Holy Botox
As these first real bursts of winter weather have descended upon us so rapidly, I noticed my body going into its hibernation mode. My skin and nails are dry as a bone. Not to mention my lips. I can’t apply enough Chap Stick to give them any relief. Any hint of that kiss of sunshine face has long ago faded. These signs are our bodies’ attempt to convince us to cover up and stay indoors. No one wants to see this. As I was surveying the damage the other day, I was stopped in my tracks by another sign on my body. This one hit me right between the eyes. Literally. I have quite the furrowed brow. It’s my badge of honor, or should I say dishonor, for all the many years I have spent worrying, needlessly. I don’t like to think of myself as a worrier but I seem to be giving off that vibe. I’ve had a few people in the last week or so tell me to stop worrying. At Firstfruits last week we were praying for each other as we ended the Many Faces of Prayer series. One of the participants said that as we were praying for me, she had this vision of Jesus with His hand gently placed on my forehead. Smoothing and soothing my furrowed brow. I like to think about that. Sounds better than Botox and more permanent. Fr. Richard Rohr is quoted as saying that what isn’t transformed is transmitted. Since I haven’t yet completely transformed my worry habit, it appears to be transmitting through my thoughts, words, and my forehead. I know that if we want to feel lasting peace from whatever it is we struggle with, we need to spend more time in quiet communion with God. The surrender and trust that is the daily treatment we need to apply doesn’t come in a shot or a lotion; it only comes from knowing the God who wants nothing more than for us to know how much we are loved. As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, let’s open ourselves up to really see that love in the big and small blessings all around us. I promise I will try. Once all the family makes it to my mother-in-law’s. It is a two-hour drive and you know there are so many deer darting across the highway. Hopelessly furrowed, Joan...
HOORAY!
One of my grandkids’ favorite silly songs is the one that goes: If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it, then your face will really show it, If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. The next verse tells us to stomp our feet if we’re happy and we know it. The last verse tells us to shout “HOORAY!” What do you do when you are happy and you know it? If you are like me, you don’t clap, stomp, or shout “HOORAY.” You remain even keeled. You downplay the good in front of others because so many are struggling and you don’t want to appear as if things are wonderful. And, you fear that close on the heels of all that clapping, shouting, and stomping will be something to take away the happiness. The catastrophizer in me kicks into gear. I don’t do happy well. And I am feeling a bit ashamed about that. Our faith tells us that the spiritual life is a series of times of consolation and times of desolation. If we are aware and believe it, we see God’s gift of those grace-filled moments where love and goodness overwhelm us. Give us cause for clapping, stomping, and shouting. Consolation. Life also provides us with many times when through our own fault or not, we are faced with moments that bring us to our knees. Times when we feel very alone. When the connection to God’s love and goodness seems to fade or disappear altogether. Desolation. The good and bad news is that these cycles follow each other. When we feel the joy of consolation, we need to accept the reality that it won’t last forever, but while it does, we should allow ourselves the freedom to revel in it and let others see how amazing it is. When you’re happy and you know it, that is you know from where it comes, clap, stomp, and shout! Let your face show it. If more of us did, maybe it would be contagious. Instead of harming others, it might just heal others. It might just give others hope. Because just as we need to be aware that consolation won’t last forever, we also need to know that desolation won’t either. Those times when life brings us to our knees and we feel disconnected are times of powerful growth....
Time To Move
In the Old Testament book of Exodus God sent a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide the Israelites as they fled their bondage in Egypt. It was a sign of God’s faithfulness and care in providing a resting place along the way and a lesson then and now that God never forsakes us. When that pillar of cloud appeared, it was time to move. Being in the throes of moving this weekend, I really sympathize with those Israelite women. Just when they had the last basket of clay pots unpacked and neatly arranged in just the right spot in the kitchen, someone would shout, the cloud has moved. And off they go again. Yikes! They knew their God and trusted that when He said to move, they moved. As long as they had their trust in this loving God, their every move was promised to be best and blessed. Most of our moves over the forty plus years my husband and I have been married have centered around what was best for our growing family. We didn’t move often. Only three times in 39 years. But the cloud has moved twice now in just three years. With each move I find myself reflecting on just what was best and blessed about the place I am leaving This time, even though the stay was short, there was much to ponder and learn. The memories in this most recent resting place won’t be filled with Kodak moments of bringing home a newborn, first days of school, or sleepless nights before the weddings. This latest temporary resting place brought with it lessons. Valuable, hard lessons that I have come to realize are truly best for me and a blessing. In these last three years I experienced a pandemic that hit very close to home. I faced mortality, my own and that of my loved ones and come out the other side with a calmness. It took me a couple years but I made progress. I learned to trust God with my fears. In the last three years my husband had cancer surgery, retired from his fast-paced career in the corporate world, and continued to suffer from the effects of chronic back pain. All this puts a strain on these golden years. I learned, kicking and screaming (literally), a deeper sense of empathy and compassion. I faced a selfishness in me and did some...
