A Tea Party Shows off my mom’s playful personality.
My mother died 1 year ago this month, on our daughter’s 16th birthday. As a pastor I have often counseled people through the stages of grief and know that grief can take many twists and turns along the pathways of our life. Grief may walk beside us when we loose a parent, a spouse, or a child—these are journeys people notice. Read the rest of this entry
Just getting out the door is challenge.
Getting Out the Door
We have a rule in our house: always wash the dishes before we leave on vacation. This may seem ordinary enough, I’m sure many of you may do the same thing. But for me, the mere act of getting out the door on time is difficult enough—you can’t imagine how tempting it is to say, “leave it, just leave it. We will be back soon enough.” But the person who leaves the house is never the person who returns to it. We become a new person because of the journey and nobody wants to come back and clean up someone else’s mess.
Andrew “Cymbal Kid” Pawelczyk with our Son Nishanth
One week ago my son’s best friend Andrew Pawelczyk (Pa-Vel-check) was thrust onto an international stage–he is the YouTube sensation “Cymbal Kid”. A month ago during the last middle school band performance, Andrew, an accomplished drummer who usually plays the “quad” 4 drums, was asked to play the cymbals. I was sitting dead center with my husband and daughter while our son sat in the trumpet section at first chair. Read the rest of this entry
Lean in to smell the perfumed fragrance of this red rose.
These days my garden is blooming with color-reds, pinks, yellows, and especially purples. These warm days of June bring such bountiful beauty I can sit in my rose garden for hours contemplating the mystery of God’s creation around me. The tomatoes have not yet formed. The eggplants and peppers are hopeful flowers blossoming on young plants in delightfully cool mornings awaiting the buzz of bees to bear their fruit in fall. The basil is reaching upwards toward the sun, not yet ready for my Friday pizzas. It is here with the sun on my face, sitting at my garden table, with the breeze dancing among leaves of the cottonwood trees that I feel at peace, a sense of ONENESS with God and the world. This is sacred Sabbath time. Read the rest of this entry
After three years my blackberry bush is producing fruit.
The garden teaches us many things about life. It teaches us about patience. It takes time for a blackberry bush to grow, to flower and to produce fruit. My blackberry bush is three years old and I think this year I may harvest 20-30 blackberries. Last year we picked 4. Another lesson the garden teaches us is discernment. We must learn to distinguish between plants that will produce food, and plants that will not–of course I am referring to weeds! If we allow the weeds to grow, they will choke out the young tomato and pepper plants. These two lessons are fairly obvious. The third lesson the garden teaches us is a much harder lesson. Read the rest of this entry
A large fragrant red rose was the first to bloom in my rose garden this year.
How do you get in touch with God? When do you experience the feeling that you are dwelling within a sacred moment? There are many ways that we can access the Divine. Some people experience the sacred in cathedrals and churches; others experience the holy in the smile of a newborn baby; still others in the quiet time of prayer. For me, I experience God in the midst of ordinary every day experiences with my family at home, at the beach, and especially in my garden. My granddaddy—my mother’s father—was a Wesleyan Methodist Minister back in the day. As I am writing this post, in my mind I can hear his strong vibrato tenor singing the hymn, “Come to the garden alone.”
I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
What brings me to my garden every morning? Read the rest of this entry
Nandini is on her way to raising $10,000 to build wells for kids who need it most.
Hi! My name is Nandini and I am celebrating my 12th birthday this month and you can help me give the gift of water.
Last spring, I had an epiphany. Everyone wants to do something to help people, and I had just figured out what I wanted to do. It felt like God was sending me a message, and it came in a funny way. I got my message in a catalog. Read the rest of this entry
A community of blossoms on a tree signal the beginning of spring.
As the season of spring erupts all around me in the blooming tulips and blossoming trees, I am hearing about people starting new adventures as well. Several of my pastor friends are starting new congregations, and others are teaching historic churches how to create new life. I have friends who are beginning new jobs after long periods of unemployment, and others who are moving into new companies with new responsibilities of leadership. Each of us at some point will enter into a new environment and begin the work of creating a community within. Whether we are involved in new church starts, new jobs, or starting a new venture, I have been thinking about the questions, “How do we create a new community?” and “What makes a community sustainable?”
Our daughter won a goldfish at a county fair two years ago and remarkably it was still alive at Christmas. As her parents we decided that she was mature enough to have a tropical tank as her Christmas present. For five months now my daughter and I have been hard at work creating a tropical fish tank of community fish. In a very tangible way this experiment in creating a tropical tank has my daughter and I discussing how to start a community, what makes up a good community, and how it can sustain itself. Read the rest of this entry
What do we do when we hear the news "you have a tumor?"
These are powerful words. How do I let my heart take courage? So often there are times when the news is so overwhelming that we are filled with fear and trembling especially when we hear the words, “You have a tumor.” How can we take courage in those times?
It has taken me some time to find my voice again. Recently I became discouraged after I received some disappointing news and I stopped writing in my blog. I am reminded of a time 6 years ago when we heard those words, “You have a tumor.” As pastors we are to be cultivators of hope and promise–faith and joy. But what happens when life seems to be filled with more downs than ups? How can we learn to cultivate hope in the midst of adversity? Read the rest of this entry
When Good Kids Make Mistakes
Last week I was standing in line at a toy store and I saw a little boy about three years old very excited about the present his dad was buying for him. You might imagine it was a car or truck, maybe a building set, or even a sword or light saber. Any of these would have been expected for a little boy to be excited about, but to my surprise this boy was delighted to have a kid sized broom and dustpan. Like many kids, he wanted to hold his new toy while standing in line. He took the broom and began sweeping the floor and singing…”Clean up, clean up, every body do you share. Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere.” I was amazed by the sheer enthusiasm this child had for doing his share and getting to work cleaning up messes on the floor. Generally speaking kids and adults alike do not like cleaning up messes.
One of the best pieces of advice I got as a mom of toddlers was to give them the best chance of success and plan for failure. What do I mean? When we bought our new home the dining room was carpeted. The highchair sat on carpet and three times a day our son would throw food on the floor and we would have to get down on our knees and dig the food and crumbs out of the fibers. The carpet was never really clean and so we were upset every time our kid did what kids do, make messes. We decided to pull up the carpet and put in a hardwood floor.
When the floor was installed, I was as excited as that little boy in the toy store was to sweep up the messes my kids made. What once was a headache and chore became easier to manage and my attitude was much happier. The broom was always close by. We planned for failure when they were learning how to drink as well. We gave our kids tiny steel cups to drink from and put about a tablespoon of liquid in the bottom. If they spilled it, it was no big deal to wipe up. If they drank it quickly, we would give them a refill. When my son fought to hold the spoon I was feeding him with, I gave him his own spoon too. Two spoons allowed for us to be successful. Two spoons changed my relationship with my son. No more fights…for now. Read the rest of this entry
