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“Moses was past middle age when God called him to lead his children out of Egypt, and he spoke with a stutter. He was reluctant and unwilling and he couldn’t control his temper. But he saw the bush that burned and was not consumed. He spoke with God in the cloud on Mt. Sinai, and afterwards his face glowed with such brilliant light that the people could not bear to look at him.

“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there’s no danger that we will confuse God’s work with our own, or God’s glory with our own.” ~Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water

Stilled and so not qualified,

Sandy

Where have you been aware of your own lack of qualification? Where have you seen God shine through you, work through you, well knowing that it was not you?

Welcome to Still Saturday where we pause after a busy week, move in quiet pilgrimage, maybe linger a while in some still place, and soak in the beauty of images and words. We’d love for you to join us. Get the details on the left, grab your favorite button, and link up below. We all love to hear if something especially speaks to your heart, but please don’t feel pressured to comment. Simply take some time to gaze long and drink deep.

The post still saturday: unqualified appeared first on Sandra Heska King.

Snow fell on Sunday. In May. On Mother’s Day. It frosted the tulips white.

“My mother would not be happy today,” my sister posted on Facebook. “She wouldn’t even be amused.”

And I doubt if even we could have made her crack a smile by bursting into song and dance, perhaps with a spring rendition of Winter Wonderland. She’d have squinted her eyes, squeezed her eyebrows, pressed her lips, shook her head.

But inside, I think she would have smiled. Maybe. Just a little.

Anyway, the Sandy and Candy Show is on hiatus. It hasn’t performed since our manager took her final journey before the snow fell.

And some of the music left with her.

Remember how we’d go on sometimes, Mom? Like those nights when we wheeled you outside in your Cat-in-the-Hat socks and stocking cap and hamburger wrap and you’d stare awestruck at moon spots (sun spots during the day) and watched us “perform?”

We haven’t sung together since. Except when the two of us sang Amazing Grace at your memorial service. And then again a few weeks later when we wrapped your urn and set you in the ground with fresh tulips. Or were they silk? It was pretty cold that day.

And some of our song died with you

Are you seeing rainbows of living color and flashes of light now? Are your warm? Are you singing a new song?

Still trying to sing,

Sandy

With Lisa Jo and Community on the word prompt, song

The post sing a new song appeared first on Sandra Heska King.

I slammed doors, stomped feet, and spewed all kind of venom.

How dare the company ask us to move (even if only for a short time), and how dare my husband say yes.

He could just go alone. Without me. Because here is where I was. The I who’d found my identity and importance in doing good.

Never mind that I was weary and overwhelmed and not so much doing good for my husband.

The tantrum didn’t last too long, and I resigned from all my responsibilities (and later discovered life in that place did not collapse without me.)

We moved into a smaller house that I now had time to clean and keep neat. I baked bread again, cooked healthy foods, and we walked every morning before my husband went to work and after he came home. Those long days gave me time to sit and read  and write and study and quilt and even nap. I ate grapes for dessert and watched pounds peel away.

When a woman from our new church needed a place to hold a meeting, I invited her to hold it at my house. In my kitchen. And I baked some kind of nifty and complicated breakfast bread.

I’d found some balance. Finally.

I remember the day, though, when this same woman called. I don’t remember all the details, but she wanted me to drive her somewhere to help a battered young woman. Never mind that I’d just had major surgery to reconstruct a scarred tube in the hopes of becoming pregnant. This was not about me, she pressed. This was about someone who needed me, and I’d be selfish to say no. I said I’d do it, hung up the phone, and cried. I was so tired. But I didn’t want to be selfish.

I sometimes wonder if the final outcome might have been different if I’d invested in more self-care after that surgery.

“He seemed,” wrote John Wesley in his Journal about George Whitefield, “to be an old man, being fairly worn out in his Master’s service, though he has hardly seen fifty years . . . ”

Whitefield himself said when advised to rest, “I had rather wear out than rust out.” He died at 64. (My goodness, that’s how old I am.) I wonder if he’d have lived longer and touched even more people for his Master had he “indulged” in a little more self-care.

