Wonder why...

I have always wondered why people think that when you die you become an angel. The more profound the loss the more stories about another angel in heaven as if being an angel is a better deal. Why would anyone want to be a servant of God when you can be the child of God? Cash, the little boy in my last post walked into heaven whole and well and one of the many laughing, playing children at the feet of the King. He isn't an angel with a job but a child in a relationship. Please don't misunderstand my feelings about angels, I am sure they are impressive and magnificent and glorifying but they are not God's children. Less we forget we were created for a different kind of relationship. Angels are a different created being...I have no idea if God has created more but they do not procreate. There is a certain number of angels...the ones that stayed, the ones that fell. We on the other hand are the many children of God and enter eternity as we were in time, sons and daughters. I am looking forward to meeting that angelic host, they must be spectacular. There does not seem to be much comfort in our loves ones transforming into another being, there is much comfort in our loved ones being transformed into a better them.

A Cash of Hope: Answering Prayers

A Cash of Hope: Answering Prayers: "This afternoon Cash took a significant turn for the worse. His breathing has become very labored and he is now unresponsive and sleeping. ..."

I have been following this little boy's fight for survival this year. He is loosing the battle with brain cancer yet in the midst of it all his parents with broken hearts gently lead him into the arms of Jesus. This place of pain I shudder to ever understand, please pray for the pureness of peace to settle like a blanket over every jagged breath and every moment of silence. I can't begin to understand the mind of God, that Great Doctor and Creator of our broken bodies. I don't want to 'why' this one into doubt and anger. I will silently grieve the hugeness of this pain...and plead His divine intervention. That He would not be silent and that He will SHOUT His love and kind attention into every crevice of longing and grief. Yes, Lord please make it so.

If you can, follow his parents blog by clicking on the above title...

What wisdom is and is not: a thought process.

It isn't bitter envy or selfish ambition. That's from the book of James. So when I want to be wise I should not in that endeavor be doing whatever with envy or selfish ambition. Or if what I do involves envy or selfish ambition it isn't wise. On the other hand if I need wisdom for something it has to first be pure then whatever I want to do has to do with peace, it has to be considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. This is an impressive checklist ...It can't be selfish and it has to be considerate, impartial full of good fruits, peace loving , submissive and sincere to be a wise decision. I think we want wisdom...we usually though want wisdom for our own benefit...so what we are going to do will be successful. Does success have to do with selfish ambition?
If I want to be a wise person..then I need to first be pure, then peace loving, considerate, submissive, impartial, full of mercy and sincere. Then someone who is bitter, envious and has selfish ambition...can not be wise.
OK...I think I can wrap my mind around that. Wisdom isn't a great idea or a way of doing something, it is being someone and not being someone. It is much easier as an adjective...not so much a noun or even a verb.

Deluge, downpour and dampness

This has been our reality for about 3 weeks. It is what happens here in the PNW and that's fine. What isn't is that we were promised a winter like no other. I think the rest of the States has received its wintery reality...we on the other hand have been promised, forewarned about what hasn't happened. We still might as February and March are still ahead but I think we are in for much of the same. I am not complaining much except I like weather...weather that makes a statement, thunder storms, blizzards etc. Here we do really good with temperate...that mellow in the middle of extremes. Since we have this new wonderful wood stove I was ready for the hunkering down watching the snow swirl its crazy patterns outside the window. Not so much hunkering down...but we have been warm in all this dampness.
You know...it's much like life. Most we live in the middle of extremes moving gently from the mundane to the ordinary. We prepare for those times with insurance and proactive living but once in awhile it comes with no warning, the storm what threatens to undo all that we have anticipated. This is what I want to teach these students of mine about their faith. There will be storms and those that can destroy most completely are the ones filled with betrayal, loss and fear. If you have walked with Jesus in the normal, mundane and ordinary days...you will be able to hunker well when the storms come. Unlike our weather forecasters...there will be hunkering days ahead, walk well in the normal.

Some days !

There is a song that Dire Straights sings about being the ball or the bat, bug or the windshield...in this instance, the cat or the dog.
On any given day in our house we will have a fight between Chino the small dog and BFC the Big Fat Cat. If Chino was big enough there wouldn't be anything he would like more then to sit on BFC very much like this dog on that cat. Chino is smaller then the cat but he does not know that. She is his ultimate prize but the most elusive yet. She holds her own, growls, swipes, runs away and Chino will sit there growling advancing...whatever it takes to show that he can take her whenever he would decide.
I have been reading in Romans when Paul has this kind of wrestling match with himself, the evil that fights and the good that wants to win. If you are a cat person...the good represents the cat. If you are a dog person...yep...that furry brown dog sitting on that cat is good winning over evil. Every day we have the opportunity to sit on or be sat on. Paul goes on to say when we have the Spirit of God living in us we can always be sitting on...rather then being sat on. BFC or Chino? In the animal world it would be nice if they all got along...in the spiritual world...we had better be fighting!

