Tag Archives: Easter

…”how do you solve a problem like….”

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One of my husbands, (yes, I am ratting him out!)… all time favorite movies is The Sound of Music!

The Sound of Music (film)
The Sound of Music (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For all the years I have known him, he has rallied all the kids around to watch it …ONCE AGAIN! at Easter time, only to be compared to the ritual of watching The Ten Commandments, (“…so let it be written, so let it be done!”). You have to be impressed with his loyalty and dedication! But, in the Sound of Music there are many, many songs to sing with (for which we(HE! DOES MOSTLY)do and lately without the whole family only  because the kids have gotten older and they choose not to endure our festivities….spoil sports!

Movie poster of The Ten Commandments.
Movie poster of The Ten Commandments. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of my favorite songs is…..How do you solve a problem like Maria…lalala! This brings me to my point in writing today…(ya knew I would get there eventually, right?) And it is a stretch so hang in there….but….this song is one that reminds me of my beautiful Bethany. Tomorrow is her birthday and because I enjoy writing about my kids if only to completely humiliate them…..(paybacks rule!) here I am once again attempting to let her know how important she is to me.

Back to the song…it is about this NUN who is just a little too human for the rest of the NUNS which makes her perfect for God….. if you ask me. She is always getting into a pickle and causing a ruckus….full of opinions and speaking her peace! So goes part of the song…….

…..When I’m with her I’m confused
Out of focus and bemused
And I never know exactly where I am
Unpredictable as weather
She’s as flighty as a feather
She’s a darling! She’s a demon! She’s a lamb!

She’d outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
She is gentle! She is wild!
She’s a riddle! She’s a child!
She’s a headache! She’s an angel!
She’s a girl!

Yep, that about explains it all! My Bethany is all that and more…I prayed earnestly for her, picked her out and described her to GOD. HE picks this one time to answer my prayer…exactly! He is cute like that…..and awesome and she is my only girl and for that she had to be something special!

Her birthdays come every year, like clock work, like us all and she would sell her soul for a white cake and white icing-STORE BOUGHT CAKE….for which is the worst ….I say…wedding cake kind is her fav! I have attempted to make my kids their cakes ,but the love is lost on this girlie….so I will give in and succumb to my loss of tradition…..she is just that worth it! No matter what goofiness or literal pain in the heart she can be, I adore this kid.

And so I have to respond with these lines from the song:

……Many a thing you know you’d like to tell her
Many a thing she ought to understand
But how do you make her stay
And listen to all you say
How do you keep a wave upon the sand

Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?(BETHANY)
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

She is the heart of my heart and so much like me I feel sorry for her…..she has grown to side with her daddy WAY TOO MUCH which is disturbing when I am odd man out but never a day goes by that I don’t praise the Lord for her and her spirit. She keeps me praying and I know that her future is HUGE with all kinds of exciting twists and turns.

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….then (my favorite pic!)
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…now! (what a doll!)

Happy Birthday my sweet Bethany Rose!….a problem I will never solve because like Maria, even if those strict NUNS acted like they were mad…they loved her and like Maria, my Bethany  is a joy. You are never a problem and without you I would be lost….

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Blue Skies……

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Image……I wish this picture could convey the day, the clear pure sky blue straight out of the Crayola 64 crayon box, as well as the spring green of the new tree buds. I am not sure if those are the names Crayola calls the crayons anymore which is aggravating to us old school kids. I want burnt sienna to stay and red-orange, not lollipop red or any other “cute” name. The need to change such trivial things as the names of crayons may seem silly to me but to Crayola it must be BIG!

World-famous Crayola crayons are manufactured ...
World-famous Crayola crayons are manufactured in Easton. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My nostalgia keeps me longing for the past which is the essence of what also can destroy me. I must allow spring to come, making all things new. Fresh oil everyday, fresh thoughts and hope for the future. The now of it all and looking forward to the future joy is what keeps us.

