It's Wednesday

Thanksgiving week is my favorite week of the calendar year.  While beginnings, in general, are not my favorite; think, new job, new school, new church, new neighborhood, this beginning is overflowing with cherished treasure.  Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday season and we do a bang up job for the next 6 weeks, but in its own right, this holiday filled with tantalizing aromas and all day work, is at the top of my list.

Wednesday is the day we get into full swing. As every established cook knows, this is the day devoted to the baking and the prep work of the meal itself. You know, those highly sought after in-law gigs, (like the putting away of the leftovers),  it's chopping veggies and peeling potatoes.  Wednesday is cheerfully leaving the office behind knowing much of the country is doing the same.  Goodwill is in the air despite our best efforts to smother it with ill tidings.

Wednesday.  

I fussed in my kitchen for several hours this evening. I cranked out two pies (which is a lot for 4 people, but I believe in us) set the table, made the sweet potato casserole, and made dinner before the dinner. (This is the only downside to Wednesday...we need to eat before we eat.). Yes, I make my own crust and you can too - get a food processor.  As I rolled out dough, chopped veggies, and peeled potatoes, these holiday tasks handed down from generation to generation that are preserved by some even in this day, I felt a strong connection to those I have loved. 

I thought about things my Grandmas or Great- Grandmas would have had on the menu when I was a child.  I thought about what my mother or step-mother would be making today. I thought about my siblings and aunties and cousins.  So many people all gathering in the center of the home to produce a meal that is forever remembered and celebrated through memory. My grandkids might one day be doing this very thing the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  "This is what Grandma Angela would make," they will say, and it will be as if I am there with them, measuring flour and humming a seasonal tune. 

Traditions are important to the fabric of our lives, it helps us to know who we are, and it helps to define who we become.  We get to pick and choose what we will keep from our heritage and what we will create for the future, all the while knowing that at some point it becomes someone else's heritage. I am a true traditionalist, and that is something I kept from my heritage. I make no apologies for appreciating being a wife and mother, for wanting a house full of people at the holidays, for making my own pie crust, and for knowing turkey should be roasted in an oven the way God intended.  Yet, while in my heart, I feel traditions strongly, I have, surprisingly, learned to yield.  I don't get a house full of people. I don't always cook my turkey in an oven. I don't, gasp, always cook my own Thanksgiving meal.  That's right - on some occasions - I've let Cracker Barrel do it for me. I would drive to the restaurant, load up the goodies, and heat it in the oven, in order to spend more time with my earthly treasures. 

If I can be so frank, the aging of my children is hitting me so hard in recent months. The other day, those two guys took the car to get a safety inspection and ate dinner at Chick Fil A.  I made dinner and no one was eating, and it felt so surreal. It's a new phase and these earthly treasures of mine are almost adult men, which means I will eat at McDonalds for Thanksgiving if it means I get to spend precious minutes soaking up their humor (these guys are funny), their crazy 20's hair, their opinions, and the way..."love you, Mom," rolls so easily off their tongue.   

I have spent many Thanksgiving weeks as a married woman and homemaker, yet they seem to have passed like a vapor.  I made a heritage for my kids without realizing in the day to day it was happening.  They will not be traditionalists in the way that I am because our life as a family was created differently.  But, they will know what love is; they will know who God is (what they decide to do with Him will be their own choice); they will know the value of family, no matter the size of the gathering; and they will know the importance of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. 

On Wednesday, we take out our rolling pin, the flour, the spices and we open a window to yesterday.  

Traditionalist or not, I hope Wednesday finds you with good memories; and, if not, I hope that today you have the courage to create new ones. Create something new and then it can become tradition, and then...heritage.

This is the magic of Thanksgiving week - full of promise and possibility.  

Heaven and Nature

Gentle Readers....

I see that I have written in this blog only a few times this year.  I would have to say that it is because I have been lost.  Tolkien said, "not all who wander are lost," and that is true; but, sometimes, we wander because we are.  In my case, the latter applies.  I gave up writing because it does not behoove anyone to beat a dead horse and my heart was not able to find excitement, nor peace, in the humdrum of mere existence.  I hope Jesus understands when we are merely existing.  I hope He knows that we still hold this life in a tight clutch even when we wonder if, or when, the sun will warm our face once again.  Now. Let me clear that the sun in Texas is eternal, so this is rather a metaphorical reference.  

