Beware: broken sidewalk

If you’re on Instagram, you’ve probably noticed the proliferation of cat and dog photos.  That’s okay, since it’s a subject obviously near and dear to the owner’s heart.  I even wrote a children’s book about my dog—ready for this??—in Swedish, for my Swedish granddaughter. 

(Sidebar—Yes, I’m trying to learn Swedish, such a beautiful language.  I use my vocabulary words, plus a few others to fill in the blanks, to write primary-style stories along the lines of “See Jane.  See Jane run.”  Because that’s about the level of my Swedish.  So why not write about my dog, along with photos?) 

One of the wonderful things about dogs, we are told, is that they live in the now.  There’s no worrying about tomorrow or fretting over yesterday.  For them, it’s a total embracing of present tense, in every encounter, every situation. 

Snack time!

I love to eat.  In recent years, it has been showing a bit more than in the past. 

One of my challenges, when it comes to food, other than the fact that I live in a place of overabundance and a culture of overindulgence, is that I have a touch of hypoglycemia.  Low blood sugar, that is.  Hypoglycemia isn’t mere hunger pangs and gastro-growling.  Hypoglycemia manifests itself in things like blurring of vision, headache, jitteriness, and irritability.  When it hits, I’ll grab just about anything besides what I should since the craving for sugar is my body’s way to sustain life, even though it may be temporary.

The clarity of a foggy morning

An early morning in June along the Pacific coast in Oregon is a little different than mid-summer in good ‘ole land locked Missouri.  By now, the heat is already stifling and the humidity is beading the on the brow back home, even if I’m in the shade.  Here up north on a family vacation, sitting out on the porch, I’m wearing sweats, sweat shirt, Bob’s hat, wrapped in blanket and drinking hot tea.

Does this place actually exist, or am I just dreaming?

They do have humidity, however.  It’s in the form of fog, and lots of it.  It hangs heavily over the mountains in the distance, and even the near pines are hiding on this particular morning. At least intermittently.  I mean, they kind of come and go. 

Waste not; want not

I seriously love trees.  In fact, forested landscapes are on the top of the list of my favorites.  I remember the thrill of exploring the woods as a youngster at Girl Scout camp, and conquering that amazing (although not altogether safe) tree house in our neighborhood. At this writing (July), the leaves are fully out and lush green, and our eldest just did a preschool unit on trees with our two-year-old granddaughter.  The sooner she learns that trees are our friends, the better!

God evidently thinks so, too.  As the recently

Worriers, unite! (and then go somewhere else.)

Did you know that our upper atmosphere is totally littered with cosmic debris, some of which could break through and wreck havoc at anytime, unannounced by our sophisticated technology?  (Remember Russia a few years ago?) 

Or how about the “definitely-not-Kansas-Toto” freak tornado in China that terrified a schoolyard of children and teachers?

A little closer to home is the New Madrid fault line, where I live here in the Midwest of the USA.  I read this little tidbit this morning: “…earthquakes in this region shake and damage an area approximately 20 times larger than earthquakes in California…”, and that we are about thirty years overdue for a major jiggle. (Bob tried to soothe me when we moved here saying that we would be living on the side of our town a little further away from the crack…)

Making it more personal, I was sitting out on the patio this morning right before sunrise, enjoying the relative cool, the quiet of crickets and waking birds, the serenity of my big black dog and my pot of very black tea.  Deep breath.  Nice.  

Then the sun came up, I turned off the outdoor lights (Bob likes it when I do that) and continued my morning on the porch. After a bit I noticed a big spider web built on the side of my table with (guess what) a big spider in the middle RIGHT NEXT TO MY ELBOW–all morning!  

I relocated quickly.

Closer inspection confirmed the spider was deceased (evidently not his own web?) and after clearing the area of the offending wildlife, my skin stopped creeping as I sat back down.

My thought is that potential dangers (or at best, inconveniences) are all around me, and I’m not even aware of most of them.  Yes, I wear my seatbelt.  Yes, I eat properly, (and sometimes I even exercise.)  Yes, I put on my bike helmet before riding to Walmart for groceries. (Yes, I wear spandex…TMI??) 

But even with the best of all things, other things still happen. Unexpected things. Tragic things. Things that have nothing to do with terrorist attacks or misplaced passions and loyalties belonging only to humankind.  (And we all know, especially these days, that many humans are not kind.)

When Bob’s dad died of a heart attack at a young age, my husband said, 

“God is still on His throne.”

If anyone had reason to worry, it was the Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk.  He came to this conclusion:

I trembled inside when I heard this;
    my lips quivered with fear.
My legs gave way beneath me,
    and I shook in terror.
I will wait quietly for the coming day
    when disaster will strike the people who invade us.
Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
    and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
    and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
    and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
    I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength!
    He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
    able to tread upon the heights.

Meteorological interruptions or man-made intrusions, God is still in control.

Time for that Walmart run.  (Helmet on, of course.)

Habakkuk 3:16-19  Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

 

Worry?

In other words…

“…casting all your cares [all your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares about you [with deepest affection, and watches over you very carefully].” (1)

CAST: Throw (something) forcefully in a specified direction (2)

 

(1)  1 Peter 5:7  Amplified Bible (AMP)Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, CA 90631. All rights reserved.

(2) http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/cast

Anchors Aweigh, My Boys!

My dad was a sailor, and we love to hear him tell his stories about when he was not quite into his twenties wearing that white “dixie cup”, old photos and all!  Fast forward about 20 years, and I also love the story about when he and my soon-to-be stepmother were dating:

Dad had taken this nice woman for a fun day of sailing on our little Sunfish, when I get a call from Dad saying that the sailboat had caught the wind and had capsized, both he and Jane had been dumped into the cold water, and he had lost his keys (as well as his glasses) in the lake.  Jane’s son (the only one of us kids who had a driver’s license at the time) was coming by to pick up an extra set of keys, and would I please get those ready for him??? 

(In Dad’s defense, his stint in the navy didn’t include sailing anything.  He worked on airplanes and