Little Things Will Get Ya

“Enjoy  the little things in life…for one day you’ll look back and realize they

were the big things.” – Robert Brault

Oh, Mr. Brault, I’m so sorry. We did not enjoy that little thing. And right away we realized that, yes, it was a very big thing!

Here’s the story. My husband and I were on vacation, soaking up a gorgeous week of Florida sun in one of God’s best places on the Gulf Coast (according to our winter-weary, warmth-deprived souls, anyway). But sometimes, even on vacation, one needs clean underwear. Our hotel not having any coin-operated laundry facilities (one strike against that place!), we were forced to take a      vacation morning and seek out a local laundromat.

We’ve long had the luxury (and it is surely a luxury for a great part of the world) of in-house laundry equipment and hadn’t had the need for a public laundry facility in years. Though we  didn’t know what to expect, the business turned out to be pretty clean; the machines were, if expensive (I guess I never pay attention to how much washing and drying laundry at home actually costs), fairly modern and up-to-date. After loading our items into two         machines (as long as we had to do one load, why not do two?), we sat down for a pleasant wait reviewing the news from 2011 (in other words, reading outdated magazines even too old for doctors’ offices). What we did not do was check for a little thing.

And, boy, did that little thing cause big trouble. A previous patron had, for whatever reason, left one of those BLEACH INCLUDED laundry pods in a wash machine, the very one we used. (Who would think to check for that? I will, that’s who. Next time. If there is a next time.) When the “I’m Done” beeper sounded, we found that most all the items (and of course they were the dark load items; not the white underwear) had large, splotchy, obvious “someone-doesn’t-know-how-to-use-bleach-properly” stains on them. Only a couple items of clothing in that load were of the old, we-don’t-really-care-about-them items. Included were several newly purchased and now-ruined tops of mine (how many mowing or painting shirts does a person need?) and a dark blue (now turned dark blue and white) “This Old Cub” T-shirt, which had been presented as a special gift by our daughters to their Old Cub father. Boo. Hiss. Why hadn’t we washed just the underwear as originally planned?

Ernest Dimnet once said that “the     happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.” While we weren’t exactly happy about the laundry “oops,” this “little thing” surely wasn’t a “great     catastrophe” or a “fatal error.”           Destructive, yes, and will not be       repeated if we can help it. But, what about other destructive “little things” that might be in my life?

“Keep a close watch on how you live and on your teaching,” warns Paul in I Timothy 3. “Stay true to what is right for the sake of your own salvation and the salvation of those who hear you.” Pastor David Whitehead agrees: “Pay attention to the details of everyday life,  for it is when we pay attention to the little things that we are preparing for the moments when our light shines the brightest.” Little things...like my words? My attitudes? My thoughts? My desires? My activities? Are they bright lights or...big, ugly laundry splotches?

DAD, A YEAR LATER

Right before Father’s Day last year I wrote an essay. In it I said that I thought 2013 would be the last such holiday I would spend on earth with my Dad, while he was still on it. I was right. Dad passed away on June 25, 2013, a month and a half or so before his 90th birthday.

I can’t say I would have wished he stay on. At least not the way his poor body had deteriorated. He was so tired, so very, very tired. The truth is, the end of earthly life comes sooner or later to each of us and Dad was fortunate to have reached “later.” He was, as they say, ready to receive his reward.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss him. He was an honorable, quiet, kind, patient, industrious, honest (telling the truth was paramount), loving person – a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. There’s a quote that says “to really know a father, observe his behavior with a lady, a flat tire and a child.” Dad? Check. Check. And check – he’d have passed each one with flying colors. (And as far as my Dad is concerned, I would add “a dog” to the list. There’d be a check mark there, too. And a big “woof” from all the lucky canines who ever crossed his path.)

My father was not a rich man in the sense that this world defines rich. He worked hard in factories and at what some would consider “menial” jobs for his entire life. College was never an option for him. Money was always hard to come by and he could be described as a frugal, “waste not, want not” type of guy. He didn’t waste and his family didn’t want – for anything we needed. An understanding of money and what one should do (and should not do) with even a little bit of it eluded him, and it’s frankly been a little frustrating to sort out the small estate that he left behind.

