Ginny
September 27, 2008 | My Joys
If you don’t know Ginny, you are really missing out. She and I have been friends for about eleven years now, but it seems like we’ve known each other since first grade. Sometimes it feels like we were twins separated at birth and then returned to each other’s lives as middle-aged women.
She’s the first to admit that she’s a sanguine party animal by nature, and I believe everyone always has a great time with Ginny. But she’s also quick to remind her friends that “this ain’t the party”, helping us to look past our current hard times and to never forget that untold joys await on the other side. 
Ginny is one of the first people I go to if I need prayer. I always know Ginny will pray. And keep praying. I cherish this about her.
If you meet Ginny and become even slightly acquainted with her, she will very quickly christen you with a nickname. Sometimes the nicknames make sense: she calls my husband Michael “Mickey”, and she calls me “Jewel”. I like that. She calls my youngest daughter Sara “Bubba”. Now Sara no more looks like a Bubba than Queen Elizabeth does, but because Ginny says it with such fondness, somehow it just seems right.
Ginny’s passion, I think, lies in the word connection. She’s someone who has a passion to see people connect with each other and with God – she wants people to feel welcomed, included and loved right away, and no one else makes that happen quite like Virginia Kay. She would eradicate loneliness from the face of the earth today if she had the power to do so, and sometimes I think she just might.
She likes to connect with her friends on a deep, sharing level. She cares, she calls, she listens, she laughs, she prays out loud for me and makes me feel loved. She knows how to put people in touch with whatever it is they need, whether it’s a wallpaper hanger, a restaurant, a blazer that’s 32 inches long, or Almighty God Himself.
She has nurtured women young and old in the faith for years. She says she can’t bake and can barely cook, yet each time she invites me for a meal I end up salivating all over the table and begging for the recipe. She loves the “type and shadow” found in the Bible and her huge eyes fill with tears when she learns a new truth. Ginny and I were in a book club together for ten years. We go to the same church. We have husbands with similar interests, primarily food and guns fishing and travel. We love attending Community Bible Study together. And we are very partial to our Danskos.
Ginny has never chosen to have children of her own. I once asked her why and she cracked me up by responding, “I didn’t have kids because I didn’t want to wreck anyone – I was pretty sure mine would end up being the ones who sit on the tops of buildings with rifles in their hands.” Yet she is the most maternal, wise, insightful, nurturing woman you could meet. I recently heard this phrase and it so applies to Ginny: that girl could mother a fencepost.
For my last birthday she took the time to write out fifty of our memories, on fifty small strips of paper. I cried fifty tears and thanked God fifty times for a “jewel” of a friend like her.
Meet Ginny. If you don’t know her yet, you should. Your nickname awaits you.
Twenty-four years
September 26, 2008 | My Jottings
The house I have lived in longer than any other house will go on the market tomorrow. We moved out of it in March of this year and have been slowly getting it ready to sell for a while. It needed some paint touch-ups and Michael decided to sheet rock closets and paint the basement walls and floor too. Now in the current economic crisis, it seems like it will take a miracle to sell our beloved old house.
My mom was a compulsive mover, and I am not. I am a compulsive stayer. My mom lived in thirty-seven homes in her lifetime, always looking for a place that would make her happy. I, on the other hand, always feel that change will ruin things, and that if I could only stay put I would be content. Nevertheless we finally moved to a different house three miles away, and each day the new place is beginning to feel a little more like home.
I lived in my first house from birth to age three. The next one was from my third until my fifteenth year. Then my mom and I lived six months in an apartment. Then one year in a house. Then one year in another house, when my Grandma moved in with us. Then one year in another house, after Grandma decided to move back to Kansas City. Then at age eighteen I got married and lived for six months in a three room trailer on the banks of Yuba River in Smartville, CA. Then we lived for two years in base housing at Beale AFB, then on to Germany we went, where we lived almost two years in two houses. At age twenty-two I found myself divorced, and my two little girls and I returned to Southern California where we lived in three places in two years. When I was nearly twenty-four years old I married Michael, a native Minnesotan, and moved to American Siberia. Our first house was a cute rental and we were there three years. Then we bought our own home in a quiet neighborhood not far from Lake Superior – a dumpy Victorian, built in 1895, with good bones and lots of potential, and we stayed for just under twenty-four years. I lived in that old house from age twenty-seven until I was fifty years old.
