STEAK AND BARE BONES

“Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.  It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”  I Corinthians 13: 4-5

I

’m going to make a confession.  Sometimes I am assaulted by a streak of rebellion.  Everybody who knows me well knows that as a “little boy” growing up in East Texas, I was a dyed-in-the-wool rebel, but I am here to confess to you that vestiges of that rebellious nature still occasionally rise up in me and have their way. They often rise up, specifically, in the area of well-established, commonly-accepted aphorisms. 

            Yesterday I heard an old song on the radio that I’ve been hearing and singing along to for as long as I can remember, and I’ll lay you nine-to-five odds that you have too.  Here are some of its lyrics: “You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all.  You always take the sweetest rose and crush it till its petals fall. You always break the kindest heart with a hasty word you can’t recall…” So far, I have no huge problem with what I assume to be the lyricist’s logic:  Vulnerability is indeed the thoroughfare on which pain most effectively travels, and thusly, many live the remainder of their lives after serious heartbreak stony hearted and heavily fortified against a repeated offense. I don’t think he was saying any of this in a bragging way but likelier as a confession of falling prey to the terrible temptation to take advantage of those who are easiest – the ones we know we have already “caught” and won’t likely run off too easily with our cruelty borne of familiarity and laxity of self-control. But then comes the final, climactic line of this would-be (but sharply failing to be) romantic ballad.  Are you ready?  “So if I broke your heart last night, it’s because I love you most of all.” 

Wait a minute—WHAAAAT???  Even my very sketchy research reveals that at least fourteen artists have made this sad and sadistic melody a hit.  I am astounded that I have easily and naturally sung these words for years without any recrimination from my conscience or even from my common sense, for Heaven’s sake!  (Yes, I do remember that the goal of my writing today is to come up with a worthwhile devotional meditation; truly, Your Honor, I am about to get to that very thing!  Can you tell I’ve been watching “Matlock”?)

            The lyricist here seems to be doing the devil’s work for him quite effectively, subtly gaining the agreement of thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands that we always go around picking on the ones we love, bruising and battering the sweetest and kindest of hearts. He makes it sound as though this is normal— that this is just the nature of true love.  It ranks right up there with the much-repeated, grossly unbiblical, line from the 60’s movie “Love Story”: “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.”  Both are attempts to give us permission to ravage tenderness, to despise kind vulnerability, to treat with scorn those whose love will surely easily turn the other cheek. That’s way more than enough commentary of these ridiculous notions for the likes of you, the choir.  I’m done singing to you about those first few lines. You can easily fill in the rest of the blanks.

            But about the song’s climax, I have a little more to say.  “So if I broke your heart last night, it’s because I love you most of all.”  Really? Is the indicator of some people’s depth of love for others how poorly they treat them?  Well, it does go right along with the song’s theme, so here, I suppose such a sad conclusion is to be expected. That’s written as a representation of the pagans, right? 

Our reflex answer is yes, but in fact, no.  I’m afraid the truth is that even with us who love Jesus and claim to want to follow Him, the confession of this emotionally worldly song bears out some sinister reality.  Many of us give ourselves silent, subtle license to maim those closest to us with our sharp tongues (or, just as often or moreso, our silent tongues!) and with our offhand treatment of them which shouts our testimony that they have become invisible?  I watch with mounting concern so many who act this way toward their spouses. This is no better than luring a dog into a cage with a t-bone steak and then tossing him only bare bones for the remainder of its life.

The truth, from God’s point of view, is that if we broke their heart last night, there might be several reasons, many of them understandable and even forgivable, but among them is not that we love them most of all.  It might be that they love us most of all, and that is why they were standing close enough to get burned.  It could be that we love the fact that they keep staying and giving us someone on whom we can explode when an explosion feels necessary for us to get back on an even keel.  It might be that we love their loyalty and faithfulness and ability to keep turning that cheek time and time again. But let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking that we mistreat them because we love them. The closest that can come to being true is that we mistreat them in spite of the fact that we love them. 

Ever since I caught myself singing those words the other day, these thoughts have taunted me.  I plan to go back and study in depth God’s definition of love and ask Him to help me be brave enough and humble enough to measure my treatment of my “loved” ones against His standards for us, His children.  He has given us lots of words about how He wants it done.  Will you join me?

           

UNPREDICTABLE GLORY: A TRUCKING MAMA'S TESTIMONY

Dear Readers, You are getting this a second time because "Unpredictable" was misspelled the first time, and I couldn't stand it.  I know; it is a neurosis.  I can't help it; I taught English for too many years!

I am definitely a pray-er, but sometimes I do it poorly.  I know my tendency to ask God to do things His way and then with the very next breath, to begin telling Him specifically how.  For this reason, as I prayed for weeks for the upcoming trip with Larry, I made a concerted effort to mean it when I asked God simply, “Show us Your glory.”

            And now here I am back to report how He did that with no help at all from me. 