Proverbs 16:21 says that a “wise man is known by his common sense.” Dad was rich in that. And so I know and remember him. And realize that the estate he left us is really very, very large. Enormous. We were taught respect. And care. And truth. And though he didn’t often give voice to the words, love. Thanks, Dad - you left me an extremely wealthy woman. Happy Father’s Day!

WE BENEFIT. WE ENJOY.

"It is a pleasure now to say a few words to you at the laying of the cornerstone of the beautiful arch which is to mark the entrance to this park. Yellowstone Park is something absolutely unique in the world so far as I know. Nowhere else in any civilized country is there to be found such a tract of veritable wonderland made accessible to all visitors. . . ." So said President Theodore Roosevelt on April 24, 1903 as the arch at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park was dedicated. When the arch was completed in August of that year, across the top these words were carved: “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”

I agree with Roosevelt—Yellowstone is truly “something absolutely unique in the world” and is a “tract of veritable wonderland.” I read somewhere recently that in the beginning the park was, indeed, called “The Wonderland.” I would agree with that, too. Mountains reaching to the skies, rushing rivers, the thundering, huffing bison, racing pronghorn, bugling elk, and of course, if you’re fortunate, a (not too close) glimpse of the great grizzlies and black bears (my favorite!). I always say, every time you visit the park you see something different. And I do enjoy and benefit from it. Because I know Who made it all, my time in the park brings me closer to Him and causes me to more fully appreciate His infinite creativity, wisdom and love for His people.

 

Naturalist John Muir once said, “In every walk with nature one receives more than he seeks.” I go in the spring, seeking another look at my bison buddies and I receive a look at a brand new mama and her little red baby, a reminder that God is the Author of life. I go in the fall, hoping to hear my first call of the papa elk and receive the treat of a lifetime as the annual show goes on right in front of me, a reminder that such it has been ordained; it is the order of things as God has so determined. 

Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning...God." God what? God created...everything. God made...everything. God did...everything. He made it for His pleasure, because He wanted to. He made it so we would praise Him, because it was so magnificently marvelous. He made it so we could live in it, take care of it and rejoice in it. So we could say, "Wow, God - You made a Wonderland! Your Indian Paintbrush tells me that. Your funny-looking sand cranes tell me that. Your beautifully blue bluebirds and Your soaring, beady-eyed eagles tell me that. What a Good God You are to fashion it all for the benefit and enjoyment of Your people!

For Mother's Day, some "Mom Math"

MOM MATH

“Nobody notices what I do…until I don’t do it.” (Anonymous)

Isn’t that the truth? I’m sure my mother thought so. I don’t remember thanking her very often for all the dust she dusted away, all the carpets she vacuumed, all the windows she washed, partly because I guess I was, like most kids, oblivious (it just “got done,” didn’t it?). But also, I guess, because my mom just about never didn’t do it.

I was looking through some old family photos the other day and wondered how many times she’d done the same things. Over and over, I looked at kids with birthday cakes and gifts, kids sitting by Christmas trees, kids with clean faces and shiny hair, kids who had been well fed and clothed.  And I knew that mom was responsible for much of it.

So, better late than ever and regardless of the fact that she’s been in heaven since August 2008, here’s a big “THANKS” to you, Mom, for:

--160 weeks, 1,120 days of water retention, nausea, weight gain, unknown hours of labor (we

didn’t talk about “those things”) and having to wear those simply horrendously unattractive voluminous 1950’s maternity clothes, all for your four.

--11, 680 baby bottles you washed and sterilized and all the formula you mixed up, assuming each kid ate every 3 hours or so for the first year of life; nursing, in my opinion, is easier, cheaper and better but it was not at all “in vogue” in the 50’s.

--The more than 72 birthday cakes you baked and yes, even for that white boiled icing that never really was my favorite (maybe it was yours?!). I don’t recall a “store-bought” cake ever coming into the house.

--2600 + grocery shopping trips (that’s a trip per week for the 50+ years of my parents’ marriage, and there were, of course, more), each one a search for bargains; each Friday night, after my dad got home with his paycheck we were off to “The Pig” (Piggly Wiggly) in Beloit; did you want green grapes – well, they’d better be less than 19¢ per pound or you weren’t getting any! What was purchased had to last the week, with only an occasional send-a-kid-to-the-corner-store-for-bread run.

