The Black Club on Vacation

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Margaret

The Black Club recently convened in Florida. Jack and his cousin-dog, Sydney, have enjoyed a week of daily fun together on Sanibel Island, working hard to keep cool in their black fur. The first day, when both dogs were panting hard, Skylar suggested they might feel cooler if they took off their fur coats. When I asked her how to do that, she demonstrated the movements of removing her own invisible coat, first the zipper, then each arm. I said, “Ok, let’s take the dogs’ coats off,” she looked diligently for their zippers but never did find them.

The Black club members couldn’t believe how salty the ocean tasted compared to Lake Michigan but kept sampling it, shaking their heads in disgust after each gulp. Regardless, their happy dances continued uninterrupted, and both of them were pleased to be included on the family trip.

Dogs are well-liked on Sanibel with quite a few of them out on leashes strolling the beaches every morning and evening. Jack and Sydney wagged their way up to enthusiastic strangers but lived for off-leash romps in the Florida greenbelt (a tropical substitute for sand dunes) when other dogs weren’t around. Both Jack and Sydney adapted to vacation life quickly, and as long as we were nearby, they were completely content.

I wish it was that easy for the rest of us to find contentment. God offers to provide it for us if we’ll take him up on it, but most of us quest after it through our own methods, ignoring the Lord’s ideas. One perfect example is a family vacation. Looking forward to it usually includes an expectation of contentment that’s very rarely realized. Instead we work hard (while on vacation) to adjust (to our vacation), and struggle to resume the routine (after our vacation) when we get home.

It’s curious that the words contentment and contention resemble each other closely but have opposite meanings. The first is to be emotionally satisfied, the second to struggle in opposition. Much of our effort to find contentment is really contention with God’s scriptural principles.

What are his ideas on how to experience contentment? Here are just a few, taken from biblical passages:

Appreciate what’s in our closets.
Express gratitude for our homes.
Tell our complaints to God not others.
Take care not to love money.
View crises as tests we want to pass.
Share what we have.

Each of those may, at first, seem to oppose contentment, but they work. The age-old theory “more is always better” is a fantasy, a trick of the devil leading to permanent discontent instead.

But if this list is too hard to pursue all at once, we can always do what Jack and Sydney did to be content: dig a hole and crawl in.

“Godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either.” (1 Timothy 6:6-7)

Small Beginnings

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Margaret

If we oldsters in the autumn of our years could bottle some of the youthful energy surrounding us here in Florida, we’d all have the pep of 18-year-olds after draining the bottle. When our seven enthusiastic young children are at the pool together, other resort guests pick up and leave.

The oldest two, Mary’s twin granddaughters, are the leaders of the pack at nine years old. Witnessing their limitless energy in the water, you’d never know they survived a very rocky start in life.

Hannah and Erika were born almost nine weeks premature weighing 3.12 and 3.5 pounds respectively. When I visited them at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) the week they were born, I wondered if they would make it at all. Their tiny bodies bristled with tubes and wires, hooked up to the best that medical machinery could offer.

When Hannah contracted meningitis and Erika evidenced heart trouble, anxiety ran high. But day-on-day, they gained weight and strength, leaving the hospital a month later.

Their young mommy, my niece Julia, did a stellar job nursing them, no small feat for two tiny babies who needed frequent feedings. She was grateful for each day’s progress and never complained about her daunting task. Today she’s every bit as thankful for their presence in her family as she was the day they were born.

Julia and her husband Drew had a jump on the rest of us in terms of viewing their children as God’s creative handiwork. Our babies came at full term without crises, and we took that blessing for granted. But the twins (and their younger brother Andrew) are so appreciated, their parents take advantage of every opportunity to turn their attention toward the God who made them.

Hannah and Erika were taken on their first mission trip at six years old. Including them on a journey to Ecuador was a risk, but the girls’ world view is shaping up to be full of tenderness toward the poor, partly because of that trip. In preparation for serving with their parents and other families, the girls were told of children who lived with their parents in a dump, scavenging food others had discarded.

After returning home, the twins prayed for the people they’d met. One evening after Julia had dished up dinner, Erika took her untouched plate of food to the trash and began scraping her food into the garbage. “What are you doing?” Julia said.

“I’m sending my food to the children who live at the dump,” Erika said. Although the Ecuadorian families would never receive that offering of love, God did and was extremely pleased with her sacrifice.

Linking that incident with the twins’ early days in the NICU, none of us can doubt God had eternal work for these two fragile preemies to accomplish. And they’ve already begun.

God actually has important work for every life to accomplish, and that includes even those born too prematurely to “make it” on this earth.

It also includes all who’ve had their lives snuffed out before they even have a chance to be born.

“We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Cravings

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Margaret

I’ve battled the bulge my whole life. Even in childhood photos I was the “pleasantly plump” one, but once I reached high school, plump wasn’t pleasant.

Before college, I dreaded gaining the “freshman 15” but fell in line with the averages, finding those 15 and a few more. Transferring schools the next year must have given me unconscious permission to do it again, because I found another 15 at my new college.

Senior year I got serious about my eating habits, trying one fad diet after another: grapefruit and eggs, meat only, cabbage soup. Then came food-substitutes in the form of drinks, cookies and frozen bars. And when I got desperate, there was fasting.

But each diet was just a stepping stone to binging, because all that deprivation led to craving comfort. And what better comfort than food? The lost pounds always came piling back, and by graduation, 200 pounds was in my not-too-distant future.

I thought about food non-stop, what I should or shouldn’t eat, how long since I last ate, when I could eat next, what I would eat that I shouldn’t, and on and on the mental dialog raged.

Marriage and seven babies didn’t help. After each pregnancy and birth, stress-eating packed on another 10 pounds during the baby’s first year.

Eventually it was, “Welcome to menopause,” when a woman’s hormones go through a second adolescence, but backwards. It’s fruit-basket-upset time, and nothing that worked before, worked then.

Sometimes I think about Eve (of Adam-and-Eve fame). When God put them in his garden, food was abundant, and they ate as much as they wanted. They’d never tasted Krispy Kremes, biscuit gravy or Snickers bars and had unspoiled natural appetites for the fruits and veggies around them.

God gave them taste buds, a sense of smell, and eyes to appreciate the food available to them. They probably oooh-ed and ahhh-ed as they discovered the tartness of a pineapple, the scent of a strawberry and the green of a kiwi. The fact that eating was made to be a thrill for the senses was God’s special gift to us, although it came with the caution to be self-controlled.

But anything good can be made bad by taking it to an extreme. We can spend too much time, money, energy and focus on behavior not meant to dominate us. It isn’t God’s fault. We’re the ones who turn blessings into curses.

Although I’m thinner now than in past years, it’s probably a byproduct of Nate’s absence. Because he’s not coming home to share dinner as he used to, I don’t cook much. Even so, I still play endless mental games with food and must repeatedly submit to God’s headship in this area. None of it is easy.

For all of us who have to wage war against appetites that are difficult to control, serenity will one day come. God will defy the odds and make all things good again, including our appetites. And from what I hear, the all-you-can-eat heavenly banquet table is going to be absolutely sumptuous!