The Snares in our Life

Proverbs 3:25-26
"Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared."

The other morning I padded out to my cold deck in my bare feet, eager to see the subtle color changes in my backyard.  Within three steps I found my face fully encased in a large sticky spider web.  My eyelashes instantly seemed to be glued shut, and without my vision I was even more grossed out by the sensations of the web around my entire face.  Fear quickly began to grow because I had no idea where the creator of the web, the artful orb-weaving spider, was lurking. As I jumped around pulling sticky webbing out of my lashes, I stepped on a cold, dense, squishy thing that gave way under my foot. My senses were on full-alert now, because I knew instantly the pest under my foot was a slug. I gasped in horror and danced around the deck like a crazy woman, sliding my foot along to rid it from slime and slug-parts.  I then walked around the wet yard scraping my foot along the grass like I was skating on a ice-covered pond. The word "gross" really doesn't go far enough in situations such as these, nor do the words "wretchedness," "torture," "torment," or "freakish misery". I ran from the yard to the shower and scrubbed my skin and  hair until there was no hint of outside pests or even natural oil left on my body. I then went out and salted the remainder of the slug and a couple of its evil friends.

Life can be like that sometimes.  We can be cruising along with every good intent, then we're struck by a temptation or calamity that we have to deal with, and deal with now! How nice it would be to have a warning that we were about to encounter something awful. I'm just saying...

But God tells us that we should have no fear of sudden disaster. He obviously knows we will encounter them, after all we do live in a fallen world. He tells us to have confidence in Him, that he will keep our foot from being snared, because once those feet go walking towards trouble, the rest of our body comes as a package deal and before we know it, we're stuck.  God is the creator of all things and therefore can and will provide a way to get through, over, or around, anything that threatens to pull us away from His loving arms.

How easy it is for me to forget these things. My natural temperament is peppered by fear. "What ifs" prowl around my head just looking for a place to pounce. But God gently reminds me to "Be still as know that I am God", and when I really do this, I rest and am at peace. Praise the Lord for He is good.

Fall Blessings

I sing for joy at the works of your hands. How great are your works, O Lord!

Psalm 92: 4-5.

As long as I can remember fall has been my favorite season. My eyes are drawn to the warm colors of gold, orange, reds and browns, so it’s no real surprise that the colors of my home have naturally gravitated to these. Lately my eyes have been riveted to Pottery Barn’s fall catalog because the vignettes of life on those pages look, well...homey. Its pages brim with peaceful earthiness, rustic charm and a touch of whimsy. Sometimes I want to jump into those pages and assume the life of a fall Pottery Barn woman...coming into my door with arms laden of fresh-picked herbs, a bottle of homemade wine has just been opened and about eight of my dearest friends are admiring my table setting and sipping appreciatively.  Pottery Barn women would seem to entertain a great deal (which I would like to, but for some reason don't), and work from home (which I would, but I can't figure out what I want to be when I grow up). Yes, fall is a magical time, and I would assume even more so for Potter Barn women.

My daughter says fall brings with her urges to buy something in bulk, reminiscent I suppose of our fall school-shopping expeditions. I, on the other hand, feel a yearning to make soup and knead bread, shop for colorful squashes, make applesauce, and eat pork chops with my fingers. My eyes are scanning for each day’s color changes and my skin awakens to the crispness of the fall air. One of my favorite fall thrills is watching leaves flitter downward from the trees and then dance enthusiastically upward for a festive and elegant waltz after a car zooms over its carpet. Fall also brings dew-bejeweled spider webs that are stretching over expanses of air like a spidery art show. The one stretching from the rain-gutter to my grill, takes “best-of-show” in my book

I know the beguiling magic of fall has long been with me because when I was a little girl of eight or nine, I wrote the following poem and a year later submitted it to a grange national newsletter where it was published, much to my youthful glee:

Fall

Orange, green, red, brown,
Fall is the time the colored leaves fall down.
They titter and tatter up in the trees,
Then swoosh comes a big hard breeze
Then, down, down, down, goes my beautiful leaves.