Back to my picture! On this day I was sitting on the deck at my Mothers home, relaxing with the light breeze blowing the wispy clouds, the blue was so poignant, a classic blue and the spring green buds on the huge trees popped against the blue and white. I have told everyone I am with at the time to notice the color of the trees, the new buds of leaves in that bright color. It is a joy to notice. This is why spring is so nice, new fresh colors and smells and HOPE. I am sure it is the artist in me, but spring is as vivid as fall. My Mom has Alzheimer’s and is still with us, she still knows us but her world is now sweet and happy. She seems to not have any worries which is a great joy to me. Even as I say that I am a bit envious….she doesn’t remember all those hurts and wounds she so rehearsed in the past years. While I sat admiring the view and she repeated herself, I could not help but laugh at the quirkiness of life.  All the drama is such a waste……on that porch, looking at this sky was what was real...the here and now.

For me that HOPE couldn’t come at a better time. It has been a long season of darkness. The days became months and then years and the coldness insurmountable. I HATE COLD and coldness. In the midst it appears there will never be an end, yet when the breakthrough comes it is as swift as the wind on the new spring afternoon. The frustration comes when we are not in control….if everyone would just listen to me and do what I say then easy…huh? Poor GOD, I know he wants to smack me and then at the same time he probably feels the same way….silly people!

There are so many tests in this life….so many questions and not enough answers. Like JOB we all are open season for the TEST. I HATE THE TEST…TOO! How will we act or react to a given situation. Will we walk the walk we have talked. What is the first thought? Run like hell usually….if we are honest and I can’t help but be. It takes a bit of re-grouping, re-sizing up the situation, re-minding ourselves of what God says about it, re-alizing that….. but for the grace of God go I, and re-leasing the flow of forgiveness. I know my very life depends on it…even more my soul!

That is the hard one….forgiveness and the releasing of the pain and what pain it is. We have every right to our pain….it wasn’t our fault!!! It is so hard to get past the pain and see the possibility of life without it. The pain has usually been there for a while, during the dark cold, hidden deep in a cave, unable to even look out to see the light. To release the new pain…the band-aide that was pulled off and allow the sore to heal….give it air and salve and dig out the yucky stuff is really the beginning of the healing.

Forgiveness is a gift, a gift to ourselves. Without it we will stay in the pain and never find out it can be better. I tend to look for the happy ending. I always want to know what happened after the book ended and everyone was ok…how did they walk it out? Was it still painful or did it become good again. JOB shows me that God can re-store back to even better.

Once the cave is shut up, let those boulders fall in front of the opening…..the beautiful sky blue can be seen…the spring-green pops out in front of the wispy white clouds. This is the face of forgiveness. Forgetting why it happened (even though that feels impossible for us that have to know the whys!) moving forward to the future.

I have found this forgiveness gift is the gift that heals….a wounded heart needs love and compassion and hugs and kisses and attention and cuddles and more of the same over and over which eventually brings trust and security once again. It must be the groundwork for a huge blessing, going through such struggles…the “going through” part being the key.

Blue skies are all around us…the light wind is blowing…..God is speaking…...be still and know i am GOD! My heart doth safely trust in you Lord…thank you for your freedom to live again and more abundantly.

 

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Amazing Love

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As I write my thoughts today, I am reminded of the most memorable day of my life with the exception of my Wedding Day, which was of course the day that changed my destiny forever.

But the memories that I have today are of the most amazing event that could ever happen. At the time I had only known about God for a few short months, I had only snip its of the awe inducing world of God and they weren’t much. I do attribute any knowledge of Biblical matters to my sister who is right above me in the birth order. There would be times when I would have questions, I would hear about it in school; this was back when it was normal to hear about God and the baby JESUS at school, and I would ask my sister. She being an avid reader, to the point of that’s all she did when she had the time after farm and house chores, she would ALWAYS find the event in the BIBLE and make me read about it. NEVER would she just cut to the chase and tell me, I would have to work for it and of course this would full fill her need to make me read more, for which I now thank her, I finally like to read, it is a delicacy in the world of four kids.