That feeling

For a few weeks I have had this feeling like I am forgetting something important and that I need to find something important that I have lost. There are so many things that are vying for my attention I am sure both are true but what they are...I don't know.
I think it has something to do with all the user-names, passwords and numbers I have to keep track of. The bills online and those that come in the mail. Just yesterday as I went through the bills i realized that one of them was late. I don't usually do that but have been doing that more often. I am unsettled at the fragments that are supposed to make sense but are still fragments at the end my day. I am supposed to drink more water but I always forget. I am supposed to take my Vitamin D but I always forget. More often then not I go to school without thinking about what I am going to eat for lunch. At the end of the day I am dehydrated, hungry and deficient in Vitamin D.
I am constantly distracted from the project at hand. That lack of focus and concentration that makes for completing something and finishing well. This is different for me and I don't know where it is coming from.
Just like this post...a bit fragmented in its content. It is Sunday though...maybe I can find it, remember it and do it..

Smile Code

It is always an interesting discussion around the ESL table. They were bemoaning the fact that what American's think is funny isn't to the Asian students. "It is a smile code" one student said. A smile code...a certain understanding that one culture speaks to the other. A code of humor, an understanding between us, what makes us smile. Do you have any idea how important it is to smile, laugh and generally add humor to the day of another? I love to laugh but then I have never met anyone from any culture that does not love to laugh. That full on belly laugh that makes tears flow down your face and for those of us who have had children...wetting your pants.
We kind of all have a smile code..that one thing that gets you giggling. Word play and word mistakes make me giggle. Nick when he isn't trying, makes me laugh. Slap stick on the other hand aka The Three Stooges...makes me cringe.
We make the word joy too holy and separate. Joy is often expressed as the grinning and bearing it through the pain but I think joy, that joy that God wants us to experience is the smile code from heaven. I don't think there is much giggling on the enemy's side of things...but even in this broken world and unspeakable pain that surrounds...joy can bubble. It is a most excellent gift, that gift of fresh and unspoiled humor. I wonder what made Jesus laugh? What was His smile code? I know he did because we do and we should much more often, I know I need to.

Simul iustus et peccator

or broken and beautiful, saint and sinner, sanctified and being sanctified...simultaneously saint and sinner is the literal translation of this Latin phrase. On a side note...having a Latin phrase to quote is just cool.
We are so amazingly bad at staying good. We are so amazingly good at being bad. I saw this phrase at a beautician shop and though I won't quote it exactly you will get the gist. "Thank you God that today I have not lied, sworn, been envious, or even slandered I have been lovely to my husband and fair to my children. I have eaten only what is on my diet....When I get out of bed, would you help me the rest of the day". It really is in the living that being a saint seems impossible and a sinner so probable. I think I am doing so well when not a minute later I simultaneously eat to much, slander my co-worker, envy an outfit, think bad thoughts about someone who has succeeded and kick the dog. OK, I don't kick the dog but I want to...and won't because the dog will pee on the carpet and I have to immediately pay for my sin.
Otherwise...I really don't pay for being bad...not immediately or I probably wouldn't be bad so frequently.
Being bad is also so relative to how much grace we enjoy and how close we are in our relationship with Jesus. I can excuse my bad...not so much in others. Seriously, we are warped human beings stuffed into these walking tents. What does He see anyway? Broken and beautiful, tandem realities expressing grace and truth: selfish and selfless...myopic and global...kind and cruel...May God grace us with eyes to see the reality of who we are and then the humility to stand alone in the circle of His light. Authentic faith in a real world in broken vessels leaning helplessly on to the Giver of life. I am what I am...but never have to remain !!!
Hallelujah, what a Savior.

Resolutions

Our Principal asked the staff if anyone had any resolutions to raise their hands...I was the only one. No one seems to like resolutions...I LOVE THEM. I have this idea that if you don't have a target you really don't hit anything... you don't miss either. If I don't write down goals in every area of my life(physical, spiritual, mental and social) I won't have anything to work towards. They help me make decisions about choices. They limit my excuses and motivate me off the couch. So I write at least 3-5 goals in every area making sure they are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. Fresh starts, new beginning, attainable goals...this is the best thing about the New Year. I told them to Scott which is a first for me. I have never had an accountability partner.
You may ask how well do I do with my resolutions?
80% of my goals I usually reach. A solid B- is teacher terms. This year I am hoping for an A.

1-1-11

Won't be able to write that one out any other time in my lifetime...Even if I have nothing to say...it is just worth that amazing number combination. 1-1-11...so refreshing in its beginnings...it is the first day of the first month of the eleventh year of the 21st century, today.

We just came back from Saskatoon town, the frigid city to the north that houses the warmest people on earth. We arrived on Monday and left today and these past five days have been soft, warm, tender, funny, honest, yummy, cold, serious, interesting, engaging and all together lovely. I miss being with my Dad and Elfrieda, I miss the Aunties...These souls are pitchers of wonderful that fill a dry soul.

I endured the airplane and it was not nearly as bad as I envisioned. I am tired of fear...it does not need to rule anymore.

I want to prepare myself for this year...a more pithy start with ambitious goals and dreams. At this moment though, I am full and so grateful we could go.