This is what it's come to

All I know for sure is that the big event on February 17, 2024, wasn’t on either Trixie’s or my bucket list. Our men had everything to do with it, so don’t be looking at me funny.

Todd, Trixie’s husband, drove the Jeep while Husband rode shotgun on the way to Ridgeland, Wisconsin, for the occasion. While the vehicle swallowed up the miles, Trixie and I sat in the back seat chatting about adult children and ergodic literature.

The first time I heard about the annual chicken toss in Ridgeland, Wisconsin, I assumed the mayor of the town flung packages of meat (maybe even frozen—ouch!) into the crowd, and the lucky recipients saved money on their grocery bill that week. Husband soon corrected my misunderstanding.

A bleak sun shone as Todd parked on a street in Ridgeland, and we tugged more insulation around our bodies to meet the twenty-five-degree day. Snow pants, check. Extra jacket, check. Hats and scarves, check. Hand warmers in our mittens, check.

We strode toward the growing crowd. This western Wisconsin town’s inhabitants shared the style of those in the northern Minnesota place in which I was raised: Polaris jackets, wraparound sunglasses, camouflage, snowmobile boots, cans of Coors Light.

“You can cut the tension with a knife,” Todd said. And maybe there was a certain anticipation under wraps (read thermals).

At noon, three sturdy men appeared on the one-story flat roof of Rural Mutual, each holding a chicken, and the tossing began.

The men extracted chickens from their cages, one by one, and released them over the crowd. I cringed, thinking of what the townspeople would do if they caught one. Trixie raised her arms with each toss, and I already knew what she’d do if a feathered one ended up in her care. She’d build a lovely coop, and that bird would live a charmed life with a cute name, the healthiest of feed, and her daily crooning.

“Just because you don’t catch a chicken doesn’t make you a loser,” Todd said to me like I was worried about it.

Now and then, a bird flew away, escaping all the extended arms, and the villagers cheered as if they hoped, like I did, the fowl would evade their clutches. I said a little prayer for the chickens flapping over the crowd, feeling conflicted. The criticism from animal rights groups was real; I hated unkindness toward creatures too, but I ate chicken, so who was I to comment? Also, was this unkind? A guy near us tucked his feathered gift inside his coat for warmth, letting its head poke out to gaze around.

Another bird flew away and perched on the Drunk’n Monkey Bar & Hotel, a place that looked more like a saloon from the Old West than an establishment of today. The crowd applauded its freedom.

“What’re you gonna do with it, if you catch one?” I said to a man next to me.

“I already have a chicken coop full of chickens at home,” he said, so I didn’t get an answer.

Each time we thought the show was done, the roof men magically produced another crate. About forty minutes and one-hundred birds later, the cages emptied, and we left the smalltown scene, chickenless.

“Maybe we protest it next year,” Todd said. “You know, mix it up.”

“Or maybe we don’t come back,” I meant to say, but I don’t recall if I did, although I believe our group’s consensus was that the bucket list item had a solid check mark next to it.

Every adventure with Trixie and Todd is delightful, and it’s okay by me if our future excursions don’t involve avian antics of any kind. But wait. I hear Abang Yoli, a new restaurant with Korean fried chicken, is amazing, so maybe next time we do that.


*A big shout-out to Trixie for this blog installment's title. It truly has come to this.

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Flicka and the wedding quilt: Part 1

“I’m supposed to start making my wedding quilt,” Flicka says one day in November.

She spends time in the secret place each day and learns new things there. This is definitely one of them.

I consider two realities missing from my twenty four year old’s life: impending nuptials and a current boyfriend. But I know how callings and faith work: solid ground always rises to meet each step into seeming nothingness.

“You better get to it then,” I say.

She comes into agreement, calling what is not as though it were, and orders wool roving from Amazon. This won’t be a fabric-squares-stitched-together type of blanket but a felted wool covering meant to hang first from the altar on their day before God and man, then come to rest on their bed (or wall of their first apartment.)

Excitement mounts. Will my firstborn’s husband enter her life as soon as the quilt is complete? Is this an “if you build it, they will come” scenario? And more importantly, is Flicka even aware of that movie reference?

