I had been speaking with a friend on the phone and she was remarking about my story and how I continually made lemonade out of lemons, so to speak.

In response I told her it was actually not the challenges, but the lack of challenges that sometimes made me ready to give up in life. I seemed to do better with the crises than I did without them. They drew something out of me, an energy, a hope and faith that propelled me to figure out a solution.

My life may at times have looked like a disaster to others, but the challenges that have presented themselves have definitely given me the courage to take on new ones. I look back and see how God has used them all for my good, even when that seemed incredible and impossible. There are a couple challenges right now that I will be interested in looking back at to see how that happens yet again. As it is now, the losses of the past two years have put me in the enviable position of having as little baggage as at any point in my life to make a significant move, so it’s all good.

Only when we look back can we ever see God’s hand in our lives in the things that confuse us. Many of my entries over the past two years have been filled with uncertainty about where I was going and why so much seemed to be changing for me. All the things that previously seemed like losses become freedom in the circumstances I am in beginning to create today.

As I look at making a major move across the country, I am thrilled that I don’t have a home to sell, thanks to last year’s bankruptcy. I do not have a thriving real estate business to leave, courtesy of our present economy. I have become used to living without my furniture, thanks to a friend with whom I moved in temporarily. All the things that seemed so difficult to understand now have an entirely new framework within which to observe them and make new decisions. How light and free I am, now that everything is down to the basics!

What I learned in all of the paring down of the past few years is that I am a relational person. My relationship with God is foremost, then my relationships with family and friends and all the other wonderful connections that have crossed my path. Knowing this has made it really easy to make a choice to move. Not having a husband, particularly one with a job, meant I did not have to get permission or agreement, or impose my needs on anyone else. The things that made me feel lonely and single became the gifts that allowed me to follow my heart. How could I have known this when I was in the midst of despair or depression? Only by faith.

Hopefully when I read backwards in this blog, or better yet start from the beginning and read forward, I will see evidence of that faith as I went from one crisis to another, putting the pieces together as best I could, knowing God’s grace was always with me. I know I was often in a downward spiral, but I also know that He helped me to keep my head above water when I kept my eyes fixed on Him and His promises to me. I have never been disappointed with the journey we have been on together, and now it is time to move on to the next place and see what He has for me to do there. Having been taken to Berlin in 1987, seemingly to learn to pray deeply with a huge group of women brought there for the same reason, I am excited. We prayed for the wall to come down, believing in what seemed at the time impossible. Two years later, it did. With the idea of earthquakes and fault lines and radiation fears all over our West Coast, I can imagine that He needs more people of faith out there praying. If so, that is OK with me. There are many kinds of missionaries in this world. Perhaps someone’s fears will open an affordable home opportunity for me!

I am one who never seems to be under the covering of any particular church or ministry, yet I know I am under the cover of the Holy Spirit continually, and so I will go where  I am called and see what is needed there. It is always exciting when God changes our course and direction. His plan is always better than the one I might have made without Him. I hope to keep posting as I take one step at a time following the map as it is laid before me. I have to admit, a part of me thinks I should start a blog called “How to downsize your life to what fits in a car and move across the country in 90 days!” I had better google that, as undoubtedly someone has already written one that I can follow!

The biggest part, as in all things, is keeping my faith way ahead of my fear, knowing the enemy will try to keep me from going where God is leading. Having a prior track record of similar journeys is a big help when it comes to that. We have done this together before, and God is in my driver’s seat!

OK. Everyone has been asking where I have been. Why haven’t I blogged since Feb 14th? No I didn’t get depressed on Valentine’s Day. I was sick for the better part of February and tired as can be. I was unable to blog because I felt like I was in some kind of time warp:  I couldn’t seem to go forward and I wasn’t going backward, but I was just getting a feel for where I was right here and right now.

That said, I had bought tickets to see my son and daughter-in-love in Los Angeles, and I was just hoping to be well enough to make that trip. The time came in early March and off I went on American Airlines! It was a magical trip from beginning to end. The kids picked me up at the airport and then began to give me the visuals to complete my picture of their life together out there. We lunched at Joan’s on Third, a very posh but cottage-y place that was absolutely scrumptious! We drove around looking at all the homes they could never afford but enjoyed the view  anyway. We had a wonderful dinner in their apartment and got up the next morning to go on a  hike in a canyon with breathtaking views of the city and skyline. We brunched at a neat place called Urth, and ate near the sidewalk enjoying the air and the sun and the people.

