THURSDAY THOUGHTS: Locked Out

I
had coffee with friend and fellow blogger, Wendy, last Saturday morning.  Here is a link to her blog http://partofmystory.blogspot.com.
 I mentioned since I started blogging
again, after a rather lengthy absence, the few posts I’ve done have been
serious and I missed the funny me.  Cuz I
am a funny one.  And when I say funny I
don’t mean funny Ha Ha, but funny in that I do and say stupid things.  Like this episode a while back with my
equally funny sister, Chrystal.

 
During
my basement dweller days Chrystal and I would occasionally go grocery shopping
together.  (She lived upstairs in the
main part of the house and I, and my two cats, lived in the cute little basement.  Cute, if you could overlook the
spiders.)  We came home from one such
shopping trip to find I was locked out of my apartment. 

“No
problem, just go through my house, through the garage and laundry room and use
the connecting door,” Chrystal suggested.

“Ok.”  As I said that I was trying to remember if I
had left that door unlocked or not.  I
usually locked it even though she was the only one with access, because I’m a
fraidy cat.  What if the bad guys come
through her house, rob and kill her, and then decide to check out the basement
dweller!

Sure
enough, it was locked.

“I’ll
get a screw driver and hammer and take it off the hinges,” said one of us.  I think it was me because I remember being
the one to actually UNSUCCESSFULLY take it off the hinges. 

“Well
since that didn’t work just use the hammer to break the lock.”  I distinctly remember it being Chrystal who
came up with that idea.

After
about 20 minutes of the two of us taking turns trying to break the stupid lock,
which of course wouldn’t break because it was doing its job, we gave up.

“This
door is not the sturdiest of doors.  What
if we use the hammer to chop a hole right next to the door knob, and then reach
in and unlock the door.”  Again, I credit
Chrystal with suggesting another brilliant plan.

So
chop we did.  And we chopped some
more.  We got a lot of aggression out on
that stinking door!

 
“Wow,
these doors are sturdier than they appear,” I said after another 10 minutes. 

Another
few minutes of chopping and we had a hole big enough to reach through only to
find out that, in our earlier attempt to break it, we had damaged the lock
beyond use.  So locked it stayed.

We
stood there for a few minutes staring at all the wood chips on the floor with nothing
to show for it.  It was then that
Chrystal decided to give it a shot with the hammer and screw driver to take the
door off the hinges. 

It
came right off. 

What?!?!?  What had I done wrong?  I have taken doors off hinges many times to
move large furniture in or out or to paint or something.  What?!?!?

We
discussed if for a bit and decided it was because we were tired.  And maybe also needed some therapy time to
hit, punch, yell, and destroy an inanimate object.  Poor little door.

Since
we rented the house from our church we thought the most Christian thing to do
would be to hide it and get someone else to come put in a new door before the
elder in charge found out.  Which is what
we did.  Unfortunately the elder in
charge was mowing our backyard when the chopped up door passed by.  He laughed, shook his head and said he didn’t
dare ask what happened.

So
that is how my single sister and I solved the problem of being locked out.  Would a husband have gotten it off the hinges
on the first try?  Or would he have not forgotten
his key in the first place.  Either way I
think our plan worked out just fine.  I
got in didn’t I?

Question:  Ever been locked out?  Have better luck in getting in than we did? 

TUESDAY TUNES: Help Me Find It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjZ94K7UQs

This was
my theme song for last summer…

I
became unemployed and homeless all in one weekend in the spring of
2013.  So in June I found myself on a
plane headed for Tennessee to spend the summer with some good friends working
as their nanny.  I also needed to clear
my head and figure out what was next.

 As I
drove around beautiful Franklin, Tennessee with its green cotton-ball trees,
Sidewalk Prophets’ song “Help Me Find It” always seemed to be on the radio
every time I needed it to be. 

It was
my story…

“I don’t know where to go from
here, it all used to seem so clear.”

”If there’s a road I should walk,
help me find it.”

 And the comfort of…

“For every
step, I’ve never been alone.”
 
“Even when it hurts You’ll have Your way, even in the valley I will say, with
every breath You’ve never let me go.”

 If I
was alone in the car I would sing it at the top of my lungs! But one evening
the song came on while I was driving the girls to dance, or to eat, or to a
friend’s house or to something.  I said,
“Oh, I LOVE this song.  It’s my theme
song.”  They asked me why, so I started
singing along with the words like I was telling them my story.  When it got to the words “You’ve never failed
before” I had to turn my head and fight back tears, because He never has.

 Right
before that phrase are the words, “I will wait for You.”  That’s the hard part!!  But I’m learning to “Be Still and Know
(remember) that He is God.”  These are not
new concepts for me.  It’s just when you
find yourself in a difficult situation you learn them all over again.