I’m reading The Life of the Body: Physical Well-Being and Spiritual Formation by Valerie Hess and and Lane Arnold. They emphasize in chapter 3, “Toward a Balanced Lifestyle,” that self-care is a godly activity. That self-love is not the same as self-indulgence. That many of us believe that to care for ourselves is selfish, that the needs of others are more important than our own.

But, I think, doesn’t Paul tell us in Philippians to value others above ourselves? To look not to our interests but to the interests of others? And then there’s that old J-O-Y acronym: Jesus, Others, You–right there at the bottom.

Valerie describes a pastor’s wife who ruined her own health in spite of a chronic condition that required her to rest. She nearly died twice and was eventually forced to take disability.

Somehow, the idea of simply “being” with God, enjoying his presence, doing nothing but sitting with him while watching a sunset, seems “sinful” or wasteful . . .  The irony is, the more frantic our lives are, even in the service of God, the less useful we are in the kingdom of God . . . We cannot be the hands and feet and heart of Christ if those body parts are suffering from neglect or even abuse through overuse. ~p. 61-62

I’m going out to sit in the yard now to be with God.

Still sitting,

Sandy

Some of us are working our way through The Life of the Body: Physical Well-Being and Spiritual Formation by Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold. This week Marcus Goodyear leads us through chapters 3-5 over at The High Calling. Pop on over to read more.

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I want you woven into a tapestry of love,

in touch with everything there is to know of God.

Then you will have minds confident and at rest,

focused on Christ, God’s great mystery.

All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge

are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else.

~Colossians 2:2-3 (MSG)

Still and at rest,

Sandy

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Young children have no sense of wonder. They bewilder well, but few things surprise them. All of it is new to young children, after all, and equally gratuitous. Their parents pause at the unnecessary beauty of an ice storm coating the trees; the children look for something to throw. The children who tape colorful fall leaves to the schoolroom windows and walls are humoring the teacher. The busy teacher halts on her walk to school and stoops to pick up fine bright leaves “to show the children”–but it is she, now in her sixties, who is increasingly stunned by the leaves, their brightness all so much trash that litters the gutter. ~Annie Dillard in An American Childhood

Annie gives us something a little different to contemplate. Usually we think of children awash in wonder, and we adults too busy to slow down and see. But maybe it takes time’s march to open our eyes and ears.

Still pondering this,

Sandy

“God! Let the cosmos praise your wonderful ways,
the choir of holy angels sing anthems to your faithful ways!
Search high and low, scan skies and land,
you’ll find nothing and no one quite like God.”

~Psalm 89:5-6 (MSG)

Welcome to Still Saturday where we pause after a busy week, move in quiet pilgrimage, maybe linger a while in some still place, and soak in the beauty of images and words. We’d love for you to join us. Get the details on the left, grab your favorite button, and link up below. We all love to hear if something especially speaks to your heart, but please don’t feel pressured to comment. Simply take some time to gaze long and drink deep.

The post still saturday: finding wonder appeared first on Sandra Heska King.

Comfort, the word, always takes me back to that uncomfortable place. A hospital bed surrounded by a forest of faces and the smell of alcohol and acetone. They’re removing the polish from toenails and fingernails, making yet another stab in my forearm, trying to pour life back into my body.

While life pours into my belly. And I’m so scared.

My husband reaches through the scrub green limbs to hold my hand.

My pastor comes and  prays over me right before they whisk me away.

And two days later I sit in the recliner, and I know the battle’s over, and there will be no baby.

Ever.

I’m alone in this semi-private room, Bible open on lap, reading in 2 Corinthians. “Comfort others like I comfort you.” That’s my Pauline paraphrase.

And I’m numb.

And sad.

But peaceful.

And there’s a commotion outside my room, and the nurses wheel her in. A young woman, teenager.

She’s hidden within a forest of faces, but she’s alone, and so I creep through scrub green limbs and reach for her hand.

