My husband also loves birds. When I married him I hardly ever paid attention to birds, but living with him for thirty years has changed that. We have had three cockatiels (Rosie, Chester and Walter) and one canary (Harriet).

We don’t keep birds as pets anymore, but we feed the wild outside birds a lot, and even our grandchildren love to watch as chickadees, jays, juncos, sparrows and nuthatches make frequent visits to our back deck.

Here are some birds of the world (found online) I’ve marveled over today…

Meet your average Green Honeycreeper:

A Lady Gouldian Finch:

A Mandarin Duck:

This is a Lorikeet:

A Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock:

A Polish Chicken:

A Flamecrest:

Lady Amherst’s Pheasant:

Wilson’s Bird of Paradise:

Bleeding Heart Pigeons:

A Resplendent Quetzal:

And this is the Blue Footed Booby. Click here to see two Blue Footed Boobies do their very slow and simple mating dance. I think even I could do it. (Don’t tell Michael though.)

And my favorite bird of all, the Northern Cardinal. (For those who might not know why Cardinals are special to me, click here.)

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?   

Matthew 6:26

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Thank you for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend…

If you’re the naturally optimistic sort, maybe you’ve never truly despaired of life. Or maybe you can only remember one time when the thought crossed your mind that you’d be better off dead. But if you’re someone who could be Vice President of the Pessimist’s Club, then you may have had many times in your life when you were ready to call it quits.

I tried to take my life many years ago. It wasn’t a cry-for-help attempt, it was a real, carefully plotted out time-to-die plan, and I almost succeeded.

I was fourteen years old.

Someday I will tell the story of how I almost ended it all. It’s not a topic I visit very often but I’m not afraid to share it. It’s part of my history and I freely speak about it if I feel nudged and if it could be helpful to someone.

Today I want to share about what we can do when life is really hard and we can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. (Disclaimer: this post should not be taken as the whole of advice we might need when life is difficult — some folks might need to get professional help such as a doctor or a trained counselor or a pastor, and do so right away.) 

I was born with a melancholy temperament, which means I feel things deeply, tend to over-analyze, can have much compassion and empathy, revel in details, can be creative, tend to be critical and nit-picky, and usually see the glass as half empty rather than half full. The other part of my temperament is choleric, which is often defined by bossiness and pride, a take-charge attitude, and someone who can get the job done while forgetting the feelings of others. For me, the combination of these two temperaments means that when one part of me is feeling low and hopeless, the other part of me tries to grab me by the lapels and give me a good shaking and a firm talking to, and tells me harshly to just quit blubbering and shape up.

The melancholy me thinks the choleric me is really mean and uncaring. The choleric me thinks the melancholy me is a wimp and should just get over it. It can be a bad combination.

When life gets really hard and the enemy of my soul pitches a tent on my shoulder so he can hiss his poison in my ear, it’s my melancholy nature that let’s him stay there for way too long. I have learned a lot in recent years about how to take my thoughts captive and replace the lies with truth (see 2 Corinthians 10:4-5), but that doesn’t mean satan gives up for very long. It’s still a battle. But here are a few things to do when life gets so hard it makes death looks easy:

1. Cry out to God for help. You’ve heard me say this before, but I can’t emphasize this enough. If all you can do is weep and whisper the name of Jesus in between your sobs, do it. Whisper the Name above all names, over and over again. That is deep prayer, when it’s coming from a place of total helplessness and humility.

Don’t be discouraged if the blinding light of angels doesn’t immediately fill your room, or if your mood doesn’t lift right then and there, or if the person causing your grief doesn’t fall at your feet completely changed. I have yet to experience quick answers to such cries for help. God is not constrained by time and He is (maddeningly) not in a hurry. He is into doing things His way, and they’re always the right way. When pain is so deep it’s hard to understand why comfort doesn’t seem to come the second we plead for it, He is teaching us to wait on Him. Cry out, talk to Jesus, tell Him everything, and in faith, carry it all to Him and leave it there. Ask for His miracles and be willing to do what you’re supposed to do when that revelation comes.