If we're the oldest of friends or the newest of acquaintances,  I welcome you back to this space where I share stories, my life, and my love of God and family.  In this space, I like to imagine we are raising a mug of tea and pouring ourselves out as only good friends can. 

On that note, my big Texas life is starting its third year.  Two full years have come and gone on Harvey Penick....  Dear ones, I don't want to be melodramatic, but it has been a trial of the soul.  You might remember how I shut myself in the water closet a time or two, and let all the life force drain from me.  A person can only take so much, and change is not for me.   In fact, I've said it more than once, and I might still be saying it as of today, "The third time is the last; I will not survive another uprooting and relocation." Well, I'm sure I will physically survive but my heart will not go on and on, and what is a life without a heart? I ask.  

I lost a good chunk of myself in this move. When I say I was lost, I really mean that. It has been two years of going through the motions of life with no heart.  I work at the same company as my husband and my job has overwhelmed my life. It's always present and I have not particularly liked it, but there seemed to be no escape hatch. We talk about work at work. We talk about work in the evening.  We talk about work on the weekends. Mostly we talk about how I can process being miserable. I have no person.  I have no outlet. I have no other resource but my husband.  18 years ago, when we made vows to each other, I think God was thinking of this dark age and He sprinkled extra measures of mercy and grace in Ryan, and in me, He affirmed a foundation of faith.  No matter how many times I have murmured, Ryan has unwaveringly met me in that arena, without complaint.  No matter how my soul has chafed and wept bitterly, of loss and loneliness, or, more frankly, bone dry and resoundingly empty, God has met me in that arena.  I keep coming back, lifting my empty cup, and my husband and God pour back into my heart.  

And then....as it always does...as I know it always will...signs of new life spring from the dry, parched ground. 

I might finally feel a little more at home at work, like maybe I can belong here. I planned a potluck next week and it's bringing people together. (My favorite thing. )

I did the hard thing of becoming a volunteer in a place where I knew no one, and it didn't go well, but I am going back next month, because life is out there in the uncomfortable places. 

I have been inviting people for dinner recently, and it's been well received. One person told me this was their first invitation to someone's home in 24 years. I can't even comprehend that statement, but the joy I felt in being part of changing that, was immeasurable. 

People. It's what I do.  It is my first and true passion...be with people and connect them to each other, and hopefully, to Jesus. It isn't easy and quick, it takes so much more time than you might think to put down roots.  It's painstaking. Sometimes we start to root in an unsafe place and we have to try again in a new spot. It's agonizing. Two to three years is really the tested timeline.

What I know and trust is that God who is full of mercy, looks down from heaven on Angela muddling through and He says, "This one is headstrong, and she is sometimes misguided, but I have a place for her to bloom and I will plant her just so and water the ground beneath her feet. Purpose will I give her and strength to see it done." And, wouldn't you know it, Angela steps back and looks on in wonder at what is unfolding. Heaven. And nature. 

 It's indeed how it happens...  Just like....once upon a time...

I am always humbled when I stop and think of how the Lord orders my steps.  How patient He is with  my shortsightedness. I fail often to see the big picture.  The big picture is this....God is writing a story through all of human history and He has a couple paragraphs in which I am included. In joy or in sorrow, heaven and nature come together to pen God's love letter to the world. 

Rejoice. Rejoice. Glory to God, hallelujah.

Heaven and nature singing together. 

Forever and ever. Gloria.

Green, Gold and Baby Blue

Sunday evening on the last day of a very hot July finds me eager to eat a warm chocolate chip cookie and drink a cup of coffee.  It doesn't make a lot of sense but I'd probably preface it with a glass of ice water. 

It has been an interesting weekend of house cleaning, deconstruction, reconstruction and the giving away of worldly goods.  I can define it as a  settling in to the space that my body has occupied for almost two years.  You know more of what you want versus what you don't and act accordingly.  To this physical phase I am adding the emotional component...

