Friday’s Fave Five

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Susanne at Living to Tell the Story hosts a “Friday Fave Five” in which we share our five favorite things from the past week. Click on the button to read more of the details, and you can visit Susanne to see the list of others’ favorites or to join in.

1. Celebrating my husband’s birthday Saturday.

2. The veritable feast we had for dinner for his birthday. In our house the birthday honoree gets to choose what to do for dinner, whether a favorite home-made meal or a restaurant outing. My husband said he wanted to grill some steak, chicken, and shrimp. I felt a little bad that he was cooking his own dinner, but that is what he wanted to do — and it was wonderful! I made scalloped potatoes, salad, and Boston Cream pie; Mittu made corn on the cob and deviled eggs. We enjoyed the leftovers for days as well.

3. And then Mittu made dinner Sunday after church — chili, cornbread, and I think Mexican corn or some kind of corn salad. Jeremy made “blondies.” It was good, and it was so nice not to have to get dinner together on Sunday.

4. New buds on my hydrangea bush and new little leaves on my rose bushes! It is so nice to see first signs of spring! I was going to take a picture — but it’s gray and drizzly out today.

5. Lunch with my good friend Carol on Tuesday (hmmm — this FFF has even more than the usual references to food…) Even though I enjoyed going to a local restaurant that we don’t get to very often, I enjoyed the fellowship much more.

And then after we parted ways, I wandered around a few stores. I don’t usually like “recreational shopping” — normally I want to just find what I need and then get back home. But every now and then I like to visit a few stores and see what’s new. I spent less than an hour at it, but it was very relaxing. The only things I bought were some dish towels on sale, two for $3:

I very rarely see anything kitcheny in pink these days, so I was happy to find these!

It’s been an extremely busy week, but a good one! Hope yours was as well.

Flashback Friday: Driving

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Mocha With Linda has begun a new weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. Sounds like fun!

The flashback question this week is:

How and when did you learn to drive? Do you have any particular memories associated with getting your driver license? How old were you when you got your first car and what was it? Who paid for it?

In my very first driving experience as a teen-ager, my dad asked me to move the car from where we had washed it to where we usually parked it. He got in the car with me but gave me no instructions at all. I knew enough to turn the ignition and put the car in reverse, but I backed out a little too fast, and he started to shout, “Hit the brake, Hit the brake!” I said, “Where’s the brake?”….and backed over the mailbox. My dad had a fairly short fuse, but thankfully he started laughing instead of getting angry, probably realizing that just because I had been riding in a car for 15 years didn’t mean I had picked up on how to drive it.

I took Driver’s Ed. in my local high school, but the next summer we moved from our little tiny town to the whopping metropolis of Houston. I could drive in my neighborhood, but the freeways scared me. I’d take the feeder next to 45 all the way from my house to church — about a 30-minute drive. Once I tried the freeways, though, I loved them: I loved going faster and having no traffic lights.

I have never actually had my own car in my own name, which is fine with me. We had some little tannish thing that I learned on — I’m sorry, I don’t know the makes and models of many vehicles. Then in Houston we had some kind of big monstrosity that was the family car, but I could use it for most anything. It could look a little purplish in certain lighting, but I thought it was a faded black. I was horrified later on to hear my mom call it “Ol’ Purple,” to think I had been driving an actual purple car.

Do you have any interesting early driving experiences to share?

Parting the Waters

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I first read Jeanne Damoff when someone (I’m sorry, I forgot to note who) linked to her articles “How fiction can powerfully inform the practical application of truth,” part one and part two. Both her insights and her writing style resonated with me. Since these articles were part of a writer’s blog called The Master’s Artist, I clicked around to see what else she had written.

I discovered her book Parting the Waters: Finding Beauty in Brokenness about her then fifteen-year old son’s near drowning. Such an accident is the stuff of parents’ nightmares. Jeanne takes us from the day before the accident, when unbeknownst to them at the time, they had their last “normal” conversation for a long while, straight into the events of the next day — hearing the startling news that one boy on a class outing had died and that Jacob was in the hospital, having been underwater for several minutes and then receiving CPR for twenty minuted before reviving.

After the first few weeks, the Damoffs were told that Jacob would likely remain in a persistent vegetative state. But doctors and friends continued to work with him, trusting that God would have the last say. I rejoiced right along with the family at Jacob’s first movement, first laugh, first weeping, first words.