In the afternoon we drove to Nora’s parent’s home in beautiful Santa Barbara, and began the makings of an evening meal together. Somewhere around cocktails, my son and his wife disappeared for a moment, only to reappear to three parents, fittingly lined up on the couch facing them, to announce and video our reactions to the news that they were four months pregnant! You can hear my squeals of delight all over the video. What an incredible event, not the least of which was how they had kept it a secret until this moment!

The story goes on with more adventures back to LA and then off to see friends in the South near San Clemente.  I took the most exquisite train ride from LA to their home, tracing the ocean as we quietly rolled along.  Somewhere around San Juan Capistrano (where the swallows come back) I began to film the view from my window, saying softly to myself…. I could live here, I could be happy here. After quickly touring her home, my friend drove me right back for lunch to the place I had been filming….she had planned to take me there all along. Needlesstosay, there were more friends, more food, more sunlight and colors and ocean views to take in, all breathtaking. But somewhere upon awaking to the sound of birds and the breeze that is California’s hum through my window the next morning God whispered in my ear….Are you willing to be totally healed? Are you willing to be totally happy? I thought for only a second before answering a resounding YES!

From there it will all become history soon. I came home to start packing and selling off everything that I have held tight to in the past years. Furniture and dishes and fabric and books….It is wonderful to know I don’t need them any longer. I am off for the adventure I have always secretly sought, a place where I have found my people and that feels like home! I don’t need anything but whatever fits in my car with my can’t-wait-to-see-California companion, Gypsy, and a brand new beginning on my 65th birthday this June.

God sometimes asks our permission to make great changes in our lives. He is totally able, but He wants our cooperation in the great things He has in store for us. I have been getting ready for this all year, although I didn’t know it. When it seemed I was losing everything, I was just re-prioritizing what was really important to me. I was pulling out weeds in my heart making the soil ready, with the oil of Gilead, for a new and beautiful garden that He would help me plant. My coming Grandchild is the reason to set the date, but for five years I have known there was a pull toward that place. Now I  am ready to rightfully  claim it for myself.

All I can say is, I am ready to receive what He has been saving for me, and I can’t wait to go where it already feels like home.

In my last post, I wrote about what I knew about, shelter dogs. This drew two wonderful responses from friends who had had cats and/or pedigreed pups. They were adding their insight to what I saw and provided information that helped me to expand what I saw from my own experience to now include theirs.

It is all about sharing ideas in this worldwide classroom we call ‘online’. That is what is so fascinating about it, that if we choose to participate, we will find that our views are not the only ones out there. I think of it as a classroom, where the teacher calls on different people and each of them share from their own lives or minds. While they may disagree or just come at the issue from a different place, we all leave the room changed in some way. Our thinking is a little broader, more inclusive.

In a classroom you have often met the person, spoken with them about other things, perhaps shared a meal. Online, this person might be a total stranger, with a name that doesn’t give you a clue to whether they are male or female, American, or from some other country you know nothing about. Yet somehow your ideas found each other, and you passed them back and forth like the salad at a friend’s home.

The first tenet to being open to enjoying this maybe first assuming you don’t know everything, that there is no right or wrong way to see things here. If your background made you believe there was always only one way of seeing things, this could be difficult. I do believe the more you take part, the more you begin to enjoy the fellowship of ideas and the broadening of your experience, if only somewhat vicariously.

Thank you for reading and sharing your comments. You stretch me and also make me realize I am not alone. Although I may see things differently than you, our insight and feedback is invaluable to the whole that we see, and as I go through life today, I will bring with me the thoughts you have shared as a link to my own, and I will see more than I did yesterday!

There is something I have noticed over the years about the way people choose a dog to join their family. There are some who prefer pedigreed animals, those who come with a long line of traits characteristic of their breed. The new owner is promised the dog’s behavior will be similar to those who have gone before, within certain limitations. They usually pay quite a lot of money for those expectations, and may be extremely disappointed if they are not fulfilled as the dog grows up.

