Clean Floors

            It’s amazing what a difference clean floors make.

            I am thinking about how good it felt to come home this week to clean floors and a clean bathroom.  Finally, I have hired someone to help me with housework.  She does a great job.

            I can sweep occasionally, but mopping and vacuuming are not worth the physical repercussions. 

            With amazement I watched what my daughter and son-in-law can do in a single morning.  A week ago today while Dana cleaned house and Shawn did yard work, I took my grandson Benjamin on a walk in his stroller.  The day before I sat on the floor with him while Dana scrubbed away at the toy chest she had picked up at a yard sale.  I spend a lot of floor time at their house, so I appreciate their clean floors, too.

            Back home on Whidbey, today I have worked at my computer, practiced my flute, done a load of laundry, tidied the kitchen, made lunch, taken a nap, gone on a short walk and then enjoyed a long talk with a friend, picked up a few groceries, and now am contemplating the leftovers I will throw together for dinner.  I’m bushed. 

            The minute I sat down to wax eloquently on the subject of clean floors, though, our elderly house cat made a deposit in the hallway.

Brief Conversation

            Mom comes in after watching TV for an hour with John.  She goes down the hall to the bathroom.  As she walks back into the living room, she asks, “Was this John’s house first?”

            “No . . .”

            “Oh, right, it was here already?”

            “Remember, it’s a manufactured home.  You bought it in 2003, I think.”

            “Oh, now I remember seeing it hauled in down the driveway.”

            On the outside, I’ve remained calm.  On the inside, grief raises a storm.  Who or what will go next?

Single Cells Anonymous

            Hi.  My name is Janis.  I’m a recovering amoeba.

            My problem, like all of you here tonight, has been adaptation to my environment.  I blend in so quickly that some of my more colorful friends call me chameleon. 

            Put me in danger, and I’ll disappear right before your eyes.  Put me in the middle of disagreement, and my indistinct shape will absorb both sides.  You’ve heard the saying, right?  All of us amoebas have been compared to Jell-O nailed to the fencepost.

            As you know too well, deciding on a form is no easy task for a recovering amoeba.  I can’t be cast in concrete.  I still defy borders.  I prefer fluidity to sharp angles.

 Part of my recovery involves drawing lines to determine my boundaries.  Thus, some lines have been drawn . . . erased . . . re-sketched . . . lengthened . . . shortened . . . curved . . . straightened.  I prefer working with invisible ink.

            Let’s just say that I’m a work in progress.  But at least I’m not shapeless anymore.  There’s a “me” in there somewhere.

           

             

The Challenge

            I remember driving down Fourth Street and taking the turn onto Grant Avenue that would lead me home.  My heart was a stone bitterly lodged in my chest.  My emotions were pretty well frozen as I simply survived each day.  Too much had happened.  I felt like a modern-day female Job, except I didn’t believe anymore.  Too many prayers had gone unanswered.  If God was there, He clearly didn’t have any interest in my puny, suffering life.

            I spoke out a challenge as I turned left, something like this:  “God, if you want me to believe, intervene.  Show me a sign that you care about my personal life if you actually do.”

            I wondered for a moment if this God I wasn’t sure I believed in would do something so fine and wonderful—I was specifically thinking about him rescuing my son from the hell he was going through—that it would draw me back into faith. 

            Sure enough, nothing happened.  But the memory of that brief prayer challenge stuck with me. 

            And, this morning, about eight years later, I suddenly realized that God did answer my challenge in a form I never expected.

            Much of that answer was, strangely enough, in moving to Whidbey Island—a decision that was a huge step in recognizing and acting on my heart’s desires.  It would take pages to tell about all the unlikely convergences that had to take place for me to be able to move in the first place.  And it would take pages more to trace the gradual, gentle ways in which God quietly intervened to create a life for me I had never imagined.  And it would take even more pages to recount the healing that has come in my relationship with my son.  Though God did not intervene in the particular ways I had in mind for Joseph, He has been at work.  I now understand, at least a tiny bit, that God’s tender and fierce love for my son is even stronger than my own. 

            Those few blocks of my drive home for lunch are seared into my memory.  I asked, and God answered.  Not immediately, but in His time.  I don’t want to make the selfish mistake of assuming God is there for my manipulation, a type of instant-solution man or genie in a bottle.  He sees a picture that is much bigger than any single one of us.  But in wonderful ways we do not understand, He answers prayer. 

I'm Premonishing You

                Why admonish your children when you can premonish them?

                A word that must have been created for mothers all over the English-speaking world, “premonish” means “to warn beforehand.”

                And, to make sure your progeny understands, you can use a related form of the word:  “preadmonish.”

                I think of mothers empowered to make their soapbox speeches with this wonderful word to bolster their important proclamations.

                “I’m premonishing you, Susie:  don’t forget to look both ways.”

                “And before you even consider doing what I know you are planning, young man, let me preadmonish you that you will regret it if I ever find out about it.”

                I’m feeling better now that I’ve done my duty with Dictionary.com’s word of the day:  you can’t say that I left you unpremonished, even if you are not my children.