--About 54,600 meals you prepared – that’s 3 meals per day for those same 50+ years! Wow, mom! All that cooking, fashioning something tasty out of not much – and you got kids to eat it (truth to tell, we did spend a lot of forced time after dinner, morosely stuck at the table staring down at something we found to be particularly distasteful). We ate mostly a meat and potatoes diet, with lots of corn and carrots, beans and peas and a few beets thrown in now and then. When money ran out before the days of the week we often supped on leftover gravy and bread – and never knew it was because we had to.

--How many Christmas trees? Let’s say a few more than 50. Thanks for letting us “help” hang the ornaments and “thanks” for each and every single, slender, solitary piece of that static electric shiny tinsel that had to be applied single file, strand by lonely, painstakingly applied strand; so many  “thanks“ that after 2 of my own Christmas trees following mom’s tinsel-y tradition, I decided to never, ever trim a tree w/tinsel ever again! Sorry, Mom!

--Keeping our house so clean, week after dirty week. While I didn’t grow up to be Mrs. Clean (when I tell people you washed out corners with a toothbrush, I am not fibbing, am I?!) you taught us the value of the clean, of all straightened up and put away.

--I was never good enough at arithmetic to calculate how many loads of laundry you did over your lifetime. With 4 kids and a husband who was always working in or outside, you had plenty of dirt to keep you running up and down those basement stairs. I’m not sure if we had a dryer when I was little, but though they have pretty much disappeared in today’s suburban neighborhoods, we always had an outside clothesline where the bed sheets blew in the breeze, the towels came in scratchy and the birds sometimes dropped a little “something extra” for you on those undies flapping in the wind. And, oh, my, did you fly to get that laundry off the line when the thunder cracks sounded and the raindrops threatened! After it all came in much of it went into the ironing baskets, a lot having to be “sprinkled” and put in the fridge before pressing (sometimes we had more clothing being cooled than food!). Ironing ended up to be a job for “the girls,” and to this day I cannot turn on the iron for just one item – my “rule” is at least four!

--How many dishes did you wash? By hand, mind you. More than I can possible count. You did raise 4 dishwashers, and the same number of dryers, for you could not be convinced that air drying was “proper” or more sanitary. You filled one sink with soapy water and the other with rinse water and could also not be convinced that the dishes were not truly being rinsed when the rinse water ended up being as soapy as the soapy water! Keeping the tap running over dishes was “wasteful” and that was just that.

--How many socks did you darn? As many as we wore. Your old light bulb would come out in the evening and you’d get out your needle and darn a way. Does anyone still do that? You’d darned up the holes until there were more holes than sock, and only then it could be discarded. Again, sorry, but I hated those darned socks, those thread bumps between your shoe & your foot. You never could understand my frivolity of buying new socks when I could have learned to practice the frugality of the darning needle.

Meryl Streep once said that “motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” Another truth, yes? Basic essentials of bathing children and then teaching them to clean themselves; teaching them to count and later to do their homework; making them say “please and thank you” and all the while teaching them to live each day in a “please and thank you” manner, even if others don’t. Mom, thank you for all those essentials you performed for me and for the family. Thank you for your tireless daily-ness, for the tasks you did over and over and over again even when you were plum tuckered out. Most of all, Mom, thank you for taking me to a Bible-believing church each and every week and for introducing me to Jesus. I will be eternally richer for it all.

“I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” --- Abraham Lincoln

AN AGED MIND OVER MATTER

“Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.” ~Leroy "Satchel" Paige

And I never used to mind. When I turned 40 I received a birthday card referring to somebody by the name of “old bag.” Didn’t bother me a bit. At 50 someone commented that I didn’t look it. Made my day. At 60 I subscribed to Satchel Page’s theory that age didn’t matter if I didn’t mind. I didn’t. Uh-huh.

But on May 16 the child I prayed for, the fruit of my youth, my first-born baby... turns forty years old. What?  Angie, 40? I have already been a mom for 14,600 days, plus a couple extra days thrown in for Leap Year? Now, that, my friends makes me feel my age just a wee little bit. Nixon’s resignation, People magazine, the Happy Days and Little House on the Prairie TV shows, Hank Aaron’s record breaking homerun – I get that those things are now 40 years old, but my little girl?

