Words From Wise Ones

Sometimes Charles Spurgeon gets it just right where others fail:

God often takes away our comforts and our privileges in order to make us better Christians. He trains his soldiers, not in tents of ease and luxury, but by turning them out and using them to forced marches and hard service. He makes them ford through streams, and swim through rivers, and climb mountains, and walk many a long mile with heavy knapsacks of sorrow on their backs. Well, Christian, may not this account for the troubles through which thou art passing? Is not the Lord bringing out your graces, and making them grow? Is not this the reason why he is contending with you?

"Trials make the promise sweet;
Trials give new life to prayer;
Trials bring me to his feet,
Lay me low, and keep me there."

This may bother some folks, but right now it is a comfort to me. And to some folks I would say, like God said to Job:

"Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
     Let him who reproves God answer it....
"Now gird up your loins like a man;
     I will ask you, and you instruct Me.
"Will you really annul My judgment?
     Will you condemn Me that you may be justified?
"Or do you have an arm like God,
     And can you thunder with a voice like His?
"Adorn yourself with eminence and dignity,
     And clothe yourself with honor and majesty.
"Pour out the overflowings of your anger,
      And look on everyone who is proud, and make him low.
"Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him,
     And tread down the wicked where they stand.
"Hide them in the dust together;
     Bind them in the hidden place.
"Then I will also confess to you,
     That your own right hand can save you."

And though I have complained at times, I say with Job:

"I know that You can do all things,
     And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'
     "Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
          Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know."
'Hear, now, and I will speak;
     I will ask You, and You instruct me.'
"I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
     But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I retract,
     And I repent in dust and ashes."

For I am trusting that like Job, the LORD will bless my latter days more than my beginning. And I am following the Song of the King, not the song of the Hopenots.

It helps more if you are going to sing, if you will please sing the first, and not the second. I'm not a fan of Charles Ives, and I have very finely tuned musical ears, so more than one song at a time just reeeeeeally bothers me. Ya know.

Thanks. Won't you join me?

Simply singing,
Patty

A letter to my friends

Dear Friends,

I wanted to keep you in the picture where my own emotional state is, as I know you all have prayed about that too. 

Yesterday, I woke up around 3:15am, and started crying because I couldn't give my little girl a party for her birthday, or even go and see her, or wish her happy birthday and expect she will see it. So I started praying, and searching the Scriptures, and waiting on the Lord. For two hours I did this. I posted "I love you" all down her Facebook wall, in hopes somehow she could see it, but I don't think she looks at it anymore at all.

Then, around 5:30am, as I was reading the Psalms, God brought to me over and over certain ones of the songs He gave his people all those centuries ago that exactly speak to my situation. I pondered this, and other evidences of God's love in my life recently, and understood that He wants me to TRUST Him. My daughter had given me some warning of all this, a couple weeks before it happened. But being Christmas and New Year's, I had pushed it all into the back of my mind (which was, I'm sure, what some intended). I reviewed her words to me, as far as I can remember them in my addled brain, and the word that most came to the fore was TRUST. She wanted us to trust her. And so I have decided to do just that, really trusting in GOD'S ability to keep her safe, and her intention not to harm us whom she loves. She made me understand then that she wanted to keep us from any more pain and hardship than was necessary.

I believed then that she was getting into some kind of trouble, but didn't know what, nor how to get her to listen to me, so didn't push it at the time. And the holidays sent it clean out of my mind, together with a life decision I was working on, and an unexpected, positive, life-changing experience. For this I have been full of guilt at times, as the enemy hurls his darts at me. But God is faithful to remind me of His forgiveness, and gives the peace which passes all understanding in this situation. I know I am loved with a love as vast as the ocean, and I know I am in the center of His will, seeking a way to serve Him completely at last.

And so I came to peace in the end, TRUSTING in God's almighty hand on my daughter, TRUSTING the Spirit within her, TRUSTING her own intentions as they are good. If the lesson in TRUST had not begun in December, I do not know if I would have been able to face yesterday. But God is able, who delivers me from the wily snares of the enemy. And His timing is oh! so perfect!

And so throughout her birthday, I was given guidance and assurance that I could rest on His unchanging love, and I laid down the heavy burden of rescuing my daughter from the place she'd got herself by her ignorance of the world, and took up the burden which is light, which is simply TRUSTING the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of the God of the universe instead.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise God all creatures here below.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise God, the Source of all our gifts,
Praise Jesus Christ, whose power uplifts,
Praise the Spirit, Holy Spirit,
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!!