Jeanne is transparent and truthful about all of the issues involved as well as the wrestling of her own heart, trusting that God was in control yet struggling with why He allowed this to happen. Early on she wrote:

I saw God’s mercy in the timing [at the beginning of summer, when their teaching responsibilities were over], and the thought upset me. Why did God time this at all? Even in these earliest hours of uninvited, undesired affliction, I feared for the potential damage to our faith and begged God to preserve it. We didn’t understand His plan, but we knew we couldn’t endure this hell without Him.

Yet all throughout the pain and struggle, many different people remarked that something beautiful and unusual characterized the whole situation: they could see the grace of God in action through provision of different items or just the right person, through the family’s, friends’, and community’s interaction and support.

Not only is the story compelling and inspiring, but I love how Jeanne has organized the chapters around a theme, with titles like, “A Pebble Falls,” “First Ripples,” “Breakers,” Deep Waters,” “Stormy Winds, “Undercurrents,” etc., with verses at the beginning of each, such as Isaiah 43:1-2a (But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.”) and Psalm 42:5a,7b (Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?…All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.)

At the back of the book are two appendices: one contains thoughts and testimonials from others involved in the story, and the other deals with “God’s Purposes in Suffering.”

I am so thankful Jeanne shared their story with us.

(This review will be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Random Dozen Meme

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Linda at 2nd cup of coffee created and hosts the Random Dozen meme every Wednesday. You can answer the questions on your blog and link up to Linda’s plus find more participants there.

1. How old is the oldest pair of shoes in your closet?

One pair of tennis shoes is at least 12 years old because I had them when we moved here, and I had them a long while before that. They may be even 20 or more years old. I don’t wear them often.

2. Did you buy Girl Scout cookies this year? If so, what variety?

Yes! I forget their names, but the ones with peanut butter inside and chocolate outside, the peanut butter ones, and the thin mints (I’m not a mint fan, but others in the family like them.)

3. Do you know how to ballroom dance? If not, would you like to?

No. I like to watch the flowy, elegant ballroom variety (waltz, foxtrot), but I am beyond learning it. I have balance problems, and I would only want to dance with my husband, so I don’t know if we could be taught without dancing with other people. 🙂

4. Were you a responsible child/teenager?

Yes. As the oldest of six and designated baby-sitter, I kind of had to be.

5. How many of this year’s Oscar-nominated movies did you see?

I have no idea beyond a couple which ones were nominated, and I have not seen those.

6. If you’re going to have a medical procedure done, such as having blood drawn, is it easier for you to watch someone else having the procedure done or have it done yourself?

I don’t think I could watch medical procedures being done on anyone. I can’t watch blood being drawn on myself, either, but it doesn’t bother me if I don’t look at it.

7. What is your favorite day of the week and why?

Oh, I don’t know. I like them all. Maybe Saturday because I don’t usually have to set the alarm clock then.

8. Do you miss anyone right now?

My mom.

9. Do hospitals make you queasy?

I don’t know if queasy is the right word. Nervous, unsettled, uncomfortable…all of those.

10. At which store would you like to max-out your credit card. Not that you ever would, you responsible person, you.

A hard choice! Probably first choice would be a  furniture store if I could find living room furniture I liked, but if not that then Hobby Lobby.

11. Are you true to the brand names of products/items?

For some items, yes, for others it doesn’t matter. I did a whole post on this topic once.

12. Which is more difficult: looking into someone’s eyes when you are telling someone how you feel, or looking into someone’s eyes when he/she is telling you how he/she feels?

Probably the former. Actually, it’s usually hard for me to tell someone how I feel in person even without looking in their eyes. With my dad it usually wasn’t accepted or understood and usually made things worse, so I rarely did…and old habits die hard, I guess. But a lot depends on what exactly the situation and feelings are.

Dr. Sa’eed of Iran

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Some months back I wrote about Dr. John Dreisbach, a modern-day missionary who recently went Home to heaven. I was listening to his memorial service online when I heard the following poem read:

Christ is my Life, and Christ is my light;
Christ is my guide in the darkness of night;
Priest and strong Advocate Christ is for me;
Christ is my Master, to truth he’s the key.

Christ is my Leader, he peace to me brought;
Christ is my Savior, Christ righteousness wrought;
Christ is my Prophet, my Priest, and my King;
My Way, and the Truth to which I firmly cling.

Christ is my Glory, and Christ is my Crown;
Christ shares my troubles when woe strikes me down;
Christ is my treasure in heaven above:
In every deep sorrow he soothes me with love.