I cried on the day we moved in to that place because it needed so much work and I had no vision. “I can make this a nice home”, Michael assured me. “Tell me what you don’t like and I’ll change it.” And over the course of that twenty-four years, my talented and hard-working husband tore down every bit of old plaster and lathe, and sheet rocked and taped every wall and ceiling. He tore down walls, made two smaller rooms into a huge kitchen. He replaced all windows but one. He put a two bedroom addition on the house. He built a half bath on the main floor. He enlarged the full bath on the second floor. He roofed the house, he sided it. He installed soffit and fascia. He put up crown moulding. He jacked up the two-car garage and tore out the old slab, pouring a new slab and extending the garage to hold four cars (or actually, two cars and all his boy-toys and other stuff). He built two decks. He did so much more than I am listing here. He transformed that raggedy old first house into a place I truly loved, a place where we raised daughters, had our first, second, third and fourth dogs, held Bible studies and welcomed friends for dinner, laughed and cried and rested and home schooled and dreamed and prayed and hoped and lived.
And now the for sale sign will go up in the front yard tomorrow. Today I spent a few hours at the old house getting it in ready-to-show condition, doing the final paint touch ups, cleaning the bathrooms and scrubbing the floors, snipping off the stalks of the old hosta blooms in the yard, and carting out the final few odds and ends still there. It felt like such a momentous closure to lock the door and drive away.
The twenty-four years we spent in that charming house with the round window on the third story, were years that shaped my life in ways I’ll never forget. Thank you, Lord, for all that you blessed us with there, all you helped us with. Thank you for giving us a home.
The Key to Something
September 24, 2008 | My Jottings
I just read a book I loved called Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller. It’s a series of topical essays by a very funny, candid Christian man whose political beliefs are not my own, but that doesn’t matter to me. I laughed out loud and cried a lot while reading this book, and one section moved me so profoundly I knew I wanted to share about it. I was going to actually quote one paragraph from the book, and naturally give credit to Donald Miller, but when I emailed Thomas Nelson Publishers just to make sure I was doing it right, they promptly wrote back and said I couldn’t quote the paragraph at all. Even though it would have been a glowing blog post, I can’t quote it word for word. So that means I have to convey what the paragraph in the book said, using my own words to retell it, and, loquacious person that I am, it might not be as concise. But it’s worth the telling, I think.
Apparently a friend of Donald Miller’s, a man named Alan, decided to go around the country and interview the heads of big ministries, to find out why they were doing what they were doing, and what made their ministries so successful. This didn’t sound very interesting to the author of Blue Like Jazz until his friend started talking about the part where he sat down with Dr. Bill Bright, former head of Campus Crusade for Christ. Alan said that Dr. Bright met with him to answer questions, and always looked him in the eye when he responded. At the end of the interview, Alan concluded by asking him, “What does Jesus mean to you?” And he said that this large, powerful man who sat behind a large desk as the founding president of a huge and effective ministry, couldn’t answer. Dr. Bright’s eyes filled up with tears and he began to cry.
Donald Miller was deeply moved that someone would love Jesus so much, that just to hear the mention of His name would make him weep. He wondered if Dr. Bright was either a fruit nut or someone who knew Jesus so well that it was all he could do to keep it together when he thought of what Christ meant to him.
Donald Miller wrote that he would like to love Jesus like that too. He mused that knowing Jesus so intimately and loving Him so utterly might just be the key to something.
I can’t get this out of my mind.