Simply loved,
Patty

Re-echoing the Praise of the Lord

January 15, 2011, will forever mark the day between my former existence as a happy mother of two, and my new existence as a mother of one teenage, musical, artistic, very intelligent Boy Scout whose beloved big sister suddenly, out of a clear blue sky, ran away and left him in a clinically anxious state, and one..... what kind of girl??

On that day our daughter, aged 19 going on 20, broke up with her boyfriend of 3 years, with whom she was practically engaged - had indeed made plans - in a most rude manner, over the phone. When I learned of this, I began delving into her friendships and found out she had cut off ALL ties with ANY of her friends. Facebook seemed the only connection she had left open. Over the next 24-36 hours we discovered she was in thick with a cult, and was lobbing accusations of abuse at us, her parents. We have subsequently learned that she has not attended ANY of the classes or sessions she enthusiastically set up for herself in the previous weeks, including her new college, George Fox, who verified that she had canceled all her classes. This in itself proved to us that our daughter was not acting out of her own will. To say this was disconcerting or even alarming would be a grave understatement of our feelings as parents. We were TERRIFIED for our daughter's safety!

We attempted to call, but were met with the immediate voice mail message.We called the host family where she was staying, but were stone-walled. As all messages from her appeared to have been written by someone else, we feared the worst. Yet when the police went to the home in which we last knew she was staying, they told us she was fine, an adult, and we should just back off.

The threats in her messages seemed to intensify over the next days, as I strove by using Facebook to reach my daughter herself somehow. It was clear her computers and telephone had been hijacked by the cult, and messages were being sent by people other than our daughter. Her voice on the phone and in messages was hers, but it was oddly changed, with a robotic quality that scared us very much. She was obviously repeating words she'd been coached to use. What were they feeding our daughter? What kind of mind manipulation were they using? Who could we get to help us?! The police were useless, and counselors were all out of town or otherwise occupied, including our daughter's own sleep therapist. The help friends gave us in the way of websites to visit and books to read merely added to my confusion, as it was all too new for me to digest all the information and sort out what would be helpful to us. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. This cult leader knew what he was doing.

The other day, our daughter left the car we'd bought for her to drive, along with everything to do with it (including the AAA card I'd gotten for her safety, cut in several pieces), her house key, and her cell phone, parked in front of the police station. She sent us a "Cease and Desist" letter, we believe was crafted by the cult leader, which was also sent to the policeman on the case. We thought this very odd, and that prompted a visit from me personally. I demanded to know what was going on with my daughter. The two policemen who had seen her the day before sat down with me very patiently and went over it all again. Basically they told me for the umpteenth time that since she was over 18 they could do nothing, and she has the right to do as she pleases. They also told me that if she wanted a restraining order she would have grounds, given the number of times we had attempted to contact her within a week. This feels like a threat. Me! Threatened by my own daughter together with my hometown police for attempting to protect her!!

So we have had to take our hands completely off this situation. We have no knowledge of our daughter's whereabouts. We have no way to find out. We know she is penniless and without any form of transportation, except what she is able to beg from others. We know she has probably got somebody to buy her a new cell phone, because she removed the battery and SIM card from hers when she left it in the car (which is theft, as those batteries are not cheap).

To say this keeps me awake nights would be yet another vast understatement of the facts.

But I am a child of the King. My daughter is a child of the King. All my life I have heard the promises, sung them, lived by them, taught them to my children. My daughter knows who she is, and in her heart is buried the Word of God, the Sword of the Lord, hidden in her heart with songs and memory verses and stories from Bible School, Sunday School, recordings of Christian singers and choirs she's sung in, and lullabies I used to sing her, one of which we sang together in my Mothers Day concert on behalf of Haiti last spring, another of which we sang together just last month at her grandmother's funeral. And if my life has not acted as witness to the Truth of those Words I sought to teach her, it is myself at fault, and not the promises.

We are not powerless.

I have been extremely distraught over this until now. I have gone ballistic on Facebook with so many posts people have hidden me or just turned it off. Some of them sent me messages, as they were very concerned for me. I thank God for them. They were right.  So I turned off Facebook and gave my login information to my best friend to check for any messages from my daughter. Of course there haven't been.

