The Joys of Aging

Actually there are some joys in aging (just to let any youngsters out there realize the fact). But at times you have to look sort of hard. Those of us who fit the Senior Citizen category can look back at wise choices and not-so-wise choices and know that we have learned from that circumstance and can go on from there with confidence. And of course, you have to have a certain amount of years under your belt to have and enjoy grandchildren (or great-nieces and nephews).

However, dealing with aging bodies that you had thought were relatively fit is an unwelcome surprise. Case in point:  last Monday I was finishing my third set of strength training exercises when I heard a pop and immediately felt an excruciating pain in my calf. These were not new exercises to me and I had warmed up in the same fashion as other times I had done these routines. How could my body sabotage me like that?

Once the pain had subsided enough for me to hobble over to the computer, I googled mid-calf pain and discovered that I had possibly torn a muscle. Well, that sounded really hunky-dory since we had a vacation planned for the next week. After icing and elevating the leg most of the day, I took one of Dean’s anti-inflammatory drugs  and slept great that night

Since then I have been able to walk pretty much pain-free except that I can’t get rid of a limp. Not sure whether I just want attention—don’t think so—or if my brain is telling my body that the correct balance needed to walk freely isn’t quite what it needs to be yet.

My friend told her husband (a high school coach) about my injury and he immediately had a name for the problem—sorry, I don’t have it, but probably couldn’t spell it anyway. He said old athletes often incur this injury and it was nothing particularly serious—I should be back to 100% in about three weeks.

Old athletes, huh? So now I’m an old jock. Who’d a thunk it?

Adoption

This subject could be titled “Salad Bowl Discourse #3 as it is a gift (shame! Shame!) that I have taken for granted until I read J.I. Packer’s chapter on “Sons of God” in his book, KNOWING GOD. (Yes, Dean and I are still inching our way through the book, but it really IS worth the journey.)

In our 21^st century culture we view adoption as a wonderful way to unite a baby or young child without parents with a childless couple or parents who unselfishly open their family to nurture additional children.

However, during the Roman era of world dominance which held sway during the time the New Testament was written, adoption generally dealt with bringing a young adult male into the family to carry on the family name in a worthy fashion and to inherit the family wealth.

As a child I asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior (in the Baptist vernacular) and because of that decision, I grew up taking for granted that I was a child of God. That phrase “taking it for granted” is the bad guy here because as I read Packer’s thoughts on what it means to be adopted into God’s family, I realized I understood  only a tiny morsel of what that privilege meant.

Adoption into God’s family gives us eternal benefits starting with forgiveness. John 3:16 tell us God loved us so much He sent Jesus to take care of our sin debt by dying in our place. (Pat’s paraphrase) That’s just for starts. Also, in this awesome package of Godly adoption we get faith, hope, peace and other great helps for our sojourn on planet Earth.

Then there’s this inheritance factor. When I think about being a co-heir with Jesus, my Lord, it almost feels heretical—but that’s what the Bible tells me in Galations 4:7. When I try to imagine what heaven is like, my brain gets even more tangled up than when I look at the stars on a clear night and think about the galaxies beyond my sight. Yet that’s what I, as a child adopted into God’s family, will inherit.

I have been blessed with a great flesh and blood family here on Earth, but now that I’ve removed Adoption out of my spiritual salad bowl, I truly marvel at what a family I’m a part of—God, the Father and Jesus, the Son. Wow!

Purely Personal

This blog post will be a travelogue of sorts re: our Ft. Worth trip. The first picture is the sun shining through a hole in a stormy cloudscape which reminded me of a spotlight. If you look carefully, you can see two or three. Pretty eerie. This was taken between Silver Zone ad Wendover.  

The 2^nd day’s travel ranged from Laramie, WY to Dumas, TX—a long day made even more miserable by the rain and fog we traveled through. Thanks to the fog, we missed seeing the beautiful scenery over the summit between Laramie and Cheyenne. However, we didn't deal with flood waters as Boulder did.

Day 3 put us in at Jeff’s house about an hour before he got home, but that was OK. The next day was B Day—birthday time. No particular celebration this year but we did take Jeff to a new restaurant to him (and of course, to us). Then we bought 3 different LARGE slices of cake at his favorite bakery and topped that off with some ice cream at Braun’s.  (Can you se the "42" candles?)

 

Sunday was church at Hope and lunch with our friends, the Andersons. Jeff’s DVD player inside of a hand-me-down TV had die and since I use a DVD for  an exercise guide and Dean loves to watch the tube, we made a trek to Radio Shack for those items so the old folks wouldn’t feel deprived

 

Jeff took Monday off so he could help us get started on the two major goals: Inserting a new side door for his garage and putting up  pegboard for his kitchen renovation so that shelves could be put up and cabinets constructed.

