In Every Teardrop

 In every teardrop, there is a rainbow.

Eleven years ago we moved Mom into assisted living, out of the family home she had lived and loved in for 64 years. She vacillated between agreement with the need for the move, and resentment and opposition. It was a hard time. A wilderness time.

On one of those dark days, though, I remember crying as I drove between her home and the new place of residence, praying as I cried. And impressed on my heart by our loving God were the words of that promise, In every teardrop, there is a rainbow. Maybe that is one reason I really love rainbows.

Mom and I have navigated a wilderness journey since then. I am often bewildered and lost in decisions I feel unqualified to make. In those moments I hear Mom’s adage in better times, ‘everyone is just doing their best’, and know she would say that to me now if she were more aware. I also hear echoes of my dad’s advice, ‘make a decision, pull up your socks and do it.’ I find it amazing to look back and see how many times during these years I have made faltering decisions in faith, praying that as God sees me doing my best he will make up the shortfall.

And as I’ve pulled up my socks, I have seen him do it.

Thinking of wilderness, of Jesus being led into the wilderness for forty days, and of these wilderness years since Dad died, I am aware of the many miracles I have seen while out here with Mom. Even yesterday, calling Social Security, which can entail an hours long wait for someone to answer, we were through to a very helpful girl in five minutes. And then, as she had to seek approval from Mom for me to speak on her behalf, we watched in amazement as Mom clearly answered the questions, stating her name, her date of birth, and even my full name. Miracle upon miracle.

Today is my last full day here, and I have a wonderful gathering of five of us cousins, but I also have to tie up a few loose ends which are out of my control. I will continue to focus on Jesus, with his help, and trust that these things will resolve without problem and satisfactorily.

I am aware of so many praying for us. Thank you. I am grateful to God for a digital connection to friends who are staunch supporters. God bless you. 

In every teardrop there is a rainbow.

The Enough

The enough.

I know that the Lord’s blessings can come, pressed down and overflowing, and I have experienced so much abundance in my life because of his lavish grace. My heart sings with gratitude to the merciful Lord who loves me.

I also know that he is the God of the ‘enough’.

One of the things that I’ve seen over the years of helping Mom is the way he always provides the enough. There are situations which I find baffling and beyond me, and I can feel alone and wishing so much my dear sister were still here to make decisions together, but invariably God has sent someone to answer the sometimes silent cry of my heart.

Yesterday was such a day. There is a confusion over the payment for the bed and wheelchair Mom requires. Insurance stuff here is so confusing, even for those who have navigated it for years, but more so for someone like me who moved out of the system decades ago.

Two cousins visiting. One retired from a career in geriatric social work. She has gently and quietly come alongside and made some calls. We now await a quick response but I am so grateful that for this need, God sent the enough in the beautifully calm action of Deb.

The Lord be praised.

High expectations

 I see up close the real consternation of someone I love who is captured by inherited expectations. Lunar new year may be a day of celebration, but it is also a time where certain provisions and specially prepared foods must be on the table for the ancestors. There is anxiety, much rushing around to find ingredients, to prepare food, to exchange small gifts with many others.

High expectations create chains that bind.

I came to set the captives free, Jesus declared. Love the Lord and your neighbour. Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.

Christian expectations are also high, but with the Holy Spirit we are given the strength to fulfil them, by his grace.  

In the desert, prepare the way of the Lord. May this Lent be a time of true preparation. Help me, Lord, to discard those expectations which bind me, and live and walk instead in the freedom only you give. Give me a discerning spirit to recognise what is from you, and what is not, and the strength to accept only that which is from you.

Throw out

So when it rains in Southern California, it pours. That is what’s going on now.

As I redirected my morning to going through more of my parents’ files, I first had a quiet time and read Ecclesiastes 3:6, where it says, there is a time to keep and a time to throw away. I’m revisiting the stuff I’d decided to keep, which is too heavy for me to carry back, and am being much more ruthless.

Who knew the Bible had something to say about decluttering?!

No-brainer

 Arriving at Mom’s place late morning, usually, I help give her lunch, then roll her wheelchair over to a lighter, quieter spot where we, or at least I, can look out across Los Angeles to the mountains which encircle the city. Hollywood Hills, San Gabriel’s, San Bernardino’s: I’m not sure which I’m looking at.

