Today's Column

Today's column is a lighthearted expansion of the Wall Words blog post.

Here it is.

Blog Tour: First Stop

First stop on the blog tour for Tea and Trouble Brewing: A thoughtful and thorough review by Amanda Bird at Birds' Books.

Stop by, enjoy, sign up for the giveaway.

Thanks, Amanda!

Rachel

I'll bet there were hundreds of people like me, people who ran into Rachel only occasionally, but whenever they did, they felt like a wilted potted plant who had just received a soaking cupful of cool water.

I don't think we talked much the first time we met.  Her husband, Ernest, was the guest speaker at our mission's annual "Staff Fellowship," and Rachel and a baby or two came along.  It was held way up north at Stirland Lake High School, back around 1990.

We were living at Round Lake then, deep into challenges far too big for us; lonely, overwhelmed, and exhausted.  Ernest spoke about "The Wilderness."  I recall this because his stories of the Israelites in the desert paralleled my own life, and I remember sitting there in tears while he spoke of the hardships of the wilderness, and of a place of water and palm trees.

Those of you who have been there will recall how the chapel at Stirland Lake was on the top floor of the main building, and you came up the stairs at the back of the chapel.

I was sitting there in one of the back rows listening to one of Ernest's talks when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Rachel coming up the steps and standing at the top.  I think she was holding a baby, and she stood there looking at her husband with a face I can only describe as "glowing," a rapt expression that said, "That man is the most amazing guy in the universe and I am so proud of him and I am the luckiest woman in the world to be his wife.  And just listen to him speak, did you ever hear anything so profound?"

Her face also said, "I am totally content and happy to be completely anonymous in the background."

It was not a face you'd forget.

I got to know Rachel a lot better many years later when she, my cousin Kay, and their friend Karen organized a women's retreat that I spoke at, in northern Minnesota.  Rachel was a quiet ministering angel in the background, making sure that my needs and a hundred other details were taken care of.

She and her daughter also spoke at that seminar, an amazing story of their journey through the daughter's medical issues, and of their faith and humor through it all, and of looking for--and finding--an unusual number of rainbows throughout the journey.

When the Witmers moved to Los Angeles, they travelled through Oregon a few times and came to our house for a meal or visit.  They were people we felt comfortable with from the minute they stepped in the door, and the conversation went right to the heart of things.  Again, we felt like well-watered plants on a hot day.

On their last visit, Rachel asked me about my writing and speaking.  She seemed intrigued by it, with that life-giving interest that was neither awestruck nor gushy, just interested.  And then she did something no one else has ever done, before or since.  Nonchalantly, as though she were offering to give me a recipe or do some other simple good deed, she said that if I want to, I can email her a list of prayer requests before I give a talk, and she'll pray for me.

I thought, wow, she's a busy woman, she probably has pages of people to pray for every day, and just as no-big-deal as that she offers to add me to her list.

I took her up on her offer.  It wasn't that often, but it was so nice to know that I could send her an email and ask her to pray without feeling like I was imposing, because it was her idea, after all.

Rachel was suddenly, shockingly, taken from us this last week.  A car accident in Colorado, just days before her son's wedding.

It still seems impossible, that she was ripped away from family, friends, ministry, everything she was so deeply invested in.

I considered going to the funeral, but I was committed to giving a talk at a church in town the next day and didn't want to cancel.  I knew she would have understood.

I watched the funeral online.  It was a beautiful tribute to her, a mix of grief and glory.

I remember her face at the back of the chapel at Stirland Lake, and I imagine her gazing at Jesus, at all of Heaven, still happy to be in the background, still rapt and glowing, full of love.

Blog Tour Coming Up

I was delighted with the response to my request for bloggers willing to review Tea and Trouble Brewing.  Eighteen of them!

So, starting this Sunday, I'll be directing you (almost) every day to a stop on the TATB Blog Tour.