The holidays happen, distractions beckon, and my girl appears to forget her assignment. Santa remembers, though, and she finds a gift card from Knit & Bolt in her stocking on Christmas morning. Still, no more movement on the quilt.

“Look, do you want me to keep you accountable?” I say as 2023 ends. “Because I will.”

She says something about the new year, about the strategy she forms even now for The Quilt.

One Saturday in early January, I swirl my toilet brush around the insides of porcelain bowls in the house, and maybe my activity ignites productivity because Flicka lugs bags of supplies into the living room. She draws out yarn on spectrums of cream and gray.

“Oh, good,” I say, touching the dark gray wool. “This is accurate. Like the storm clouds of marriage.”

She lays out a swath of bubble wrap, layers the wool roving on it so the fibers are perpendicular and alternating, sprays hot soapy water onto the wool, and overlays it with mesh netting. She rubs the surface, agitating it, then rolls it in the bubble wrap and mesh, squeezing and peeking now and then to see if the fibers have bonded.

But this is tedious work—much harder than she expects. She decides a boiled wool product is preferable to wet felting and relaxes into a chair with her knitting needles.

In mid-January, a family friend—unaware of Flicka’s project and in the thick of Swedish Death Cleaning—messages my girl to say she has lots of yarn, and would she like to have it?

This is a divine you’ll-need-more-yarn-than-you’ve-got contribution to the project, and our knitter drives to Hudson, Wisconsin, in mid-February to fetch the donated skeins. If one zooms out far enough to see the picture from heaven’s vantage point, one soon sees that our friend purchased the material specifically for Flicka. And it’s perfect.

During the “knit one, purl two” of her days, my girl and I talk about the man coming behind the quilt. The whole family discusses how this might go. We throw out some names. We consider options that seem plausible, some more exciting than others. I feel like Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, a tiresome and gossipy character consumed by the desire to see her daughters married. Yikes. I pull back and choose to trust instead.

After all, if she knits it, he will come.

*****

Curious about Part 2? So am I. Come back at some point in the future to discover the ending of this story; it won’t be next week.

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.




A book and a cookie

I read Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See aloud to Flicka, delivering the final chapters as she mixes and rolls cookies. I think of all the paragraphs filled with the young, blind French girl navigating war-torn Saint-Malo, guided by the miniature replica of the city her father built her. Can my soul ever go on? How many heart-slicing books have I read in my life, convinced I’ll never heal from them? I always do and surrender to fresh woundings with each new story. When the words run out of this one, though, I sit at our kitchen island under the crushing weight of it.

“I cut back on the sugar,” Flicka says, “but I kept the same amount of butter.”

“Well, that’s good,” I say, not really caring one way or the other about baked goods when I know what became of young Werner.

I committed more reading than writing this week, so come back next Thursday for a hopefully better, longer story. For now, help yourself to a cookie.

Here are some photos of Flicka’s treats. (No photographic evidence available of my literature-broken heart.)





Love and foxes

I’m writing this on the evening of Valentine’s Day, so maybe you expect love to fill my story, but no. It’s all about foxes.

First, let me take you back several years to one Sunday at church.

Before the music played that morning, our pastor approached Husband and asked to meet him for coffee. Could it even work that week, he said? He didn’t know my man well and didn’t give a reason for the sudden need to talk. I speculated.

“He’s going to ask you to be a mentor to someone,” I whispered to Husband during the service. “Maybe even to him.”

“Who knows?” he whispered back.

Later that week, Husband returned from the coffee meeting. “You were partially right.”

“I was?”

“He asked if the two of us would be marriage mentors.”

“Oh,” I said, “that’s kind of big.”

We flipped the idea around for a day or two and soon said yes. We were no experts, but why not try to help?

On each couple we mentored—all engaged couples, preparing for marriage—we sprinkled advice of one kind or another to go with the six-week curriculum. After each session, though, I zoomed in on us and our relationship. How were we doing?

The great lyric poem, The Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs)—that blush-inducing book that somehow made it into Holy Writ—answered my question.

Nestled among the lovesick murmurings on couches resplendent with figs and caresses comes a startling imperative: “Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.”