Then there are those of us who take our kids, or ourselves, to the nearest humane shelter for abandoned animals. We may go back more than once, knowing that when we see the one that is right for us we will just know it. Having had dogs before, we may prefer a certain breed, as two good friends of mine do, and then we go to a rescue for that particular breed. At least then, we are assured of some of the characteristics we are fond of, even though the one we bring home may have been a little off the pedigree charts or even abused in some way.

For the rest of us, though, we are pretty much open to the ‘love at first sight’ philosophy. It may be a matter of the purse, as these animals have usually had their shots and even been neutered. Often I find it is a matter of conscience. These dogs are not bred for our enjoyment, but rather the products of two other dogs not very closely watched by their owners, perhaps let loose to roam the neighborhood at large. They come with a bit of a stigma as to their “parentage’ and their lineage?…well, you can pretty much forget about tracing their family tree!

On the other hand, they teach those of us who have them a great deal about keen observation, and learning to read body language. I have noticed that Gypsy, for instance, has a much greater aversion to my taking a white kitchen trash liner in or out of its container, than he ever does to the vacuum cleaner being turned on. I assume there was a very bad price to pay from a run in with some kitchen garbage in his past, one that he will never forget.

I also notice how he behaves around certain people, trying to pick up on the signals that make him feel safe, rather than nervous and fearful. I notice how he does stupid things when he is uncomfortable and trying to fit in….even though his antics usually bring him the exact opposite results and get him temporarily removed from the party. I often wonder if I do the same thing around people with whom I don’t feel I fit in? Do I tell jokes, act too loud, call attention to myself?

I believe that people who love shelter dogs can become pretty adept at reading humans as well. Perhaps because of our own wounded backgrounds, we feel an instant affinity for animals who did nothing wrong except be different than expected. I often notice that the single moms I have known almost always have a shelter dog in their family. We are often people who seem to be able to accept what life handed us, even though it might not have been exactly what we expected. What I have noticed is that most of us have a natural tendency to love God fervently, perhaps because we feel He accepts us exactly the way we are at this moment, band-aids and all. We know He still sees the original as His pedigree and will continue to love us unconditionally and protect us until we come to see it too…. and that’s exactly the way I feel about my Gypsy.

I may have said it before, but dog is God spelled backward, and for some of us a constant reminder of His comforting presence in our daily lives.

P.S. Cat lovers please read comment below. It is excellent and makes the same point for those who rescue cats!

It has been over 40 years since I got my wings and finished training in Dallas/ Fort Worth to become and airline Stewardess for American Airlines. I left college after two years, not finding my purpose there and not wanting to waste my father’s money (perhaps somewhere knowing that I might need his help more later down the line, as I spent twenty-five years as a divorced single parent). Anyway, after working in NYC at Bloomingdale’s for a season, my Dad mentioned something about stewardess being a good job, and somehow my heart leapt at the thought. I immediately sought out the two best airlines, in my estimation, and set up interviews.

While TWA wanted me to come back for a second, then a third interview, American said we have a class starting next week and we want you to be in it!There was something about them recognizing me as their type of employee, it seemed almost a spiritual match, like when you find a sorority in college that feels like a lot of people very similar to you and you instantly feel a part of the whole. It seemed a good sign and I was ready for change and off I went.

As with many things in my life, at first I didn’t seem to fit the teachers molds, and some doubted my sincerity in being there. I remember being chosen song leader of my graduating class, and of being the only one who cried at our graduation. I was probably the most sincere, but I had an aloofness that at first sight might make you think I didn’t care. I was always afraid of rejection, and always held myself back in groups until I got the feel for where I fit in.

As I was driving home from Publix today with groceries I hoped would last the month, I prayed that God would help me to be a good steward of the food I had just purchased. I realized that sometimes I bought things knowing exactly how I was going to use them, but after I put them on the shelves or in the refrigerator, I later forgot what my intention had been. I hated throwing out food that I had forgotten to use before it expired or went bad. It seemed like being such a bad steward.