I have had difficulty smiling at people, answering their "How are you today?" in the store without saying just a plain, "Awful!" I have shed tears at odd times in odd places. And I cannot stand to look at the row of Growing Up Girls in the cupboard, waiting for the time my daughter should move out and have her own china closet to keep them in safely. This Tuesday, February 1, will be her 20th birthday. I can not even think of it. There has NEVER been a year I was not planning a party or get-together to celebrate God's leaving this most amazing child with us another year.

I have gone over and over what reasons my daughter could have for so breaking the hearts of everyone, EVERYONE, who loves her. I admit we have made mistakes, and I admit my attention has not been fully on her words in the last two months. If only she would come and sit down with me, and talk, just the two of us together, for a little while. Perhaps we could understand each other somewhat and put this behind us. I am not even permitted to ask for that. Not even permitted to try and apologize for whatever it is she is so unhappy about that she had to remove herself. But her words and actions beforehand lead me to believe she was not unhappy with us until she went with the cult, who twisted her mind around in knots and confused her so she doesn't know which way is Home.

I'd been hoping for a song to come to me, like they always do, that would speak to this situation. It's how I pray, and God is always faithful to send one. But there seemed no song for this. There are no words for this. But as I walked in the park today with my little dog, Jeffy, the sun came out. There were many people in the park today, as it was a planting day. The river was lovely, reflecting the houses on the other side. They were upside down... just like my life has been turned by my daughter.

As I walked through the filtered sunlight with Jeffy skipping beside me, finally a song came to me. It's on page 518 of The United Methodist Hymnal, copyrighted 1989, which includes a few musical contributions by my daughter's Godmother, Elise Eslinger,which has nothing to do with this; and it goes like this:

O Thou, in whose presence my soul takes delight,
On whom in affliction I call,
My comfort by day and my song in the night,
My hope, my salvation, my all!


Where dost thou, dear Shepherd, resort with thy sheep,
To feed them in pastures of love?
Say, why in the valley of death should I weep,
Or alone in this wilderness rove?


O why should I wander, an alien from thee,
Or cry in the desert for bread?
Thy foes will rejoice when my sorrows they see,
And smile at the tears I have shed.


Restore, my dear Savior, the light of thy face,
Thy soul-cheering comfort impart;
And let the sweet tokens of pardoning grace
Bring joy to my desolate heart.


He looks! and ten thousands of angels rejoice,
And myriads wait for his word,
He speaks! and eternity, filled with his voice,
Re-echoes the praise of the Lord.


(Joseph Swain, 1791 - Ps. 23)

I will praise Him. Though I have no earthly reason to right now, I will sing praises. It's who I am, a daughter of the King, and it's the job He gave me when I was born. And I intend to act, above all, like a true daughter of the King acts, by the grace of God.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it! And you can take that to the bank.

Simply T-R-U-S-T-ing,
Patty

Love is of God

It was as if it were a death, and an old one at that.

She sifted through the photos, old photos, of their youth. They were still the same, those children. They hadn't grown or changed, they were still laughing just as they did so long ago, still walking across the tarmac to their waiting family, still planning to make the move that directed their entire lives and who their children would be and why they would eventually part ways.

And that was the answer, the reason at the core. They hadn't grown together. It's impossible for two vines to grow together if one refuses to grow, refuses to act like a vine but must immitate a fence post. The one growing vine will curl around it and even put tentacles into the fence-post-like vine, but eventually it must shoot out and away, seeking other company in the sunlight.

And so she had, while he stayed in his childhood, afraid to grow toward the light, and even shunning the touch of her leaves, planting himself firmly in the mud, and ridiculing her as she reached with all her might upward, ever outward, toward the joyous, rain-filled air.  They were never alike. They were planted wrongly in the garden.

Oh, it wasn't the Gardener's fault. But it was so nonetheless. Some underling had made the mistake, seeing the vine reaching, reaching toward the other in its shoot days. The Gardener had simply allowed it, to give the underling a lesson perhaps. But the underling hadn't got it, had left the two, she wrapped around him, he unwilling to grow, all the years locked by the rule of the garden - no one must move what has been planted - for so many, many years. And little vines had come up through the soil between them, sheltered by the growing vine from the intense sun of summer and worst rain of winter. But the two vines did not grow together. It was impossible.