The spotlight illuminates the relationship-destroyers, and it isn’t the big stuff that undoes marriages—at least not at first. The bickerings over the timing of oil changes or saving money by shopping at Aldi instead of Lunds or forgetting to reschedule the dental appointment or saying yes to a friend date over a family commitment—these are the little foxes gnawing at the healthy vines, the creatures digging holes in our well-watered soil. The clumps of snow on the wood floor, the parking ticket, the need for yet another Centerpoint repair, the disagreeing on the details of a memory. The invitations are endless.

Humility and resolve rush in. Admission is everything, isn’t it?

Now I read this writing to Husband, and he’s eyeing the landscape for foxes, and I believe he wants to invite one in. Who even cares if I took the truck last night instead of the car? The car’s gas gauge loomed over E, and I didn’t have time to fill the tank before my meeting. And there I go, holding the gate open for that furry intruder too.

But we can do something about those pesky intimacy-ruiners, and that’s what we choose today.

Husband, let’s go set some traps.

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Bibliophiles, unite!

What’s harder than finding time in one’s day to read a book? Finding time in one’s day to read a book aloud with one’s adult child who’s still living at home but working full-time and as heavily involved in volunteering as one is.

Okay, I’m talking about Flicka and me, and it’s our New Year’s idea (the word resolution is too exacting) to tackle a bunch of books together. The idea is sweet, the schedule tight. But we’ll do this thing—even if we need to plug the activity into our calendars and stay up past our bedtimes.

Early in January, over cups of ashwagandha tea, flames dancing in the nearby fireplace, my girl and I discussed our reading goals. Our book list would cover a variety of genres, include a few classics we should’ve already read, provide entertainment, send us on trips through time and place, and grow our faith roots deeper.

See what you think.

Books of 2024

All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr, literary fiction)

The God I Never Knew (Robert Morris, religious/spirituality nonfiction)

The Thursday Murder Club (Richard Osman, cozy mystery)

The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, autobiographical/psychological fiction)

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro, speculative fiction/unreliable narrator)

Earthlings (Sayaka Murata, bildungsroman/psychological fiction)

Neither Here Nor There (Bill Bryson, travel literature)

Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, satire/social criticism)

The Gospel Comes With a House Key (Rosaria Butterfield, Christian literature)

Sunburn (Laura Lippman, private detective/psychological thriller)

The Elizas (Sara Shepard, psychological thriller)

Menfreya in the Morning (Victoria Holt, murder mystery)

East of Eden (John Steinbeck, allegorical novel)

Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky, psychological drama)

In case you’re interested, we’re only halfway through All the Light We Cannot See, and it’s already February 1. Can we do it? Can we complete this entire list (don’t forget the reading aloud part) before “Auld Lang Syne” floats through the air?

Also, what do you bookworms recommend should we find ourselves craving more after Dostoevsky exits the building?

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Shayla and Ulysses

Shayla trudged into my small office and dropped into a chair. The space gave a living room feel, the two of us in soft chairs facing each other, but there was no warmth in this setup; Shayla brought a cold front with her, and I wished I had worn a cozier sweater.

I asked the usual work questions as an employment consultant, my job all about helping people get jobs. Shayla offered clipped responses to my questions. She said no employers had responded to her calls or follow-ups. She said people had stolen her resumé more times than she could count. She said she had applied for sixty jobs in the past week with zero results.

A person needed a mental health diagnosis to qualify for my services, and I already knew about Shayla’s struggles from the diagnostic assessment that came with the referral. I recalled my initial meeting with her months earlier. That day, I hoped to learn about her life as I clicked through the intake. Instead, she dozed in the chair in front of me, and I needed to rouse her to ask each question. She mumbled a yes or no, then snoozed again.

Later, I checked in with her social worker who she had visited that morning. No, Shayla had been fine then, but maybe she had taken cold meds? I brushed away my immediate concerns; I would believe the best about this new client on my caseload. I could find a way in, I thought, even though the door appeared to be shut.

But month after month, the door stayed shut. Missed meetings, no responses. Then one meeting but more silence.

Today, though, Shayla was there, awake, and glowering at me in our faux living room. “What’s the point of you anyway? I can find my own job.”

I told her specific ways I’d helped her and named other ways I could support her. “I’m on your side, Shayla,” I said. “We can do this thing together.”