But back then I really only knew the high points, Christmas, Easter blah, blah, blah! At the time of my first pregnancy I had only given my heart to this God I speak of about a year earlier and being a new christian I was in the baby steps myself. I did have a good teacher thou, my new husband was raised in the “way” of the Lord. He had not always been all fired up about it but as the scripture states (paraphrased a lot) teach them and when they are old they will always return to it! It worked…He came back to it or should I say the Lord and he did it in a big way, all in that one was.. I was glad but he really got sold out and here I am twenty eight years later a preachers wife…..geez!

This brings me to this amazing event that was about to happen, how can after all the new events that had happened to me in the past nearly two years, married to my best friend (love of my life, funniest guy I ever met and loves me more than I deserve), salvation (getting to live in heaven someday and dodging the impending doom I was headed for) and now this…..the greatest miracle ever done. People say that it is a great thing but even a dog can do it and a lot more at one time ( I assume a man said that not that I am male bashing but really?) This momentous event is the birth of my first child. This is even more of a miracle than the obvious and anyone who ever knew me could attest to that fact. I was reminded recently that I had written in my High School Annual(Go Patriots ’77) that I thought then I would probably become a teacher and at a last resort get married. My hopes were not high at that time, I was a scrawny high school senior who had not yet crossed over to the maturity level of my peers at least physically.

Needless to say I didn’t get asked out much, I had lots of big brothers though which was actually more fun! The idea of marriage and kids were ridiculous and I am not exactly sure how it happened, maybe I was sold into white slavery, ambushed by a masked man who kidnapped me and brainwashed me? HaHa Nope, just saw a boy who was scary……..(Robert Redford-like) beautiful and blonde….that’s all she wrote…I was bitten..the love bug won…yeah for love bugs! This brings me to the birth…that event that made time stand still, on this day I became a mommie, I fell in love in a way that is only understood by those that have had the same event happen to them…wow it is amazing, the amazing love! How could this squishy little punk have such an impact on a reasonably smart woman. First of all, how in this world did all that happen inside of ME! Seriously, who thought that up? And how did he figure all that out? Never did I ever realize the existence of GOD as I did at that moment…wowza! did that really happen? I was awake, although I had a C-section….surprise! scary and totally foreign….I had never been in the hospital before and it was freaky and a bit unexpected, I was secretly happy, the thought of screaming my guts out and pushing that almost ten pounder through that Holy of Holies….well, that was an awful part of the event, Gods little gotcha….stupid apple, Eve what in the heck were you thinkin’, thanks for causing all of eternity to suffer well, the girls, typical! Not me sista..I got a pass, and boy o’ boy was I happy…five days of bed rest and pampering by my scared to death husband. He was as flipped out by the rush into surgery as I was. Worked in my favor though so cool. I never looked back, that’s the way to go, I say.
 
So I was alert and I still say…how did that all happen, God is so smart, he is God for pete’s sake. This is an undeniable fact….HE really does know what he is doing, that is awesome, building a whole person inside one young girls body. Totally terrific and amazing, that is the only word for it….AMAZING!
 
God gave me a little boy, we named him after his daddy, a junior, and it was the incredible thing that made me know how tender and precious life is. It all went well, he was strong and perfect and I was in love..immediately. How could God allow this to happen within Mary’s womb and allow his only son to be slaughtered by his own people, the chosen ones. Why would HE go through the pain He must have had and give up the only real and precious person he created only to know he would suffer?
 
Amazing love, that is why. I get it…He loves me that much, we are all His children and He loves us all that much. I can’t see it and it must be why He is God. I know I couldn’t do it but HE did..thank you my sweet Lord. And now on the eve of my own first borns birth, twenty seven years ago, I am still in awe of the miracle of birth. I am thankful for that child of mine and the three others that followed but, I must say the first time is amazing…Happy Birthday to my first born.
 
The amazing love that I have for you, is pale in comparison to how much the Lord loves you. You have blessed my life and I am comforted in the fact that HE loves you even more than me and HE will always keep his hand on your life, choose Him everyday, HE picked you out especially for me and I am honored to be your mom. Even if you are a “pill” most days!
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