.