2. Wait three days. Don’t drive off the cliff today. Don’t stroll the aisles of sleep aids at Target or Walgreen’s tomorrow. Don’t let thoughts of guns and razor blades stay in your mind longer than a nanosecond. Don’t do it. Wait. Call a friend. Call a sister. Call a pastor. Call a crisis help line. Take a walk. Read your Bible. Put on some worship music. Watch a decent movie. Cook a meal. Pet your dog. And keep asking Jesus to give you the strength to put one foot in front of the other, keep living one more day, one more hour. What good is waiting going to do? Believe me, waiting three days can make all the difference in the world. Why? I don’t know exactly why, I just know from experience that when you’re feeling like you’re done with life, you should wait. Wait on God. I think God might have a thing about waiting three days too. Consider Jonah and also how many days Jesus was in the tomb.

3. Start a gratitude journal. Or if you’ve already started one, get it out again and start writing. I have kept gratitude journals at various times in my life, but until I read Ann Voskamp’s unforgettable book One Thousand Gifts, I never really saw the transformative power behind that kind of spiritual discipline. When I wrote down what I was thankful for before, I was merely writing down what I was thankful for. My husband, my children, my eyes, my independence, my faith, etc. Now when I open my gratitude journal, I number each thing I record, and I view each one as a gift directly from the hand of my heavenly Father to me. I picture His nail-scarred hands giving each one to me, personally.

If I believe nothing is random, and as a Christian who believes the Bible I do believe that, then a deer walking by my office window in the moonlight isn’t just a deer walking by my office window in the moonlight. It becomes a deer walking by my office window in the moonlight because God willed it so. Because He knew what pondering His wonders would do for my soul, for my mental health, for my perspective, for the strength I need to carry on each day.

Very recently a large deer with a huge rack of antlers strolled by my office window as I sat in the dark. The moonlight softly lit the snow around him to a barely perceptible periwinkle color, and he was five feet from me as I watched his dark silhouette. He stopped to nibble on the peony branches and decided they weren’t worth a second bite. He strolled languidly across our front lawn, paused at the big rock with the peace sign on it, crossed the street and found another kind of bush more to his liking in a neighbor’s front yard. Because I am becoming more practiced at watching carefully for the gifts God gives to me every day, I sat in the dark and the quiet, and exulted. This was a gift to me from God, with my name on it. He extended His hand and said, “Julie, this is for you” and I took it with reverence and awe and thanks. He loves me enough to give me hundreds of gifts each day. And I’m going to notice. And I’m going to thank Him. And I’ll write them down to help myself remember that when things get dark and when life gets hard, He’s still up to something. He’s still at work in my life and in the lives of those I love so much. He can be trusted.

And when you write down the things you’re thankful for, number them. And don’t hesitate to thank God for little things. When I write down even the smallest of gifts, something shifts in my heart, soul and mind. A bit of strength comes. A bit of hope. Just enough.

What if you’re having a hard time thinking of things to be grateful for? I understand that. I think of people like Joni Eareckson Tada who have lived with quadriplegia for decades and can’t blow their noses or brush their teeth by themselves. Yet she finds things to be thankful for. I can too.

I can see color this morning. Thank you Lord that the deep cardinal red on our living room pillow brings a bit of pleasure.

I can wipe spills on our counter this morning, with my own hands. While standing on my own feet. I thank you Jesus.

I can pee!

No bombs went off in my neighborhood last night. Write it down.

I have teeth in my mouth to chew my food, and not one of them hurts.

Write one thing down, then another. Ask for eyes to see, and ears to hear. And then write down what you see and hear, and realize they are gifts from God….to you.

When you keep a gratitude journal, gifts multiply. Saying thank you to God for a precious daughter then blossoms into thanking God for the way her eyes look at you when you tell her how proud you are of her, or thanking God for the way her neck smells when she hugs you good night, and the nose to smell her scent with, or of how unique her handwriting is, and how she wrote “I love you Mama” on a handmade birthday card, or how graceful she walks and what a gift it is that she can walk, or how trusting she is, and how God is using that to teach you to trust Him.