Each blogger will not only review the book but will host a giveaway.  So the more of these blogs you visit, the greater your chances of winning.

And with all of these blogs, you'll want to stick around and read a bunch of previous posts after you enter the giveaway.  Lots of good writing represented here!

Here's the list:

November 11-- Amanda Bird at Birds' Books

November 12 --Jan Pierce at Words for the Journey

November 13 --Gabrielle Marcy at Project Paperie

November 14 --Miriam Iwashige at Prairie View

November 15-- Darcy Miller at Ittybitty Blog

November 16-- Crystal Kupper at Crystal's Cliffnotes

November 17-- Lydia Jo Martin at Lydia Jo Photography

 (day of rest)

November 19-- Rhonda Schrock at Rhonda Schrock's Blog

November 20-- LeAnn McAnulty at W.L.E.N Musings

November 21-- Beverly Silver at Treasured Up and Pondered

November 22-- Luci Martin at Quiet Hearts (I got a Canadian to post on our Thanksgiving)

November 23-- Mary Ann Yutzy at Buckeye Girlie

November 24-- Anita Yoder* at Tis a Gift to Receive 

 (another day of rest)

November 26-- Mary Ann Kinsinger at A Joyful Chaos

November 27-- Mark Roth at Ain't Complicated

November 28-- Kim Martin at Sweaters 4 u 2

November 29-- Bethany Eicher at About My Father's Business

November 30-- Christine Weaver at Shall Run and Not Be Weary

*Anita lives in Poland so she might not do the giveaway quite like the others.

Quote of the Day:

"The giveaway makes me laugh because I remember when I first started blogging and I wondered What in the world giveaways had to do with blogging.  I still don’t really know the answer to that.  But I think you will like this one.  I’m excited about doing it."

--Luci at Quiet Hearts 

[I'm not sure either how that connection came about, but it's quite effective to connect readers and books.]

Apple Fritters Recipe

Here's the recipe for the fritters we made for Steven's birthday.

APPLE FRITTERS

Mix: 2 cups lukewarm milk
   1/2 cup sugar
   2 teaspoons salt

Add and dissolve:
   2 pkgs. yeast

Stir in: 2 eggs
   1/2 cup soft shortening.

Let it sit until yeast is active.

Knead in:
 2 med. apples, peeled and chopped,
  tossed with 1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cinnamon (or less if you prefer)
5-7 cups flour
Dough should be soft but not sticky.

Roll out the dough to 1/2 inch thick.

Cut it into 2-inch squares.  They will be easier to fry if you spread them apart slightly at this point.

Let rise.

Deep fry in oil at 380 degrees.

Glaze with powdered sugar and water icing.

Quote of the Day:
"What do two apple fritters who fall in love do?
They fritter their time away glazing into each other's eyes."

--Emily





Lots of greasy goodness going on here.

Happy birthday, Steven!

Steven is 18 today.

He says he doesn't feel any older, and Jenny speculates it's because his REAL birthday is probably on a different day.

When you're an orphan in Africa, you can't go dig your birth certificate out of your mom's file cabinet to check for sure, so you have to guess.

But we all think we came pretty close to the actual date and age. The doctor too.

How do I describe Steven?  He makes lame puns with a straight face.  He communicates volumes with one raised eyebrow.  He is kind.  He grills steaks that make you sigh with their sheer deliciousness.  He is big, handsome, and athletic.

"A cool dude in a family of nerds," say his sisters.  They're right.  "Is Steven a shy boy?  Does he make friends?" my dad asked me with deep concern last August, and the girls and I got the giggles.  Shyness is not an issue, nor is a lack of friends.  Steven just has it, whatever that mysterious "it" is.

He will also groan "Oh MOM" if I describe him any further.

Steven loves apple fritters and wanted them to take to school for the traditional birthday treat to share.

  



So last night Emily and I made a big batch.

He was happy.


Today the sun was shining so Jenny and Steven went to Uncle Milford's antique vehicle lot and shot possible senior pictures.

