From The Quote Garden

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating comsists mostly of building enough bookshelves." Anna Quindlen

Dog Lessons

I have a serious love/hate relationship with our two Chihuahuas.
We bought Hobbes for Jessie as a Christmas present the year Jordan died and Jacob went off to college. She needed the company of something living and breathing, but I didn’t want to do it.
Before you jump to the conclusion that I am simply hard-hearted, you have to know that we had pretty much worked our way through an entire menagerie: fish, gerbils, hamsters, hedgehogs, rabbits, miniature pinchers, bull dogs, alley cats and Bengal cats.
I was done with a capital D. Or so I thought.
Jessie had her heart set on a tea-cup Chihuahua. I wasn’t about to give in. No way. But every time I prayed about what to get her for Christmas the Lord would say, “Get her the dog.”
Of course I soundly and loudly rebuked the devil nine times over and had a foot-stompin’ fit every time the thought entered my mind.
Why, it was ridiculous! Not only would she be leaving for college the next year, but I was DONE with animals, remember? I was not about to have her dog responsibilities become my dog responsibilities!
Still, every single time I prayed about what to do for Jessie for that awful Christmas the Lord would say, “Get her the dog.”
I finally gave in and shouted, “Fine! I’ll get her the damn dog!”
And so the search began. She wanted a fawn colored dog, but the minute we walked into the vet’s office in Chandler, Oklahoma, and I saw his teeny little one pound white self with black ears and two “wing” shaped spots on his upper back, I knew he was ours.
We left him with the vet until the day before Christmas, drove to Chandler to pick him up and I slept (or didn’t sleep) with his tiny, shivering body tucked in beside me in the bed. We put him in a box with the lid folded over, stuck a bow on top and walked down the hall to the living room so Jessie could “open” her present.
She squealed with delight, of course, and for a fleeting moment I felt like we had done the good and noble and right thing.
Then he refused to be house broken.
He ruined every carpet in the house.
And he chewed his way through countless pairs of jeans and underwear and shoes and…well…other things…
I hated him! But then he’d jump in my lap, wag his skinny tail, and look up at me like no human being ever has and I’d turn to pulp.
We bought Callie right before I left to spend a month in Thailand.
I knew enough about dogs to know they are pack animals and I didn’t want to leave Hobbes all day, every day, for a month and have to come home and put him on Prosac.
So the second great dog search began.
Of course if Jay was going to lay out any kind of money, he wanted to see a return on it, so we were looking for a female with the intent of providing the world with more Chihuahuas. You can thank me later.
Jay saw an ad a few days before I was scheduled to leave and we drove out to the doggie farm. They had two females, one black and white like Hobbes, who promptly started hissing at him like a menopausal cat, and a tiny fawn colored one who was scared to death of her own shadow.
“That’s just her ‘submissive’ posture” the woman who took our money told us.
It sounded reasonable. And besides, what the heck did we know about dog’s temperaments?
So we bought the darn thing at a discount and learned why she was such a bargain later. Her “submissive” posture is her constant posture.
She won’t come to anyone except me and only then when I am sitting or laying down. Three years later, she’s still the most skittish dog you have ever seen in your life. But you know what? I lover her! And so does Hobbes!
They romp and chase and play together so beautifully it makes me laugh out loud! They groom each other, sleep curled up together and look over one another like they are playing out Song of Solomon. It’s the sweetest thing I have ever seen!
When Callie can’t be found, Hobbes whines around the house like a rejected lover. It’s pitiful and I feel obligated to stop everything I am doing, find where she might be and relieve his distress.
So….imagine my distress when they both went missing for most of the day during the hottest part of the day!
It’s 104 degrees in the shade around here and they are wearing fur coats.
I jumped in my car and drove slowly around the neighborhood so many times I’m positive everyone thought I was casing their houses.
There was absolutely no sign anywhere of the little darlings and I started to get really upset (even while realizing I could take down all the kiddie-gates I had put up to keep them from peeing in various rooms in the house).
I knew they didn’t understand about 31^st street and how busy it is or about cars. And they had no understanding of leash laws or the dog catcher, and I knew they would be terrified if they were picked up and taken to the pound and I wouldn’t be there to pat and comfort them and bring them home.
I worried that they wouldn’t be able to find their way back to the house and that they were probably hot and tired and thirsty and miserable and there was nothing I could do about it as long as they were away from me.
And then I realized just how much it paralleled our situation with God.
He has given us a lovely “fenced yard” to play in with everything in it that we need and has promised to meet every need we have. But there are parameters we are asked to comply with for our own good. There are things about our design we might not have complete understanding about so we need to simply take God’s word about how He tells us to live and operate. And there are forces in the universe that are too strong for us to withstand if we get hit by them, that God wants to protect us from.
But in our ignorance and rebellion and foolishness, we wander outside those boundaries and no matter how much power and provision and protection is available to us from our heavenly Father within them, we will not be able to partake of any of it if we aren’t where we should be.
Fortunately God is more than a pet owner and He can find and heal and restore us so that we are able to see the benefits of the yard and learn that it’s better not to wander off. He instructs us and reminds us that being next to Him and depending on Him is the greatest, safest place we can be.
Now if I could just get Hobbes and Callie to understand the same thing about us!

Uhhh....Woops!

Don't know if this made your papers or not, but the Tulsa World printed an article about a debit card problem of astonomical proportions. (My thoughts are in parnethesis.)
"A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars. (If ever there was motivation to "kick the habit" this would have to be it.)
Joseph Muszynski said he checked his account on-line a few hours later (good thing) and saw the 17 digit number--$23,148,855,308,184,500--twenty three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty four thousand, five hundred dollars. (How is this even possible? The federal government hasn't even figured out how to do that yet!)
Muszynski says he spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers (but here's the best part) and the $15 overdraft fee. (!!) The bank corrected the error."

