The Sneak Peek of Heaven

"Stars are the sneak peek of heaven," Michaela said the other night while we were driving home.

"What?" I asked.

"Stars are the sneak peek of heaven," she said matter-of-factly.



As we pulled into our driveway and parked, I quickly got out my daytimer and jotted it down. It was brilliant!



Yes, I have quoted Michaela before. "Winning is fun." Yet this quote was different, somehow. :)



"Stars are the sneak peek of heaven."

Truth is I've felt restless these last few weeks...antsy, bored. I'm guessing it's a cabin fever thing, a tired of winter and longing for spring thing. It's embarrassing to admit. Yet it is my reality. I've been praying these last few weeks, "Lord show me you. Following you is the great adventure...seeing you work, seeing you love, seeing you impact."

So how can I feel bored, antsy and restless? I must be missing something.



"Stars are the sneak peek of heaven."



I smile. A sneak peek of heaven...I envision Christmas cards from when I was a kid. Christmas cards where children stare wide-eyed in disbelief at the array of presents under a glistening tree...the first sneak peek of Christmas.



"Stars are the sneak peek of heaven."



This is the ultimate sneak peek.

Maybe a sneak peek of heaven is just what I need right now!

Bandaids

One of my favorite stories happened to a friend of mine. She has twin boys. They are in kindergarten this year. How precious is that? Anyhow, the one twin had a boo boo. His sweet brother ran to help and reappeared with a maxi-pad while announcing excitedly, "...the world's largest bandaid!"

It still makes me smile, just thinking about it.

Misconceptions...it's happened to me before. I think one thing, my husband thinks another. When he asked me to take Michaela to her soccer game on Wednesday night (and we both had meetings) I thought I was taking her and he was picking her up. He thought I was taking her and picking her up. Uh Oh! Misconception.

When I have repeatedly told my husband we don't do Sunday suppers, rather Sunday night breakfasts or snacks after night church. Then last weekend when we had the single missionary stay with us and I made homemade Monteray Jack Chicken Soup and he looked at me questioningly. "I thought we don't have Sunday night suppers?" he asked. Uh Oh! Misconception.

I told Matt to drink lots of milk since he broke his right foot over Christmas Break. Then when he comes home for his doctor's appointment last week and says the doctor said his foot has a ways to go. I asked, "Are you drinking lots of milk?" He replies, "A glass at each meal." "Three glasses a day" I complain. Uh Oh! Misconception.

When I catch my daughters putting their dirty dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher and I give them the evil eye. They reply, "I don't have the kitchen chores today. I have the bathroom." Uh Oh! Misconception. (Although I know they really do know what they should do.)

Uh Oh's and Misconceptions! I don't like them! I wish I could fix them with my little friend's 'world's largest bandaid.'

I can't!

They will always be there. There will always be conflict! Shoot! For this middle child who hates conflict...Guess what? I hate it! I hate it more than scrubbing the toilet and cleaning up dog vomit put together.

Some misconceptions are real, like my first incident with my hubby. We truly were thinking two different things. Some misconceptions are cover-ups like my daughters and the dishwasher- responses to keep from getting in trouble (and throw Matt and his lack of milk drinking into this category, too.)

I know about cover-ups, too...my responses to keep from getting in trouble. They often come in the form of excuses or blaming somebody else. "Sorry girls, I was late to take you to dance because my meeting went long." (I can't leave when I need to, to take care of my family?) "Sorry honey, I was going to get your laundry done, but I just forgot." (Is forgetting a viable excuse? Or does it show the limited value I place on caring for my family?)

Yuck! What kind of a blog is this? I'm instantly not liking it! I hate misconceptions! I hate even more looking at my cover-up misconceptions! Getting real with myself may be the hardest job I have. It's one I avoid as much as possible.

Can we stop here? Can we go back to the light-hearted 'world's largest bandaid story?'

Unfortunately, once I've exposed my heart and it's weakness, I can't pretend I don't know.

My boo-boo is invisible, yet it's real.

Lord, only you can heal my sinful heart...and that's for sure better than the 'world's largest bandaid.'

The Circus

The girls are at snow camp. All three of them! Woo Hoo! Quiet weekend...time with my man....life is good! After dropping them off at church I returned home. The quiet hush of my house was soon interrupted by a crazy black dog whining and jumping up 5 feet in the air.

O.k., O.k. Bathroom duty time, since those with the real job are gone, I thought, while attaching the leash to his collar. After a short potty break, made shorter because I had no boots (Madison's wearing mine) we came back inside.

His conspicuously empty water and food dish made me growl. Do those girls remember to feed the dog. I went into the garage to get his food. As I scooped it up I smiled.

The dogfood scooper is a chunky plastic cup, which looks like an elephant and is labeled "Romeo."