As life pours into her belly.

Still sometimes sad,

Sandy

With Lisa Jo and the Five Minute Friday Community on the word prompt, comfort.

“All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.” ~1 Corinthians 1:3-4 (MSG)

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I slow down as I turn the corner and scan Lake Abby. Something dark floats at the far end. Not a goose. Maybe a mallard. But I can’t be sure. It looks black.

I smash forefoot to floor, fly down asphalt, jerk wheel to left, spin gravel in drive, and ram gear into park. When I throw open the door, it slams back on my ankle. The camera’s on the kitchen table. I grab it, kick off flip flops and slip into muck boots, then race back up to the pond.

The duck, or whatever, is gone.

But the way the light ripples across chopped cattails fascinates me.  Redwing blackbirds perch on remaining stalks. Swallows dip and dive over the water. I squish closer to the edge, step over deer prints, try to decipher the songs of frogs or maybe toads that mingle with the birds. I wonder what happened to the geese couple. Mama spent a lot of time close to the “shore” on the east side, and I found broken eggs near there a couple weeks ago. But no babies.

I don’t have time to hang out here, but when I turn to go, I note the lilacs along the lane are in bloom. How did I miss that? Spring has exploded.

I remember the first weekend I came home with D. It was in May, and we’d only been dating for a couple weeks. We sat thigh-to-thigh and knee-to-knee on the bench seat of his company car as we drove down country roads, and I told him how much I loved lilacs. That they were my favorite flowers, and I wanted several around my house some day. I never guessed his family lilacs would one day be mine. I pull stems down, inhale the fragrance, pick a few stems for a Mason jar. I take them home and set the bouquet on the windowsill above the kitchen sink.

I need to run to the store for bread and milk, but I park too close to the garden entrance, and my artist, she pulls me toward the colors. I try to resist, but the breeze blows, and the sun’s warm, and she’s too strong. So we walk up and down the rows, sniff sweet cinnamon scents, stroke velvet petals and leathery leaves, read tags tucked in dirt. The smells carry phantom memories of the past that I can’t quite place.

I imagine a yard full of color and wish someone would come plant for me and keep it all alive. I fill a cart with red and white geraniums, white petunias, some airy white flowers called Diamond Frost Euphorbia graminea (heat tolerant, drought tolerant, and deer resistant.) And finally a small flat of red and white Torenia fournieri, “a compact, upright annual with lipped flowers and smooth foliage with toothed leaves.”

I pay, tie my artist to the cart, and push it to the car. I shove aside the soccer bag, softball bag, and bagged chairs, fill the back with fragrance. Then I retrieve a mini cart from the corral and pull it behind me as I push the garden buggy back. My artist insists on coming along, threatens a tantrum if she can’t.

We enter the store from the garden entrance and find ourselves in the grill aisle. I’ve needed new tools for a couple years, so we look everything over and pick out a spatula and tongs and a silicone baster and a grill rack for veggies. Then I decide I should consider some way to store them in the garage, so off we go to the home storage section—which happens to be right next to the wild bird supply aisle. I remember I need new measuring spoons in the housewares area—and they’re on sale. Along with a whole bunch of other stuff, and we keep stuffing the cart.

Now I’m really hungry, so the bread and milk turns into watermelon and blackberries and blueberries and strawberries and Vidalia onions and hummus, and…

So two hours later we, my artist and I, having shared an unexpected date morning, we go home, and I have lunch.

And then I remember we need cat food.

Still sniffing flowers,

Sandy

Linking with this week’s Artist Day post by Laura Boggess over at Tweetspeak Poetry

And in community with Emily

The post a lake and an artist date appeared first on Sandra Heska King.

I throw off everything that could weight me down while I weigh myself–first thing in the morning, before a drop of water passes my lips. I smile because the needle settles a few pounds lower, and I know it’s because of my recent illness.

Sickness has its benefits.

