A season of realignment

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT)
     
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established.   – Proverbs 19:21 (RSV)
      
I call my Explorer my klunker. Because it literally klunks when I turn the wheel or drive over a rough section of road. Poor thing. It’s 14 years old, which is getting up in vehicle years.
      
My husband told me quite some time ago to make an appointment to get it aligned. I did, but the guy told me something was wrong with a tie rod end or something like that, so we cancelled the alignment. Now that hubby’s fixed the tie rod end (or something like that), I still haven’t gotten it aligned. But it’s not too bad—yet. I’m used to driving it. You see, there’s a trick to steering a misaligned vehicle.
      
When a vehicle is aligned, you can hold the steering wheel straight and the vehicle will go straight. But when it isn’t aligned, you have to hold the steering wheel in a slight turn to keep the vehicle going straight. If you hold it straight, you’ll end up where you don’t want to go, like in the ditch or on the other side of the road. Alignment keeps the steering straight.
      
Now, these Pennsylvania potholes are hard on vehicles, especially alignment. Hit one too hard, and bingo! your vehicle’s out of alignment. The only way to correct it is to take it to a mechanic, who has the expertise and the tools to realign it properly again. The only thing is I have to wait in a dirty waiting room while it’s done. (Have you ever seen a clean waiting room in an auto service place?) And, besides, I don’t like waiting. But eventually it’ll have to be done.
      
This whole year has been a season of realignment for me. Health challenges have been like potholes, knocking me out of alignment, slowing me down and even stopping me. I had to resign from teaching, give up my radio program, and trim other activities from my schedule. My life is not what I expected it to be. I’m in a waiting room, where I’m learning to balance my life with work, rest and leisure activities. I’m amazed at how busy I was at things that were good, but no longer God’s purpose for me. I’m abashed at how little time I took for fun. I realize that now. Slowly I’m getting my energy back.
      
And with it a clearer vision. You see, the master Mechanic is using my fatigue to realign my life with His purposes. To force me to stop, look at where I’m headed, and get my steering straight again.
      
I thought I would teach forever. I thought I’d do my radio program forever. But God had other plans.
      
Are you in a season of realignment? Trust the master Mechanic. He knows what He’s doing.
      
      
Lord, keep me roadworthy and aligned with Your purposes. Amen.
       

Special-Tea: Read Genesis 12:1-9

Detours for dummies

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. – Hebrews 3:8 (NIV)
      
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. – James 1:22 (NIV)
      
      
“Through traffic only,” read the sign for the exit ramp. Not wanting to take the detour and drive through New Castle, I flicked on my turn signal. I figured “through traffic” meant me, since my exit to I-376 was coming up. If I had to go through New Castle, I might miss it. I might even get lost. Then how would I get to the airport? (No, I don’t have a GPS.)
      
Ten minutes and several miles later, I got back on Route 422 the same place I got off. I grumbled all the way through New Castle. I didn’t trust that the detour would be marked well enough for dummies like me who are directionally challenged. Shucks, I could get lost in my hometown. I couldn’t afford to lose any more time. I didn’t want the friend I was picking up to be waiting.
      
Fortunately the detour was well marked. I got to the airport just as her plane was landing, so she didn’t have to wait. I found a parking space close to the terminal and ended up paying only a dollar for parking, since I was there less than an hour. All’s well that ends well, right?
      
Not exactly.
      
You see, I really knew I should have taken the detour in the first place. I’d driven the same route two months earlier and knew there was road construction right where my turnoff to I-376 was. What was I thinking?
      
I wasn’t. I was being willful and trying to force my own way.
      
I can be that way with God, too. Rather than follow the way He leads me, I stubbornly go my own way. When I’m forced to take a detour—a way I hadn’t planned that will take more time than I want it to—I grumble and complain the entire time.
      