 Ten
months later I’m still a bit in limbo. 
But, He’s never failed before! 
That’s all I need to know.  So
even though I don’t know where to go from here, I
will wait for Him.  And He won’t fail me
this time either!

Rose Bowl Monday

I start out watching today’s Rose Bowl game with my dad at his house. I’ve been watching football games with him for as long as I can remember. Wisconsin and Oregon both score on their first possession; gonna be a good game. Midway through the second quarter Daddy starts feeling badly so he heads back to bed and I head back home.

I’m one-half block from my house and can’t figure out why the car in front of me is stopped. Has there been an accident? Is someone crossing the street? No, it’s a tree. A big, beautiful Oregon Fir tree sprawled across the busy four lane street. Surrounded by this sight, I feel like I’m in the woods and a wee bit confused. Once I realize what has actually happened I detour around the block and pull into my driveway where I find my sister, Chrystal, on the porch cleaning her windows. I tell her about the tree and she goes into full on Diane Sawyer mode for the duration of the “tree event.”

During my journey home both teams seemed to have scored again. Go Ducks!

The tree has fallen on power lines which leaves some folks without the ability to watch the game. I decide to watch the rest of the game next door with a bunch of dudes.

At some point I look out the window and see Chrystal on the street chatting it up with police officers and neighbors. She texts and calls in periodically with breaking news about the status of the tree. Soon after halftime is over she reports that the fire department has arrived and chain saws have begun clearing the area of the tree. Both teams score again.

Good news, at approximately 5:14 p.m., sometime during the third quarter, traffic on the busy street resumes and life for Chrystal goes back to normal.

Towards the end, the Quarterbacks trade interceptions and the Ducks pull ahead for the rest of the game. Yea Ducks!

So now the Oregon Ducks have won their first Rose Bowl since 1917, the very year my dad was born, who, by the way, was kept up to date on the game by my mother. Maybe that’s where Chrystal gets it.

Question:  Did you watch the game?

Christmas Gifts

I think I ate a year’s supply of chocolate over the last two weeks. Have I mentioned I love chocolate? I must have because I received lots of it as gifts. I ate every last bit as well as all the fudge and other luscious nummy-ness at parties and on the counters at school and church. I will have to work doubly hard in the new year to work it all off (she says laughingly as another Hershey kiss is plopped in her mouth).

Chocolate is always a good gift for me no matter what the occasion. But one of my favorite gifts this Christmas was from the hugs of former students as they visited church over the holidays. Some of these kids I only see once or twice a year, so as they arrive home from college with diamond rings on their left hand ring finger I see how quickly time is passing by.

It was also a great gift to watch some of my current Junior High students as they sang in the adult church choir. As one 7th grade girl I’ve known since Kindergarten sang out her solo among all the grownups I got all misty eyed and couldn’t stop smiling.

Spending Christmas morning with my 17 year-old niece was another great gift. Watching her open her stocking, I pictured her as a little girl again with curly locks instead of the hair she works so hard now to straighten.

But, I have to say my most favorite of all, first place winning Christmas gift this year was the fact that my church partnered with a Presbyterian Church for a Christmas program mid-month and shared Christmas morning service with a Baptist congregation. Yowsa! Imagine that, different churches with differing theologies getting together to celebrate Jesus. Whee!!  Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” Amen and Hallelujah!

Question: What were some of your favorite gifts this Christmas?

Happy Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. Or to be more exact, today was Thanksgiving. I was in charge of all things potato: mashed and sweet. And when I say sweet, I mean sweet. Every ingredient I put in nullified any nutritional value in the sweet potato. I was going to go the healthy route but my niece requested my casserole with the mashed up sweet potatoes mixed with sugar, brown sugar, butter and other fattening things with a mixture of brown sugar and walnut yumminess on top.

I began the day with brunch at my place with a few friends. Stuffed Baked French Toast topped the menu. It was a fun way to begin the day. When I got home from dinner with my family this evening I felt like I had either been cooking, eating or washing dishes all day. But that’s okay. I enjoyed every minute.

My oldest sister Robin, the family historian, likes to make cards and scrapbook. She greeted everyone with a nice Thanksgiving card and poem. My other sister, Chrystal, you know the one who left me stranded with pancreatitis :), likes to play games. She had everyone write down a few things they were thankful for and then we had to guess who wrote them.

Most of the thankful notes mentioned family and friends. One said chocolate. And no, that one wasn’t me. I said I was thankful for my family, friends, that I had a job and a place to live.

This has been a very difficult past six months for me, but I am not complaining. God is good and I am grateful. Very grateful. Forever grateful.

Hope you had a wonderfully thankful Thanksgiving.

Question: How did you spend your Thanksgiving?