We bought a door at a recycled items place which we are pleased with (unfortunately ran out of time before it could be put in place).  

I spent a chunk of time Monday ridding a copper light shade of many years of grime. We decided to turn it inside out so the copper is visible

My next project was washing the glass crystals of two chandeliers Jeff was given by a friend who is remodelling an old house. (Too bad we didn't have time to get this up to show off the light against the crystals.)

Friday was another “vacation” day (not really) for Jeff and he constructed cabinets for the kitchen that day. We moved furniture around so that his living room and dining room no longer contain quite so much kitchen utensils.

God willing, we will get to go see Jeff for next year’s birthday (Dean drove the 1500 miles in relatively good condition), so we will see what changes evolve in the little Tudor style house on NW 19^th by next year.

Our trip back home started out with beautiful sunshine but by the time we reached Cheyenne, the typical Wyoming winds picked up. I love the sight of large wind turbines and these were guarding the horizon outside of Cheyenne. I knew we would seem more turbines between Laramie and Arlington and also on the Three sisters just before we reached Evanston, so thought it was probably silly to snap this picture. Good thing I followed my first intuition as all the other locations had gray skies and snow

We got home safely and I went out to see how “the tomato plant” had fared in our absence. Elko had had freezing temps, but despite that, the 8 blossoms that emerged after the August rain turned into 4 tomatoes! (They have white paper as a background, but may still not be visible.)  A pathetic yield if you're a gardener; an unexpected delight if you're not. I fall in the second category.

Let There Be Light

This blog posting was actually written  about a month ago but I felt such a great urge to share my “tomato story”, this one was pushed to the side.

I love nostalgia and delight often in the items our local paper chooses to print  in their weekly column called Rewrites. The item that caught my eye this morning (9/7) was an article written 125 years ago.

The date of September 3, 1888 was to mark the electrification of Elko. It would be interesting to research how the town folks readied themselves for this lighting up of their lives but it surely ranked up there with future events like the first radio set in town and then the first TV available. Or maybe by that time, new inventions were becoming blasé

I was raised on a farm in the Midwest but my memory as a child always included having electricity in our home—just not inside plumbing—but that’s another story. However, I have friends (yes, they’re still alive) who remember homes without electricity. That meant going to bed at the same time the chickens did or straining your eyes to read by an oil lamp (although I understand Aladdin lamps gave out very good illumination). Moving from that type of existence to electric lights had to have been a life changing experience—one that very few of us can even imagine. I suppose some Elko folk had gas lights so that adds another twist to the change-over to electrification.

A more recent “Rewrite” column mentioned that the last bastion of non-electrified Elko County was hooked into the grid in the 60’s in the settlement called Midas. The last time we were exploring ghost towns, Midas was our destination but there may still be some people in the are—we just didn’t see any sign of them.

If any of you have memories of your family or relatives living with gas light or oil lamps, please share, particularly if there was an air of excitement in a newly electrified home or place of business.

What a Difference A Rain Makes

The title is a “take off” on an old standard and probably makes little sense to any readers who have not lived in the Southwest desert areas. My experience with rain in northeastern Nevada is that it usually arrives in June, we then see little of it the rest of our short summer--and then it snows.

This years has been different with very cold temperatures in June  (I was bemoaning my non-garden in an earlier post) and little moisture. This post will chronicle the continuing saga of “the” tomato plant. Here it is pre-planting.  

As you may remember, “the” tomato plant started out as a “counter” plant bearing  one tomato about the size of a tennis ball and a  smaller one about the size of a golf ball. The larger tomato ripened and graced a Diehl salad one day. After having surmised that the freezing weather was over (by the end of June) I decided to plant "the" plant outside in hopes the golf-ball tomato would show its muscle and grow into something useful.

Three days later the July heatwave hit Elko and we had 7-10 days of temperatures at 101-105 or high 90’s. I finally checked the baby  fruit and discovered its little insides had totally cooked in the heat. Well, I did say it was a non-garden this year.

Have to admit I neglected the plant after that but then discovered that one branch of it seemed to be thriving.  Hoping I’m not sure what, I dumped a bucket of water on it periodically.

Now comes the irony. We had two rains last week and they could actually be measured. They even classified as rainstorms by Midwestern standards. One friend who lives near the foot of the Ruby Mountains (about 20 miles from Elko) said their rain gauge read 2.2 inches. Elko probably didn’t get that much but some storm drains here in town couldn’t handle the sudden rush of water.