Bins
In preparation for our move in three weeks, I am spending a lot of time among the bins in our basement. There is the holiday-decorations bin, the dress-up-clothes-for-the-grandkids bin, the baby-book-and-photo-album bin for each of our kids, the partyware bin and the don’t-know-where-else-to-put-this-stuff bin. With each move I have tried to pare down the bins. I really got brave this time, realizing there might not be a lot more moves. I threw away stuff that I couldn’t before. My high school and college diplomas; gone. A pair of my baby shoes that my mom saved; gone. Stacks of Mother’s Day cards my kids made for me in grade school; gone. With each of these goodbyes, I kept saying to myself it’s time to let go of the past and really cherish what is in my life now; the family, the friends, and the love that surrounds me each day. The past was a path to where I am now. I want to really appreciate the steps now. But there was one bin that gave me great pause. It was the one labeled Mom and Dad. In it was what is left of the lives of two people who mean the world to me. My dad’s tan fedora hat that he wore every day to work and to church. My mom’s reading glasses and a charm bracelet with a typed list of each charm and what it symbolized. There was a mailbox charm and in it was a weathered, tiny piece of paper you had to pry out with a straight pin. On it in very faded blue pen were the words, “To Flo, I love you. Bill.” It represented the trips my mom made to the mailbox to retrieve the letters my dad sent while in the South Pacific during WWII. There were the pictures of my mom when she was in her early twenties all decked out in a beautiful dress, wide brim hat, and high heels with my dapper dad next to her in his suit and tie. They were in downtown Chicago where they used to go dancing a lot. And pictures of my mom and her girlfriends lined up like the Rockettes in cute rompers enjoying a warm summer day. I also found the wallet my mom used to carry around in her last years, to all her doctor appts with her insurance cards and credit cards. Tucked away behind the...
Sing a New Song
It’s a big day for me. I’m a little distracted with the excitement of it all. If you recall, in The Bicycle Dress blog of a couple weeks ago, I ended with an aspiration I have that is a deep desire of my heart and an expression of the real me but that I haven’t had the courage to unleash. Can’t remember? I want to be a backup singer in a band. Well, relax, that isn’t happening, but I did take a step in the right direction. I joined the choir at my parish. Tonight, is my first practice. How did this happen you say? I have found a church home that feeds my soul. A big part of the feast is the music. Every Sunday, at some point in the mass, I feel the urge to clap in appreciation for the connection I feel to God through the music. It really moves me. Music has always been a big part of my life. My mom and dad liked to listen to the radio. They loved to dance too. As a teenager I had quite a collection of 45s that I played on my record player. Remember how you would stack them up and they would drop down one at a time to play? The good ole days. My performing began in third grade when I was cast as Gretel in the Sound of Music (see the picture above) at my older sister’s high school. Then there was the role of Mary Poppins in the sixth-grade talent show and a string of musicals in high school: Mame, My Fair Lady, and a solo in Bye, Bye Birdie. (It was one sentence but hey.) Since then, my singing has been relegated to private concerts in my car and silly but precious moments with our children and later, grandchildren. I can really nail a good "Mary Had a Little Lamb", "I’ve Been Working on the Railroad", and "Bicycle Built for Two", not to mention "Skid-A-Marinky Dinky Dink" and "Hush Little Baby." The thought of once again singing songs that don’t involve made up words that rhyme, lambs showing up at school, or carts and bulls that are always falling down seemed so appealing. I heard it said once that singing is praying twice. I think that is why I’m drawn to this right now. I am so overwhelmed with the knowledge and experience of God’s love in my life that...
Surprise!
