BIRTHDAY JOY

The phone call should not have come as a surprise. But it did.

"Mom, Dad! Listen. Guess where I'm going tonight?"Our seventeen year old proudly said from her college dorm room. "I'm headed downtown to volunteer and help the homeless. It's so exciting!"

My heart sank as I heard my beautiful young seventeen year old daughter innocently connecting with these people. She could have volunteered for anything else, I pondered.I rationalized about the other safer opportunities this Christian college could have exposed her to.

My silence or long pause and lack of words  kept her from hearing the affirmation she wanted to hear.

"Isn't this what we have done for years?"she questioned.

I hated to admit that. Each summer in recent years her two brothers had gone with us to some third world country where we'd work all morning before the beaming sun forced us to eat and rest.Then we'd spend the afternoon acquainting ourselves with the missionaries or native pastors who worked by our side."But Lord, " I reasoned, "We were in charge. We could protect her there."

Struggling for words, I changed the subject and hung up. I hated to squelch her enthusiasm, but this didn't seem like a good idea for her career.

The weeks went on. Our "little girl"  was so involved that anything we said she would twist."Wasn't this what you tried to accomplish in Haiti or Dominican Republic? What's the difference between Nashville or Haiti or wherever?" echoed in my ears. "Don't they all need help?"

"So true, I knew!" She nailed us.

The months passed. Her professional goal in college was never mentioned although she volunteered at Room In the Inn even as it was birthed.As parents, we visited, not knowing if our intervention was appreciated.

However, during those early years, something was happening to her. Someone was mentoring her because they saw potential and maturity that as parents, we lived so close to her,we overlooked what God was birthing.She became more assertive and willingly shared her gifts and time while teaching full-time.What she had grasped in Haiti or at a mission was not taught in a class. Empathy  was seeing the homeless not as faceless members, but as real individuals needing a place to belong. That she could process. It was not something that could not be bought or sold , nor learned in a textbook. She saw the homeless as helpless, vulnerable people, broken as she.

I only saw her actions as something she was doing rather than what God was equipping her to do. I didn't recognize her servant hands God was using.

Father, forgive me for wavering as I saw your will revealed in her life where she was far safer in Your will than anything I planned for her. I know You will take her to places I never dreamed of, and I will be glad.

And now, on the eve of her birthday over two decades later, I may be one of her best cheer-leaders watching many talents share within this community seeing needy hearts healed one by one.Thank God for the seeds sown by hundreds of volunteers and a host of staff members resulting in a great harvest of growth, changed lives, one by one.What a gift of love.
Like I said before-better than a Hallmark card, "I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord."plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11
Happy Birthday Rachel! I love you dearly.
Mother

To Everything There Is a Season

Three years ago my back deck needed repair, or whatever it took to make safe a wobbly insecure well-worn wooden deck. Down it came and a lovely new one was constucted  that should last. I could visualize steps leading to my sloping back yard with a lovely crepe myrtle to accent it. I even had it planted by one who had a better green thumb than I.

And so for the last three years, I have pampered it, watched it carefully like an expectant mother would watch and wait for the first bloom.I begged for it to bloom as I had spent too much to see it dormant.

The lawn man came to mulch and I asked him for some encouragement and he said, "Miz, just leave it alone-in God's own time, it WILL bloom. Just watch what I say."

Well, August fourth arrived  and I just happened to look out my window after  Quiet Time, and I could not fathom what I was seeing. Above the deck rails, there was a colorful parade of blooms that I had not seen. I cried. I shouted for joy, all alone,but all I could hear were those gentle words -"in God's time."

As writers, we find ourself in waiting periods like these. We fret over our "babies" that we have written, been critiqued, been submitted umpteen times. In my study where I write, I have on the wall an article, "Dr. Seuss's first book was rejected (in large numerals) 27 times.
Next to it hangs an article "Dishing With Kathryn Stockett," She said her book, The Help, was sent to 60 literary agents before it was published!

What kept these people going? Stubborness, tenacity, or whatever it took prevailed.

Maybe it's the wisdom of Flannery O"Connor who said: "When a book (or manuscript) leaves your hand, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business."

Enough said...Thank you for those words. In God's time that overshadows the glorious hues of my little "late bloomer," a crepe myrtle which
reminded me of Your truth, so rich and beautiful. Maybe that is what Solomon meant in Ecclesiastes 3:1-"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." KJV