 

At any rate, I checked “the” tomato plant  after the rains. Not only had it thrived on all that heavenly water, it now has 8-10 blossoms on it. (Sorry, they're hard to see because the picture was taken by a somewhat blind photographer, but they ARE there.)  

Poor things don’t realize those freezing temperatures are probably on the way again in 3-4 weeks (while I’m gone and can’t cover the plant). If it does live until I return, I will probably re- pot it and return it to the kitchen counter where it started. That way we may have two tomatoes/month through Christmas (or ten at the same time) and I can feel like I have afforded the plant a true "life cycle."

A Child’s Ta-Da

My sons gave me some hilarious memories during their growing up years. A favorite for Jeff was one day when he burst into the kitchen shouting, “Look Mom, I can twirl,” at which point he began to twist his body around in circles attempting to get himself dizzy enough to fall down. I don’t know who was laughing harder at the end of his exhibition—him or me.

For Brian, the topper has to be the time he and Jeff were playing in a mud puddle next to our driveway. Hearing sounds of little boy glee—which almost always means trouble—I went  outside to see what was going on. “See me, Mommy,” gurgled Brian. He was covered head to toe with mud, literally, helped very generously by his brother Jeff. As I recount this, I’m wondering how I ever cleaned him up, but it was probably first by turning a hose on him because he was far too muddy to put in the bathtub.

To quote Sheila Walsh in WHEN A WOMAN TRUSTS GOD, children seem to be born “with a God-given Ta-da inside, confident that everyone in the room will be overjoyed to see them make an entrance.”

Unfortunately, life has ways of erasing that self-assurance and enthusiasm. Fear, depression, shame, lack of self esteem can take over our lives, but we do our best to hide all that and pretend that we “have it all together.” (To any male readers out there, just because I'm referring to a book aimed at women doesn't mean it might not be applicable to you, too.)

Here’s an adult “ta-da.” The good news is that Jesus offers to help us overcome these unhappy emotions. He said “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way.” (John 7:37-3 MSG)  After just finishing a study on Revelation, I was especially struck by the invitation issued in the latter part of verse 17 of chapter 22: “And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.” (NKJV)

Sheila continues. “This isn’t just for those whose children are model students and whose husbands know how to load the dishwasher. …or made good choices up until this very moment. It is an invitation to anyone who has finally come to the place where they are tired of pretending that everything is fine

“It’s scary to come out of hiding if you have lived that way for years…[but] God knows everything about you and loves you [anyway].”  Seems to me that offer is worth taking the risk.

Had a “Mad” On Lately?

We all have had moments of anger whether that anger is “righteous indignation” or just plain being mad because we didn’t get our way or had what we considered our rights trampled on.

Wrath is an emotion that we humans probably couple with anger or “getting mad” at someone. However, it is a much stronger word than we might expect and it is also a word we don’t use much anymore.

Dean and I are still slogging through J.I. Packer’s book, KNOWING GOD and have just finished the chapter Packer wrote on God’s wrath. This particular topic was of special interest to me since the Small Group I have attended this summer just finished Beth Moore’s study on the New Testament book of Revelation—definitely some graphic examples of God’s wrath.

According to Packer’s dictionary definition, “wrath is deep intense anger and indignation.” God’s wrath is not an attribute we like to think about, even as believers. It’s much more comfortable to rhapsodize about God’s love, mercy, grace, forgiveness, etc. which are all truly attributes of God. But we are doing an injustice to our unbelieving friends and relatives if we ignore this wrathful side of God.

Packer mentions an interesting aspect of the way our culture views wrath as a loss of self control, wounded pride, or just plain bad temper. That might be a picture of human wrath; it is definitely not a picture of why God would be full of wrath. “God is only angry whey anger is called for.” His indignation is ALWAYS righteous. God’s wrath is never cruel, for cruelty is immoral, but His wrath is judicial or administering justice. The Bible never quibbles about God’s wrath; in fact His wrath is mentioned more times than His mercy, kindness and love. That statement really surprised me.

Packer brings out another side of this topic when he shows that mankind chooses (believe it or not) God’s wrath. See John 3:18-19. I seldom think about that choice since long ago I chose to accept God’s remedy for sin as opposed to choosing His wrath. It's not pleasant to think of friends and family members who have, to this point, chosen God's wrath.

Yet He IS a loving God and because He is, He has made a way of escape from His own wrath, that wrath being aimed at rebellion and unholiness. The good news (Gospel) is that Jesus left His throne in heaven to come to earth and did on a cross taking on Himself God’s wrath that should have been directed at we ornery human beings.

When I read how God’s wrath will be poured out on humankind during the last days, I can only marvel at His love that also provided a way of escape from that wrath through Jesus’ sacrifice in our place. That escape is really good news!!!