I was chatting with a Starbucks barista the other day after buying my first pumpkin latte of the season. We were agreeing over the deliciousness of fall and she was bubbling over with the anticipation of fall and winter holidays. How much easier it is to say good-bye to warm weather and summer flowers when the beauty of fall is so prevalent and the family feasts of winter holiday celebrations beckon us forward. How blessed we are as a nation. How blessed we are to live here in the midst of so much beauty, treasure and bounty. I’m humbled to be the hands and feet of our Lord, and pray for eyes to see his blessings, hands to serve others and feet to walk with those who need a friend. Help me Lord to serve; I have more than I need. Help me to realize that when I'm reading the Pottery Barn fall catalog.

Here are a few of my blessings around our home:

"I Think My Kids Ate All My Frogs!"

That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil; this is the gift of God. Ecclesiastes 3:13

My sister and I were stretching out lazily on our perspective lounge chairs listening to the peaceful sounds of late summer on the back patio of her Oregon home.  It was dark and we watched the moon cast beautiful shadows on her nearby pond.  The quiet and warmth were blissful and we sat enchanted...well at least I was enchanted. My sister was thinking suspiciously like a cowboy in an old western..."It's quiet", she slowly reflected, "in fact it was TOO quiet..." Suddenly she sat up abruptly and said with astonished realization, "I think my kids ate all my frogs!"

The frogs were normally plentiful in the pond and even her two chocolate labs and her alpha female-want-to-be-lab-Shih Tzu, had not depleted the quantity with their raucous romps in the water causing huge numbers of frogs to leap in all direction to escape the dogs' gleeful fun.  Yet, here we were at night, next to a pond and we did not hear one single croak.

My sister's grown children had recently had a camp out with their children around the pond while she was away.  They had text-ed her that they were having  such a good time and were even going to cook some frog legs like they did when they were younger.  My sister had smiled fondly at the text, remembering the fun frog giggling times their family had when the kids were small. However, her country kids had learned their gigging skills well and their aim was apparently true, because the uncharacteristic quietness of the pond did indeed suggest that her fears had substance...her kids had eaten all the frogs.  I offered weakly, "Maybe they're just a little cautious about croaking right now..."

Now I remember my city-born kids eating all the cookies at one setting, and even a particularly stealthy and mysterious dessert thief in the family who always struck at night, but I never had to worry that they were out marauding the neighborhood depleting its frog supply after we went to bed. Therefore, when my sister strung those crazy-sounding astonished words together, I could do nothing but laugh...and at the same time feel a bit of sadness for the frogs.

I have a frog at my front door every day. Sometimes there are two or more lining up on top of a painting I hang from the porch light for the summer.  The frogs have found that good eats are always around the porch light and are undoubtedly thankful when I place the painting back under the light, thus making their feasting all the more expedient. 

Sometimes frogs cling to my small window near my front door in obvious effort to thank me for their bounty, jumping in to join us on occasion. Crane flies and moths are their usual diet, and before the frogs found their high-rise dining table, my porch floor was littered with the singed carcasses of these insects each morning. Now, instead of lifeless insects, my porch and the painting sport a much different look...frog poop.

It is amazing to me how large and abundantly a small frog can poop. Every few days I wash off my painting and sweep the poop from my porch, wondering if the trade-off from dead insects is worth it. Then I remember how those crane flies and moths attack my lawn, and I'm thankful for the help I receive from my frog family. "That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil; this is the gift of God." May my niece and nephew and all our frogs find satisfaction in the toil of their work and be blessed.

The Richness of Soil

Ephesians 3:17-18: May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is.

Before my 2/3 mushroom compost, 1/3 topsoil blend came to our home, my gardens were "special needs". The clay was hard and the rocks were plentiful. I shoveled on the nutrient rich compost like a mother feeding her hungry child. And my little piece of earth responded. The above picture is after the compost. The picture below is what this same little bed looked like as I was applying the compost.