What came to me as I prayed was the word stewardess. Somehow that brought a smile to my face and always will. It reminded me of times where even though the flight might look like the same one I had made many times before (say NY to Chicago), there was something different about it each time . In fact, the thing I remember most about being a stewardess (yes, they are called Flight Attendants now, but back then we were all women) was that every time we boarded a leg of a flight there was something different. If not all new, there were always additions and subtractions to the passengers, even though some were going through with us to the next destination. There was a different meal to be served (yes, we still served full course meals then :-). There might be an addition to our crew if the flight was full. Even if I was going from the same place to another place I had been many times before, the people I was going with were entirely different.

This was the way God encouraged me today. Simply by adding ‘ess’ to an old word for taking care of what the Lord gives you, I was changing the way I perceived it completely. I now smile and think of myself in my uniform with a red, white and blue bow in my hair(It was the sixties!)and I can give myself another chance to do things differently.

I am grateful for His sense of humor and for the constant ways He gives me a second chance to see what He wants me to see. He knows just where to go in my old picture albums in my mind. May I learn to be a good stewardess of what He gives me today.

When is the last time someone said to you “Do you want the good news first or the bad news?” For me it was two days ago. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but as I was gathering thoughts about our Bible study the other day, it really struck me.

Are you someone who wants the good news first or last? I thought I would say, bad news first, but truly I want the good news first. It is the good news that often provides the cushion for me to be able to receive the bad news. It gives me a framework that already has acknowledged that there is lots of good going on all the time. The bit of bad news can be dealt with in that atmosphere so much more easily than in a negative cloud of doom and gloom.

As we think about reaching out to those that the Lord puts in our path, to express His love and compassion for them, how often do we think about letting them rest in the good news first? Do we make sure that they are totally secure in the feeling that God loves them and more than that, through His love of us, we love them too? Is it palpable and real for them? Only if it is, are we in a position of  making a real and significant difference in someone else’s life.

I read once that it takes ten compliments to reverse the hurt of one criticism. I was raised by a dad who had trouble withholding  criticism, and an even harder time expressing his love verbally, even though it was never in doubt. It made it difficult for me to believe that God wasn’t a punisher first, a rewarder later. The fact that He gives you the big reward first, before we have really done anything to deserve it, has always been astounding to me. It has always been easier to accept God’s discipline and conviction, grounded as it is in the love I know He has for me.

Reward, then punishment. Even then, He is usually gentle and kind when He convicts us in our hearts, and His punishment is never as severe as we might have thought appropriate. Most Christians really get that, particularly if they came to him through the pain of loss, addiction, or infirmity. I believe we are called to love in the way that He loves us, and as far as I can see, the Good News is always offered to us before the bad news. Some of us may have rejected it the first, second, or third time it was offered. Or we may have shot the messenger! Chances are, looking back, we can find many places where He came to us bearing the good before He ever asked us to handle the bad.

It is a challenge every day to offer His good love, instead of condemnation, to those around us. To me that is the cross I pick up every day.

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I am back in the Bible study, trying hard to hear God, and yet not believing what He is saying, although I am getting confirmation so fast it makes my head spin sometimes. Today I was reading in John 21:15-17, the part where Jesus is telling Peter what to do. Peter is being questioned about his love for the Lord, to which he replies of course, you know that I love you, but the Lord is commanding him three times: then Feed my lambs, Shepherd my sheep, feed my sheep.

He has given me a ministry to be an advocate for working Christian single moms. They are His heroines, and He doesn’t want them forgotten, as they go about their daily struggles, rarely asking for any help besides prayer, relying on His provision for their needs and those of their children.

Meanwhile, I am still trying to figure out how I proceed with what He has asked of me, worrying about providing for my own bills and obligations and needs. He keeps impressing on me to step forward and do what He has asked, even though I cannot see how that helps my circumstances in the least. The drum in my head only beats louder. Follow me!

Sometimes, and frequently in the past, I must admit, God’s instructions have seemed crazy. They would seem to make me look irresponsible to others. He continually brings me back to “why do you care how it looks to others? I want you to see how it looks to me. I don’t have a back up plan. You are it! If you don’t put your puzzle piece down on the table, no one else can come and attach theirs. You will never see the whole picture if you don’t begin with the piece I have given you!”

Please don’t think He is yelling at me, because He isn’t. Like a parent who has reaffirmed the same thing several times to a child, He is only being firm, and perhaps a little frustrated. He knows I know better. I have already seen His provision for over 27 years of my life raising two children. I know His timing is perfect and He will never abandon me. So what am I waiting for?