Why, if I close my eyes I can see the 21 year old me lying on the ob/gyn able at the US Army Hospital in West Berlin, Germany, listening with joy as Dr. Ali Arban pronounces in his thick Turkish accent, “You arrrre o-fic-ially prrregnant.” I remember the first time the 22 year old me saw my beauty’s newborn face on May 16, 1974. I watch again in my mind as my mom, fresh off a trans-Atlantic flight to get to her granddaughter, rushes straight past me to grab that little 3 month old and hug her to her chest with all her might. Seems, as the “old folks” say, just yesterday. I can’t believe it.

That may well be, but it’s a fact that I am now two years into my 7^th decade of life. My creaky knees believe it and my popping hips agree; I can’t do the “sit down on the floor without using your arms, cross your legs and get back up again the same way” test or “you’re likely to die in 5 years” thing. If this test is true I should have been long expired already since this ability hasn’t been even a prayer of mine since...since...when exactly? I fight the never-ending battle of turning grey hairs back to the blond ones that never really were. Label directions on a bottle of headache remedy are an indecipherable blur without a magnifying glass or pair of reading glasses; and speaking of those specs, I buy them in bulk nowadays. Get the picture? I was going to add that it was not a pretty picture, but as I sit and think about it, I think I have changed my mind. (No, not lost it. I said, changed it!)

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “the years teach much which the days never knew.” I wouldn’t, if I could, go back to myself at 22. All my years have taught me many valuable lessons, and are still working at teaching me. But, if I could, I would tell that girl to slow down, worry less, enjoy more and savor the day. I would remind her to read and ponder Isaiah 46:4: “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Oh, my, I’m grateful for the truth of that!

There’s a huge difference between feeling old, thinking old, and being old. Victor Hugo said that “40 is the old age of youth and 50 is the youth of old age.” Caryn Leschen quipped that “35 is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.” Whatever old age is, I am determined that this grateful granny will be a Psalm 92 fresh, green, old age fruit bearer. (Go find your reading glasses and look it up!)

KISS ME…I’M IRISH (or at least a little bit, anyway)

So that’s why no one ever pinched me, at least not on St. Patrick’s Day. I just found out that if a person isn’t wearing green on March 17, you are allowed to pinch him or her! I’ve long been participating in the “wearin’ o’ the green,” so none of my bruises have ever been from any smart-aleck big bruisers, I guess.

I am, after all, one quarter Irish. My father’s father was supposedly 100% Irish, married to a 100% Norwegian girl. He apparently called his children “half-breeds.” I don’t know if that was a joke about the Irish or a slur against the Norwegians, but my aunt claimed it was so. On St. Patrick’s Day, I like to claim a little affinity with the other 34 million Americans who claim a little Irish ancestry.

St. Patrick’s Day was almost my birthday, too. If Mom just would have pushed a little harder, a little quicker, I’d have been more of an Irish lass; I missed it by about 90 minutes. But, anyway, March 17 is the traditional day of St. Patrick’s death, not his birth, so I guess that’s OK.

However, other than my love of potatoes (which I adore baked, fried, frenched, hashed, scalloped, au gratined and any other which-a-way) I probably haven't made much of an Irish woman, at least in the traditional sense. Just as I made for a poor Hawaiian the year we spent on Molokai (I don’t like seafood in any form, except for Goldfish crackers and I don’t think they count; coconut has an off-putting taste and a weird texture and rice makes me get a bit gaggy), there’s no green beer for me (other colors, if there are any, needn’t be drawn, either); in fact I’ve never had a stinky sip in my life. Corned beef and cabbage? Nah, you take it – and far away, please. Soda bread? Thank you, no.

In my family we have always tried to just make the day fun (goodness knows we all need to frolic about a bit in March after the winter woes we have had during the last few months!). Tonight, along with our chicken and green mashed potatoes (see--there’s a bit-o-the-Irish!) we’ll feast on homemade green yeast rolls, lime Jell-O (just because I was asked to make it for a green Jell-O lover; yes, there are some!) broccoli, just because…because…why are we having it again? O, yeah, it’s green and they say it’s good for you. (I eat it but tend to sympathize with Seinfeld’s Newman who snarled it into the “vile weed” category) And there will also be that Irish specialty, key lime pie. Not in its natural state, though. ‘Cause I tinted it, you know, green.