“I take online classes at SNHU,” she said out of nowhere, and I caught a flicker of light inside her statement.

I asked about the courses she was taking, and something chipped away at the frost in the air.

“Can I read you a poem from one of my classes?” She was already rummaging through her bag.

“Of course,” I said.

She pulled a dog-eared photocopy from a green folder. “‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson,” she said.

The classic poem, inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, told of Ulysses’ voyage to the Trojan War and his return to Ithaca, and Shayla delivered it with an intensity of feeling and sense of peace that soothed my world too—right there in the office.

“‘Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’” One beat of silence, and she replaced the paper in the folder.

My next breath brought me back to the office. “Wow. I loved that.”

Shayla smiled.

“What does the poem mean to you?”

“Ulysses fought battles and suffered,” she said, “No one really knew him or understood him. I feel that.”

“Hm,” I said and sat a moment too long, soaking it in. Shayla didn’t seem to mind.

Up until then, her goals were straightforward for someone seeking work, and my part in it was clear too. But an invisible page turned that day, revealing to me new methods for Shayla—a fresh approach. Maybe poetry and a different timeline were needed. No, of course they were. She and Ulysses first shared the desire to be heard, seen, and known.

I had never written up an employment plan for someone that included steps for both locating a future job and tending to a heroic heart, but I’d find the words somehow.

And Ulysses said, “Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”


(Note: The names I use in my blog are always changed to protect the people in my stories.)

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Fitness goals?

“It’s automaton,” Flicka says, correcting me, placing the accent on the second syllable of the word.

Apparently, I’ve never said the noun aloud—only read it—and assumed the first two syllables sound like the thing we drive.

The word surges through my mind as if it’s the only one out there to describe tech billionaire Bryan Johnson, who some call the most measured human on the planet.

I discovered Bryan in December of 2023 and can’t move past his videos demonstrating the daily routines he developed along with his thirty closest scientific professionals. Daily, he eats a vegan diet, ingests 111 supplements, exercises an hour (at times running on a treadmill, wearing what looks like an oxygen mask with a hose trailing from it), adheres to rigid bedtime practices, and sleeps with monitors and electrodes affixed to his body. The machines measure seventy of his organs, and through his intense regimens, he seeks to reverse the quantified biological age of each. He performs daily health tests and spends two million a year on his experiments, offering his body as both guinea pig and gift to us. And now we onlookers can follow his ways through a membership that costs only $333/month.

Bryan’s ultimate goal? Don’t die. And he wears the T-shirt—those two words in all caps—to remind himself and others.

I’m glued to the comment sections of his YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

“He somehow looks incredibly healthy and terminally ill at the same time.” “What an inconvenience to prolong the inevitable.” “He’s a super advanced AI bot. They’re here, ladies and gents.” “Imagine if bro does all that and slips on a banana or something.” “Bryan is top-notch for sharing all of his research and findings with the world.” “He lives his life as an experiment so the rest of us can learn from him.”

Another guy, A.J. Jacobs, American journalist and author, is also known for writing about lifestyle experiments. After a bout of tropical pneumonia and feeling ashamed by his middle-aged body he thought resembled “a python that swallowed a goat,” he set out to become the healthiest man in the world. His 2012 book, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, takes the reader along on a hilarious romp where A.J. tries all the workouts, diets, and gadgets.

I consider these two men and think of my own goals for good health and possible longevity: Eat 80% well 70% of the time. Exercise. Love God and people. And since I can't not die, I embrace the following truths: My body is a temple, a living sacrifice, a tent of flesh. Life is a vapor that appears a short while; I came from dust and will return to it; my days are numbered.

While Bryan Johnson gets another blood transfusion from his seventeen-year-old son and A.J. Jacobs plays with the practice of extreme chewing, I'm bundling up to collect my steps outside on this winter day.

They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

No fear in life—or death. That's my ultimate goal.

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Movie on, I guess

Early in November, Husband and I watched Mystery on Mistletoe Lane, a Hallmark movie we streamed through Peacock.

“On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate this one?” I said when the show ended.

“I give it a 3.5 because there was no murder,” he said. “How about you?”

“I say 3.7. It was just a treasure hunt and not that mysterious.”

“True.”

A plan ignited in my mind. I scurried to make a call.

