Just A Little God Story

I have become a huge Jen Hatmaker fan. Her books 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess and Interrupted are not only laugh-out-loud funny but super thought-provoking, two attributes that are important to me. Jen has me thinking rather alot about what I have done/am doing/will do for "the least of these", as in Jesus said, "What you don't do for them you didn't do for me" (my rather inelegant, but correct, paraphrase).  Sure, I can reassure myself that I give regularly to certain charities/ministries/causes or be brutally honest and admit I mostly take care of me and mine. For the most part, I keep "the least of these" at the perifery of my radar because they're not really in my "comfort zone" and because when you start to go down that path, it widens into a highway with a zillion lanes and few off-ramps. Nonetheless, Jen had me wondering and making some hesitant, fairly generic inquiries, in God's direction as to just what helping "the least of these" might look like. Do I have to bring home the guy at the intersection with the the cardboard sign and the vacant look in his eyes? Should I become a regular soup-ladler at Mission Arlington? Do I need to give away my favorite jeans and most of my shoes rather than the ones that no longer fit/have some age/didn't suit me anyway?

While I, on the one hand, am striving to be a better human being, with the other I am spending hours each week idling over computer sites dreaming about how I can make my own life cushier/more profitable/less mundane (yes, I am that shallow). So I am on Pintrest, a favorite time-waster of mine,  when I see that someone is offering a free pdf for a little girl's racerback dress pattern. Yea! I like free, and it just so happens I have a small internet business selling handmade children's clothing, so of course I am quick to set about downloading this offering. In so doing, the designer mentions that she is using her pattern to make a couple of dresses to send to little girls in Africa whose families have to make hard choices like buying one dress or food for the week....a conundrum I have not had since....NEVER! Well, shoot, I can make a dress, too. That's no biggie. I've got 30 yards of dress material piled up 10 feet away, for Pete's sake! Best of all, this is beginning to smell  like a "least of these" kind of thing... yet, too easy....too "comfortable"....so maybe it's just a "co-incidence" and not actually a "God-incidence" ;-)

As I go through the channels to figure out just exactly how my little dress is actually going to make it's way to Africa, I see that this particular clothing drive is being spear-headed by a woman named Margaret who has taken this on as her Junior Women's Club project. Margaret says that she hopes she can have all donations collected by the end of May/first of June when she will be sorting and packaging  the dresses to be transported to Africa and distributed. But my eyes grow wide when I see that Margaret lives in...ta-da!...Tampa, Florida, exactly where I plan to be the last week of May! Okay! Now I am fairly certain that this has "God" written all over it, and I am blown away by the graciousness He has extended toward me as  He has orchestrated this: a task tailor-made (no pun intended) for my skill set, a task that inspired enthusiasm, rather than dread, in me, and a task that allowed me to interract with someone who would share my enthusiasm making this even more personal and special for me! What a great way to get my feet wet in the "serving-the-least-of-these-arena"! I am psyched! And I sew!

On June 2nd I make my way to Margaret's home with my 6 dresses (if one dress is good, 6 is better, right?) where this pretty, vivacious women welcomes me in to meet her young family and for a few short minutes, talking as fast as we can, we share what this experience has meant to each of us. I mention, in passing, that for me this has been a God-thing and she mentions, in passing, that she is "not particularly religious". And I think, "Good thing, because I recall Jesus had a fair amount of trouble with the "particularly religious" and a whole lot better experience with the "not...." I myself would prefer not to be labeled "religious" either, but as one who hears God and tries to obey (more or less, some of the time, and often tentatively!) And I am so-o-o-o grateful for the Margarets of this world who do what they do just because it seems right and good; I hope a lot more of them cross my path.

The donated dresses (Margaret shared that she had originally hoped to have 25 and now anticipated sending upwards of 300!) will be distributed by "Little Dresses for Africa", an organization, I understand that is completely volunteer manned and has NO budget. Yet they have sent clothing to: Burkino Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DR of Congo, Ethiopia, The Gambia,Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sierrra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar, and Zimbawe.

Other countries who received them in crisis situations are: India, Haiti, Cambodia, the Philippines, Honduras, Guatamala, Nicaguara, Mexico ,and in the USA: South Dakota Indian Reservation and the Appalachian area children. Wow! Double Wow!