Saying thank you multiplies blessings. Complaining obliterates them. I know this.

What if I’m wrong? What if all these things I’m thanking Him for are random, and He didn’t really send the deer for me and didn’t really give me healthy teeth, and it’s all about chance, heredity and flossing? Well, okay, maybe someday I’ll find out I’m wrong. But I would hate to find out someday that He crafted 10,000 or 1,000,000  or 10,000,000 gifts just for me, and I went blindly on my way and complained, or ignored them. I’d rather be found thanking than not.

I don’t know when God will intervene in your situation, or mine. But until His answers come, I am going to do whatever it takes to gratefully receive these breaths, these heartbeats, these moments, these gifts that He gives me, and live.

Michael and I owned income property off and on for years. Our last building was a big Victorian five-plex that Michael worked hard on, but we sold it when his Parkinson’s began to affect his energy levels.

I used to keep our income property records in these specially ordered books, and I found six of them in a desk drawer last week. They’re way past the seven year record retention time recommended by the I.R.S., so out they go.

And the little purple zippered wallet has never been used — that was donated to our local Goodwill.

The schnauzer on the couch stays, though.

Michael introduced himself to me through the mail in 1981. I had never heard his name, and I came home from work in Anaheim, CA one day to find a letter from him in my mailbox. Three months later I married him.

Michael introduced me to Minnesota, and showed me what it takes to live in American Siberia. It’s been thirty years now and I’ve never looked back.

He introduced me to what kindness and strength combined look like in a man. I had never seen that before.

He introduced me to Sorel boots and Mukluks.

He introduced me to my love of birds.

He introduced me to kohlrabi.

He introduced me to venison.

He introduced me to the remarkable feeling of being loved no matter what I looked like, what I weighed, or how I behaved.

And Michael introduced me to the music of Keith Green.

Are you familiar with Keith? He was an amazing and talented young man who decided to wholeheartedly follow Jesus after searching for truth for years, and his life and music subsequently impacted many lives. Not everyone loved Keith, however. He had the often annoying habit of being loudly outspoken about his faith.

When Michael and I were getting to know each other through phone calls and letters in 1981, he sent me an LP record album (ancients that we are) by Keith Green, and I was hooked after one listen. I had never heard contemporary Christian music before.

Over the years Keith’s music meant so much to Michael and me that “our song” is one of Keith’s songs. It’s called “You Put This Love in My Heart” and you can listen to it by clicking right here.

In this song Keith was actually singing about how he felt about the Lord, but Michael and I related the words to each other, and we still get a little emotional when we hear it today. It came on in the car the other day while we were driving somewhere, and Michael reached over and took my hand and smiled knowingly. Then his eyes filled with tears. Keith’s music does that to you.

Also, here’s a link that will tell you a little about Keith’s life and untimely death — it’s worth reading and you can see a short video of him playing and singing.

We pulled out some CDs by Keith Green several days ago and are being impacted all over again. Somehow his music doesn’t seem dated to me — it seems as fresh and powerful as it was thirty years ago, and it challenges me and softens my heart. Listening to his music makes me want to love the Lord more than I do. His songs give me hope and scrape a few scales from my dull spiritual eyes. They put things into perspective for me, and they beckon me to draw close to the Lord. I need all of the above.

So, I would like you to have some Keith Green music too!

If you would like to have a fabulous CD of Keith Green’s music (pictured above and entitled “Keith Green – The Ministry Years – 1977-1979″) all you have to do is leave a comment and answer this question: Are you familiar with Keith Green’s music? Yes or no answers are just fine. If you are familiar with his music you could also share which one of his songs is a favorite of yours.

Now, let me address those of you who would like this CD but are hesitant to leave a comment. You might be thinking but I’ve already won something from this blog and I want to give someone else a turn, or I live in Australia (or England or New Zealand or Antarctica) and I don’t want Julie to have to mail me something from so far away, or I don’t want to be greedy, or some such unacceptable reason.