Carey
September 23, 2008 | My Joys
This is my dear friend Carey. She and I met about 24 years ago at a young couples’ small group gathering through our church. We were in our twenties then and still pretty naive about so many things. Now we are middle-aged and hopefully a little wiser. We giggle about how in another 24 years we’ll be clacking our dentures and cackling together on the phone like we always have. Cackling and clacking. We won’t look as cute if we cackle and clack, but the love will still be there.
Carey and I have seen each other through a lot in life. Or you might say that we have clung to our friendship while we’ve waited and watched for Jesus to see us through. We have cried to each other too many times to count, carried one another’s burdens as the scriptures encourage sisters in the Lord to do, and laughed and lunched and longed for higher things together.
My husband and I were eating dinner with family the night we got the horrible call that Carey’s husband Gary had died suddenly at age 26. I spoke at Gary’s funeral and wondered how God would show Himself to a young widow who had experienced less than two years of marriage. Then God brought new love to her life, and I rejoiced when she and David were married. I also remember the phone ringing in the night and Carey’s soft voice saying, “We have a girl!” Now that little babe is doing wonderfully in college. I will never forget the night their third child was born. I went down to the hospital to be with their two sleeping young daughters, while she and David waited to welcome their son. I couldn’t help bursting into tears when I heard his healthy cry, and when I drove home I pondered: death, life, tears and tragedy, health and happiness. I’m so glad God gives us friendships to help us hurt and to help us celebrate. Carey has certainly done this in my life.
Carey isn’t just a loyal friend. She is a real-life version of Wonder Woman, if you ask me. There are so many things she does well it’s astounding. She can cook and bake delectable meals and treats, and the desserts she makes look like they’re off the cover of Bon Appetit. She can expertly fish for walleye, bring down a deer with an accurate shot, then gut it with a knife. She can butcher the deer and then make her own sausage from the meat. She can properly tear apart an outdated room in an old house all by herself. She can install ceramic tile. Carey can sew beautifully, and used to have a business doing just that. Then she started making the most unique and gorgeous dried florals, and couldn’t keep up with the demand. Today she makes jewelry and when she eventually has the website I think she needs, I’ll update this post and you can see her gorgeous creations. She can read a how-to manual on just about anything and then do the job well. She handily changed a flat tire for me once. She has sewn incredible Halloween costumes. She sacrificially and cheerfully did all the flowers for the wedding of one of our daughters. She can pour concrete and she can create a breathtaking English flower garden. She can canoe, portage and set up camp in the Boundary Waters and she can put on a fabulous English tea. But even though she’s strong and can meet a physical challenge, she’s very feminine, tender, beautiful and kind.
Carey is smart, too. Really smart. She has two college degrees and could probably get a third while building a garage, altering a wardrobe and feeding the multitudes. But she wouldn’t like me telling you that, because she’s humble. She has a quiet servant’s heart that always wants to make people feel cared for, listened to, and helped in a practical way. Not too long ago she came to my house and helped me put a bed together, move some furniture around, prime the kitchen walls, and fold some clothes. She made me feel like this was no big deal to her, yet it meant so much to me.
We were in a book club together for a decade. We have read and discussed and recommended books to each other time and again. I can imagine we’ll be talking books while we’re clacking and cackling. We’ve even talked about visiting some of the places we’ve read about. Our most recent travel dream is the island of Guernsey in the English Channel. Up until now the farthest we’ve gone together is Minneapolis, but we had so much fun on that trip I think we could handle Guernsey someday.
One special memory is when we met for a movie one evening – a film about chocolate. Or maybe it was just a movie about life, with lots of chocolate thrown in, which isn’t that far from the truth of our own lives, actually. Carey and I couldn’t simply sit there and enjoy the movie together. We hunkered down in the theater seats and ate huge, freshly baked and still warm, gooey, appropriately chocolate cookies as we watched, and washed them down with jars of cold, smuggled-in milk.
We know what brings joy to each others’ hearts. We well understand what brings pain and fear. But we also know how to point each other back to the Lord, and that is what I cherish about our friendship.
