Try, try, try, try and then quit

This is the remnant of my last attempt to grow a STUPID avocado plant. You would think it would be easy to grow a plant from a seed that sprouts roots in your window sill. And to be honest...every attempt to replace the amazing avocado plant Scott brought into our marriage has failed. The plant that Scott had was over 6 feet tall and beautiful. I am usually quite good with house plants but Avocado's have something against me. Maybe because it took me 45 years to like the fruit/vegetable/green slimy edible thingy. I can get the seed to sprout, the leaves to grow ...then one day all the leaves are curling up, the next they are dropping off and I am left with a stump like this one dead and more dead.  This is the fourth attempt and I am now officially finished with the trying.

It really irks me though. I have looked online, I have followed protocol for growing and snipping and watering. I have talked nicely, put the plant in sunny but not too sunny places. I even kept the dead looking stump over a month with the idea that it may decided on a whim...much like it did to die, to come forth with new life. It sits and mocks me in its deadness.

Scott often sighs and reminds me how lovely his Avocado plant was...how lovingly it grew for him.

So I put the stump outside in the cold...I dare it to survive.

 I secretly hope it will...

I may try again...

one more time!

Spring ahead !

On Sunday I went to a memorial service for a little girl who died at two weeks old. This week I will attend a funeral of a co-worker who died after fighting cancer...he was a young man in his early thirties. Next week will be the one year anniversary of Cheryl who died suddenly at the early age of 52. It seems I keep attending funerals of unfinished lives. I know what many say at funerals, that this was God's will but every time I hear that I want to say OUT LOUD...NO, death early was never God's will. He designed us to live forever, His will would have been so different, so full, so real...not this leaving too early business. I don't know why it makes people feel better to say that this was God's will...it does not make God look that good to have babies die and young man falter. I always say and think in my head...This is not what God intended, He will walk in this valley and mourn the brokennes of a world we chose but He did not Will it to happen. Death reminds me always of how it isn't supposed to be...It is the starkest of reminders that life is limited and time is fleeting.
Looking back on my recent posts...I have opined much on conversations full of loss and pain. It seems to surround the days even as Spring tries to begin. Our winters here are dark and dreary and long...so it seems my blog journey. I will begin to Spring, bring a new life into this journey, Thank you for your patience through the winter.

Telling my story

On March the 20th, I am to tell my story to the students here at LC during chapel.  I accepted the request because I enjoy speaking in chapel..I enjoy preaching if possible... I enjoy the challenge of speaking and engaging teenagers for 20 minutes about issues they have usually heard before and try and present in another way.  Sometimes I am effective...other times, not so much.

Needless to say...telling my story out loud brings with it a certain amount of fear. So much of my story has to do with people in this picture. Two of them no longer breath the air in this world. So much of my story is about loss, and loss is so very very personal.  Most know  something about Curtiss and my Mom and my Dad and how I was raised...I often speak in terms of overcoming, enduring, learning but not the profound aspect of how I have dealt with this loss. So you may ask...why do it?

Long ago I decided that if I would be anything, I would try to be authentic. I would be who I am where I am. One part of why I attempt to follow Jesus is that He has been the only constant in my life. Nothing... love, family, geography, work has ever remained constant...He has. We don't have an easy relationship...we do have an honest one. So within all the losses...He has been the walls I bounce in. I want the students to know that. As tired as they are about all that is True...I want them to know how amazing the Wall of faith is when everything else crumbles...this is one thing I know for sure. Students need to start building those walls of faith now...because loss/grief, disappointment is either coming or has come already.

All that lay before..

At the end of March my Mom and Dad would have been married 53 years. They are so amazingly beautiful in this picture..so prepared for the whatever was before. My Mom a little French woman..Marie-Josephe and my Dad, tall blond Dutch man, Adriaan, she peering so confidently out to the camera...how little did she know what lay before. Her history so marred with grief and adventure to live a life before filled with the same. How much she lived in her short 52 years, never speaking her heart language, not being allowed to raise her kids, far away from her beloved mother, alone in a tribe full of everything her French culture abstained from.

In the quiet moments of my mundane, normal life I think of her. I hope she would have been proud of me. She speaks so often in the ipod in my head. The words of encouragement and instruction...lots of instruction. I wasn't so easy to raise...I am sure I would still ruffle her traditional feathers..."zut alore my minette 'eidi"....she did not pronounce the H in my name.

Her deference to my dad, her catholic reverence for all that is sacred, her talent in the kitchen, her profound insight into people, her loyalty to people, her care for the unlovely, her giggling fits at herself, her greener than green thumb...I was/am not like her in too many of these ways. Her quiet confidence in the Holy and tenacity and love for her family as far flung as we were for all her life...she lived and loved so well. But what did she know on this day so many years ago...but still, you can see it in her eyes?

I love it that I am her daughter...I kind of wish I was more like her.

I was born a princess...

A pilot family came over for a visit the other day. A pilot who flies in Papua. In fact, he flies into the small villages of my youth. He said off hand to my daughter, "your mom is a rock star there!" My whole family is royalty among the Nduga's of Papua. I was born a princess. Every move I made, every excursion out of the home I was surrounded with an entourage of curious and admiring people. When we returned not too many years ago, there was a pig feast, choir and painted faces. Granted, I was with the King ( my Dad) and the Queen ( Elfrieda) but I was loved intensely and without hesitation. All honor given but nothing earned.

If one lives in that environment too long, one becomes accustomed to respect not earned and honor not deserved. There is a subtle but persistent lie that begins to permeate...All those who are born of royalty assume the same...I must be better than, if everyone loves and honors me so. It is hard to be a servant when one is born royal!

There is something quite wonderful about an experience like that...I never want to be comfortable with it though.

I think when those who follow Jesus become too comfortable in being special, famous, popular...they need to do what Jesus did....wash some feet...not in the public eye and maybe not literally but serve as if your sanity depended on it...because maybe it does.

Ring the bell

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen ( Anthem)

Romans 12:1 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

All that we do, all that we are, wherever we are, no matter our occupation, vocation or calling...all that we are is a cracked imperfect offering on an altar seeped with the blood of the perfect offering. Nothing is sacred , nothing is secular...it is all just an offering. One isn't more and one isn't less...it is all we have it is all we are.

Ring those bells !!!!

As long as it is called Today...

13 But exhort one another each day, as long as it is called “Today,” that none of you may become hardened by sin’s deception. Heb.3

Every day, each day as long as it is called Today....exhort, encourage, come along side...
Why...because sin deceives us and as a result we get hard hearted. It is that simple but the thing with deception, we don't know we are being hardened or deceived. That is the sneaky side of sin...others have to tell us. Let me ask you, how often has someone in your life said to you ...'hey, you are being deceived by sin and you are getting hard hearted'?
What does a hard hearted person act like?
Remember when the cry of the heart was that we would have a heart of flesh not a heart of stone? I know there is a creeping hardness in my heart...and as I pray for my enemies I realize when it began. I harbor resentment. I enjoy the fruit of jealousy. I relish apathy.
Not full blown...not wholeheartedly...but I am deceived in increments. A little bit of sin...

A little resentment colors every conversation . A little jealousy hinders gratefulness and contentment. A little apathy allows the day to melt into trivial pursuits. Increments...

Today...I exhort you, I exhort me...