I am pretty sure my future "assignments" (better yet, "opportunites") to serve the least may not be quite as comfortable for me, but I am excited to see where, and to whom, He leads me next. In the meantime I am calculating how many dresses I could send on my own to "Little Dresses...", or better yet, if I got my friends or church-family together... And I love, love, love the "little God stories" I get to tell as a result! Stay tuned  :-)

And, so, I run.

About a hundred years ago when I was young-ish, I had a neighbor who talked me into running. It was the 80's when we bought into the "no such thing as too rich or too thin" mentality and I was on the fast-track to anorexia. So, the idea of burning copious amounts of calories in a relatively short span of time was incredibly appealling to me. Several weeks a night, I dragged my children (one in an infant carrier) to the college track and hoofed-it around for about a mile or so.  A few weeks into this new pursuit I talked Paul into joining me.  Long story short, he became a running-addict and I went back to cutting my daily calorie count shorter and shorter.

Fast forward a couple of years and I am intent on growing the spiritual life of my little family (read that" husband"). Assuming I would encounter resistance if I started with the "You should..." approach I brokered this deal:  if Paul would join me in a devotional time each morning, I would once again lace up my running shoes and do my best to keep up.  Surprise, surprise...he went for it! He was faithful to spend time in the Word (still does, 30 minutes first thing every morning) and I was faithful to hit the pavement with him. Nearly every single day, for an entire year, I would accompany him on the first few miles of his workout, and then he would speed off and do double the distance while I would drag my can't breathe/hate this, self back into the house. It should come as a surprise to no one that after that year, I was done. I mean DONE! I had given it a shot, but I hated the last day as much as I hated the first. I could run as far as seven miles, but never once did I experience that so-called "runner's high" (urban legend, if you ask me), nor did I weigh less, have better looking legs...absolutely NO benefits from my vantage point; it was torture and I am not a masochist.

Although no longer a runner myself, I continued to be a supportive wife, dragging two reluctant little kids all over North Texas most Saturday mornings at the crack of dawn, to 5K's, 10K's, half and full marathons. In all kinds of weather, braving porta-potties and mind-numbing boredom, we hung out at finish line after finish line as Paul pursued his passion. And a passion it was. Every day revolved around when he was going to get to run, and if circumstances prohibitted it, well....it wasn't going to be a very good day. I was proud of his committment and accomplishement, but I was also resentful: both because long training runs took time away from the family, and, because I didn't have anything that captured my attention the way running had captured his.

Of course when you are married to a runner, you are inevitably questioned about your own running history and I was always quick to point out:  been there, done that, not going back. No, never. Nothing in it for me. My dear husband overheard me taking my stand one day and commented "Well, you never really gave it your all."  What?! Oh, no Pal....I will concede that there are very few things in life I couldn't have improved upon (hold-over guilt from Harold), but I HAD GIVEN EVERYTHING I HAD to my running experiment and came up empty. His accusation was a stake straight through my heart, and it stings to this day.

So I get into my 50's and I find MY passion...tennis! Oh how I love this game! It's a great workout, it's social, you get to wear cute clothes...love it, love it, love it! I take lessons, I join a team, I play USTA...it's all great until I encounter a mysterious arm ailment that keeps me off the tennis court and sleeping sitting up for nearly a year. And during that miserable year of no tennis, I walk to keep up some modicum of fitness. But walking is so....boring!!! And one day this little voice in my head says :"Run." And I say, "No way, Jose. Don't want to, can't make me, never again." But then it occurs to me that that little voice might actually be God, who I am constantly begging for guidance, so on the off chance that it is, in fact, a divine command, I run. The next day I run again. And then I run further.

I have been a runner for nearly five years now. It got me through the arm deal, it got me through cancer, and most recently it got me through a year-long hiatus from tennis when a back issue kept me off the courts (a lift in my shoe is conteracting the effects of a lower spine torqued by scholiosis, so I can play again! Yea!) I run because God told me to. I run because Paul can't; twenty years ago, having just qualified for the New York Marathon, a diagnosis of multiple schorosis robbed him of his great love. He still dreams he's running. I run in part because I know he would, if he could.