The little vines were grown large enough now to stand much of the sun and rain on their own. She was almost as dead as the vine-turned-fence-post beside her. The rain fell gently on her upturned leaves: "Come out! Come out! Higher, climb higher into the open space where the sun will shine! We are almost finished watering the earth for awhile, the light will come again. Lift up your head!"

And so she did, as she put the pictures back into the disintegrating album. She looked up, and looked around. And she wasn't disappointed, there was the light! There was a whole garden all around her! And she knew there was the Gardener, though she couldn't yet see Him. And there were other vines, and especially that one....

Then she heard the voice of the Gardener saying, "Lift up your head, your redemption draweth nigh." And she knew it was time to put away the former things, for behold, all things are becoming new! And she stretched out her tendrils toward that other vine with all her might, but something gave her pause, something undescribable here.

But reach she must. The Gardener had said it, and that voice she never disobeyed had commanded her to LIVE. So live she must.

She put away the old photos. She would begin tomorrow to sort them all, like she'd planned for so many years, but life had got in the way. Just like it had got in the way of her growing toward the light. She would grow in a new direction, alone in the garden if necessary. She would be growing, though, and living. If not, she would end up a fence post, good for nothing but hemming in and saying "No!", even when "Yes!" is what's written.

This was her salvation.

But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us — by me and Silas and Timothy — was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.

Waiting

Waiting.

But that's Advent. This is Christmas, the 4th Day of Christmas. What did my true love bring me on this day? 4 calling birds, right? What are calling birds? Are they really singing? That would be nice. No, wait, it's now the 5th Day of Christmas: Five Gold Rings. Who needs those? Give me the birds!


But I'm still waiting. The Messiah has come and I'm still waiting. There's something wrong with that.


Michelle said something about that in her sermon Sunday, but I can't quite remember what exactly. I did type in the line I liked best here on Facebook, but there was more to it. We are still waiting around for the thing that has already happened.... to happen again? For an encore? That was part of it.

Am I waiting for an encore? No, not that!! I certainly don't want a reprise of what came before!! I feel like I'm waiting for something that was promised, but hasn't come, even though the time has arrived for it to be here. Am I waiting for something I've missed?

Yes. I certainly am.

I've been waiting for quite a long, long time. The promise has come, but I'm still in a holding pattern. That's so hard! I'm a girl of action, movement, not stillness, not hesitation.

And yet.... So many times in my life I've been the one to be still when others act, to hesitate when others rush out. Why? Because I couldn't see the promise was already here? But I didn't have it yet. Now that I do, what should I be waiting for?

Well, I guess I know the answers to that. I just don't like it. It isn't me. It isn't ..... yare (yes, I looked up that spelling). Yeah, that weird term from that great old movie, The Philadelphia Story. Good old Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. Love 'em!

I don't know what that word yare could mean, really. Daddy didn't teach me all the sailor terms he must have learned in the navy in WWII, and around Long Beach and Newport and Balboa. But it apparently means something really good and square and right. And that's just what my situation is not: good and square and right. Not yare. Not a good floating vessel, this life I'm in right now.

But it's one I wouldn't trade for anything else in the world! All it needs is a little adjustment here and there. Then I think it will be quite yare indeed.

yare (pron: yar) (adj)
Definition: Describing a boat that handles with little effort. A good sailing design, quick and capable.

There, just like I thought. Good and square and right. And quick, yeah, I like that. Capable, well I could be more of that, I suppose.

Just under it in the Nautical Dictionary I found online is this:

yaw (n)
Definition: The turning of a boat off course caused by seas arriving at an angle.
See Also: pitch, roll

Yes, that's how I feel. Not yare, but yawing. Seas at an angle (not angel) have definitely arrived. Why they couldn't have arrived straight on, when a sailor was ready and in good position for them, I'll never know. But that's how it occurred, and that's how I have to take them. Seas at an angle to the rest of my life, proving my boat not yare (pron: yar), causing me to pitch and roll ridiculously, like a school girl.

But I wouldn't have it any other way. Not for the lessons I've learned, not for the knowledge I could have gained no other way. And not for the heart as ready as mine is now to give so much more than to receive.

Lord, I want to be yare, please. I'm ready. Please square me up so I quit this yawing.

Simply waiting,

Patty