(No, not a possible senior portrait.  Just cute.)
 
We are so blessed to have Steven in our family.
 

Quote of the Day:
"What do you call it when a crocodile helps you across the river?
Gatorade."
--Steven

Disappointment

I think we are all looking for Jesus.

We are looking for something or someone to be there for us, to satisfy deep-down, to meet that vast heart-deep need for love and for reassurance that we are ok and everything else will be ok too.

We look in all the wrong places for him, and so we're always disappointed.

Mostly, we look to other people.

Now I will grant that we are supposed to be like Jesus, and that His living water flows through us to others, and the apostle Paul said, "Follow me as I follow Christ."

But ultimately, we are just us, and we are going to miss it, and we are going to disappoint.

I think about this a lot, being a mom, a minister's wife, a writer, a daughter, a sister, a friend.  People want and expect more from me than I give.  Sometimes, I don't meet their expectations because I'm selfish; sometimes I don't because I simply can't.

Family and friends tend to have a more realistic idea of what I'm capable of, knowing, for instance,  that I can't leave for town without rushing back into the house three times to snatch up things I forgot.  And I am going to forget a lot of birthdays and also messages I was supposed to put on the prayer chain.

But even more I disappoint in spirit.  Anger, moods, obliviousness, selfishness.  I just miss it, over and over.

And then perhaps I will mention that little recent episode when I was speaking to several dozen ladies in a lovely living room and one of them asked, "What are the tenets of the Mennonite faith?"  Now seriously, I should not be out in public unsupervised, let alone speaking to groups of people, without being able to answer this question.  Suddenly my mind was a front-loading washer on the spin cycle, whirring with Genesis, Daniel Kauffman, the Ordnung, I Corinthians, Instructions for Beginners in the Christian Life, the book of James, and Gott Ist Die Liebe.  I could have talked for an hour, but I could not at that moment summarize our beliefs in one minute.

I'm sure I was a disappointment.

But especially, one disappoints as a writer.   I think it's easy for people to project their Jesus-needs onto writers because all they see is these tiny slices of the writer's life, put into words that resonate with their own lives, and so their imagination fills in the rest--this must be someone who is all that I am trying to be, who would truly "get" me, who has it figured out, whose family life is truly healthy, who understands our frame and remembers that we are dust.

And then, oops.  This writer writes a post on April Fools and fools you, and you think, "What??  That's like LYING."

She doesn't respond to the email you send.

She writes that they attended a football game, and you know no true Christian should do that.

She jokes about holy things.

You hear what her child did at EBI one night, and you're deeply disturbed.

Worst of all, you finally get to meet her in person and she's tired and spacey and distracted, and her teeth are crooked, and she doesn't use much Scripture in her talk, and what she uses is from the NIV.

She is not Jesus after all, but that's not what you really think.  You think, "How disappointing.  She's not who she projected herself to be.  How could she do this to me?"

Years ago, when Francis Schaeffer was the John Piper/Ravi Zacharias/Christian guru of his day, I didn't revere him as much as I did his wife Edith, a smart, classy, creative woman.  I especially liked her book "The Hidden Art of Homemaking" which gave me a whole new perspective on turning housekeeping into service and art.

Recently I've run across their son Frank's writings.  Now he may well color and fictionalize and satirize his family life, but I still find myself thinking, "SERIOUSLY, Edith??  I mean, come ON."

Disappointment.

And then there was the woman I know who corresponded a bit with Elisabeth Elliot and was greatly helped and encouraged.  Then she got to meet her in person and it was not at all the warm connecting that she had imagined.  Even though she knew her expectations had been unrealistic, it was still very disappointing.

And I think, ok, if Elisabeth Elliot herself can disappoint someone, there will be no exceptions for us mere mortals.

Ann Voskamp writes about this sort of thing and I read it now and then after I gird up my loins and gather my courage, because going over there to A Holy Experience makes me feel like What am I THINKING to go tossing words into the great void when someone is saying it a hundred times deeper and better?