As I went back inside and plopped Hercule's food in his dish, I was beaming. Matt was only 3 or 4 when we had taken him to the circus in Cleveland. He, of course, needed a snack at intermission. He and his dad left and returned with a red snowcone in the Romeo cup.

How had that cup survived the moves, garage sales and radical clutter-eliminating treatments given by my husband? I shook my head in amazement. I must have tucked that away in some unseen nook or cranny or it never would have survived our household for all these years.

No, we must've lost it.

Yet, here it was. Today...the day of anticipation, because the house was quiet. Maybe we should surprise Matt and visit him at college, I thought excitedly. Then remembered, No, no...this was our quiet day. Our Day! :)

I scooped out the second Romeo cup of food. Memories of the circus made me smile again. I remember asking Matt as we were putting our coats on and getting ready to join the mass exodus of people leaving the Gund Arena, "What was your favorite part?"

Without hesitating, he smiled and said, "the clowns."

The clowns? Anyone could be a clown. What about the trapeze artists, the lion tamers, and the elephant stunt men? These people had spent hours and years perfecting their craft and skill.

The clowns? Their job was simply to give us something to watch while the rings were being taken apart and reset for the next act. The clowns were a matter of keeping us occupied and laughing while the next significant act came. The clowns did not need skill - just lots of crazy interaction with each other and the audience.

As I gripped Matt's little hand and we stuck close to Daddy, winding our way through the crowd, I kept thinking about the clowns.

As a mom, I am the clown. My job doesn't seem very important. It doesn't take years of skill to be a mom, just a moment of conception.

I often wonder what I'm doing...surely there's something more important and significant than changing poopy diapers and listening to children fight. I often feel like I'm not 'getting anywhere' and neither does the clown who occupies the ring he's assigned to. Yet, the circus could never operate without a clown. The clown captivates the eyes, minds and thoughts of the child while the "big stuff will soon be happening."

Yet to the child...the clown is the big stuff.

4 Little Letters

The other day while cleaning out my hallway closet I found it. Now that I had taken the plunge and thrown out all my brown paper Aldi's bags, I had carefully replaced the stack with 3 simple but overly large fabric bags. There behind the fabric grocery bags was a small paper bag. What's this, I wondered.





Inside were 4 old blocks.




That's right! I had bought these for my friend, Julie. By the time I remembered to give them to her, I couldn't remember what they had spelled. Once again I began turning the blocks over...l, o, e, b? Surely the word must have been love. I carefully looked at each of the 6 sides on each block. No letter v!





Was I thinking I was going to marker in a a little dash here or there to make a letter look like a v? No, no way! For myself...I might have thought that. For Julie, my dear friend, whose blocks I had already decided to keep, no way!

New thought...what if the word wasn't love. What other 4 letter word could it be? Twenty minutes later, I got it!

HOPE


It was better than LOVE. Love is passe, overused, trite. HOPE is soul-ful, heart-pounding, life-inducing.


I grabbed my antique, chunky, perfect letters and placed them on my antique ice chest. Perfect! They looked perfect. It was confirmed. I needed them. (Sorry Julie.)


HOPE...my favorite word for the new year.


Why is it that January 1st should feel any different from December 31st? It's simply a tomorrow tacked on to today, or is it?


The difference is hope. With each new year comes hope. Hope that I'll lose weight, hope that I'll pray more, hope that I'll get my priorities right, hope that I'll make a difference in the lives of others. Hope that God will reach down and use me to be a blessing to those I touch. It will be small, likely unnoticeable. I just need to hope in that quiet trusting kind of way. I need to hope and believe and act upon the truth that all I need to do is stay close to Him and let the amazing smell of His aftershave rub off on me.


I hope I'll choose that...day after day.


It's even better than losing 20 pounds!

Belonging to the Lord...at Christmas?

Christmas shopping...Christmas wrapping...Christmas cards...Christmas family pictures to go in the cards...Christmas family letters to go in the Christmas cards...Christmas cookies...Christmas gift exchanges...Christmas gifts for teachers...Christmas parties...Is anyone else getting buried under Christmas?

The answer? I found it today in Isaiah...an adorable little verse I had never seen before. "...And another will write on his hand, 'Belonging to the Lord.'" (Isa 44:5b)

BINGO! That's it!

I got out a pen and wrote it on my hand. "Belonging to the Lord." I don't belong to the tasks of Christmas. I belong to the Lord. (Let me confess here, I did it for the blog picture...not the wonderful spiritual reason you are thinking.)