            I definitely had my ‘druthers about places we might be sent.  I had my ‘druther not’s, too;  and, in classic Almighty fashion, some of those places I intended to be disappointed with were places God intended to use to teach me some humility and foster more blind trust in Him at the same time. I was hoping like crazy without actually dictating to God my wish-list, to go east, preferably northeast, perhaps even north northeast up into Canada where he has been sent several times.  I was envisioning eating lobster in New England and maybe seeing Niagara Falls into the bargain.

 But instead, we were sent to Georgia—Atlanta, Valdosta, Savannah— and Memphis, then Arkansas, back to Houston, down to Freeport, up to Wichita, Kansas, back to Houston, and over to New Orleans and back.  Mostly south with very little northness.   Mostly familiar with very little exotic.  Those are logistical facts of the trip. HOWEVER, logistics are rarely the whole story, and they are definitely just a minor part of this one.

  I am so thankful that we can depend upon Holy Spirit to help us ask aright and, in fact, to do a lot of our praying for us.  Otherwise, I would have never thought to repeat the prayer for weeks ahead, “God, just show us your glory however and wherever you choose.”  He answered my prayer with exclamation marks.

I’m assuming had we gone north we would have missed the autumn foliage, one of the very specific reasons I had wanted to go during October, because the Southeast was full of it!  Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas were screaming!  For miles and miles our eyes were assaulted with a near garish display of oranges, reds, and bright gypsy yellows.  No child’s brash rendering could have captured this lovely reality on God’s palette.  I had forgotten about the mountains in northern Alabama and the way the waxy magnolias in the Deep South (even without blooms!) punctuate so beautifully the soft, velvety evergreens.  I thought I knew all about Louisiana, but I had never witnessed anything like the Atchafalaya River Basin with its eighteen-and-half-mile bridge spanning mysterious cypress swampland that resemble a Van Gogh masterpiece. Also, we got to dine not only at The Lady and Sons, Paula Deen’s restaurant in Savannah, and The Rendezvous in Memphis, our favorite ribs in the whole, wide world, but also at Jason’s Deli in Little Rock with Norm and Susie, our old friends whom we met in Germany thirty-five years ago!  We laughed our way through two quick hours and all talked at once like we always did.  Pure delight! Our eyes were wide open, as we promised God they would be, to take in everything He chose to include on this Gloryland Tour. 

But the trip was not only a cornucopia of God’s visual glories; it was a bold display of His care and providence.  What we never could have predicted was the Thing that was brewing out in the water and preparing to crash into the Northeast.  Sandy, the Perfect Storm, targeted the very route of my dreams with intense irony.  I didn’t get my lobster, but I also didn’t get Sandy’s wrath.  We stayed in the south, but we stayed warm and dry.  We didn’t see Niagara Falls, but what we did see were regular meals cooked with unwavering electricity, dry roads to travel, and water for showers at every stop.  And the folks in the wake had one less big truck and two fewer stranded bodies to deal with. We realized, and we gave thanks.

And then there was the glory of the bond of peace and togetherness that we had hoped for between the two of us but that honestly we had wondered about A LOT !  Larry worried that I would overreact to the traffic, scream, “Watch out!” catapulting his reflexes into a wreck that would wipe out an entire interstate highway full of innocent travelers in their comparatively wimpy vehicles. (I had pretty much the same vision, but mine included what worse thing might have also happened had I NOT shouted out my warnings just in time to save us.) I think we both had worried a little about the ill effects of cabin fever upon a couple who had, yes, missed each other while apart, but also had, yes, formed our own separate habits and routines designed for solitude. And yet, none of those things happened.  We really did enjoy each other’s company; a bonus was that neither was there any panicky out-screaming nor metal crunching… not even one wreck!  God’s glory every bit.

Now, I must tell you a tiny bit of Chapter Two.  The very next trip, can you guess where Larry was sent?  Ontario and Niagara Falls.  At least he didn’t get any lobster.

A TRUCKING MAMA

It will be my maiden voyage.  Yes, I am getting to go with Larry in his big tanker truck on an adventure!  We take out tomorrow—providing they have a load ready for us— for parts unknown and will live together in our little orange Condo a la Schneider for two whole weeks. We won’t know where we’re going tomorrow until later today, and once we get to that place, they will then tell us where we go next.  

I’m as excited as a kid at Christmas. However, I think my man is a little trepidatious about taking on this particular partner.  I think he must be imagining that his well-laid schedule will be shipwrecked by having a girl along who, for one thing, can’t jump out and t-t on one of the 16 huge wheels that are pretty easy to hide behind, providing, that is, that you are standing upright in a pretty narrow line, like men do, rather than squatting down into a triangular shape like a mature woman must.  (Two inserts here:  Yes, 16 is right; tankers are mostly 16-wheelers, not 18-wheelers.) And (That was an embarrassingly long and unwieldy—almost run-on-ish  sentence— for an experienced teacher of grammar to have left standing there.)  But I’m in a hurry; my coach pulls out directly, and I don’t want Larry to have any excuse to leave me behind.