Here is another before and after picture:

And now some more fun afters:

Clearly, the soil where roots are planted is vital to the life and proliferation of plants.  So too with us. I've found in my own life that when I have tried to plant my desires apart from God, my efforts have been frustrated.  However, when my roots are planted deep into God's heart, reaching to him, hungry for his nutrient rich guidance....then I produce fruit.  How wide, long, high and deep God's love is for us is best demonstrated when we plant our lives, our roots, in Him.  I'm thankful for God's mercy for those times when I plant my roots in clay and rocks and for His overwhelming blessings when I choose Him.

My Lavender Birthday Pilgrimage

These are but the outer fringe of His works; how faint the whisper we hear of him!

Psalm 104:24

It seems like each time I go to the lavender festival in Sequim I think, "Have the fields ever looked THIS beautiful?" "Do the farmer's personal gardens have more colorful flowers and scented pathways than in previous years?" The lavender festival always falls on or near my birthday, and never fails to renew my spirit and usher in the next year of my life with a beautiful welcome. To think that beauty like this is only a delicate whisper of God's works, just fills me with thankfulness and awe!

Sequim (pronounced: Squim) is wonderfully situated in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  The Dungeness River flows from the mountains, through the town of Sequim and into the strait.  Years ago, farmers channeled the river for irrigation on their farms, and about 10 years ago the crop of choice became lavender. The mere 16.81 annual inches of rain (quite an anomaly for the Pacific Northwest), ocean breezes, mild climate and alluvium soil from the Dungeness River, converge together in perfect harmony to produce what is now, world famous lavender.

I love it when a community carves out a beautiful new niche and utilizes all the wonderful attributes of its land for a great product. Oregon has done that with its vineyards and award winning wines, after its timber industry declined. Reinventing yourself like that is like finding out in your old age that you still "have it".  I'm hoping for that very discovery as I start my new year in life! What new plans does God have for me?  I hope I'm open to His guidance each day and don't miss out on any new beginnings!

Glass-Winged Butterfly

Proverbs 27:19: As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects a man.


Colors capture our attention. Bright colors like yellows and reds seem to clamor loudest for consideration. Often times red can be a warning color in nature, signaling poison, a bitter taste, or conversely a bright invitation to pollinate to help carry on a plant’s life cycle. Now, greens are amazing. There are endless shades of green just in my back yard, yielding depth and texture that can only be truly treasured if you are standing actually in the yard and purposely noticing the dimensions of their pallet. Blue is like that too. Water and sky have so many shades and hues that I don’t think anyone could possibly dream up that many names for blue, although many have tried (like Benjamin Moore who named a lovely dark colored blue simply, ‘Stunning 826’).

I think people can be a bit like color. Sometimes we meet colorful people in our lives who brush in and out like a well-dipped red paintbrush adding laughter, brilliance, or even poison and leaving us changed. Other people are here to stay and their shades of green, gray or brown can be muted and lovely adding such a dimension to our lives that we could scarcely breathe without them.

Today I saw a picture of glass-winged butterfly from Panama and it is so beautiful, I cannot stop thinking of it. Its wings were iridescent, reflecting the colors of whatever it was near, and magnifying the beauty of whatever it rested on. Oh, to be like the glass-winged butterfly, reflecting the beauty I see around me, and magnifying the beauty of others who are near! So often, I will only reflect my own dark heart, brooding and worrying so much that I am missing the beauty and potential that I am actually resting on, and the words of wisdom God has prepared in other’s, will pass on by without me knowing.

It would seem that glass-winged type people are the quiet people in our lives, whose gentle spirit softly bring out the best in us, their humble strength receding to let others boisterously jangle their needed colors. However, the world would be a bit dull if we were all like the glass-winged butterfly. There would be no colors to reflect or emphasize, and so much passion, as well as the flushing lessons from angst might be lost. 

Its not my nature to be glass-winged (at least the positive elements of it). I am far more colorful than even I can handle at times! I am thankful that God works with me daily in refining my colors and helping me along in my little piece of earth.

Mystery Dinner Guest

Critter-food Carnage of the Rose Bush Kind

Psalm 103:1 Praise the Lord O my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name.