Carey and I have been in many Bible studies together, marking each summer with a different Beth Moore study, and each fall, winter and spring we attend Community Bible Study. We have learned so much about God and His goodness together, talking things out and praying for each other. I think that’s the main thing that comes to mind as I think over the years we’ve been friends – God has grown us up together, in Him. He has instructed us about life and eternity, and about His inscrutable ways; He has shown us what we can live through as we walk with Him, and in His kindness He has given us our friendship, which is truly rooted in Christ.
After all these years she still warmly says to me, “Julie, it’s so good to hear your voice.” I feel the same way about her.
I want you to get to know Carey. It’s so good to have her as a friend.
The Full English
September 20, 2008 | My Jottings
This is a typical breakfast at any inn or bed and breakfast in Great Britain. We ate approximately 10 of these when Michael and I traveled to Ireland, Scotland and England in January of 2007. There is bacon, ham with thick white fat around the edges, a very moist mound of unsalted scrambled eggs, a grilled toe-mah-toe, a deep-fried triangle of bread, a giant sausage, and the black blob in the middle of the plate is Yorkshire pudding. Missing from this particular meal at The Nag’s Head Inn in Pickhill, Yorkshire, England, were the grilled mushrooms and the bland beans that were served with breakfast everywhere else we stayed. Toast is always served cold in little racks (see top of photo), and there was usually yogurt, fruit and occasionally cereal if we wanted (we didn’t). Don’t forget the porridge (oatmeal in the little covered white bowls), the ubiquitous Typhoo tea, orange juice and coffee. We drove a leisurely 1004 miles in 10 days in a rented Vauxhall Vectra and had some memorable adventures. But because we were almost daily served a Full English breakfast, we were never hungry enough to stop for lunch.
He doesn’t say so, but I think Michael would like me to make him a Full English breakfast every morning (without the tomato). I’m not planning to do this anytime soon, because I love him and would like him around for as long as possible.
Eternity in our hearts
September 13, 2008 | My Jottings
I remember getting up to go to the bathroom right before dawn about a year ago. The reason I remember this particular morning is because as I was sitting there in the dark, looking out of the bathroom window toward the eastern sky, I saw a very bright light. Everything is a blur without my glasses, so I thought it was a large plane, close to flying over my house on its way to the airport. I waited for the plane to come closer so I could hear it go by, but it stayed put and I never heard a sound. The light was huge and low in the sky, so I retrieved my glasses and went again to the bathroom window, where I could then clearly see that it was a star or a planet like I’d never observed before. I went downstairs to look up online what I was seeing, and learned it was the planet Venus, at least 26 million miles from us. Standing there at five in the morning and gazing at this heavenly sphere, my thoughts turned to God. And I felt something I’ve been experiencing more often as I get older: a longing, a difficult-to-describe yearning, an intangible ache that comes in an instant, like a stab, and then it’s gone.
There are other things that have brought on this longing, and I wonder if any of you will relate.
Certain music, with haunting melodies, brings a subtle yearning. Wind chimes barely touching in the breeze. The way some authors can put words together has made me feel that pang. Brilliant autumn leaves. God’s Word, prayerfully and humbly read. Looking at the night sky and meditating on its vastness, and knowing God is so much bigger.
My grandchildren often evoke an indescribable sweet ache in my heart. It feels like wonderful joy, and it feels like pain.
When my husband and I visited Scotland a while back, the ancient heather hills and the lonely sound of bagpipes seemed to call to something deep inside me; I wanted to fall to my knees and weep, but I didn’t know why.
One characteristic about the fleeting sense of these longings, is that you can’t duplicate them if you try. Maybe tomorrow the same drive up the shore of Lake Superior or the same view of Venus won’t bring that same feeling back.
Have you ever longed for something, for someone at times, and you can’t quite put your finger on what you’re yearning for, and then it’s gone? Do you sometimes grow restless even when everything is going well? Do you ever get the sense that something you’re hearing, something you’re observing, has a meaning much bigger than the moment, but you can’t say exactly what it is? You’re not alone. And if you’re a Christian – if you have surrendered your life to Jesus – I believe that ache, that longing, has been put there by God. It’s a reminder from Him to us, that this earthly life isn’t all there is.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
My Bible notes on this say “this verse means we can never be completely satisfied with earthly pleasures or pursuits”.