The person we associate the most with Ireland wasn’t even. Irish, I mean. St. Patrick was from England, or Scotland, or Wales…the scholars that be cannot agree. But it wasn’t Ireland. Some Irish raiders captured him and carried him away as a slave to serve in the Emerald Isle. Years later he escaped, went home, studied a lot, and returned to Ireland to preach the Gospel to a people who needed to know about God. I like that. And I like that the special color most associated with him was blue, not green, since I’m a blue-color person. In several artworks he’s depicted wearing blue vestments and blue is commonly used on flags and shields and banners that represent Ireland.

So, even though I don’t pass any of the “You Know You’re Irish If…” tests that are floating about on the Internet today (I don’t drink “tae” or tea or anything else similarly spelled, didn’t call my mother “mammy,” don’t have a gift for swearing (if that’s a gift it should be returned), or a fondness for strong drink, I do appreciate my one-quarter-Irishness (and since I meant this to be just one page, I also can appreciate that I seem to have the Irish inability to make short a long story!). 

Sure and however it tis you celebrate on this fine day, remember this blessing from the Irish:

“May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

From the end of 1986 through the fall of 1997 I was the church secretary at East Troy Bible Church in East Troy, Wisconsin. I put out a simple church newsletter using an electric typewriter and a copy machine. After our move from Mukwonago, WI to the Milwaukee, WI area I scanned all my early typed articles and saved them on an external hard drive, along with articles from my stint doing the newsletter at Spring Creek Church in Pewaukee, WI. Sadly for me, that hard drive suffered an early, (tragic!) death last year. Fortunately, I have hard copies of a good deal of my work and have been spending time transcribing them back into an electronic form. Thus, I found this account of God's grace to me that is as true and real today in 2014 as it was back in 1991. (The directional disability isn't any different, either!)

ISAIAH 41:10 AT WORK

Humanly speaking, there was good reason to fear. I had agreed to be one of the drivers for the recent ladies’ getaway to Indiana Amish country. To get there, you have to navigate through the clogged maze that is Chicago – and I have absolutely no sense of direction. I can get to the Grand Avenue Mall in Milwaukee but can’t get home without written instructions (unless I have someone else in the car whose brain has fully functioning directional circuits). I go into a store in the mall and when I come out I can’t remember if I’ve come from the right or from the left. When we moved to this area I was able to find my way quite nicely to either Brookfield Square or Southridge shopping center – but needed to go all the way home first if I wanted to go from one to the other.

The cause of this defect may be a faulty gene in my hereditary makeup. While riding in our car, my grandmother would often swear (meaning “stated emphatically,” – no actual swear words uttered...ever!) we were headed east while being blinded by the setting sun.

I also never drive in anything that could remotely be considered traffic. Mukwonago “traffic” is an oxymoron, and when it’s busy in Milwaukee I don’t go there. But, as Psalm 23:4 says, “I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.” As evil as I knew the Windy City’s snarled roads to be, God would have to be with me if I were to attempt anything as “foolhardy” (for me!) as this.

The Lord must have a delicious sense of humor, for He answered my plea for help getting through possible and highly probable Chicago traffic by putting me square in the middle of the very thing I feared: traffic, and loads of it! We left East Troy early on Friday to avoid the rush, but the rush outsmarted us. A trip that was scheduled to take four hours turned into eight (yes, we stopped twice, but still…).

Refusing to allow that to happen again, on Sunday our carload decided to depart for home earlier than the other two cars. There would be no familiar vehicle ahead of me to follow, but with three navigators, a road atlas and the Lord as our guide I figured we just might make it back to East Troy before the next week (though our goal was for that evening’s 6:30 service).

In my wildest imaginings I could not have conjured up the auto convention that occurred on the Interstate. Bumper to bumper and then a smash into my bumper (nothing serious but it definitely got our attention!). We decided to exit that monumental jam-up and turned off onto another highway. Through the city the speed limit was just 35mph, but at least the tires were rotating. However, after hitting potholes the size of our other car and wandering around in questionable neighborhoods, we decided that four small-town women belonged back on the I-system, no matter the congestion.

Well, there I was, white-knuckled once again, when one of my favorite Scriptures flashed through my vexed and befuddled mind: “Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee, yea I will help thee…” (Isaiah 41:10). He did do, as He always does, what He promised. “And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest…from thy fear” (Isaiah 14:3). Though still in the midst of more cars in one place than Henry Ford ever fantasized about, my fear was at rest. I relaxed. We returned. And we rejoiced!