Two years in Texas. My life is a foreign chapter of travel and exhaustion which I don't recognize.  I never in my dreams or imaginations pictured my life to be the way it now is.  One thing I have found to be true, life always goes that way.  I opened photo books this weekend and gazed at my life in print.  You know what I saw?  Happiness.  We of course do not intentionally take or pose for photos when we are upset but our parents at times offer some gems up for reflection.  (Like the photo of me crying about having to eat boiled potatoes.  I'm actually not embarrassed by it which was their intention, it strengthened my determination not to eat a boiled potato ever again; upon gaining the threshold of free will, I haven't. ) Since we take photos during happy times, it can be a joy to travel through the stages of our life.  We might remember feeling disgruntled right before the photo was snapped but sometimes it is overlooked as the memory is rose colored by the emotion that is captured by the camera.  When I would like to feel melancholy about the past, I simply need to take out the photo album and see happiness staring back at me. 

Every day I walk with stronger step forward to a life that still remains unknown to me.  I still consider myself to be friendless in Texas, meaning that bosom friend is not yet arrived in my heart.  I know that it takes such a long time to grow an old friend, so I am spending all that energy on my family rather than wondering when it will happen.  I have intentional faith that it will happen, one day I will love this life as much as any of the others, and when it happens, it will be a beautiful and tangible thing to hold.  In the meantime, I have just four years with these guys.  Four years and I could be an empty nester.  My mind drifts over the years ahead and I can only dream of what is in store.  

I am starting to form the idea that I would like to have a life that includes my passions and my connections. I was recently telling an old friend that you don't enjoy old things when you are younger.  You want new things for your home that you are building as a newlywed. You want new adventures and you boldy go forth.  But there is something to be said about the wisdom of age and the changing of values over time. I can now boldly go forth on adventures but I am embracing and carrying the old along with me.  I picture a life that includes my favorite books, and gardening.  My hair is getting quite gray -  and so I see a gray haired Angela with knowing blue eyes making raspberry jam and fresh bread.  It is a slower life I think.  I dream of a slower life, filled with quilts, soft lamps, fresh flowers and the man I love still tinkering in the garage, for he has definitely brought along his tools. 

God has been good to carry me these recent years for it has been a weary road.  I can see that success can be measured in many ways, but that joy is still to be found in the simple things for I am a hobbit at heart.  My adventures give me scope and depth, and I embrace that, but the cry of my heart is for the hearth. 

To quote a much better writer...."where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good, tilled earth. For all hobbits share a love for things that grow. And, yes, no doubt to others, our ways seem quaint. But today of all days, it is brought home to me: It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life."

I sit here on a Sunday evening, painting the future with green and gold and the baby blue eyes of Ryan.   

In summary, though, I know that many are the plans in the heart of man but God orders his steps. 

The Heart of Winter

Are you in the heart of winter? 

I think right now it doesn't matter where you are, likely, winter is in full swing.  Snow, ice, sleet and a good dose of wind to bring the temperature to an uncomfortable level.  Are you feeling cold? I've been a bit cold this week; my teeth have chattered and my environment has been frozen.  (My beloved fern might not be with us for much longer.)

Many people, often these people are writers, also use the word "winter," as a metaphor for a difficult experience that lingers and creates a season of time that is painful and uncomfortable.  Frankly, the word "summer" is rarely used and maybe that means we have some seasonism going on here.  (Yes, political correctness is out of control and it's bound to be brought up so I might as well be the first to brand it and cash in on it.)

Have you had some winter in either sense recently?  

Have you had both? 

This week I was traveling for work from Texas to Oregon.  Now, I like Oregon, in all honesty, it might become a second home with the amount of time I might need to spend there for work.  It's beautiful; to me, the landscape is beautiful.  Big trees, some mountains, coast, coffee...  It has very charming appeal, but, it is not the place for me.  It's expensive. It does not welcome strangers. It is snobby and full of its own virtue, that is, in my opinion, lacking.  Thus, when it was time to leave, I wanted to leave, but I could not make it back to Texas....due to winter.