He has set eternity in our hearts. There’s something always there, something that feels like we’re being strummed by a huge, unseen hand, some sort of chord that’s being struck in our souls. Like a distant bell is being sounded, and a tiny bell in our own soul answers. At times it’s a thrill, and often it’s a little painful.
Sometimes it’s the passage of time that makes us aware of this pang. We run into an old acquaintance after ten years and are shocked that her children are ten years older and that her hair has begun to turn grey. How did this happen? Why are we surprised at time and why do we feel that longing as the years go quickly by? Could it be because we are eternal beings temporarily confined by time?
C.S. Lewis describes this phenomenon in one of my favorite quotes:
“If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (‘How time flies! Fancy John being grown up and married! I can hardly believe it!’) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something about us that is not temporal.”
I’m convinced that some people feel this longing deeply, but try to quiet it or squash it because it can be uncomfortable. I think I’ve tried to silence this vague yearning or to fill it in ways that have not served me well. Some might choose alcohol or busyness or spending money or control to silence this longing we all feel. Or we might pressure our friends or spouses to fill that yearning in us, which of course is futile, because a human or a substance or an activity can’t ease a yearning that God has put in us to remind us that we’re pilgrims here, only passing through.
Psalm 63:1: O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
I think our whole beings long for what only He can give us. Even when God has lavished us with kindness and blessings untold, deep inside we know there’s more. And we long for it. Even those who haven’t acknowledged God, have felt this yearning and can’t identify what, exactly, they’re aching for.
My husband and I bought a new house recently, and I have endeavored to pick just the right paint colors for the kitchen, three of the bathrooms, five of the bedrooms, the living room, the garage door, the laundry area, the office and even the outside shutters. Many times I spread out the entire fan of several hundreds of paint chip colors and still thought to myself, “This can’t be all the colors there are – there have to be more colors than this! I just can’t find the colors I want.” And then this verse from 1 Corinthians 2:9 came to mind:
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
I believe there are colors in heaven that we don’t have here – colors no eye has yet seen. I think there will be musical notes and sounds in heaven that we don’t have here – songs no ear has yet heard.
And once in a while, God seems to part a veil to give us a momentary glimpse of those beauties and joys that await. And then in a flash it’s gone. And we feel that longing, that yearning, that deep ache.
He’s a loving and generous God, and when we consider His creation and His Son, we can know this about Him: He loves beauty, and He is generous and patient and merciful. But in His wisdom, I don’t believe He allows us to be completely satisfied here on earth. He gives us just enough of what we need to learn to love Him and depend on Him while we’re here, but He often gives us those transient glimpses of eternity to help us to set our hearts on minds on Him, not on the things of this earth.
While He’s pouring out His abundance and help and correction and grace and instruction on us here, He frequently reminds us of what is yet to come. While we can have His peace through Jesus now, deeper peace is coming, and while we can know His joy today, more joy is around that eternal corner. We live in mere shadows of what will someday be true and glorious substance.
So even though I still sometimes sob when that veil is pulled back and I sense that horribly wonderful and ephemeral ache, I’m beginning to rest more in what I believe it is. I will never be truly at home here. My Lord is good to remind me of that. He helps me to live in this very beautiful and painful place, and lifts my chin now and then and whispers to me of the Place where all boredom, confusion and pain will forever cease, and my longings and yearnings will be completely fulfilled.
RX
September 12, 2008 | My Jottings
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Psalm 42:11 (NIV)
Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?
Why are you crying the blues?
Fix my eyes on God—
soon I’ll be praising again.
He puts a smile on my face.
He’s my God.
Psalm 42:11 (The Message)
Let him eat cake!
