Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Sunglasses and a Savior

I think I’m a little late with the spring fever. I’m always the last one to fall into the latest trends.

(I heard somewhere that oversized sunglasses are in? Is that true? I'm just not sure I can go there yet.)

I think it is spring fever because I seem to have lost my motivation for anything. ANYTHING.

So, I’m making a list. Maybe if I document at least the passing thoughts through my brain, then maybe I can then check some of it off and feel like I’ve accomplished something.

My list is of things that have been on my mind that are truly post-worthy, but I haven’t been able to finish one single post. I’ve started several hundred of them. “Started” is the key word. Apparently “finish” has dropped out of my vocabulary lately. Along with the words “diet” and “exercise”. Oh, and “work.”

My list is a reminder to me that if I ever do get back to my regular posting and don’t have anything to talk about, well, here’s a place to start.

But who am I kidding? By the time I get back around to anything I’ve started and not finished, the beginning of a hundred other things will have taken their place.

And so it goes.

My list of totally unrelated things to which I should have dedicated entire individual blog posts:

1. So, I have a new car. It was truly an ordeal. It took about a month to actually get it to my driveway. I haven’t quite found the balance between the joy of a brand new car and the sickness of car payments. Does anybody ever feel like they got a good deal on a car? Really? I mean, people who sell cars do it all day every day. I buy a car once every five or six years, if that. How can I win with those odds? Anyway, we simply HAD to buy a new car because I couldn’t keep buying new sunglasses every week. It seems on two separate occasions with two different pairs of sunglasses, I left them in cars we test drove. So, two lucky new car owners got a free pair with their new car purchase. Now that’s a deal.

2. One day when I’ve lost all my inhibitions I’m going to write a book about all things your minister will never tell you. There are lots of sub-topics under this one, but lately I’ve been thinking about weddings. ONE: never, ever schedule a church wedding in December. Yes, the holiday decorations make lovely pictures, but the sanctuary is already booked every Saturday in December for all the extra choir rehearsals and programs. If you want the minister to focus solely on your special day, do it during a season when nothing else is going on. June is good. TWO: You pay the band for making music at the reception, why not pay the guy who sings the sweet love song during the ceremony? Unless, of course, the guy singing the sweet love song is the groom, then paying him would be weird. THREE: Pick up after yourselves. Or at least ask your mom and dad do it for you after you’ve gone on your way to honeymoon paradise. For the rest of us, coming to church on Sunday after a Saturday night wedding and finding dress hangers, empty panty hose packages, pins, flower petals, and cans of hairspray sitting in your Sunday School class seat or in your choir chair is a little unnerving sometimes because it leads the mind to think of people changing clothes (and thus, in their underwear) right here in the very place I’m trying to, well, not think of people in their underwear.

3. What on earth have I have I got to complain about? I have a friend my age that’s been fighting cancer for several years and the battle is getting harder every day now. I have another friend my age that fought a seizure demon and had several years of victory, only to have it seize her again. I have a friend I went to college with whose wife has been on a respirator. These are people in their 40’s. I have younger cousin whose Air Force soldier husband was just sent to Iraq for six months. I can’t even keep track of how many times he’s already been over there. She’s home with her 2 girls.

Did anybody see the Life Today program a few weeks ago where Beth Moore was talking about being in a doctor’s office waiting room anticipating an appointment where she would get some test results? One of her daughters was with her and passed the time by reading all the medical brochures in the waiting room. You know, the ones that inform you of all the different kinds of cancer and diseases. Her words were, “He knows it’s scary to be us.”

Indeed, He does.

Stress over things like losing my sunglasses to making car payments.

Frustrations of being married to a minister.

People all around me who have a special need for comfort and care and healing.

God knows it’s scary to face all those things. And He doesn’t want us to face them alone.

All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 The Message

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