I've Hit the Wall

I knew it was going to happen. You can only keep going at breakneck speed for so long and then your body says, "No more"! It's too bad for me that this has occurred while at the very beginning of my 3 week marathon road trip that will have me driving from Baltimore to Boston to Baltimore to Atlanta to Orlando to Atlanta and finally back to Baltimore right before the 4th of July.

I am currently sitting in a quaint inn in Magnolia, MA located right up the street from Tiffany and Michael's apartment. It's very quiet and also very chilly. I was dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, a light pullover fleece, and then a heavier fleece jacket for most of the day. It's the middle of June, people!! It's definitely still spring here and I will take some pictures tomorrow to prove that to you. Of course, in about 2 weeks when we're unloading a truck in 90+ degree heat in Orlando, I will wish for this cooler air, but I think it contributed to my over-stimulated mental state today.

For those of you who might have worried about us in DC last Wednesday when the shooting at the Holocaust Museum took place, we obviously survived. We did almost get run over by two police cars racing to the scene and had our wanderings around the city detoured many times due to roadblocks, etc. We were inside the Capitol on a tour when it happened and it was a very sobering reminder of how fragile our freedom is. We had a great time, walked several miles, got to know new friends, and had fun seeing the city. We now have a better idea of how much to see in one day, so we'll be better tour guides in the future.













This past weekend, the Braves came to Baltimore to play the Orioles. Hamp's company has season tickets, and we were able to go to the game on Friday. If you're a fan, you will know that this was the only game the Braves won of the series. It was Tommy Hanson's first major league win and if he ends up being the pitcher he's been projected to be, someday we'll get to tell our grandchildren that we were there.





Most of the people that have come to Baltimore to work with the Gallery Church, which is where we're going, are from the Atlanta area and went to the game too. Ellis and his family are the lone Orioles fans of the group, so for Friday night at least, our trash talking was backed up by our team's play. Yeah, not so much the rest of the weekend......





Joey was able to come up for the weekend and go to the game with us, so we took the water taxi from where we live in Fells Point to the stop close to Camden Yards. It's a fun way to travel if the water doesn't smell bad. Fortunately for us, it was a nice evening.



Yes, we did wander around the city in our Braves shirts, but people were nice about it and let us pull for our team. I'll let you know if the same thing holds true this Friday when we go to Fenway Park in Boston to watch the Braves play the Red Sox.

I'm going to try and reset my inner clock, so I'm off to bed before midnight. While I'll be helping Tiffany get things sorted and packed, there will be some time to relax and also walk around the beautiful area where they live. I'm hoping the down time I do have will recharge my tired self for the busy weekend ahead. Next time you check, I should have some gorgeous spring flower pictures to share with you. :)

Scenes

As I'm typing this, we're waiting for friends of Tiffany and Michael to arrive from Boston so they can go to DC with us tomorrow. It was a very last minute idea and surprisingly, their schedules worked out so it could happen. Hamp is flying to Atlanta early in the morning for a customer meeting and will stay overnight so he can leave with Matthew on Thursday to drive back to Baltimore. I'm beginning to think the phrase "new normal" is going to be quite an adventure for our family.

I've been thinking a lot about the phrase "the sacredness of the everyday" since I last wrote. I've been keeping up the walking and in doing so have seen little things I might have otherwise overlooked as I've been more aware of looking for God in them. I keep thinking about the words to "Scenes", a song by Charlie Hall from the album "Bright Sadness", and decided to share the chorus with you along with a few pictures I've taken recently.

I see You in every scene, I bet You are thinking about me,
I have such a short memory so You keep reminding me of You










While it's pretty easy to be reminded of God in scenes like this, I've noticed more everyday things as well. Here are a few:

the bird on top of a lamp post serenading anyone who would listen

the cat that lives near a pier I walk on that stops for a pat as I pass

salty air being blown around by a fresh morning breeze

small raindrops scattering from the heavens refreshing the land

the homeless man sitting bleary eyed in the early morning warmth

happy dogs of all shapes and sizes on their morning walks

hurried people passing by getting their morning exercise

I'm sure you could come up with your own list that initially might seem insignificant, but when viewed through the lens of God's perspective, it becomes everday sacredness. What will lift your mind toward Him today?