Embrace the rain today and make the calls. Start the newsletter and let Him bring others to help complete it. I am beginning to think it may rain for forty days and forty nights if I don’t start right now! I am remembering Jonah on the ship and the high seas that nearly overtook them. He finally said to the sailors, its me. I am causing the trouble by not being obedient to what God has asked of me.

Lord knows, I sure don’t want to come face to face with my own big fish!

I was prompted this week, when reading a blog about abortion and how we have or haven’t dealt with it, to write a small response telling my story. Divorced, with a five year old son, finding myself pregnant at age 37 and in crisis. The father of the child was an also divorced friend, but the sheer reality of a pregnancy brought a quick end to both the relationship and the friendship.

I was surrounded by female friends who were very clear about what they would do if they found themselves in a similar position, and all offered in one way or another to drive me to the place to terminate this problem. I was adamant that the only women I wanted advice from were those who had either had an abortion or a baby out of wedlock. I knew only one of the former and none of the latter. This was before I became a Christian, so my friends were very forward thinking about what they “thought” they would do.

As for the one I knew who had recently ‘terminated an unwanted pregnancy’ (these words are cold and lifeless to me as I write them, somehow void of any emotion at all, something else that should have been telling for me even then), and when I asked her to tell me how she felt ‘now,  she burst into tears and then hung up on me. She never did tell me. I wanted to know what I would feel like twenty years later and I wanted to know that day. A very difficult thing, because even though abortion was legal, no one would talk about it. I kept thinking, how can they think this is a good thing, if it becomes something a woman has to keep secret for life?

Since I had already had a child, there was no convincing me it was not a child, and the decision had to be made quickly because each day was more painful and confusing than any I ever remember before or since; as I recall, I found out on a Thursday, drove to tell the father on a Saturday and was scheduled for the procedure on a Tuesday. There was little time to get input and weigh my options.

Not finding the support I had hoped for with the father, I was already at Monday night when I made a call to a good male friend on the other side of the country. I remember taking the phone to the basement (I lived in the northeast then and we had basements) so that my young son would never overhear this conversation about his sibling to be. I knew somewhere deep in my heart that I could never maintain the open, honest relationship we had if I erased all the evidence of someone who was also family to him, without even asking his opinion (I would never had gotten his permission, I knew, but it seemed a lot to hang on a five year old, no matter how grown up he seemed at the time). Then I listened to the words of a man whose only offspring had been terminated by a former girlfriend.

I will never forget the words he used, because they washed into my body and spread through my soul quicker than an IV bringing an instant end to the pain I was in. He said “What are you doing the next nine months you couldn’t do pregnant?” There it was. Gray area, in a decision that had previously seemed to have only black and white sides to it. At that moment I experienced total peace and confidence that the decision to carry this pregnancy to term was the right and only decision for me. The decision to keep and raise that child could and did come some months later, but there was never a moment of looking back from that moment on to this very day, some 28 years later.

I offer this as an alternative that can be given to anyone who may find themselves at that crossroads with that enormous decision resting on their shoulders and so very heavily on their heart. Twelve words. If there is someone who can appreciate and embrace that gray area, they will recognize those words when they hear them. I responded immediately by laughing and crying at the same time, a whole world of trapped emotions bursting out of me in huge gasping waves.

Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Because I couldn’t think and I wasn’t in my right mind. How could I be? I will tell you that even though I am an artist who loves and appreciates bold and vivid colors and who has never been much of a fan of dreary, dull days I used to reference with this color, I have never been so grateful for gray as I was that evening.

In the past few weeks, as God struggled with me and I with Him to really hear His directions for my life, I was caught by one recurring theme. How often well meaning Christian friends seem to play ‘devil’s advocate’ in my life.

Not that they were meaning to, exactly. I found that if I shared what God was doing in my life, or the crossroads at which I found myself, several of them responded quickly from their own flesh, and very often added advice that was really harder to process than if it had come from a non believer. I wanted to give it weight, as I knew they loved the Lord, but God warned me to be careful of listening and taking that advice to heart.