Perspective shift, anyone?

I need $20,000 by the end of this month in order to increase my personal book order for, "The Rhyme and Reason Series: Genesis" from 2,000 copies to 5,000.
There. I said it.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I can sell every single copy between the mid-October release date and Christmas.
Still, twenty thousand dollars seems like a lot of money. Probably because it is a lot of money.
So in my prayer time this morning I was sitting outside in the cool morning air, courtesy of a thunderstorm last night and having a conversation with the Lord about it. Reminding Him, as if I were negotiating with Him, that this whole thing was His idea to begin with, that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and if our son asked us for bread would we give him a stone and how much greater does He love us, and all that faith-building gyrations I periodically put myself through thinking it will help when my faith needs a little boost.
Then an interesting thing happened. I quit blabbering and casually looked around. I heard the Lord ask me how many different varieties of trees and plants and flowers I thought there might be in just my yard. I counted well over fifty before I quit.
I heard a bird in a tree near me, saw a squirrel on the telephone line above me and watched a rabbit dart along the back fence and laughed as our two little chihuhuas gave futile chase and I heard the Lord ask me how many varietis of animals I though there might be on the planet.
That made me think of the first time we ever went snorkeling in Hawaii and when I put my face into the water, an entirely different and glorious world appeared before my startled eyes and I saw all kinds of vibrantly colored fish and coral and I heard the Lord ask me how many different kinds of sea life I thought there might be in all the oceans of the world.
I looked up and saw the dim outline of the moon in the morning sky and I remembered Psalm 147:7 and Isaiah 40:26 where God declares that He has named all the stars and I heard Him ask me if I could even fathom the number of stars in the galaxies and beyond.
I felt an itch on my arm and looked down to brush a bug off and then back up at the moon and I heard the Lord ask me how long I thought it took him to design an eye that could focus clearly and instantly on a bug close up and a moon thousands of miles away then to the raindrops on the leaves that were rustling in the breeze just above my head.
I was reminded of the astonishing photography one man took of snow flakes and I couldn't get over the infinite design, order and beauty of each and every one and it made me marvel that the Lord makes zillions of snow flakes in every snow fall and that no two are alike and then they are gone forever when the sun melts them away.
I remembered reading somewhere that there are over a thousand varieties just in the lily family and I heard the Lord ask me if I had any idea how many varieties of flowers He had made and how He had picked the colors they would come in.
And suddenly, I just knew. I knew the money would come. I didn't have to "manufacture" faith, the Lord just filled me with divine assurance as I reflected on the extravagance and beauty of His creation and basked in His presence and I understood all over again the truth of Hebrews 11:1. "Now faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen." And it made me laugh out loud at the silliness of ever fretting or being anxious about anything!

Continual Repentance

Since I have nothing original to share with you today, but wanting to keep my new promise to myself to blog every day, I bring you a prayer from "The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions. I often begin my morning prayer time with one of these because they often speak my heart more eloquently than I am able.
"O God of grace,
Thou hast imputed my sin to my substitue,
and hast imputed His righteousness to my soul,
clothing me with a bridegroom's robe,
decking me with jewels of holiness.
But in my Christian walk I am still in rags;
my best prayers are stained with sin;
my penitential tears are so much impurity;
my confessions of wrong are so many aggrivations of sin;
my receiving of the Spirit is tincturned with selfishness.
I need to repent of my repentance;
I need my tears to be washed;
I have no robe to bring to cover my sins,
no loom to weave my own righteousness;
I am always standing clothed in filthy garments,
and by grace am always receiveing change of raiment,
for Thou dost always justify the ungodly;
I am always going into the far country,
and always returning home as a prodigal,
always saying, "Father, forgive me,"
and Thou art always bringing me the best robe.
Every morning let me wear it,
and every evening return it,
go out to the day's work in it,
be married in it,
be wound in death in it,
stand before the great white throne in it,
enter heaven in it shining as the sun.
Grant me never to lost sight of
the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
the exceeding righteousness of salvation,
the exceeding glory of Christ,
the exceeding beauty of holiness,
the exceeding wonder of grace."
And all the people said, "AMEN!"

Iron and Wine

If you like music (and who doesn't since God thought of it the same day He thought of sex...I'm pretty sure of it...) and powerful, moving, engaging music most of all, I would highly encourage you to buy both "Iron and Wine" CDs.
I keep them on replay and could listen to them all day long except it drives the others in the house crazy when I get on a merry-go- round that won't stop.
But this guy is good. Really good. He has poetic lyrics, mezmerizing melodies, and an across the board appeal for every- one from grandmothers to kindergarteners. Check them out and let me know what you think!

Publish Post

What a Ride!

It's been a long time since I indulged myself by reading a book in one sitting, but such was the case yesterday with Logan and Noah Miller's book, "Either You're In of You're In The Way." It's the incredibl true story of identical twins who made a vow to their homeless, alcoholic father just before he died that they would make a movie about his life.
Just a few minor problems. They had never written a screen play, had no money, no equipment, no connections and no support. All they had was a promise that became a burning desire.
But as Dorothy sang, "Dreams really do come true."
By the time it was over, they had managed to write, produce, direct, and act in their movie and get four-time Academy Award-nominated Ed Harris to play their father.
They proved Anatole French's statement that, "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but dream; not only plan but believe."
It inspired the heck out of me.