I did not want to stay in Portland another day. I'd already turned in the rental car, went through all the airport rigamarole, and departing for a new hotel in the same location was not what I wanted to do. "Please," I asked the Delta attendant, "please keep me booked on this flight to Salt Lake City, and I will stay overnight there."  She was not very keen on it, preferring to send me to Atlanta at 0600 the next morning but I knew I would be stuck in

 Atlanta because that flight would be cancelled since it was earlier in the day. The forecast was not amenable to successful travel into Austin before the evening. She agreed, but was insistent I'd have to have somewhere to stay, basically I think she was saying that Delta would not be responsible for me.  I don't need Delta to be responsible for me so I boarded that deliciously empty flight to SLC while Velma, my newly purchased travel bag and future companion for business travel disembarked - I'd like to think involuntarily- and began her own journey across the country.  I rented a car while we sat on the tarmac and settled in, mentally calculating what I'd need to purchase at the airport Hudson News when I arrived: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, sweatshirt..err...parka perhaps? 

Skiers, missionaries (and 30 of their closest friends and family), herds of various travelers were coming and going; SLC has grown significantly since it was my "hometown" airport.  I spent some change, got the necessities and met the arctic blast head on. I was the only person looking like I expected the weather forecast to be a balmy 60*.  My fellow travelers had all.the.gear and it felt like frostbite was setting in while I struggled to find my Toyota Corolla in D26.  For the love...it's A,B,C,D...right? I found my new-to-me companion, hopped in, and turned on the heat quickly. As I drove out of the airport parking lot, I abandoned my original travel plan and drove straight to 2006 down Bangerter Highway.  This is the way to Eagle Mountain. 

Winter. 

I passed West Jordan and the armory....2009...flashes of a tall, handsome soldier, helicopters, the American flag...and goodbye.

Winter.

Time ceased to exist and I lived for an hour in my memory. I was amazed by all the physical changes, and, as if for the first time, I was mesmerized by how you can see a million lights at night by the terrain. Everything is sandwiched between mountain ranges and you are a king looking down on the vast sea of diamonds spread before you, and the freeways are the parting of the Red Sea; you go right through. It was one of my favorite things to see when I first moved there; it's so different than anywhere I came from. 

I just drove and tears rolled down my cheeks, unbidden. Not forced. Not planned. Not painful. But very emotional. 

I worked the next day, but took time out for a nice long lunch.  I drive down State Street from Lehi, through American Fork, Pleasant Grove, Lindon, to Orem.  Everything I passed was a bright flash from my past. That was the first Costco I belonged to. That was my favorite Mexican restaurant. That was the road to the pediatrician. That was the hospital where I had Aaron. Noah's first elementary school.  My baby went to school here; can I even remember what that was like?  Yes, I can. This is the route that he would walk.  

It was a strange feeling of: this is not home, yet I know once it felt that way; it is so familiar I can drive without thinking of how to get there. Strange and familiar; home, but foreign; a dichotomy.  I found my cheeks were wet once again.  How do these silent tears just fall? Where do they come from? 

Winter.  It can be a hardship, the season of cold temperatures and the season of painful experiences.  I had a lot of winter in Utah. When I look back, I honestly can't explain how I did some of the things I did. I certainly don't feel like I could do them today.  As I drove and cried, I had the deep seated assurance that grace is the answer. 

Grace is the answer.  When I needed to do something difficult, God provided the grace I needed to endure.  The grace and strength was available in the moment of need, just in the perfect timing.   I cannot tell you how I hugged my husband goodbye and left the airport with two babies in tow knowing I faced the next "forever" alone in a house in Orem.  I don't want to think about doing that right now. I don't think I can do it. But I did do it. I can do it.  Because when it was time, and only when it was time, the grace was poured out. 

My Utah chapter is a season of winter to me but it is a precious one of deep faith, friendships, and maturity.  It clearly still resonates in my heart and overwhelms me.  I see so many examples of the faithfulness of God and I submit it is usually in these times we can most make that connection. 

Are you in winter? 

Winter does not last forever but it can linger much longer than we desire.  

Pray for grace, dear one.  Pray for Jesus to meet you just in the moment. He doesn't necessarily remove the pain, but He does lavish His grace on broken and hurting hearts.  

And He raises them to life in the Spring....   

Spring follows and Summer and then, Fall.....and maybe a new winter.  But winter always comes with grace for every believer. 

I was very thankful for my brief stopover in my past this week.  It was a good walk down memory lane, it was good to remember. 

As I look toward the beginning of Spring in Texas....