The Sacredness of the Everyday

This has been an interesting week for me. Last Sunday, we had the water leak, then Monday brought very disturbing news from home. Mid-week the clouds started raining and they have only stopped to refill before beginning again in a day or two. So it's been a mostly gray week outside and inside my soul. Sometimes things are so deep inside of me that I can't process them and when that happens I have to move. So ready or not, I began in earnest my long overdue exercising to mostly clear my head and heart, but hoping to ultimately walk my butt off...literally. The good news is the benefits were almost immediate in many ways, but by yesterday my body had expended all the energy it had and I crashed. It rained all day and since some books I had ordered had been delivered the day before, I succumbed to the pull and laid on the couch and read all afternoon. It was wonderful!!

(Endorsement moment here - Robin Jones Gunn has been a favorite author of mine and Tiffany's since Tiffany was almost 16. She wrote great books for teenaged girls, then developed her storyline to continue into early adulthood. A few years ago, she began a series called "SisterChicks" that have been both entertaining and inspirational for those of us a little more "mature". If you have the time, check out the link to her website here and get to know her a bit if you've never done that before.)

My biggest struggles this week have been sorting through the truth of God's eternal presence and my failure, both real and perceived, to see reality when it was in front of my face. I have carried a heavy burden of responsibility for the consequences that befell our family and while I know ultimately that God allowed these things to pass, that has been the inner turmoil I have wrestled with the last couple of years. A lot of that has been resolved already, but the stirring of the pot this week brought to the surface those wrestlings again.

As I was reading yesterday in "Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes", I came across a verse from a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that caused me to stop and ponder.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

I realized in reading those words, that the quiet hours, the rain, and even the walking had done just that - brought the beauty of God's peace to my heart and removed the strivings. Later in the book, she uses the phrase, "the sacredness of the everyday" and it was like God was making sure I got the point. Each day brings part of the eternal with it and the longing for things to be made right is ultimately the longing for heaven that God has woven into our being.

Yes, I would like the circumstances in my life and those I love to be good and right and happy all the time, but we live in a fallen world and that's just not reality. My challenge to you, and one I am accepting as well, is to find the sacredness of the everyday that God brings across our paths and to let the beauty of His peace remove the strain and stress from our ordered lives.

While she's not exactly where she's supposed to be resting, I think Kit just might be catching on!

God's Grace is Still Amazing

Greetings from hot and stuffy Baltimore where the poor fish are still dying and the harbor is still smelly and strangely colored. Lest you think that all is bleak, I want to share a few pictures with you from our walk last evening. The first site that greeted us was my duck friends that have apparently adopted our little pier area as home. They were just kinda chillin' in the approaching dusk on the posts in the water whose visibility changes as the tide comes in and out.



There's a promenade that runs alongside the harbor all around where we live and it's a great place to walk.











Not a bad site for an evening stroll, is it?

Now for a much different view of life here. On Sunday late afternoon, as I was getting ready to leave for a small group gathering where Hamp was already grilling some chicken, I heard a very ominous noise above me. I could tell it was water and that it was going somewhere. I knew that gravity was not going to be my friend and sure enough, soon little trickles of water started running down the back wall in our kitchen. Thinking back on it, I'm sure for a few seconds I looked pretty ridiculous running in circles trying to figure out what to do first. I didn't know it at the time, but the pump in the washer of an apartment on the 4th floor (we live on the 2nd) had gone out and the draining water was running everywhere. What I did know was that if the worst happened and the ceiling fell in, I would have a giant mess on my hands, so I began frantically emptying all the kitchen cabinets and drawers. Notice I said ALL of the cabinets and drawers - food, baking dishes, cleaning supplies, pots and pans, paper goods, etc. I had stuff strewn all over the apartment just trying to get it out of the kitchen as fast as I could.