Christ is my Savior, my Portion, my Lord;
All honor and homage to Him I accord.
Christ is my Peace, and Christ my Repast;
Christ is my Rapture forever to last.

In joy and in sorrow Christ satisfies me;
‘Tis Christ who from bondage of sin set me free.
In all times of sickness Christ is my Health;
In want and in poverty Christ is my Wealth.

Afterward I searched online to find out who wrote this poem and discovered it was titled “Dr. Sa’eed’s Hymn” and was contained in the book  Dr. Sa’eed of Iran: Kurdish Physician to Princes and Peasants Nobles and Nomads by Jay M. Rasooli and Cady Hews Allen. It is no longer in print, but Amazon.com has inexpensive used copies, so I ordered one. (If you don’t mind reading books on the computer, the text is online through Google books.)

Dr. Sa’eed’s is a fascinating story. He was born into a Kurdish mullah’s (an Islamic teacher) family in June of 1863 in what was then Persia, now known as Iran. He was uncommonly bright and well-taught, so much so that he was given the title of mullah at the age of thirteen when his father died.

As a child he once saw a foreigner wearing a hat with a brim, uncommon because Persians then wore brimless hats. When he asked his mother why the man wore that “funny hat.”

“He is an unbeliever,” she replied, “and they do not wish him to see the sky, which is the abode of God.” By such an answer was aversion to non-Moslems instilled in the receptive mind (p. 23).

Sometimes he might be in a Christian home and “accidentally” knock something fragile off a shelf so that it broke or sit on a rug and cut holes in it with his knife. “Such misdeeds, while inspired by bigotry, were done especially to earn merit with God by causing damage to an unbeliever or even to one of a rival Moslem sect” (p 24).

But he also had a thirst for holiness that led him to fervent study and extreme rituals. After years he was still “dissatisfied and restive” (p. 29.) His first encounters with professing Christians were with Catholics who disgusted him, as they drank alcohol (forbidden in the Koran).

When he was seventeen, some Protestant missionaries came to town and engaged Sa’eed as a tutor in the Persian language. He had heard even worse things about Protestants, but he acquiesced.

He was surprised by many things: they knew something of the Koran, they prayed for their enemies, they did not drink, lie, or gossip. Their behavior matched their teaching. They used the Bible for language study, and Sa’eed heard many discussions about Christian teachings. Over time he began to speak with Kasha Yohanan about religion and read the Bible for himself. He began to see his own failings and to doubt what he had always been taught. This was agony to him, causing him to burn himself with hot coals as a vow never to speak with Christians about religion again and to tell the missionary that he was no longer available. But the words he had heard continued to burn in his heart until he finally prayed to be led in the true way. He decided to study both the Bible and the Koran. “In Mohammed’s teachings and personal life I found nothing which would satisfy the longing soul — not a drop of water to quench the thirsty spirit” (p. 38). Finally he yielded to faith in God.

His heart was now at peace, but his persecutions began in earnest. Even his own brother planned to kill him. The rest of the book details his growth, his training as a physician, and his life as a testimony to the One who saved him. Though often in danger, he never failed to treat anyone who called on him, even his enemies. His faith and godly character were a witness and a reflection of the One in Whom he believed.

(This review will be linked to Semicolon’s Saturday Review of Books.)

The Week In Words

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http://breathoflifeministries.blogspot.com/2010/01/announcing-week-in-words.html Melissa at Breath of Life hosts a weekly carnival called The Week In Words,which involves sharing something from your reading that inspires you, causes you to laugh, cry, or dream, or just resonates with you in some way. Melissa explains,

“Playing along is simple, just write a post of the quote(s) that spoke to you during the week (attributed, of course) and link back here [at Melissa‘s]. They can be from any written source, i.e. magazine, newspaper, blog, book. The only requirement is that they be words you read.”

This blog post from my friend Rita, who is a missionary in Paraguay, had me sympathizing yet smiling.

Nothing will wake you up on a Sunday Morning like being introduced to a classroom full of Hispanic ladies as the guest speaker when no one ever mentioned it to you… then , when you frantically look down at your Bible for a verse of inspiration, you discover that you are carrying your English Bible to Spanish Sunday School.

This is from the March 5 reading from Our Daily Walk by F. B, Meyer:

But what we are in the smallest details of our life, that we are really and essentially.