Once it took me a whole year before I obeyed what I knew what God was telling me. Oh, I had excuses—I said wanted to make sure it was God directing me and I wasn’t merely looking to follow my own desires. But I knew. Deep down I knew. It wasn’t a good year.
      
As soon as I got on the route I was supposed to be on, the wrestling match in my heart ceased and the tension in my mind evaporated. The next time it didn’t take a whole year before I obeyed.
      
God directs us, but we have a choice—to go our own way or His. His way is always best—even when it’s a well-marked detour for dummies like me.
       
      
I can be stubborn, Lord. Thank you for your patience as I learn to listen and obey. Amen.
      

Special-Tea: Read Jonah 1:1-3      

Cleaning my friends list

A friend is always loyal. . . . A real friend sticks closer than a brother. - Proverbs 17:17, 18:24 (NLT)
      
      
Many of my Facebook friends have been posting the following notice: “I’m cleaning my friends list. Do you want to stay? Let me know.” The choices are yes, no, and not sure. I think one more choice needs to be added: “If you have to ask . . .”
      
I have close to 500 Facebook friends, some of whom I’ve never met but connect through writers and speakers organizations’ online presence. Some I’ve met a few times; others, such as family members, live far away. Still others live close by, but busy schedules and family commitments leave little time for catching up.
      
Granted, Facebook can usurp precious time and can be used for ill—some folks use it as a dumping station. But most use it to post positive messages—sayings and cartoons and pictures that perk up my day, make me laugh, make me think. Once I mentioned to a friend, who is also a Facebook friend, that I felt bad about posting my health challenges. Her response? “When I read those, I know how to pray for you.” Wow. Who’d ever think that Facebook would become a prayer net? She’s one friend I want to keep.
      
Whether in cyberspace or flesh-and-blood life, our friends lists clean themselves out naturally. Those who want to stay, do. They make time for you, no matter how busy they are. They’re there when you’re in a pinch.
      
Kathie is a friend like that. We met the first day of first grade outside the school building. Apprehensive about walking into that classroom and not knowing a soul, we looked at each other and said, “Let’s be best friends.”
      
And so we were. In grade school, we spent many hours in her attic playing dress-up. In high school I got in trouble one summer night when I walked her home and neglected to call my parents. College parted us. We settled in different areas of western Pennsylvania. Career and family kept us busy.
      
She was my maid of honor, the godmother to my firstborn. I was in her wedding. I haven’t been as faithful in sending birthday cards as she has, but our friendship in our retirement years is gaining momentum once again. When we do get together, we pick up where we left off, like no time at all has passed since we last saw each other.
      
Our friendship has lasted over half a century.
      
In her book, The 5 Things We Need to Be Happy, and Money Isn’t One of Them, Patricia Lorenz gives an apt description of true friendship: “Friends are mathematical. They multiply the joy, divide the sorrow, subtract the past, add to tomorrow. Friendship is bigger than the sum of all its parts.”
      
Cleaning my friends list? Nah. With friends like Kathie, I have all I need.
      
      
Thank you, Lord, for the wonderful people who have blessed my life with their friendship and love. Help me to be a friend to them—and to others—as they are to me. Amen. 
     

Special-Tea: Read 1 Samuel 20

 

Kathie and me on my wedding day, Dec. 22, 1973

 

      

Following the taillights

Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. - 1 Corinthians 11:1 (NIV)
          
      
I’ve driven the road between Smithport and Punxsutawney thousands of times over the 31 years we’ve lived here. You’d think I could drive it blindfolded. But I can’t. One rainy Friday night proved that.
      
Not only was the wet pavement darker and harder to see, but the road had recently been tarred and chipped, so there were no lines painted to indicate where the middle and the edge were. Nothing but a few reflectors in the center, which disappeared in the glare of oncoming vehicles’ headlights. Using my high beams helped, but I had to dim them when a car approached or when someone was in front of me.
      
Several times after an oncoming car passed, I found myself in the center of the road. When you don’t know where the edge is, you tend to hug the middle. You don’t want to end up in the ditch.
      