“Let’s create a list of Hallmark Christmas movies we have to watch and compare notes on them later,” I said to my mother on the other end of the line. “We can rank them on a scale of 1 to 5.”

“This is great since I get the Hallmark Channel,” she said. “When do we start? And do I win if I watch more movies than you?”

“This isn’t a competition, Mom.” But I wondered if I could knock out a movie a day anyway if I really applied myself to the challenge.

We selected our first four movies. I chose Christmas Island for its somewhat creative airline plot, and Mom picked A Heidelberg Holiday because she liked German culture and once studied the language. We both went for My Norwegian Holiday to watch our heritage play out and Rescuing Christmas because it was filmed in Duluth.

My zeal flickered, however, when I noted that although Peacock showed Hallmark movies, it wasn’t as generous as the Hallmark Channel itself, which we didn’t have. While Mom enjoyed a sumptuous buffet of cinematic delights far away in her own home, Husband and I picked at a bunch of undelicious visual leftovers here at our place. And the uncertainty of what would air (and when) left us a little less Christmas spirity.

We had access to Christmas Island, the first movie I agreed to watch with Mom, but I dozed off in the middle of it one evening, and the next night when I set out to finish it, it wasn’t available anymore.

“What’s that about?” I said, perturbed. But like a distracted kid seeing her next package under the tree, I ripped on. I’d just have to wander off the list and explain to Mom later. “Ooh, let’s do A Bride for Christmas.”

When it was over, Husband delivered his assessment. “I give it a 2.5 because it wasn’t about Christmas, and that dog was out of control.”

I gave it a 4 for some reason I didn’t annotate, and we moved forward.

A Song for Christmas—a movie about a beleaguered farmer and a city girl/secret popstar—was next.

Husband rolled his eyes. “That manager, Russell, is getting on my last nerve—my last Christmas nerve.”

I gave the flick a 3, and Husband matched my answer, startling me with a higher score after his low review.

We declared My Norwegian Holiday accurate for celebratory rituals (I think there was even a kransekake, the traditional wedding cake, in there somewhere), and Husband voted a 4.6 to almost match my 4.8.

Spurred on by Scandinavian stories, we viewed Christmas As Usual on Netflix, following the uncomfortable interactions between a young woman’s Indian fiance and her Norwegian mother when she brought the guy home to Telemark for the holidays. Although bleak, the movie schooled us on yet another pre-Christmas Norwegian tradition to adopt: Bitte Lille Julaften, “Teeny Tiny Christmas Eve,” to be celebrated on December 22, a day before Lille Julaften.

I told a friend about the new-to-us holiday we planned to add to our calendar. “Now you’re just doing Hanukkah in disguise,” he said.

We blew through A Match Made at Christmas, which won an underwhelming 3 stars and zero notes from me, but Holiday Road hit me right in the feels. Weather forcing nine strangers on a road trip together across the country at Christmastime will do that to probably anyone, except Husband who was away for work and missed the excursion. I gave it a 4.9.

Five Star Christmas was notable for its first kiss between the main characters at the halfway point of the story. But why so early? We all expect The Smooch to come at the very end, in the falling snow, somewhere near midnight, a blinking star overhead, and with a jovial onlooker or two, but in the middle? No. That’s moving too fast, if you ask me. I gave it a 4.5 anyway.

Two weeks into December, Mom visited. I showed her my messy legal pad of movie scribblings. We had watched some of what I had told her we would and more of what I had never admitted to her we did. Husband had viewed numerous movies with me but missed a handful too, and I applied a rating to most of them but not all. My system was missing titles, poorly documented, and inconsistently scored.

“Wanna watch some more?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she said.

To finish off the season right, we paid $5.99 to access the Hallmark Channel through Amazon Prime, and Mom and I blazed through Rescuing Christmas and Jolly Good Christmas together.

If I could sum up my goal for chasing holiday movies through the last two months of the year, it comes down to two words: Mom time.

And really, that’s the end of my story.

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New year, new word (your responses)

You readers really came through with your words for the year—and you inspire me.

Enjoy these submissions for 2024! (I’m also including the two from last week for you to savor again.)

*****

Aspiration instead of expectation (the killer of joy and appreciation), and abundance so I remember life is not a competition; there is plenty.