Just being honest here.  Don't get me started on Pioneer Woman.  A hundred times funnier and interesting-er.

Anyway. TMI.

Recently my friend Ilva sent me an email in which she quoted from Courtney at Women Living Well.  Courtney had just met and heard Ann Voskamp at a conference.

Courtney says,

Trust me, I’m a big disappointment in real life.

And so as I sat with pen in hand, ready to receive the message Ann had to share at the closing session of the Relevant Conference – this fearful, weary, wrestling mommy blogger found hope and tears stung as she spoke these words…

“You have been appointed to disappoint so you will point to the one who doesn’t disappoint.”

Did you catch that? It’s my calling!

This is my calling – to be a disappointment to the glory of God!

I am free! Free to be a big disappointment! Because it’s NOT about me – let me point you to who it’s ALL about – Jesus!

She continues with some notes she took about blogging, fame, and Jesus, including:

All the Christian bloggers united are thunder -we are signaling God is about to rain – rain on the wilderness of parched and dry souls. Since Jesus is the rain, we must be thankful people are reading at any blog.

And continues:

And so I conclude, I am but thunder…I pray that when you come here, God rains on your soul. And when I post something unsettling, don’t answer your email (oh the guilt I carry for not answering your emails I just feel terrible I’ve disappointed so many in this way) or you meet me accidently in the supermarket (multiple times I’ve met strangers who are readers in stores) and my kids are standing on their heads lol!…I will remember I am but dust…you can’t expect too much out of dust (as Sally Clarkson says).

And I am learning to make peace with my new identity.

“I’ve been appointed to be a disappointment so I can point others to the one who will never disappoint.”

It’s my honor to be a disappointment to the glory of God!

(end of quote)

I am still wrapping my head around that.  I like it, it's comforting, it's challenging.  I'm just not quite sure how it works.  How exactly do I point people to Jesus when I disappoint them, especially if it's inadvertent?

But still, an amazing concept.

And this is certainly the truth: the only one who will always be there for you and understand you and satisfy the deepest longings of your soul is Jesus.

 

 Quote of the Day:

"I felt so. . . in the presence of, almost . . . ANGELS."

--a guy who met my children in town and called to tell me about it.  Yes, he would be disappointed if he spent more time with them, but it would be good for him.

A Rant about Cohabitation, of all things

[Emily and Steven asked what I'm writing about.  I said, "Living together before you're married." They said, "Why are you writing about THAT?"  And the answer is, I have my reasons but don't want to go into them publicly.]

I have never understood the appeal of living together without being married.

Obviously, there's the whole moral issue, an excellent reason to wait for marriage.

I just read an article listing a bunch of statistics about why cohabiting before marriage is a bad idea.

It had some good points but was badly written so I won't link it.

However, it said that cohabiting couples who marry are likely to divorce--something like 82% of them.  That's an alarming statistic.

Aside from the morals and statistics, in my observation, the benefits of living together are heavily weighted on the guy's side.  Especially since the girls/women I've known tend to assume this odd housewifely role in order to keep the guy happy so he won't leave.

This is just my observation.  I have no personal experience, and praise God none of my children have chosen such an arrangement. But I know people who have.

Like this one young lady.  She had the whole world before her to conquer, and she decided to live with her boyfriend.

Not that that always keeps you from conquering the world, but that's how it worked for her.

The boyfriend was not the most reliable character, and would travel for his work, and of course she wanted him to come back home to her, rather desperately, and had this niggling fear that he wouldn't.

So among other things she started ironing his shirts.

I am not kidding.   She IRONED HIS SHIRTS.