Today the pastor was teaching about being thankful and remembering to thank God throughout the day. Today, however, was the day my Betty Boop rose was mowed down to a nub. While the pastor talked about mindful thankfulness, I sat there discouraged and most decidedly NOT thankful. My soul, my inmost being, the area where everything in me is sifted, examined, refined and processed, was in a frump and could not for the life of me come up with something about this situation in which to praise God. Not only had Betty Boop nearly met her demise, but the Queen of Sweden, Moondance and a bit of Dream Come True, had all been similarly terrorized.

It had went down like this…I woke up Friday morning and looked out my front window and my eyes moved lovingly from left to right down my 25 foot-long planter that housed eight of my 10 rose bushes along with five dahlias fresh from the earth. However, when my eyes rested on the last three bushes, my brain was grappling to understand what I was seeing. To the right of each bush were a pile of branches and rosebuds. What? What am I seeing? Today is yard day, but the sun had just come out and the front yard mowing crew were not due for a couple of hours. Beside, all they ever did was mow the front yard, blow the cuttings off the driveway and leave. Who would trim my roses when they were just beginning to bloom? I ran outside and saw that the branches had all been cut in neat 45-degree angles and placed respectfully to the right side of each bush. I examined all the other bushes, than went back to the house to grab my camera and take pictures of the butchery.
After I showered and dressed, I went back out. The yard crew had now left having completed their usual work. My neighbor was outside washing her motor home and I told her about my roses. She told me that some of her dianthus had been destroyed in the same manner. She came and looked at my roses and commiserated with me, and told me she would put a beat out on the block to see if anyone had any ideas what could have happened.

Later that day, my neighbor came to my door clearly shaken and told me she had solved the mystery. She and her sister had just returned from a vacation at the Columbia River Gorge and after washing their huge motor home, they returned it to the storage unit. Now you must know this, my neighbor and her sister are two of the most organized and clean people I have ever known. Besides having the cleanest home and garage in the history of the world, they are also the ones who host and lead our neighborhood’s emergency preparedness meetings twice a year and have our block so organized we should be sent to assist capping BP’s spewing oil leak and cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico. I know we could have it completed within a week, as well as creating a sanctuary for wildlife affected by the oil.

My neighbor said that as she was placing her customary mothballs throughout the motor home, including the engine to deter any potential critter activity, when what should she find? A female rat sitting in a bed made of rosebuds. Mrs. Rat was huge and was not in the least bit interested in finding another spot to repose, no matter how hard my neighbor tried with her broomstick. While she was still trying the relocation effort, her sister opened up another flap on the side of the trailer and found Mr. Rat. The rat couple was in no hurry to leave and my poor neighbors spent a great deal of time insisting that they did. After successfully getting them out of the trailer, they returned with traps, hoping they would not have to dispose of anything in them. By the way, the fanciest hotel I have ever walked inside was the Princeville Hotel in Kauai. My neighbor’s trailer has to be the Princeville Hotel of all trailers. The insult of having rats in it, must have sent chills throughout my poor neighbors bones, she left my porch muttering repeatedly about needing a drink.

I went to bed a bit unnerved to think of my beautiful roses being accosted my two highbrow rats who only wanted to see the country sitting on the youthful blush of Betty Boop and Queen of Sweden rosebuds. However, I did rest well knowing that the two varmints were far away and all my roses were going to grow back strong and beautiful once more… but this was not to be.

This morning, Sunday, I woke up to find more carnage. Betty Boop now has two short branches remaining, and the earlier affected rosebushes were assaulted once more. The question now remains, do Mr. and Mrs. Rat have friends and relations as highbrow as they? Are there rabbits that are teething on my roses and practicing their sharp cuts without needing to consume any in the process? Are there deer that help by standing guard during the raid? I am tempted to sleep in my husband’s car tonight to solve this senseless crime and then trap or bait accordingly.

Now about this praising thing…I will praise God for my roses and I think the critters he made are just awesome, but I’m still working on the thankfulness angle for losing my rosebushes and worried what might go on in my rose garden tonight. “Praise the Lord O my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name.” I will because God tells me to and since He is my creator, He knows best. Thank you God, Amen.