People Stories

Today I read an article written by a well-respected author who suggested a noun be changed to an action verb.  Crazy word nerd, I thought. This is awkward, at best. And yet as I read further, I began to understand the point. 

The word was family – a common word that she shifted from definitive use (people related by blood and/or marriage) to become more integrated, vital, and dynamic.  Something holy.

We “do” family too. We family our kids and grandkids, and they family us.  We’re there for each other, committing and caring and giving and sacrificing in little ways that become big ways over time because they just keep happening.

It works with other words too, like friend and neighbor.  We friend the parents whose son is fighting for his life with brain cancer by organizing church friends to help.  We neighbor the single man next door while his body takes months to heal from an ankle replacement by taking him homemade soup every week.

This all seems natural to little children.  They intuitively know what is can’t be separated from what does. Dying people get it, too.  With time slipping away, they don’t waste time on trivia, but share virtuous stories that are round and full, rich and full of life. Stories about courage or compassion or hope or diligence or generosity. People stories. Relational stories. Active stories. Holy stories by virtue of the fact that we are created with divine purpose, and the small stories of our interactive lives stack up as chapters in a Much Larger Story.

Strawberry Rubber

My home test kitchen produces a lot of culinary experiments, recently a couple of small gluten-and-sugar-free pies.  They were reasonably tasty, although I thought the rhubarb creation needed more custardy filling, and the strawberry pie’s goo could have been less rubbery.  Live and learn, next time I’ll make adjustments.

In response to dutifully tasting samples, my guinea pig husband (also cheerleader) coined a little ditty of a song with a jungly tune in honor of the strawberry pie.

“Ohhhhhh….I’m eatin’ strawberry rubber, yes I am, yes I am,” he sang at the top of his lungs.

“It’s strawberry rubber, feedin’ all my blubber, oh….I’m eatin’ strawberry rubber, yes I am!”

That man.  He really is 66 going on 16.

Living Well

To live well means to invest fully in a given moment, pay attention, sense the awe and wonder in simple things and invite their touch.  It means to earnestly seek God and care for one another with mutual compassion, to give Him glory as we ride this terminal bus together - lurching along over venomous snake pits with half-inflated tires one day, bouncing through joy rides into pristine mountaintops the next.  It means to bear witness to faith and hope, peering into human inner space and beyond to the Source: seeing with the heart.

This morning after church our two pastors, six elders, and my husband encircled me for a short private meeting when they anointed me with oil and prayed over me in regard to my escalating auditory issues.   I couldn’t hear all their words, but that didn’t diminish the experience.  The prominent reality (even in the midst of various challenges and sufferings represented among those present) was not anxiety or fear.  Rather, in this moment of unity with each other and the Lord, we were living well.  

Irish Blessing

“May the blessing of the rain be on you—

  the soft sweet rain.

May it fall upon your spirit

  so that all the little flowers may spring up,

  and shed their sweetness on the air.

May the blessing of the great rains be on you,

  may they beat upon your spirit

  and wash it fair and clean,

  and leave there many a shining pool

  where the blue of heaven shines,

  and sometimes a star.”

Rotten

We’ve done a lot, a whopping lot, of do-it-yourself remodeling in our 44 years of marriage.  My husband is not easily daunted when it comes to tearing out stuff – walls, doors, windows, plumbing, wiring, you name it. Our makeovers have been time-consuming and challenging, but (eventually) worth it.    

“Our family always does things the hard way,” our youngest daughter said when she was a teenager.  Not as a complaint, just as fact. I call it pure wisdom. 

Well, today’s headline is that the old dog’s been at it again, sniffing around, digging up new dirt and uncovering old bones.  The handyman-dog, that is.  The do-it-yourself husband, the one who singlehandedly repairs and remodels everything.

That one. The lone wolf gone constructor.

Yesterday when he was scraping paint from around the outside of our picture window overlooking the lake, he discovered soft wood, and behind it, rot.  To. The. Core.  After digging deep into splintery wood, he proclaimed the window frame too spongy to repair: “A goner! The whole thing needs to come out!”  

To temporarily seal the gaping hole at the base of the frame (a supportive spot that now had no ability to bear weight), he filled it with spray foam that dries firm, like rock-hard whipped cream gone very, very nasty.  

There are flip sides to his discovery.  Of course it’s good he caught the vigilant rot monster before it chewed clear through the frame.  Now we can prevent disaster when one of those rogue winds sweeps across the lake, threatening to blow glass into the house. So in that respect, I’m grateful for his thorough probing and diagnosis.  Also, a friendly neighbor happens to have a good-quality window in his barn that will fit perfectly, and he’s offered it to us – free!  This is an amazing provision, and I am thankful.

However, the other side…well, I’m thinking about the labor involved.  The stress.  The construction mess.  The inevitable injury to interior walls and trim, and their recovery. I know these realities quite well, having lived them repeatedly.              

I would honestly love to hire the work done, just this time (please please), but that doesn’t seem to fit with the old dog’s plan. No new tricks.  Which is okay, I just need to acclimate and get ready.

Here we go again.