Life is full of surprises. There are the fun ones, like a surprise birthday party or when your college age child comes home for an unexpected visit. Then there are the not so fun ones like positive Covid tests and cancelations. (I’ll explain in a minute.) Our ten-year-old grandson James has found a new way to make my life exciting. He likes to sneak up on me, say “BOO,” and watch me jump. I’m not sure if that kind of surprise is a fun one or a not so fun one. Surprises are a challenge to my need for order and control in the people and things around me. I like predictability. I like to know what to expect. And I don’t like that Jack-in -the-Box rush of adrenaline when things just come out of nowhere. I’m also hyper-vigilant so it’s hard to pull one over on me. I’m hard wired to always anticipate, be one step ahead of the game. So, I’m usually hard to surprise and I like it that way. I feel very uncomfortable when what I thought would happen, and in the way I thought it would happen, doesn’t happen. Something totally unexpected takes the place of how I have it neatly arranged in my head. The last couple weeks have been a marathon of surprises that have me waving the white flag. I think God has decided it’s time for me to work on letting go of my need for order and control. He gently wants me to hand it over. It’s something that keeps me in bondage and away from the freedom He so wants to give me. It’s an unnecessary burden I carry around. He wants to free me of it. The pruning has begun and it’s been relentless. Let me give you a rundown of the surprises I have had in just the last ten days. It started last Tuesday. The doorbell rang at noon as my husband and I were minding our own business, eating lunch. Surprise! There was a couple at the door asking if we were still selling our condo. (Our condo is for sale.) We said “Yes”, they said ‘We’d like to buy it.” They have another unit in our condo complex so they were familiar with the layout and facts and figures. They weren’t all that interested in walking through it but did anyway at our insistence. They made an offer that afternoon, we...
For Better, For Worse
I have an anniversary this week. My husband and I will be married forty-two years in a couple days. I’ve been reminiscing about past anniversaries. There was year ten when we foolishly thought we could leave our eight-year-old, five-year-old, and six-month-old for a weekend getaway. After all, we enlisted the help of two grandmas and one grandpa. Three on three. What could go wrong? Let me just say, it didn’t go well. They never offered to do that again. So, for many years we have stayed close to home. We go somewhere for a nice dinner. It is always so exciting because I know I can count on two things happening that are a rarity. My pick of anything from the dessert menu and prolonged eye contact from my husband. Both so sweet. Each anniversary I find myself pondering where we have been as a couple, where we are now, and where I dream we could be someday. With each passing year the traditional wedding vow words make more and more sense. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health until death do us part. Right now, we are in a toss-up between “in sickness” and “for worse.” My husband has suffered with chronic back pain for over ten years. Those of you who have experienced chronic pain know how insidious it is. It has a silent yet powerful effect on its sufferer and those around them. But, as with all of life’s challenges, there can be valuable lessons learned if we let ourselves enter the classroom. God is using a trial in the relationship that is nearest and dearest to my heart to teach me once again a very basic lesson that I seem to be slow to pick up on. Even those who love us the most will disappoint us. As my husband has been focused on his pain and all that goes along with that, I have found myself after time, losing compassion and empathy for him. I can get angry and resentful. I can become someone I really don’t like. But I’m helpless to change. I feel so let down and disappointed by the person I thought, forty-two years ago, would never fail me. Ronald Rolheiser puts it best in his book Against an Infinite Horizon, “Human love is finite. This insight helps us realize that the first task in any love, whether in a marriage or in a deep...
An Answered Prayer
Do you ever think about your first day in heaven? What your room in the mansion looks like? Do you get to settle in before the orientation begins? I hope we get some one-on-one time with God, because I have a lot of burning questions to ask but would like to do it in private. Questions like why God couldn’t just spell things out in plain language instead of making us spend so much time in Bible studies trying to decipher His word? Why we were given free will? Look at the mess we made of that. When did everything begin and when will it end? Or my dad’s question, if you had more than one wife in this life, who do you spend eternity with? Which one? (Not sure why that was so intriguing to him since he only had one wife, my mom, for almost fifty years.) Another question I have is about prayer. How does God decide how or when to answer our prayers? It says in scripture that if we ask, we shall be given; seek, we shall find; knock and the door will be opened. (Luke 11:9) In another passage we are encouraged with confidence, to approach God and He hears but we need to ask according to His will. (1 John 5:14-15) How do we know His will? I have friends who say what is the point of prayer, bad things still happen that I have prayed for and good things happen without even asking. So on and so on. It’s all very confusing. I don’t have the answers to these prayer queries but one thing I do know through personal experience is that there is power in prayer. Somehow our cares, our worries, our hearts’ deepest desires matter to God. That’s all I know. How God deals with all that is what I need to hash out in my one-on-one. God heard my worry and cared about the quiet restlessness I’ve had the last few months as I began discerning the new season of Firstfruits. Something was shifting and I was praying about it. I knew I needed help to sustain this precious work of God’s for this community of women we all belong to. The answer came on a walk, actually on a series of walks with Jill Varick. Some of you know Jill from Well Time or A Women’s Christmas that she facilitated last winter. She is a...