Deborah, Beldenville, Wisconsin

*****

Time is my word. God’s timing is perfect and His promises will come to pass. It’s just a matter of time.

Linda, Eben Junction, Michigan

*****

Courage. I'm starting a new business and I have everything lined up to make it happen. I just need the courage to start producing and putting myself out there!

Leah, San Pedro, California

*****

Self-care

Salina, Blaine, Minnesota

*****

Prosperous! Not just in finances but in relationships, personal growth and my spiritual walk with the Lord.

Shantell, Maple Grove, Minnesota

*****

Word for the year 2024: REFRESH

Refresh (v.) = update, revive, restore, give new strength or energy

(in computer language) = send a new signal and display changes

I click the refresh button (Ctrl+ R) for my life, and the picture changes

Updated, but not always new and improved

Sometimes frustrating messages: “can’t reach this page” and “checking the connection”

Connect me with You, Father, and refresh me

Avis, Newfolden, Minnesota

*****

Mine is persist.

Flicka, Fridley, Minnesota

*****

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New year, new word (there's still time!)

Hi, readers!

Two of you sent me your words for 2024 (enjoy them below!), but more of you wanted to share yours, so you still have a chance to submit (lucky you!)

Here are the instructions:

Send me a message HERE by Wednesday, January 3, 2024, with your word/verse/idea for the new year, and I’ll run it in next Thursday’s blog installment. Subscribers, simply hit reply to this email. (Please include your city and state with your submission.)

*****

Word for the year 2024: REFRESH

Refresh (v.) = update, revive, restore, give new strength or energy

(in computer language) = send a new signal and display changes

I click the refresh button (Ctrl+ R) for my life, and the picture changes

Updated, but not always new and improved

Sometimes frustrating messages: “can’t reach this page” and “checking the connection”

Connect me with You, Father, and refresh me

Avis, Newfolden, Minnesota

*****

Mine is persist.

Flicka, Fridley, Minnesota

*****

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New year, new word (2024 edition)

Today is about you, reader.

Do you have a word/verse/idea for the fresh year? What is it? And why?

If you’d like to have your answer published in next Thursday’s blog installment, send me a message HERE by Wednesday, 9:00 p.m. CST. Subscribers, simply hit reply to this email. (Please include your city and state with your submission.)

Here's what I've got for 2024:

Somewhere between viewings of Five Star Christmas and Love Actually, right after I padded to the kitchen for yet another krumkake, I got an early New Year’s gift, my word for 2024. It came as a directive in all caps with an exclamation point driving home its urgency.

EYES FORWARD!

I guess I’m setting aside present distractions and switching my gaze off of the past. Time to zero in on what’s in front of me. It makes me think there’s something notable ahead.

Of course there is.

No, my word for the year isn’t krumkake, but here’s a pic of the Norwegian treat anyway. (Mom made us three batches.)


Ponder

I awoke today with the word ponder on my mind. It was meant for the blog, and I didn’t anticipate it leading to terrible things.

For most women, the first announcement comes in two blue lines on a white plastic stick. Mary got her soon-to-be-pregnant news from an angel.

I once heard someone say if you see an angel, you’re in a dire place and need help. Far from cherubic, those heavenly beings are terrifying. And Mary was terrified to see one too.

Global worker Dick Brogden writes, “The soft lights and gentle music of Christmas alternate with the festive side of the holidays and lead us to excise the terror of God coming to tabernacle on earth. Missing the terror of Christmas, we miss its deeper peace. God coming near is both wonderful and terrible: wonderful for it leads to our salvation, and terrible for it leads to our judgment… Jesus came to earth to divide out sin and to crush it. Christmas starts a war that ends with peace.”

I prefer to focus on the cozier side of Christmas and of Mary, the teenager favored by God. She was the girl God trusted—and she trusted Him back.

There’s a familiar Christmas song asking the same questions I wonder today. Did Mary know what was coming when she accepted the assignment and welcomed the pregnancy? Did she get it when she gazed at her baby, watched Him take His first steps, and noticed Him missing that day on their road trip home from Jerusalem? Did she see a flash of whips and blood and agony when she felt His infant hand squeeze her finger? Or sense the coming elation of His abandoned grave?