I did have the presence of mind to try and capture as much of the water as I could to keep it off the top of the cabinets. Adding to the effect were places where the enamel paint stretched as it was holding the water.





The water finally stopped running down the wall, Hamp got home, and we punctured the paint bubbles so things could dry out. This was how things looked when it was all over.



After letting the ceiling and walls dry out for a couple of days, the apartment complex has already begun the paint repairs and things will be good as new by the end of tomorrow.

So, I'm sure you're wondering just where God and His grace fit into all of this, right? More and more, I realize how my whole life is affected by that very grace and also by those who choose not to receive it. I don't know how well I can try to explain what I'm thinking, but I'll give it a try...

I once heard a definition of God's grace and mercy like this: Grace is God giving us what we don't deserve and mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve. What I fear, however, is that in our post-modern, tolerant, seeker friendly, 21st century American Christianity, we've ignored a part of God that could actually affect many for eternity - His holiness.

We like the idea of a loving Father God who accepts us in Christ, but we don't like the idea of a just God who required His sacrifice for our sin. We want the benefits without the cost. We want to live as we choose and as a result, we have an entire population "doing what is right in their own eyes" who cry "intolerant" if we question their life choices. Where are the warnings from the Church of God's anger and wrath toward sin? Where is the healthy, holy fear of God? What about verses like Hebrews 10:31 that reads, "...'The Lord will judge His people.' It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God"?

I've told you before that I care way too much what people think about me and I've let that affect me more than I want to admit. I've kept quiet many times for fear of offending to the detriment of my family and my own heart and conscience. While I don't plan to become someone you hate to see coming, I am realizing anew that to be a follower of Christ, I must be willing to speak the whole truth and not just what keeps me safe. So, I'm asking in advance for the very grace I'm talking about if I swing too far the other way for a while. I'm trusting God to continue the work He's begun in me even as I pray the same for you.

Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone), by Chris Tomlin

'Til Death Do Us Part

Thirty three years ago today, Hamp and I were married in a small ceremony at his parent's house in Newnan. As I type those words, I have snapshots of our lives together racing through my mind. I don't have any to share with you because we still have our lives spread out in a couple of states and none of our early pictures are with us right now.

We met at a community Bible study and went to church at the same place. He was in the area to go to Southern Tech and I was the "city girl" that captured his heart away from a much different Newnan, GA than exists today. We were entirely too young to get married; I was 19 and he was 20. Tiffany joined the family 2 years later and by the time I was 25, we'd been married 6 years and had 3 children. We like to say that we grew up as our kids did.

Both of us were followers of Jesus when we met and were committed to making our marriage successful. But we both had serious issues that had never been dealt with because we hadn't grown up enough to do so. As you can imagine, once the excitement of being married and having babies faded, the reality of living out each day took its toll on our relationship. By the time our late 20's rolled around, the future seemed tedious and less than exciting. Hamp was busy trying to take care of his growing family and I became restless.

For about 2 or 3 years, I was more unhappy than not in our marriage. We were so busy taking care of kids that we didn't invest the needed time in each other. It was during this time that I experienced my first real crisis of faith. My head knew that all the things I believed about God and His word were true, but my heart wanted to take care of me. Yet, we were raising 3 small children to follow Jesus and I knew that their lives would be broken if I acted on my unhappiness in any way.

During this time of intense struggle between me and God, the only thing I could say at times and truly mean it was, "When it's all said and done, I want what You want so You're going to have to change my heart." It didn't happen overnight, but God brought friends, counselors, and truth into our lives that all affected things for the good. But for a while, the only way that I could love Hamp was to obey God. No feelings, no excitement, nothing - just an obedience because He said so.