Mom snoozes, arousing from time to time for a brief interaction. I play her some 40’s music on my phone and am so pleased to see her slight rhythmic motions, assuring me she hears and she enjoys. 

After a couple of hours of that I leave for a restorative walk along the coast. Somehow, I missed lunch again. So I nibble on a bag of trek mixed nuts and a few raspberries. Today I added in a smoothie, but not a proper lunch. Not really.

The sermon this morning was looking at the transfiguration as told in Luke 9. The preacher commented that Peter’s suggestion to put up some shelters revealed his desire to make it last, so that he and the other two disciples could linger longer at this mountain top experience with Jesus.

I’ve had mountain top experiences, and am so grateful for them. But I have to confess that even in the most transcendent moment, I’ve rarely if ever been totally absorbed in the experience, but have usually been aware of those around me, or of the need to cook a meal, or even the nagging thought that it’s getting late and I need to get to bed.

That leads me to Martha. Mary chose the mountain top and was able to focus on what was best … time with Jesus … and resist the nagging guilt that she was dropping her responsibilities to help put supper on the table.

That brings me back to the nuts and berries, and skipping lunch. How often do I shorten, or even miss, mountain top experiences with Jesus because I am distracted by many things and prepared to live on spiritual nuts and berries instead of lingering to enjoy the feast Jesus wants to give me?

It feels like a no-brained, so why do I find it so hard?

I have been a Christian a long time, and I still have so much to learn. I’m asking God to help me develop focus and concentration, and the discernment to recognise where I am on the mountain, and the courage to choose pleasing Jesus rather than meeting others’, or even my own, human expectations.

At Jesus’ baptism, when the Father declared his love for his one and only Son, he instructed, ‘Listen to Him’. My prayer is that the Lord will transform me so that I am eager to tabernacle with God for however long he chooses, without falling prey to human motivations and distractions. 

R

I really want to ‘listen to Him’, especially in these challenging times. Don’t you?

In the mystery

 There is something mysteriously comforting to me in standing or sitting by my dad’s grave. I know he isn’t there, but it provides a touchstone to the personality I know and miss. I stood in the warm sun, gazing down. I didn’t bring flowers. He wasn’t sentimental and I know they gather them up once a week before cutting the grass, and throw them out. 

The warm sun on my back was inviting and I sat down on the brow of the hill beside his headstone, gazing out at the view. I could see the Harbor freeway, smaller roads, Terminal Island with its working cranes, and the Pacific. Somewhere in there is the hospital in which I was born. Around the corner from the cemetery are the social housing projects I lived in during my first year of life. I felt embraced by the place of my beginnings on this earth.

I love living in Scotland, and have moved away from wanting to live in such a sprawling city as this. But still, sitting on that hill, the dry grass beneath me, little black ants finding their way onto my legs and feet every so often…it was all so familiar, so welcoming. Home.

God is in the mystery. I walk my days between two places, loving both. Only the Lord can bring it all to a happy conclusion, tie my life up with a big red ribbon one day, soon or not so soon.

Good to have time to reflect. To sit. Rain is in the forecast, even here, and I may not have many days for sitting and staring, absorbing the place.

Grateful today for the Valentine our Heavenly Father has given us all, the gift of life itself. Thank you Lord.

Defense

While waiting for a banking appointment yesterday, I was leafing through a table top picture book  of Los Angeles and recognised the place I walk to every day while here. For a few decades, ending in the 1970s, the asphalt platform held a defensive missile system called Nike. That has now moved inland since longer range missiles were developed. The asphalt has been left to crack and break, its purpose largely forgotten.

I stepped onto it yesterday, finding it curious that in a site of such breathtaking beauty there had lurked a system of death and destruction, albeit defensive. 

We may be God’s image bearers, and therefore imbued with his breathtaking beauty, but Jesus warned us to be alert, to be wise as serpents though innocent as doves, to abide in him: these are our defensive weapons. Paul explored that in his letter to the Ephesians. 

Perhaps we are living in a time when this advice resonates more than ever. Or perhaps it has always been like this, but just not quite so obvious.

Either way, don’t go out without the armour, especially the helmet of salvation. In an age of deception, only God knows truth.