Yes, that's really why  I run...because I CAN. No, I don't love it, exactly, but I don't hate it either. Every morning I have that same sinking feeling when I think about getting out there. But, when I get my shoes on, and my earphones  in, I am ready. I run on the streets even though I know I am vulnerable to aggressive dogs and wierdos, but I won't live in fear. (One or two friends have said I need to carry a gun....this is Texas, after all. I haven't seriously entertained that idea yet, but I do carry pepper spray. Even then,  if I actually used it it would probably end up in my own eyes instead of my attackers!) Even when it's 90+ degrees, I run. Even when I think I am too old and too tired for this, which is often., I run. Although I can't recite a long list of benefits (and, I am sticking to my story of never experiencing a "runner's high"),  I know something about it keeps me getting out there for about 15-20 miles a week, week after week.

 I am not a fast runner, but it doesn' matter how slow I go, I'm still lapping everyone on the couch, right? And, the one and only race I entered (a 1500 women race called The Jiggle Butt Run), I came in first in my age catagory. Go figure!  (Of course I promptly retired from racing, because hey, quit while you're ahead!) And last year I got to run barefoot on the beach....fantastic!!  I have to admit, when I have finished a run, I feel accomplished...virtuous even thought I don't yet know the full reason God intended this for me...it will be on my list of questions...

It will end one day, the running. But the little voice is going to have to say when. Until that time, I'll keep pounding the pavement and loving the looks on peoples faces when I tell them I run. Yes, on purpose. Yes, without stopping.

 Why?

Because. I. Can.

Bathing Suits

So, it's Valentines Day. It's not a day that I go to any effort for whatsoever, anymore. But it wasn't always so and I am recalling one many years ago when I chose to express my affection with gifts other than, heaven forbid, candy, expecially to my chidren. (Yes, I was one of THOSE moms even way back then.) My gift to Amy, probably age 3 or 4 at the time, was her first bikini (one of only a few in her lifetime because she did not, and does not, fancy herself a "bikini girl", unlike her twig-like sister who looked way too good in a bikini way too young. But that is a story for another day.)

Amy's first bikini was sky blue eyelet, and it looked darling on her cherubic little girl body, tasteful and feminine...just MY style for my beloved daughter. But today, as she modeled it in my minds eye, 30+ years after the fact, my memory skipped ahead  to another bathing suit experience a short time later. 

We were shopping in what is now Macy's, and as I looked through one rack, she approached me with something she had pulled from another: a bikini...a gold lamé bikini. "Isn't this beautiful?" she quarried,as serious as could be, as she held it up for me to inspect.. I was appalled; N n way would I ever allow my beautiful little girl to have such a thing  grace her body; a travesty to a mom who had total wardrobe control (among other things), and felt every decision she made for HER children reflected powerfully on HER.

I hope I at least had had the grace to agree with her assessment; I probably didn't. In truth I know for a fact that the words that came from my mouth were "Put it back." I regret that now, would re-write history, if I could. While I don't think denying her her preferred choice in swimwear did any permanent damage, I wish I had seen the bigger picture (ahh! tje wisdom of retrospect!) What would it have hurt for me to have to just said, "Oh, yes! It's divine! Let's get it"? Would it have started her down some path I didn't want her to  travel? Would this just be the tip of the iceberg? Would she become a fashion catastrophe?  Really?....REALLY?!!!. How else does one develop her own sense of style without some experimental forays into a few things that would be better left on the rack? (Let me add that in fifth grade I once chose an ensemble that included a black velvet vest, aqua sweater-knit skirt and red tights!)

This girl still loves bling and has  fine fashion sense. Her own cherubic daughter also loves all things sparkly and already shows an inclination to dress with flair at age 3.  And my daughter, far more gracious than I, with greater vision and more concern for feelings and self-esteem than I ever had, would respond much differently if faced with this same quarry, I believe. " Yes, Emily, it's perfect! We'll get it", I can envision her responding. And they would both laugh one day when the story is recalled. "How could you let me?" I can hear an older Emily ask, and her mother would properly respond, "because you picked it out, and I thought, "what could it hurt?" Yes, indeed...what could it hurt?

There are so many things I did as a young mom that I might change today. Little things, like gold bikinis, were just that: little things, without big consequences.. No, lamé is something I most likely will never embrace, but I should have embraced my young daughter's wish to express herself in ways that delighted her and built her confidence in her own ability to make good decisions, even if they wouldn't have been my choice. After all, there is nothing immoral or illegal about gold lamé.  I wish tthat bikini story (a family favorite) had had a different ending.

 Myabe next year I will search out a gold lamé bikini for Emily. Maybe one for Amy, too. What the heck...gold lamé all around! Won't we be a sight?!