September 10, 2008 | My Jottings
Today my friend Carey took me out to lunch. And gave me some beautiful, elegant earrings that she made herself. And gave me a book she loved, which means I will love it. And a card that made me laugh, which assured me that if Carey ever got caught at the dry cleaners wearing a giant chicken costume and had to run into someone she knew there, she would want it to be me. That’s how close she feels to me. And since one of Carey’s many gifts is baking, she brought me an entire Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cake with a ganache frosting. With fresh raspberries on top, and mint leaves picked from her own garden.
When I brought home my whole Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cake with a ganache frosting and raspberries and mint leaves, my husband Michael took one look and started salivating. So I decided to let him have the first piece. I sliced it for him and watched him enjoy it with a glass of cold milk and half closed eyes.
After dinner we each had a piece, and there were moans all around.
Clear and bright…
September 7, 2008 | My Joys
If ever a child has grown into the meaning of her name, it’s Clara.
All the baby name books say that Clara means “clear and bright”, and here are some of the definitions of those words from Merriam-Webster: Clear: luminous, cloudless, serene, transparent, unmistakable, keen, innocent, pure. Bright: shining, sunny, lively, cheerful, intelligent, promising.
She is my oldest grandchild, firstborn of our daughter Carolyn and her husband Jeremy. Clara is six years old and is in the first grade. She loves to read (“Grandma, I guess you could say I’m a bookworm!”) and she’s very content to spend hours drawing, creating and imagining. While she was at our house yesterday, she read Charlotte’s Web, made an 18-inch tall weather vane out of felt, construction paper, tape and pipe cleaner (making sure I knew which were the North/South/West/East arrows), built a small room out of Legos with an “emergency exit window”, demonstrated the difference between the calls of the chickadees and nuthatches at our deck feeder, and told me she loved me about seven times.
One of the things I love most about Clara is her very real devotion for her three younger siblings. She and her brother Elijah are sixteen months apart and are true friends. There is a deep bond between them and it’s beautiful to see. She thinks the antics of her little sister Vivienne are adorable and says, “Grandma, isn’t Vivie so sweet?” And Clara is genuinely delighted when baby Audrey smiles or accomplishes something for the first time (“Grandma, Audrey can crawl and sit up now!”).
I grew up loving books, and remember the first time that excitement for reading began in me: in the second grade at Workman Avenue Elementary School in West Covina, when my teacher Mrs. Lokken read aloud the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books to our class. We would sit resting with our heads down on our desks after a hard-playing recess in furnace-like Southern California weather. I remember thinking that I was going to read those books to my children when I became a mother someday. And I did. What never entered my seven year-old mind was that I might eventually be a grandmother as well, and perhaps I would read them to my grandchildren.
So when the children’s play “The Magic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle” came to The Children’s Theater in Minneapolis earlier this year, we began a tradition that I hope to continue for many years: a Grandma Date. Clara and I drove to the Twin Cities and saw the wonderful production, stayed at a nice hotel, ate at restaurants, and made some memories. Elijah knows that next year when he is six, he and I will do the same together.
Clara is tall and long-legged, has golden hair and skin, and expressive blue eyes. She can be shy around new people, but her conversation with those she’s comfortable with is constant, full of hypothesizing and frequent words of love. She is obedient to her parents, helpful and peaceful. She’s an amazing example for her younger brother and sisters.
Clara loves to watch reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show on Saturday nights. When she happens to be spending the night at Grandpa and Grandma’s on a Saturday, she’ll often look at me with wide eyes and say, “Grandma! Remember what’s on TV tonight!” And when I say, “Lawrence Welk?”, she smiles and nods emphatically, knowing in a little while we’ll be watching together, swaying to Guy and Ralna or Bobby and Cissy doing their thing.