Come Alive
I’ve been spending a lot of time with our four-month-old granddaughter, June, lately. It’s amazing how fast newborns come alive. She already has two teeth, rolls around a lot, and has a very sophisticated sense of humor. She smiles and laughs at all my attempts to amuse her. Babies are such good audiences. It’s a real study in the development and the awesomeness of the human body when you spend time with a four-month-old. Parts of her body have come to life, while others are still half asleep. Her eyes find yours, her neck holds up her head, and of course, her plumbing is working overtime. However, her legs still resemble cooked spaghetti, her hands beat to their own drum, and her spine isn’t quite stacking up, literally. Her attempts at sitting up are amusing. The human body is made up of many different parts. When all the parts are working together, the body is in harmony and it can function the way it is supposed to. The same goes for the body of Christ. What exactly is the body of Christ? In his article “The Mystical Body of Christ: The Parts of the Body,” Jonathan Hayes states: “For as one body we have many parts…so we, though many, are one body with Christ” Romans 12:5 This common phrase is repeated many times throughout Scripture, especially by St. Paul in his epistles. Each and every time it is stated it is in reference to us, the people who follow God. He goes on to say: Just as every body part has a specific function within the body that is different from almost every other body part, so it is with us, that we all have our own gifts from God that we are each called to use in a way that He desires. We are all in service to the Body as a whole. We use our different abilities together in order that the main Body of Jesus Christ functions the way it is supposed to. Whether you connect through my weekly blogs, or are able to join us in person or on Zoom, you are an integral part of the body of Christ that is the Firstfruits community. What body part might you be? What gifts might you have that are waiting to come alive in service to the body of Christ that is Firstfruits so it can function the way it is supposed to? So much can be...
Goodbyes
I can feel it. It’s coming. There’s a cool hint of it in the air. From the first pencil case I spotted at Target to the fact that last evening I had sweatpants on, it’s becoming more and more obvious that a goodbye is imminent. A goodbye to summer. I’ve never been a fan of goodbyes. And life is full of them. The first-day-of-school goodbyes. First, as a child saying goodbye to my mom, and then as a mom saying good bye to my children. The relocating goodbyes. First, from Chicago to Milwaukee, then the new houses as our family expanded. The changes-that-come-with-aging goodbyes. First, to my natural hair color, then to my ability to do a cartwheel or swing on a swing without getting motion sickness. (What is that all about anyway!?) The loss-of-loved-ones goodbye. First my dad, then my mom. Lots of aunts and uncles and friends. Even a few four-legged friends. And all the other goodbyes over the years: classmates, teachers, boyfriends, friendships, coworkers, and next door neighbors to name a few. Life is full of goodbyes. What is it about goodbyes that leave us wanting? That cause us anxiety or sadness as we anticipate them? I think that with each goodbye a space is created that we don’t exactly know what to do with. Sometimes, it’s momentary and sometimes, it’s monumental and lasting. Writer Eric Clayton gives us encouragement when he states in his latest blog that "Goodbyes are powerful. There is sacred space left there, space in which grace takes hold." In the space that goodbyes leave there is room to grow. Grow in our dependence on God, grow in our awareness of God’s provision and grow in our trust that with each goodbye comes room for something more. A something more that is in God’s control and full of grace. As we say goodbye to summer, let’s say “hello,” with excitement, to what God will fill the space of our goodbye with. For starters, please consider joining us on September 21 from 6:30-8:30pm as we pray and play together in celebration of what God has in store for this coming year at Firstfruits. Say “goodbye” to summer and “hello” to the grace and blessings waiting for you. Joan...