Maybe Mary caught a glimpse of the future of her boy Who still stirs up trouble with His presence. Or maybe she didn’t. But she pondered all the details she knew, giving thorough care to store the memories for later.

Today I ponder too, trying to imagine. And I’m terrified, comforted, and at peace because Christmas calls for all of it.

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.


Treasure hunt: Part 3

It’s Christmastime, but all I see today is my first girl in a pink jumper—one-and-a-half trips around the sun to her name—crouching to claim her treasure. A thousand pastel ovals dot the rolling field of green, begging to be taken. Kids zig and zag, snapping up as many as they can tote in their buckets, but my toddler’s basket is empty, and she’s content with the first egg she finds. She plops onto the ground to open it.

I squint in the Arizona sun and sit with my little one on the grass. It’s only April 15, but it’s warm—especially with the five-month-along bump under my sundress to keep me cozy.

The unborn one that Easter of 2001 eventually got her own basket, and so did the sister who followed her. We soon learned all three of our girls knew how to locate hidden treasure, no training necessary—even with the passing years as the hunts grew more challenging.

Object permanence, the ability of a baby to know things still exist even when they’re not seen, is the start of a magical adventure. And we humans forever seek it as we pursue the special edition, the specific tool, the lost earring, the perfect gift, the ideal person.

Vestiges of the search follow me through my life. I'm decades beyond the Arizona egg hunt and thousands of miles away from it too, but the eternity-set-in-the-human-heart moves me to fetch the mail, check the calendar, click the text, open the box. My life is full of chasing, hoping, expecting, waiting. And now it's Christmastime when more is more.

I quiet myself and focus on the Truth again.

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart...

The reminder is everything. There's no need for all the looking; I've been interacting with treasure this whole time.

... and I will be found by you.

My Great Reward is here.



Treasure hunt: Part 2

This season of giving to others makes me want to search for thrifted treasures for me. It’s pretty self-serving, if you get right down to it, and I wish we Americans shared England’s altruistic term, charity shops, for those delightful stores where I find all the used stuff.

This thrifting for ME in a season for OTHERS defeats the holiday spirit, and maybe therein lies my 2018 lesson. (Remember the second-hand lamp? If you missed the drama then, click HERE now to enjoy it.)

Two weeks ago, I swiped a discerning gaze through my local thrift stores. A breathless assessment of their inventory on a Tuesday morning during my workday showed me I had picked the right day. So much art, so little time.

As an employment consultant, I’m required to do weekly job development. My clever supervisor once shared with me her techniques for conducting the task, even while running errands: simply ask job-related questions of the managers or employees while shopping, and done; it counts for the spreadsheet. And who knows? A job for one of our clients could result from our efforts, she said.

That Tuesday at Savers, I scooped up a 2 x 3-foot oil-painted landscape, a three-dimensional Jesus Walking on Water picture, two paintings of roses by Dianne Harter, a rosemåling plaque, a modern man-body done in acrylic on canvas, and a piece that looked like an ethereal scarf caught under glass. I edged toward a manager moving about on the sales floor.

“So, I’m curious about what it’s like to work here,” I said, noting the blue glass vase in the woman’s hand. She placed it on a shelf and smiled.

We chatted. I wove in questions about their hiring practices, seven-year background checks, the application and interviewing process, and oh, was there drug testing? I finally revealed my identity as an employment consultant and thanked her for the information. She said things like if I had more questions, I could reach out, and other things like I should send my people her way, and she'd be happy to talk with them. I made a mental note, but it was hard to hear her over the thoughts about the artwork in my cart and where it should live in my house.

I paid and lugged my new treasures out to the truck.

“Whatcha got there?” Husband-on-the-couch said when I got home. TV voices in the background debated a criminal case.

“Nothing of concern,” I said sweetly, waving a hand. “The total was like $60, so…”

“Hmm,” he said, more interested in the fictional court hearing anyway.

I arranged my new things just so, and two revelations hit me:

1. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the honor of kings to search it out. (Maybe God is into treasure hunts as much as we are.)

2. The chartreuse walls in the bathroom where I hung the rose paintings now call for a pink rug. (I’ll check the thrift stores tomorrow.)

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