Now ironing shirts a man's shirts is not something I will just volunteer to do.  It is not fun.  I have lots of better things to do.  There are very few men about whom I care if their shirts are wrinkly or not.  I'll iron my dad's shirts because he's old, and my sons' shirts because they are my responsibility, but a man who is not my dad or my son would have to jump through some high, flaming hoops to get me to iron his shirts.  Such as:
1. Love me.
2. Prove himself honest, responsible, mature, financially stable, smart, kind, reliable, faithful, and good-looking.
3. Marry me.
4. Provide for me.
5. Change the oil.
6. Fix the furnace.
7. Go out in the cold and rain to make sure the cat is ok because I'm worried.
8. Answer the door when the Jehovah's Witnesses come.

And a lot more.  And then I'd iron his shirts, at least the buttondowns.

So here is our young friend, who in my opinion didn't require a blessed thing from this young man except that he luvved her in some fluffy sense.  She slept with him, she luvved him back, and she ironed his shirts.  I think she also cooked nice hot meals.

I wanted to rescue her, somehow, but you can't just rescue someone with such down-deep damage and desperation.



I will probably hear from people who will say that they have a wonderful equal-partnership equal-opportunity live-in relationship.

Well that is really none of my business.

In general, I think men like to enjoy benefits without commitment, and women tend to be desperate for luv, and when they live together without marriage, most of the benefits are the man's.


Here's what I wonder.  Why do modern women--who present themselves as liberated and smart and in control of their lives--not have the sense to hold off the good stuff until the guy makes some serious sacrifices for her?  Like marrying her.

Maybe they aren't as smart and in control as they think they are.

Yay for all the strong young ladies in my life who will make their guy meet a long list of criteria before they iron his shirts.


And for the young men who choose determined women who bring out their best qualities of strength and character and commitment and sacrifice.

Quote of the Day:
"Why does the word 'lisp' have an S in it, when people who lisp can't even say it?"
--Steven

New Book

My first boxful of books arrived today.

The title is Tea and Trouble Brewing, and it contains 34 of my Register-Guard columns/essays plus a few simple recipes, since we had four blank pages to fill.

This one is dedicated to my fine daughter Amy.  So, yes, I have to keep writing books until each of the children has one dedicated to them.

To order:
You can mail me a check for $15 per book, which includes postage.  My address is:
31148 Substation Drive
Harrisburg, OR 97446


Huge thanks to everyone who helped and encouraged me through the whole process.

There will be a blog tour coming soon.  It's a first for me--I think it'll be fun.

If you want to order my previous books--
They are $10 each plus $2 postage if you can't drop by to pick them up.
Titles:
Ordinary Days
Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting
Downstairs the Queen is Knitting

SPECIAL!!
Get a set of all four books for $40 which INCLUDES postage. [U.S. customers only.]
$35 for local folks.

I'm hoping to have the book up on Amazon soon.  If you want it at your local bookstore, you can tell them to contact me.

Until then, the best way is to mail me a check with a note telling me what you want.

Thanks!

On Their Way

They really have "left the village, and mounted the steep*." 

Shipment Progress

Location	Date	Local Time	Activity
Portland, OR, United States	10/25/2012	5:18 A.M.	Out For Delivery
	10/25/2012	5:14 A.M.	Arrival Scan
Louisville, KY, United States	10/25/2012	3:37 A.M.	Departure Scan
	10/25/2012	1:36 A.M.	Import Scan
	10/25/2012	12:30 A.M.	Arrival Scan
Minneapolis, MN, United States	10/24/2012	9:46 P.M.	Departure Scan
	10/24/2012	9:33 P.M.	Departure Scan
	10/24/2012	8:51 P.M.	Arrival Scan
	10/24/2012	7:59 P.M.	Arrival Scan
Winnipeg, MB, Canada	10/24/2012	7:29 P.M.	Departure Scan
	10/24/2012	6:04 P.M.	Export Scan
	10/24/2012	2:52 P.M.	Origin Scan
Canada	10/24/2012	3:42 P.M.	Order Processed: Ready for UPS

My new books are on their way!!!

*from Paul Revere's Ride