100 Years

My Grandma Davis is celebrating her 100th birthday this week! She seems frail as a butterfly's wing, but her tenacity has carried her through a car crash, pneumonia, congestive heart failure, and recently a broken hip. All after the age of 80!

Her mind is feeble, but she still communicates her love in unmistakable ways: kissing of our hands over and over, reaching out to touch and hold your hand, and offering everyone nearby that electric smile that lights her whole face.

Grandma has weathered four wars, the Great Depression, and the loss of her husband and one son, but she has never wavered for one moment in character and grace.
At 100, she still defines the word "lady."

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Patience

That I would even attempt to write on this subject almost makes me laugh. It is so NOT my strong point. But these days, I have a feeling God may be laughing, too.

What a summer already! In May, my husband lost his job through a massive layoff that caught them all by surprise. With his education, skills, and years of experience, we hoped it would be a quick turnaround to find another one. But one ideal job after another passes by and we look at each other quizzically.

"What? Why not that one?"

Then we turn our puzzled hearts to the Lord. "Did you see that?" we ask. "Are you sure?"

What do you do when Heaven is silent?

Our 15-year-old daughter, Susie, has a stack of learning issues due to her brain injury (see sidebar, Saving Susie) and we hoped to get her into Tulsa Technology Center for her junior year of high school so she can learn skills she can use. Many academic subjects just bounce off her poor little head and forcing her through two more years of it is senseless. But...we're not in the right county and have to drum our fingers at the bottom of the waiting list, so we still do not know what classes she will be allowed to take when school starts in ten days!

Patience! Ugh! I prefer to have my entire life mapped out ten years in advance, right down to the meal planning! God does not seem to work that way.

I specifically asked the Lord to rebuke the devourer from our finances when Wayne lost his job. Citing the story of the Israelites in the wilderness, when their clothes did not wear out (actually, I've always felt sorry for the women. Can you imagine, girls? Forty years in the same outfit?!), I made it a point to mention the cars. I felt I had a good foundation to stand on.

The next week both our cars started falling apart out of the blue--including Wayne's less-than-2-year-old Impala which we bought so we wouldn't have car issues! We're still camping out at the mechanic shop. They're thinking of giving us our own parking space. So much for my theory.

So, now what? Do we get angry at God for not being more clear? Or...do we take the approach that maybe he IS being clear, just not saying what we thought he would say? As I balanced our checking account this week, he tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "See? All that car trouble you're so worked up about, and your account is as plump as ever!"

Hmmm. How'd he do that?

And the complete lack of job choices all summer long has started Wayne in a new direction, one he would not have considered while ensconced safely in his beige cubicle. He's developing ideas for expanding his own business. Ideas that leave me a bit quaky at the idea of launching out on his own, but...it's what he has really always wanted to do.

So I'm trying to view patience with a better attitude and stop accusing the Lord of sleeping on the job. Sometimes, it's the only way he can direct us away from what looks so right to us.

However, I'm still suspicious that my husband is stalling until my book comes out so that he can then be a "kept man!"

Anger

Unresolved anger is the fuel of rebellion. That's one reason Scripture speaks so sternly about it.

"Be angry and sin not" implies there is a way to be angry and not offend God. Anger over injustice. Fury at evil itself. Anger at the way Satan uses and manipulates people. In those cases, you and God are on the same side. God gets angry, too.

But when anger is left to fester on its own, it becomes rebellion--a rampant fire that is very difficult to contain. Dr. Phil says anger is simply "hurt turned inward." When a hurt is so deep, so impossible to understand or accept, too often we pull it inside, tamp it down in a dark place in our souls, and refuse to admit it is there. But it IS there, poisoning and infiltrating everything we do. It may start out turned inward, but it soon swells so big that it turns outward too, maiming and destroying relationships, potential, and most importantly our connection with God.

"Make no friendship with an angry man" is Solomon's warning to us about the devastating results of unresolved anger. You are going to get burned, he says, if you hang around an angry person. And it is true.

Once that initial hurt has rooted and started to grow, it is a natural catch-all for every hurt that comes along later. A big anger-pot is already simmering, just toss in another one. An angry person views others in his life as potential hurters--one wrong move, one unpleasant encounter, and the inflicter of hurt gets added to the pot, and the lid is slammed shut. Soon the pot is boiling and churning and so hot it is untouchable. It has a life of its own.

That's where rebellion begins. Sin prances along, enticing, beckoning, and the angry one lifts a brow of interest. Conscience rises on her hind legs, shouting, "No! No! Wrong! Don't do it!"

But the anger is bigger, louder, more powerful than anything else and conscience is easily shouted down time and again until she rarely bothers to warn anymore. Every time sin calls, the angry one has only to whip the lid off the simmering pot, peek inside at all those who've inflicted pain, and nod with satisfaction. Sin choices are justified...after all look what ___?___ did!

Soon the anger is a necessary and valued part of life. To give it up would be to give up a reason for being! It's the fuel of life, the whole reason he can sin and not feel guilty: "I deserve this right to rebel! I've been hurt! I owe it to myself to get what I want, because life dealt me a low blow. You hurt me. He hurt me. God hurt me!"

And so the pot boils on, conscience is tossed into the flames as useless tinder, and unless the anger is dealt with completely, the boiling pot tossed out, it leads to what Romans calls a "reprobate mind."

To sin without guilt! Isn't it wonderful? Following my own path...charting my own course...a free spirit we call it, and it sounds like such unfettered freedom! But God calls it a reprobate mind, past the point of no return. His Spirit will not always strive with man, Scripture says.

The day you can live comfortably in sin, prefer your acquaintances be others of like mind, toss conviction to the wind...that is the day you begin to die. Just as in the garden, when Adam took a bite, the Scripture says, "In that day, he died." Not physically, but his soul set the course away from God and Hell yawned before him.

Conscience is a gift to us, not a curse. Once it is killed, you have cut the connection between your spirit and God's. He'll let you stomp straight ahead in your rebellion if you choose to. But it's with sorrow that He watches you go.

Let Him deal with the rage that drives you deeper into an uncharted wilderness. Give it up before you no longer have that option. Escape from conscience may look like freedom, but it's merely a prison from which there is eventually no escape.

The Sacrifice of Praise

Several places in Scripture talk about bringing to the Lord our "sacrifice of praise." We sing it glibly without really considering its meaning. We usually think of the word sacrifice in relation to finances or time. In the Old Testament, sacrifice usually involved killing of something. But these past few years have taught me about a new kind of sacrifice--praising the Lord when your heart is below sea level.

When your husband is out of a job, your kid is destroying her life, a child lies near death on life-support, everything in the house seems to break at once...Who wants to praise the Lord? We'd rather approach him with a stern look and a lifted brow. "What's going on?" we demand.

And Heaven is silent. No fluffy answers fill our hearts. Platitudes ring hollow. Then the music director instructs us to sing "All I Need is Jesus." and we want to sit it out.

It is then you have the power to bring a sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord. Praise is no sacrifice for the guy pulling in six figures a year, the mom with all her shining-faced children in a row, the healthy, the rich, or the sheltered. Praise comes easily then.

But I believe God sees what it costs us to offer praises when our hearts are breaking and it is a pleasing aroma to him. When you feel you have nothing left to give. The world has taken it all. Try offering the sacrifice of praise.

Proud Mom and Dad. Sam's graduation day, 2006. 12 years of homeschool finally completed! Now he's a college man, and we couldn't be prouder!