All throughout the day it was a great reminder. When I reached for the steering wheel to go last minute shopping 'Belonging to the Lord.' When I reached to switch my laundry from the washer to the dryer and grumbling that this was the last thing I wanted to be doing when I was so behind in Christmas...'Belonging to the Lord.' When I reached to take the Chinese Orange Chicken from the lady at Hyvee, who didn't have noodles left, only fried rice as a side dish and inwardly and outwardly complaining about it (while my girls watched and imitated their mother)...'Belonging to the Lord.' When rushing through the traffic surrounding the mall, like buzzards on a dead carcass, and getting annoyed...'Belonging to the Lord." When the cashier tells me the wrong non-sale price on the North Face sweatshirt...'Belonging to the Lord.'

The sad fact is I rarely live like I 'Belong to the Lord.'

I am driven by tasks...whether Christmas ones, family ones or personal ones. I need a Saviour!

...and that's where the Christ of Christmas comes in.

A Stinky Christmas?

Of all the places to be born...a stable!

I think of visiting my grandma and grandpa in the hills of Pennsylvania. We called that grandpa 'Pappy Harold.' He and my grandma never had much. Their farm somehow had sustained and raised their 13 children.

They had a barn. I think the only time we went in was when they had a pony named Charlie Brown. We'd make our way carefully through the musty smelling barn to see him, a short bedraggled pony with white stringy bangs in his eyes.

Musty dampness wasn't the only thing we'd smell...pungent horse manure, diesel from the farm equipment, the sweat and toil from a farmer throughout the years.

God chose a stable.

Why?

He is a God of the workin' man...a God of the blue-collar worker...a God more interested in reaching into an open, struggling heart than a heart poisoned with self-importance.

My heart. My heart is often stinkin' like Pappy Harold's barn and that stable of long ago.

Doesn't God mind?

Why would the God of the Universe who made the most amazing orange beachball of a sun to rise this morning...choose a stinky stable? Choose a stinky heart?

He goes to the need.

Those with needs will listen. Those with needs will receive. Those with needs will be scoured clean in His presence.

Praise you, Jesus. Only you can clean my stinkin heart. YOU CAME FOR ME! The stable was just the pre-curser for the rest of stink You would experience...only human stink would be far worse than an animals - far more deliberate, calculated and raw.

You came for sinners. I AM SO THANKFUL YOU DID! In your presence I can smell like the freshness of a land bathed in rain.

Guest Blogger Barb Winters: Are You Awake?

My car thermometer read 38 degrees as I pulled into the driveway. Two girls came running out. Neither wore a coat, but what caught my eye was the youngest one's bare feet and runny nose. "Where are your shoes?" I asked. "I couldn't find them," she replied.

Several weeks ago I noticed an empty pew two rows behind me. An older couple, out of town for the weekend, typically sits there with their "kids" - children they pick up from various homes every Sunday morning. I didn't even know their names. But seeing that empty pew triggered a thought. There is no reason for those children to miss church when Mr. & Mrs. Evans are gone. I can pick them up just as easily.

The next Sunday I told Mrs. Evans I would gladly transport her "kids" the next time she was out of town. I didn't wait long. Mrs. Evans approached me a few days later. "My husband and I will be at my daughter's Thanksgiving weekend. Were you serious about getting the kids?" "Definitely," I answered.

That's how I ended up sitting in my van waiting for the girl with no shoes to hop in. She found a seat and I handed her a tissue. By this point my van was full. The three older children I picked up first helped these newer ones get buckled as we got acquainted. I learned the youngest one's name was Janelle. I wondered why I hadn't taken the time to know these children before. Could it be I was so wrapped up in my own world that I hadn't been awake to what was around me?

I dropped the children off at the proper Sunday school classes and proceeded to my own. Joy enveloped me. I had poked my head out of my comfortable world and helped others. No, it wasn't a big deal. It cost little. But God used this simple act to remind me I was His vessel to reach a lost world.

After Sunday school, I gathered the children and we walked to the sanctuary. Janelle sat next to me drawing carrots and pink crosses. When I asked about one sketch, she pointed to the chandelier hanging above her head and said, "It's that." She sang her ABC's and asked about the angel in a book she was looking through. I don't know why, but I was surprised by her intelligence. Her questions indicated a depth I didn't think was there. When the rest of the children were dismissed for Children's Church, I put my arm around Janelle.

The title of the sermon flashed on the screen: Are You Awake? As my husband, the pastor, joked that he was not testing our alertness at that moment, Janelle put her fingers in her mouth and leaned into me. A few minutes later, she scooted down, laid her head in my lap, and closed her eyes. As I watched this precious child sleep, I thought about how I would have missed out on this moment had I not been awake-awake to God's presence and aware of my surroundings. An empty pew led to a filled heart.

Read more of Barb's blogs on http://foodliesandtruth.blogspot.com/ as Barb explores lies we tell ourselves to justify eating improperly and the truths that dispel those lies. Also see her blog, written with her husband, Don, on adoption at http://thefatherheartofgod.blogspot.com/.