I mentally pummel myself for all the times I’ve failed, for where I could be now if I’d finished everything I started. I might sport slimmer arms, a flatter tummy, brighter eyes, and a sharper brain. If I’d actually used all those videos, followed though with that Weight Watcher’s program, continued with the trainer, stayed the course with the treadmill/elliptical/bike, took more walks, splashed in more water, stretched more muscles. If I boycotted Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut and Laity Lodge cookies. If I drank more water. And since that last sickness, I’ve yet to restart my green smoothie routine.

When I stay up too late, I sleep too late, and I miss the wonder of the morning. Or I simply don’t notice it. I’m not efficient during the day, and I’m very, very cranky.

My lack of physical discipline weighs me down emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

It messes with my health in all spheres.

And I’ve noticed that if my spiritual life is whack, everything else weighs heavy.

So I’m both excited and apprehensive about reading The Life of the Body, this month’s book club pick through The High Calling.

The authors, Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold, remind us that we inhabit these bodies of ours, bodies that are fearfully and wonderfully made, and while we’re not to worship these temples, we need to be wise stewards of God’s good creation.

I ask that I might be mindful of my body, to notice that just as the stars in the heavens, the flowers of the fields and the birds of the air show me something of you, so does my body, which you made . . . I am noticing that sometimes this body, which is my vehicle for travel here on earth, needs a bit of renovation, just as my heart does each day . . . May I see the beauty in me that is there because of your invitation to life: body, heart, soul, mind and spirit. Amen. ~p. 21

Hess and Arnold also remind us in chapter one that Jesus dressed Himself in human flesh and entered our world at one point in time to show us how to live at this point in time, in the midst of our circumstances, within our individual callings, using our unique gifts.

His life had balance, brought into being by the rhythms of rest and work, prayer and playfulness, solitude and togetherness . . . We, as that body of Christ, show the world how to live by following the path Jesus walked. ~p. 26

He lives in our bodies so we can use our bodies to care for the whole body. So self-neglect can cause us to neglect others. And so it seems that over-care of others can also cause us to neglect ourselves. We need to find the right balance.

In chapter two, the authors go on to suggest that we can’t take care of the bigger body when we don’t take care of ourselves. Instead, we can become a burden. That it’s our responsibility to make wise decisions in our own health habits so we don’t create unnecessary hardships for others.

But if we are broken in some way, we’re to reach out to the larger body who should gather around us and help us gather our pieces.

Certainly “stuff happens” that’s no fault of our own, but . . .

Oftentimes, we are tired, overweight or in pain because of self-indulgent choices that were easy to make at the time. Yet, those choices can lead to hard situations, which may then rule our lives. The results are not God’s fault. The poor lifestyle choices we make regularly have an impact beyond our own bodies. They impact our very witness to the good news in Jesus Christ. ~p. 40

Ouch.

Ouch.

Ouch.

I’m a nurse, for heaven’s sake. I know this stuff. I should live this stuff.

I think I’ll have a green smoothie for lunch.

We’re discussing the introduction and the first two chapters of The Life of the Body: Physical Well-Being and Spiritual Formation over at The High Calling. Won’t you pop over and join us?

Stilled and pondering,

Sandy

“Every act of self-discipline by a Christian is also a service to the community. On the other hand, there is no sin in thought, word, or deed, no matter how personal or secret, that does not inflict injury upon the whole fellowship.” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together 

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They mother the motherless, the mamas in this orphan village. The team that traveled to Jeremie, Haiti, the month before us went specifically to love on them. The photo of women washing the feet of women who wash feet nearly undid me.

These mamas carry hearts heavy with Jesus. Though some bring their own children with them, many leave them in the care of others so they can spill love into the empty, into children with no mamas or papas. (One of the mamas is going to school to become a nurse.)

They receive a small compensation along with room and board—likely pennies from our perspective. But how can mere money compare to their sacrifice?

I’m writing about these mamas today over at BibleDude. Won’t you join me there and offer a prayer for them?

Stilled and praying,

Sandy

The post bless the mamas appeared first on Sandra Heska King.

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Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.

~Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NIV)

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Stilled times two,

Sandy

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