I want everyone who wants one to have one. I would be delighted to send this brand new Keith Green CD to every single person who asks, and I hope you all do ask by leaving a comment, okay?

Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy; writer, mother, sloth or fly; painter, baker, wet or dry; grandpa, whiner, far or nigh. Okay? This is for you.

I look forward to sending out many copies of this brilliant CD by Keith Green. Comments will be taken until Monday, January 30th at 10:00 a.m. Central Time, and CDs will be mailed out to every taker next week!

I promise you’ll be blessed.

In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice;
   in the morning I lay my requests before you
   and wait expectantly.

Psalm 5:3

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Sometimes right before dropping off to sleep at night I’ll suddenly think of something I need to do or someone I should call the next day, but I don’t want to get up and go downstairs to write it on my day planner. So I’ll reach over in the dark to turn the little cardinal figurine on my nightstand on its side, or put a piece of Kleenex on the floor in an odd way to jog my memory the next morning. So far I haven’t tried the novel idea of having a pen and paper handy on my nightstand — maybe I’ll try that next time.

But I have need of a reminder much more permanent than a string on a finger or a strategically placed tissue. Every day I need to be reminded that my life is a gift, and that my very breath comes from God. I need to remember that I belong to Him, and that I have been created and placed here for His good purposes. Too often I get up in the morning with a selfish bent toward my own vain choices, and a distressing habit of wandering away from Him.

These prayerful words from the song “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” could have been penned for me:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

(words by Robert Robinson – 1758)

So each morning when I come downstairs to start my day, I am greeted by these words on our kitchen wall:

It’s a fairly large graphic, in blue and metallic silver letters, and I put it there as the most important reminder of all. The words are from Micah 6:8, which says:

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

On any given day my day planner might read something like this:

- reconcile banking statement to ledger

- crockpot ingredients in at 10:00 a.m.

- bills in mail

- make dental appointment

- filing

- state paperwork for Fosters completed

- birthday card to Denel

- work on tests for training

- clean out master bedroom closet

- return library books

- pick up prescriptions

- wash bathroom floors

And this list would represent a fairly quiet day.

But no matter what’s on my to-do list, nothing really productive will be accomplished unless I first pay attention to the writing on the wall.

It’s pretty amazing how differently things usually go in my day, if I will just try to walk humbly with my God.

(from the archives….)

Jesus looked straight into the heart and soul of the rich young ruler and revealed what was on the throne there — the man’s wealth. His money, his holdings, his stuff. He just couldn’t let any of it go.

Well, I’m going to let go of some more stuff.  These things just add to the hidden clutter in my house and as part of my attempt to donate 365 things in 2012, these are the next to go.

Below are two kitchen cabinet door handles that I bought online in 2007 to inspect and see if I wanted them in our kitchen remodeling project. I opted for other handles (which you can see here, among other photos of our house), and these two pictured have been in a drawer. The round one is supposed to be a lion, but at times it looked like an ape to me, and that wasn’t quite the look I was going for. (For those of you who are leaning toward the new Simian Kitchen trend, you might like the monkey pulls and I certainly don’t judge you.)

I don’t even know if we have the television connected to this remote. Why should it sit in a drawer?

I have rolled up and kept our yearly calendars in an armoire for years. I think there’s a sentimental part of me that didn’t want to throw out anything that said things like, “Kids coming overnight” or “trip up the North Shore,” or “Mr. McBoy’s 5th birthday.” These calendars have been journals of our lives, in a sense. But I’m going to throw away four of them. The oldest one is from the late 1990s. (I know. That’s a little strange. Oh well….I offer no defense.)

That’s my seven items this week. I’m letting them all go.

Have you thrown or donated anything this year yet?

1. Winter is coming
2. Winter is here

We have -13 Fahrenheit, -25 Celsius on our front porch this morning.

God bless and warm your day, dear friends…

Are you thankful you can pee? Because I am, and I’ll tell you why.