I used to say, when I was much younger and still hoping to find the guy who would fill my heart and complete my family, that I would almost prefer to have my heart broken by someone who didn’t know the Lord, than by someone I had met at a Christian function. It was much harder to get over being hurt in the name of Jesus, than by someone who didn’t even profess to know him.

I think that is still difficult. I now have mostly Christian friends, but I have to be very cautious in whom I confide when I am trying to hear God’s voice clearly. I have only a handful who have the discernment not to offer advice from their flesh, about how they think I should proceed or what they think I should do in a given situation. I am very blessed to have those few and I thank God for them daily.

I get excited about what God is doing in my life and often rush to share with sometimes total abandon with the first person I talk to after something I think is amazingly the Lord. Often the person I am confiding in does not have enough experience in the things of the Lord to know how that could seem even vaguely exciting to me. This is where God is training me in discernment. He has given me a large dose of that often for others who ask me for counsel, but lately He is really working with me on better protecting myself and the gifts, challenges and passions He has placed within me.

He  may also use complete strangers, speakers, books, sometimes even a tiny text message and I am sure a Tweet on occasion to confirm His directions to us. He can also use non believers in ways that speak to you loud and clear and focus you like a laser beam right to the path He wants you to see. What I have found is that sometimes friends may respond completely from their own fear of losing where I am in their life, or because they wouldn’t want to do what God is asking me to do, so they caution me against it, slightly framed as though it were a word from God. It seems to have a little more conviction that way, and don’t we all want to keep things from changing when they suit us; it’s really hard to resist that temptation, isn’t it? It happens to all of us, so we have to examine our motives, don’t we?

Words that seem to counter what we feel God is saying are harder to hear from well meaning friends, but as my ear gets more finely tuned to God’s voice, I hear can hear them almost before they are said. I am getting very private about the people to whom I turn for counsel. If they are not grounded in a community of worship, a Bible study and fellowship, a daily practice of meeting with God, but even more important: If I don’t hear and see them turning to God for direction in their own life, but merely asking Him to bless the direction they want to go, I know they are not where I should turn, and instead I keep his communications with  with me private and guard them in my heart. He will tell me with whom I am safe to share them.

Again, more listening. God made me a talker and a sharer, incredibly vulnerable with my openness to others. Deep listening and keeping things to myself have come with much difficulty for me. More counsel is not necessarily better counsel. I have had to learn that many Christians(who wouldn’t think of eating without first asking His blessing on the meal) will not pray, even silently, before they speak to another Christian, and may do great harm or even cause a setback, from the direction that God is leading someone else. I believe we are part of an immense trust when we speak for God into someone else’s life. We are meant to be encouragers and to lift one another up. Unless we hear God definitively, and we have been asked for our wise counsel, sometimes we also just need to listen and then continue to ask God in our private time with Him to direct that friend or loved one.

We need to use our words carefully, and His even more prayerfully, if we are tempted to quote scripture, as we do not want to cause one of his chosen ones to stumble from the path on which He has put them. It is not our path, so we need not be afraid. If He asks them to do something, He will provide the means and the way. He will not allow them to come to harm. There is a much higher price they will pay in their own walk with Him if they follow our advice instead of His. Just a word for all of us to remember, we never want to be used as advocates of the devil in our well meaning for Christ.

The people we love and care about most deeply may be the ones where this will be most difficult. Let us continue to hold them up in prayer first, last and always, as God truly knows best. And for those of us He may have asked to go into a difficult or unknown place, breaking God’s heart by refusing to go where He has asked us to go would be the deepest hurt of all.

I think this could all have been said much more succinctly, but as I am working it out as I write, I will probably come back and make more sense of this. God is always acting as proof reader and nudging me to make changes, so usually I publish right away and make changes for the first one to five hours after. If I didn’t publish right away, I would probably think of a million reasons never to publish it at all. Once done, it just gets modified a bit. Kind of the way God works with us in everything . It all boils down to the best thing any Christian can offer anyone else is the extension of God’s grace….in any circumstances, in any place or any time. That is the gift that keeps on giving, that is accepted by everyone, like the perfect credit card! No one ever returns it, they just pass it on. How cool is that? Probably food for another blog thought…this one is way too long. They are getting like book chapters, hmmmmm, God’s next?