I was about halfway home when I muttered a prayer: “Lord, please—no more oncoming cars. Let me have the road to myself so I can get home safely and with my sanity intact.”
      
A few minutes later, red taillights appeared in front of me. Oh, great. Now I’d have to keep my low beams on. Forget passing. I don’t like to pass on a four-lane highway in broad daylight, let alone on a dark and rainy night on a two-lane, country road with no lines.
      
I sighed and paced myself behind the car at a safe distance. After a mile, though, I realized that the taillights ahead were helping me to see which way the road went. I followed until my turnoff into Smithport. Only one car had approached after I had prayed. You can bet I breathed a prayer of thanks when I pulled into my driveway. I felt that God sent that car just for me, to help me find my way home.
      
Life can be dark and rainy at times, too, leaving us guessing how to stay on the road and out of the ditch. The familiar becomes unfamiliar. We’ve traveled the road before, but not in these circumstances. That’s when God sends someone to guide us. Someone who doesn’t flinch in the glare of oncoming problems. Someone who sees in the dark better than we do. Someone who can follow the twists and turns without the lines.
      
Oh, I probably would have gotten home safely that night without my “angel.” But it sure was comforting to know I wasn’t alone—that someone went before me, showing me the way home.
      
      
Thank you, Lord, for the folks You’ve sent to be guides during the dark and rainy times in my life. Through them, You remind me that I am never alone, that You have not forsaken me. Help me, in turn, to be the taillights for others who are having trouble finding their way. Amen.
      

 

Special-Tea: Read Psalm 1

      

Insight Number One

Write down the revelation and make it plain. - Habakkuk 2:2 (NIV)
      
      
Writing helps me to figure things out. In the middle of a page I suddenly understand something better—I see something in a different light. Sometimes that “something” is me. Sometimes it’s a situation or a circumstance. Sometimes it’s another person.
      
That’s why I keep a spiritual journal. My spiritual journal these days isn’t a dumping station, like my earlier journals were. Rather, it’s a place to record the thoughts and insights that come to me as I spent time with God, reading, praying, meditating, listening for the still, small voice. Time alone with God always gives a fresh perspective. And I want to record it so I remember it.

At the end of the last blog entry, I promised  to share some of these insights with you in future columns. Today I’ll share what I call Insight Number One.
      
I’d long felt guilty about not keeping a job like my husband, who’s worked for one employer now for 27 years. My sister-in-law has worked at the Indiana County Courthouse for 40 years. And here I am. I’ve never had one job for more than five years. I’ve taught full time for both the public school and the Christian school, I’ve subbed both day-to-day and long term for teachers on sabbatical leaves, and I’ve worked part-time and full-time for two different newspapers. All in the 39 years since I graduated from college. Those working stints were really like punctuation points in my life. Comparing myself with my husband and my sister-in-law, I felt selfish, fickle, flighty. Didn’t I stick with anything for the long term?
      
During my retreat time, God gave me the answer: Yes. My husband. In December we’ll celebrate our thirty-eighth anniversary. I fell in love with him on a cold January night in 1973, and I’m in love with him still. We built a family, a house, and a life together.
      
On Sept. 12, I wrote in my journal: “Working outside of the home (teaching, writing for the newspapers) has never been a career for me, but rather spaces of service. My career has been to be a wife, mother, now grandmother, and homemaker, and to serve God where I can with the talents and opportunities He’s given me.”
      
God calls each of us to different things, and He’s gifted us uniquely to serve a unique purpose. Comparing myself with another doesn’t do me—or anyone else—any good.
      
Time alone with God helped me to see the constants in my life: faith, family, and friends.
      
What else do I need?
      
      
Out of my distress I called to You, Lord. You answered me and set me free. With You on my side, I do not fear. You are my strength and my song. You have become my salvation (Based on Psalm 118:5-6, 14). Amen.