And I guess, really, that's the point. In today's world of self love, self awareness, self discovery, or whatever other focuses of self you can think of, choosing to obey God simply because He tells you to is not something that's talked about much. We've packaged Him in relevance so as not to offend and then wonder why the divorce rate in the Church is now higher than in the world. Our family knows firsthand the heartbreak of trying to figure out how to separate what God joined together. We also know firsthand that He really does bring beauty out of ashes, but oh how much better it would be to not have to experience that heartbreak in the first place!

So as Hamp and I celebrate today away from family, friends, and familiarity, we will be thanking God for His faithfulness to us. And thanks to so many of you who have invested in our lives to enable us to reach this anniversary. We love you!

A Gray Day

I am tired of the color gray. It's not a particularly attractive color anyway, but when you see it day after day, it seems to permeate everything around it. The air today has a smoky haze to it which you should be able to see from this picture.



Even though the air around the harbor is still not very pleasant to breathe, I thought maybe a walk would help redeem the day. Nope, not today. Let me explain why. This is a map of Fells Point which is where we live.



The area marked #13 is where our apartment is located. While we do technically live on the water, you can see that we're not really near open water. There are lots of piers along the streets and the water just kind of stops as it hits land. Consequently, debris and trash can end up there depending on the weather, water current, etc. There is a cool trash picking boat that comes around and cleans the water, but there are times it can't keep up. Today was one of those days and this was what the water looked like by our parking lot.



Kinda sad, huh? Then as I began walking, I noticed that some of the dead fish had drifted into our dead end water. Yuck!





I did have a smiley moment as I passed these two sleeping on the walkway where I stood to take the picture of the poor departed fish. I guess the water was a bit much for them today too.



Even now as I look out our window, the day is still just...gray. Yet, I find that surprisingly my soul is OK. I'm sure that's partly because I know that this stale air is about to be pushed out to sea bringing fresh air in its place. I think life is like that sometimes. What we see around us is so gray we can't imagine it ever changing. But above the clouds and in the winds of change, the sun is shining, the skies are blue, freshness is ushered in, and the world is bright again.

Tidbits

I don't really have anything significant to pass along to you today, so I thought I'd catch you up with some of the little things that have made up my life since the last entry.

First off, can I just say that I am so ready to see the sun shine again?? I now get excited just to see the clouds a light gray and further up in the sky. I realize that most of you reading this live in the eastern United States and have been experiencing the same thing. And I also realize that we should be thankful there is no more drought to speak of in our regions. But a few days of sunshine strung together would be OK, don't you think? I actually put this picture back on my computer desktop that I took right after I moved here just for visual encouragement.



I'm recovering from my driving stupor of last Friday, so over the weekend Hamp and I decided to check out a new grocery store. I probably won't go there often because it's further away and doesn't really have enough of a variety to justify the trip. I've tried to keep a good attitude about all the things that are not available but I do miss Publix. They sell a cornbread muffin that is amazing and I have seen nothing that even resembles that here. I checked at the new store to see what they might carry and this is what I found.



While not muffin shaped, they taste exactly like the Publix cornbread and I was quite excited. If you'll look closely, you'll also see that those are Vidalia onions. Yes, it's the little things that can make a difference when you're trying to settle in a new place and create home.

I can't fully share our latest discovery because so far there's no way to transport a smell across cyberspace. Over the last few days, the algae growing in the harbor has bloomed, which lowered the oxygen content in the water. This, combined with extra pollution from the run off of recent rains, has caused lots of fishies to die which in turn has caused the air to smell like dead fish in polluted water. Today was better and I actually did go for a walk, but do not envy me being able to breathe in fresh, salty air because that is certainly not happening right now!

That's pretty much it for now. If you don't usually read Tiffany's blog, I encourage you to check it out here. God has done and is doing amazing things in her life and I loved the illustration she shared about His unfailing love and faithfulness. For most of us, life hasn't turned out like we thought it would, but my prayer is that no matter what circumstances may come our way, we will always be able to say "it is well with my soul".