She likes to hear about life “back in the old days” when I was a child, or about poignant memories I have of her when she was younger. Recently she asked me to tell her some things I remembered about her when she was a baby. One vivid memory came to mind. I told her that when she was about a year old, we had a high chair in our kitchen that we used just for her visits. I told her how she would sit in this high chair and tentatively try some of the new finger foods her mama gave her. Even at a year old, Clara was watchful and quiet, and as I moved around the kitchen her eyes followed me, and when I spoke to her in Grandma-like coos and smiled at her, she grinned back hugely, breaking my heart into pieces. I told Clara that as long as I was in the room, she was content. But if I left the kitchen and moved out of her eyesight, she would burst into tears. After hearing all of this, six-year old Clara looked into my eyes and placed her hand on mine and said, “Grandma, it’s still pretty much like that now.”
There are days now when life seems a little overwhelming to me. Years ago I couldn’t have looked in my mind to the horizon of our future and seen there the things that make up our life now. We have things I never thought we’d have, and are missing things I never thought would be lost. Sometimes it feels like we are muddling around in the dark, trying hard to hold on to our Savior’s hand. Theologically, I know that He is holding us in His hands, but I forget that much too often. How thankful I am for our grandchildren and the riches and perspective they bring to our lives. They cause us to lift our chins, roll up our sleeves and set our hearts and minds on what’s truly important. They help us to pray and to dream and to hope.
My oldest grandchild Clara brings me joy. She is just plain good company. Her very presence can make things seem clearer and brighter, although at age six she has no idea that she exemplifies the meaning of her name. It is my prayer that as she grows, she will learn to walk closely with the Lord and that she will look to Jesus as the Protector of her heart.
I’m so proud and thankful to share about my granddaughter Clara. I love her so.
Lana
September 5, 2008 | My Joys
You see her enter a massive room full of dozens of tables and hundreds of chairs, and you are immediately struck by her gorgeous auburn hair, cut very stylishly. Next you notice how perfectly dressed she is, and you realize she knows what colors a redhead looks good in. You watch as she (and possibly an assistant or two) methodically but creatively transform the plain room into an enchanting place that will hold a wedding reception that fulfills a young bride’s dreams. You note how efficient and particular this beautiful woman is as she expertly drapes each seat with a shimmery white fabric chair cover that she designed and made herself, and ties it off with a fancy, elegant bow for a final flourish. A once nondescript room is now something that would evoke “ooohs” or “aaahs” from anyone entering, and would quickly draw them in.
I want you to meet Lana. Really, what Lana does with her started-from-scratch chair cover business is very similar to what she does in her life. She does it with her family, her home, and her friends. This creative and generous woman can take the ordinary, and quite simply, make it better. She brings a sense of refreshment with her wherever she goes.
A little over two years ago, Lana introduced herself to me at our Tuesday Community Bible Study and lovingly told me she would pray for my husband, who had been recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Last year she became a core leader at CBS and our friendship really took off. Lana is one of those rare women who is immediately so easy to be with, to converse with, to get to know, that she has made me feel like we’ve been friends for decades instead of a relatively short couple of years. Everyone who calls Lana friend knows her attentive, compassionate way of listening. She has a tender heart that translates into everything she does. When I need comfort and a good dose of encouragement, she’s one of the first people I think of.
Lana is a prayerful, devoted wife, and mom to three grown and fabulously talented children, yet she prays for my husband and children. Her faith in Jesus permeates her life in a humble and attractive manner. She’s a great decorator who brings peace and harmony to her home, not only with her creativity, but with her personality. She helped paint my newly remodeled kitchen and offered her service to us many other times. A year ago she heard that we had an undetected leak in a kitchen pipe which ruined floors, and she showed up at our door with a delicious dinner, to lighten my load. She’s just there, with a smile and a prayer and a soft way about her that really does make me feel better.
Lana is a true mixture of elegance and grace. Like the transformation that occurs when she works her magic on ordinary, utilitarian chairs, she probably doesn’t even realize she does the same with the people in her life. She quietly changes any atmosphere into something a little more beautiful, a little softer and more inviting, with her gentle, sincerely compassionate ways.
She is a woman of many friends, yet she takes time to regularly communicate with me. I am thankful for the richness and love Lana has brought into my life. I count her friendship among my most cherished blessings.
Meet Lana.