Adventures are my favorite food.  For years, I made Larry drive me to fourteen states, some more than once, just so that I could have him drop me off in the middle of the woods, drive 25-60 miles in another direction, and then walk in and meet me on the other end of various sections of the Appalachian Trail.  Every time I would head out, I would always pray that God would show me His glory in unmistakable ways.   I wanted Him to know that I was one of His children who was really paying attention to His creation.  I told Him that if He would lead me to His finest wonders, I would be faithful to appreciate them to the fullest extent and then to go tell everybody who would listen to me what an amazing Creator He is.  He has always answered that prayer in unspeakable ways.  

And now here I am again before Him with the same request.  Oh, I would love to go up East and see some autumnal glory at its peak.  It would be divine to end up in Connecticut and hike through the cool early evening to a lobster shack.  I long to see some of those Thousand Lakes Larry has told me about in Minnesota, or drive through the mountains of Colorado.  It would be thrilling to go all the way up into Canada, as he has done alone twice before.  There are hundreds of scenarios that titillate my imagination as I sit here in Belton and dream.  

And there are a few scenarios that I hope are not our assignments, also.  Houston to Dallas.  Dallas to Oklahoma City.  Or worse, Houston to Freeport or Pasadena or Beaumont over and over for two weeks.  These don’t ring of adventure… not enough of the unknown involved to widen my eyes and elevate my heart rate.  

But, here’s what I have decided— and I’m pretty sure the Holy Spirit has something to do with my attitude adjustment:  God’s makes His glory evident  in more ways than one.  Two old married people living together for forty years, who have for the last six months been way too separated, at last get to be together for more than three days.  REALLY together.  We have missed each other so much.  We hate to let each other go when our short three-day rendezvous are up.  Now, we will have the luxury of waking up just one bunk away from each other for two weeks. 

Now I know what you are thinking, and you are right to be thinking it.  What if that is a little too much togetherness?  Hmmmm.  Well, yes, that is a fair question, and moreover, altogether possible.

And so, this might be how God will show us His glory.  Is God big enough and strong enough and creative and determined enough to get the two of us to be sweet and flexible and patient enough for this thing to be a delightful adventure?  (Oh, it will be some kind of adventure for sure!!)  

And so I am praying for the glory of God to come shining through with all the brilliance our condo can hold, to cushion supernaturally all of those 16 wheels, and to show us His power in whatever way He can’t wait to show us, in whatever ways we need to see it the most.  I am praying again for His unmistakable presence every mile of the way. Even if we only make it to Pasadena, Waxahachie, or Ardmore.

GLORY THAT OOZES AND SEEPS

“The heavens declare the glory of God;

The skies proclaim the work of His hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

 Night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language

Where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

Their words to the ends of the world.”

Psalm 19:1-4

Once I was a mean Freshman English teacher who made her students memorize poetry.  One of the poets I pushed the most was Gerard Manley Hopkins, a nineteenth-century Jesuit priest. His poetry reveals his intense love for nature, obviously inspired by his ravenous hunger for God, and is characterized by a delightfully unique and highly innovative structure.  I love his subtlety: he could fashion a bunch of words into an intricately stylized sonnet without letting his readers ever know he had accomplished such a literary feat until one decided to take it apart and analyze its meter.  That, to me, is true humility! It’s like an opera diva who is totally contented to sing in her shower. To express his feelings about the pervasiveness of God’s glory, he used words like “bleared,” “smeared,” “oozed,” and “smudged”—oddly ordinary, obliquely poetic, and some might even call too earthy or vulgar.  To me they were poignantly aromatic, spicy, tantalizing, and just plain delicious.

            He couldn’t help it! He was eaten up with revealing God’s handiwork.  I really get that because since I was just a little girl, I have loved reading and writing poetry.  I am magnetically drawn to the Psalms and next to Jesus, I love David above all other men in the Bible.

            When earth turns a page and suddenly changes chapters, I can hardly contain myself.  I dream about poetry and wake up spouting rhythm and rhyme.  I can hardly finish brushing my teeth before I grab the nearest scrap of paper and start scribbling.

Today is October 1, and it happened again. On my porch, drinking my coffee—

here came a parade of words to invade my devotional time. Literarily, they are nothing special; I have written dozens of others that I had rather share with you.  But I was so glad to remember that I am a poet who, like Hopkins and David, can’t help myself.  It’s been a long, hot, dry spell; I had begun to think I had lost the feel.  So, I offer you with Hopkinesque humility, my verses welcoming autumn.

The sun has tinted the shadowed sky blue;

Acorns clatter down tin roofs.

There’s no place else I’d rather be

In this world but right here, in truth.

A hummingbird sips as the train rumbles by;

Summer’s pink blossoms hang on.

My inner man is bathed in the Word

That I feasted upon at dawn.

A squirrel hides his treasures for winter;

In the pasture black mama cow bellows.

Autumn silently surrounds me

Preparing its oranges and yellows.

Stifling August is finally a memory;

Blustery gales yet to come.

While birdsong and blanket on the porch in October

Threaten to make me a bum!

            Hopkins was right.  God’s glory oozes out, smears itself everywhere.  God is so stuffed with Glory that it constantly seeps out of all creation: out of the autumn trees in the gypsy adornment of fiery foliage; out of the birds in pied feathers and lilting song; out of the bare, brown dirt in pink and purple petals; out of me in poetry; out of you in music.