Lastly, I finally began Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter, compiled by Nancy Guthrie. These lines stood out to me in the preface:

Oh, what we miss out on when we rush past the cross of Christ.Oh, the richness and reward when stop to linger before it, when we take the time to “consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself” (Hebrews 12:3). In a culture where crosses have become commonplace as architecture and jewelry, how we need to truly gaze upon the cross of Christ in all its ugliness and beauty, in its death and in its healing, in the painful price paid there, and in its free gift of grace. Jesus, keep us near the cross.

May Thy cross be to me…

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May Thy cross be to me
as the tree that sweetens my bitter Marahs,
as the rod that blossoms with life and beauty,
as the brazen serpent that calls forth the look of faith.
By Thy cross crucify my every sin,
use it to increase my intimacy with thyself,
make it a ground of all my comfort,
the liveliness of all my duties,
the sum of all Thy gospel promises,
the comfort of all my afflictions,
the vigor of my love, thankfulness, graces,
the very essence of my religion,
and by it give me that rest without rest,
the rest of ceaseless praise.

From The Valley of Vision – A Collection of Puritan Prayers

Friday’s Fave Five

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Susanne at Living to Tell the Story hosts a “Friday Fave Five” in which we share our five favorite things from the past week. Click on the button to read more of the details, and you can visit Susanne to see the list of others’ favorites or to join in.

1. A bonus! My husband received a bonus from his job and distributed a portion to all the family.

2. An excuse! I received notice this week that I am excused from jury duty! I thought for sure I’d have to get something signed from the doctor, but they didn’t ask for that. I am relieved!

3. My mother’s ring. I told about more about this here, but I found out my sister had sent my mom’s “mother’s ring” in a previous package, which I thought I had lost because I hadn’t seen it in the package, and I was looking everywhere the package had been to see if maybe it had dropped behind or under something. Then I found out my husband had taken it out to surprise me with it later and had it in his closet. I felt much like the woman who found her lost coin!

4. Seeing Jesse coach and referee. Every year our school has an elementary basketball tournament: they take the kids who want to play, divide them up into teams, and have volunteers from the JV and Varsity basketball teams coach them. Jesse volunteered, thinking he’d be helping a Varsity guy — but he was given his own team, I think mainly because of a lack of volunteers. Plus he refereed another game. It’s always neat to see your teen-ager begin to take responsibilities and leadership roles and handle them well. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that he seems to work well with younger kids, and I wonder if the Lord might have something along those lines in his future.

5. Jeremy cooking dinner. I’ve mentioned this before — my oldest has taken an interest in cooking and occasionally will make lunch or dinner, and it’s always nice. But this week I have a lot on the schedule, especially in the next few days. I have the ladies’ newsletter due this week and wanted to get it done early. That didn’t happen, but I was able to get a great lot of it done while Jeremy made dinner last night — and he even unloaded and partially reloaded the dishwasher. So not only was it just nice to have a night almost off in the kitchen, but it was an immense help this particular time. Oh, he made jambalaya, by the way. It was good! I hadn’t had that in years.

Bonus:

Mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Just the right amount of chocolate to satisfy a little craving or to finish off dinner.

And I don’t feel I can close this post without saying this…I mentioned yesterday how neat it is when the Lord sends just the reminder or instruction or rebuke or encouragement I need, and that happened in a special way yesterday and today. I do usually get something out of every encounter with the Bible, but there are times when it is just so incredibly apt for the very particular circumstances of the day, which is even more mind-boggling considering that I am reading a devotional book or e-mail devotional that was written or compiled years ago or following a Bible reading schedule. Somehow the Lord coordinates all of that to get the right message to the right person at the right time. Amazing!

I’ll be around to visit hopefully later on today. Happy Friday!

God’s Help for God’s Assignment

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It’s amazing, thrilling, and comforting to me how the Lord sends just what I need through various means. I have a very busy few days ahead — not “crushing,” but busy, and this came yesterday in the daily e-mail devotional made up of Elisabeth Elliot‘s writings. This was originally from her book A Lamp For My Feet.

God’s Help for God’s Assignment

Sometimes a task we have begun takes on seemingly crushing size, and we wonder what ever gave us the notion that we could accomplish it. There is no way out, no way around it, and yet we cannot contemplate actually carrying it through. The rearing of children or the writing of a book are illustrations that come to mind. Let us recall that the task is a divinely appointed one, and divine aid is therefore to be expected. Expect it! Ask for it, wait for it, believe that God gives it. Offer to Him the job itself, along with your fears and misgivings about it. He will not fail or be discouraged. Let his courage encourage you. The day will come when the task will be finished. Trust Him for it.

“For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded, therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (Is 50:7 AV).