Years ago I had to have sudden and unexpected bladder surgery. (Here’s your chance to click over to another blog right now since you have an idea about where this is going.) One week I was on a cruise with my husband in the Western Caribbean, and the next week I was being scheduled for surgery, and feeling stunned.

When the surgeon told me that part of my recovery called for a supra-pubic catheter and explained what that meant, my courage almost failed me. For those of you who are rusty with your Latin, supra means above, and pubic means, well, you don’t have to speak Latin to know what that means. I wasn’t going to have a normal catheter, no. I was going to have a tube surgically inserted through my abdominal wall above the pubic bone, straight into the bladder. Just the thought of it again makes me sort of shudder.

Anyway, when someone punches a hole in your lower abdomen and pokes a stoppered rubber tube the diameter of your little finger through it, puncturing your bladder and securing the tube to the inside of your heretofore faithfully functioning bladder by inflating a tiny balloon there, it’s an event. Take my word for it.

After I dried my tears and went home from the hospital, I had to learn how to pee through the tube. I couldn’t pee the normal way. In a day or two I got the “hang” of it (here’s your second chance to click over to another blog if this is getting to be too much for you) and finally felt I could bear it while my bladder healed. I had never before been able to walk into a bathroom and pee in a sink, but now I could. And did. Do you think I’m going to tell you whose sink I peed in? No, I’m not. You’ll never get it out of me, because then I might have one less friend than I do now. I did clean the sink however, if you were wondering.

After about a week of being able to pee (do the British say “wee”?) like the other sex, I was scheduled to have my supra-pubic catheter removed. I was more than ready, because the puncture wound was painful and I wanted to get back to normal again. The deflation of the balloon inside my bladder took less than a minute, and when the whole contraption was no longer one with my body, I let a few tears of relief run down my cheeks. And I thanked God I had made it through.

But the hard times weren’t quite over. The surgeon warned me that my bladder had most likely become lazy while healing, and that it would take a while for it to relearn how to do its thing the old way. Oh brother, that’s all I need is a lazy bladder, I thought. But I had no idea how true this would be, and how painful.

The first time I had to pee, I did what most females do, and sat down on the toilet. But my bladder had forgotten its function and I couldn’t go. Oh, how it hurt. And I returned to our room and cried a little, and asked Michael to pray for me while I sat on the edge of our bed and got up the courage to try again. You know you’re blessed when your husband closes his eyes, rests his strong hands on your shoulders, and asks out loud for God to help his wife pee, with as much sincerity, faith and fervency as he prays for someone who is dying or who needs to turn their life over to Jesus.

It took several attempts, and it was the most unbearable kind of pain at times. Like nothing I ever want to experience again, and I’ve given birth to three good-sized babies without pain medication. When I finally emptied my bladder for the first time after having that dreaded SP catheter removed, I cried in relief and praised the Lord. Out loud. While I was peeing. “Thank you Jesus! Thank you for helping me! Praise you Lord….” and so on. And Michael could hear me peeing and praising and he stood outside the door and did the same. (The praising part, not the peeing part. I would have had a fit if he had stood outside the bathroom door peeing on the floor and praising God, and then the holy moment would have been ruined.)

Right then, sitting on the toilet, I made a promise to God. I promised Him I would never, ever take the simple act of emptying my bladder for granted again. And while I don’t remember to praise the Lord every time I pee, I do thank Him wholeheartedly now and again while I’m sitting there. I will never forget how something I rarely thought of and took completely for granted went haywire, and taught me about how blessed I am in so many ways.

My eyes can blink today. Can yours?  We can thank Him for that, no matter what else is going on in our lives. My voice works — I am able to tell someone I love them. Can you? What a gift! My fingers can move — I can type this blog post to tell you I think you should give thanks to God the next time you pee.

I would never try to boss you around (although I’ve been accused of being bossy more than once in my life), but today I just want to be bold, and tell you that if you haven’t thanked God for the privilege of peeing without help, peeing without pain, I think you should do that right now.

Peeing and praising. It’s a good place to start.

Psalm 121:1-2

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