Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Cathy’s Corner

 

Oswald Chambers - “The Secret of the Lord”

What is the sign of a friend? Is it that he tells you his secret sorrows? No, it is that he tells you his secret joys. Many people will confide their secret sorrows to you, but the final mark of intimacy is when they share their secret joys with you. Have we ever let God tell us any of His joys? Or are we continually telling God our secrets, leaving Him no time to talk to us?  At the beginning of our Christian life we are full of requests to God. But then we find that God wants to get us into an intimate relationship with Himself – to get us in touch with His purposes. Are we so intimately united to Jesus Christ’s idea of prayer –“Your will be done” – that we catch the secrets of God? What makes God so dear to us is not so much His big blessings to us, but the tiny things, because they show His amazing intimacy with us – He knows every detail of each of our individual lives.

“Him shall He teach in the way He chooses” (Psalm 25:12). At first, we want the awareness of being guided by God. But then as we grow spiritually, we live so fully aware of God that we do not even need to ask what His will is, because the thought of choosing another way will never occur to us. If we are saved and sanctified, God guides us by our everyday choices. And if we are about to choose what He does not want, He will give us a sense of doubt or restraint, which we must heed. Whenever there is doubt, stop at once. Never try to reason it out, saying, “I wonder why I shouldn’t do this?” God instructs us in what we choose, that is, He actually guides our common sense. And when we yield to His teachings and guidance, we no longer hinder His Spirit by continually asking, “Now, Lord, what is Your will?”

I underlined that last part because that is one of the things I have the most trouble with. I’m fully aware of God’s presence around me, within me and guiding me. But when it comes to the sense of doubt or restraint then I often miss it. I know I shouldn’t but most of the time I don’t even realize it until it’s too late and then I look back and think, ”Yep that was God trying to tell me whoa.” Like Tuesday morning, I was getting ready to ride my bike to church. Gary came and told me that there were thunderstorms rolling in and would be here in twenty minutes, wouldn’t last long and then it’d be over. So I kept getting ready, did my quiet time and got ready to walk out the door.  I hesitated and the thought crossed my mind to go turn the television on and look at the radar, but nah, I knew it had been fifty minutes since Gary had left and so the rain was long gone. I walked out the door and it was sprinkling, I hesitated but nah, I thought it was the end of the rain. Got on my bike and started down the street. Made it about three blocks and it started sprinkling a little harder, and the farther away from the house I got the harder it began raining. Soon it was dripping off my helmet, mascara was running into my eyes, and I was getting soaked. I was about halfway and I could hear it thunder and saw lightening in the distance. “Well this was a stupid idea!!” I yelled out to no one, because everyone else had the sense to come out of the rain and be inside a house or a car, nice and dry. When I got here, there was not one dry spot on my clothes or body. My shoes were filled with water, not just squishy wet but water in them. I got ready and went and put my clothes in the dryer. As I walked out of the preschool I ran into someone who used to teach in preschool. I said. “Hey how are you, I haven’t seen you in forever.” She said. “Oh Cathy, I didn’t recognize you without makeup.” That’s like adding insult to injury because I had makeup on when I left the house. Then on Wednesday night I found out someone else was on the phone with their wife when I rode up and he told her how wet I was. She was telling him to stop laughing or at least not to let me see him laughing.  So when doubts enter my mind or I seem to hesitate and think maybe I should do something or not do something, I’m going to try to stop. Then I’m going to ask myself is that God trying to guide my common sense and if so then Lord help me listen!  

 

Have a great day in the Lord. 

 

Cathy’s Corner

In December of 2006  Gary, Caitlin and I had been living in a two bedroom apartment for the past six months waiting for our house in Lubbock to sell. Our daughter, Kiersten was moving up here with us and we decided to move into a rent house with three bedrooms. Mind you this was during a time that our house in Lubbock hadn’t sold for the past ten months, my Mother was terminally ill, our son J, was in Iraq for the second tour and Gary did not have a teaching job and was working nights driving a forklift, so to say our lives were a tad bit chaotic and stressful is an understatement.  

At one point I finally got most of the boxes unpacked and I had to tackle the garage where the washer and dryer were located. I was tired from moving, stressed out from worrying about my mother, Christmas a few weeks away and a son who not only wouldn’t be home for it, but was in danger on a daily basis. I finally had the garage looking really good. There were two wire shelves up above the washer and dryer which were 10 feet long. I had gone through everything and had it in its place. I had things on the shelves, some of Gary’s stuff on one end and the laundry stuff at the other. I was washing, drying and hanging up clothes. I walked into the house and as I closed the door I heard a crash and knew immediately what had happened. I turned around and went back out and sure enough the bottom shelf had broken and everything that I had spent the last few hours organizing and putting in place was on the floor. Now I’m not talking just the shelf broke. I’m talking the bolts came out of the wall and left big holes in the wall. Gary said the wall even pulled away and remember this was a rent house. The weight was more than the shelf could hold. Gary did have a small cabinet with all his nuts and bolts and nails and stuff in it and miraculously it was still hanging on the shelf by inches. It was bad enough having to clean up the mess but the thought of having spent the last few hours organizing everything and then was going to have to do it again was more than my tired stressed out body and mind could handle and of course Gary would have to repair the wall and the damage I’d done.

Isn’t that the way it goes? We think we get our lives all neat and tidy and things just the way we think they should be. It’s all organized and together or we have taken just about all we can take. Then just one little thing (like hanging the laundry up on the end of the shelf) causes it all to come falling down around us. Sometimes just one more thing can send us over the edge. There is a scripture in Proverbs. “Men plan and God laughs.” I was reminded once again God is in control and He knows the plans He has for us, plans for a hope and a future, and plans not to harm us but to prosper us. Even in all of the chaos going on around us He is still in the smallest details of our lives. Can you imagine trying to sort through all of those nuts and bolts and organize them? It was still up there leaning toward falling, but nothing spilled. In all of the mess there was still something that was intact. God still had His arms around me and was holding me safe and secure and He was doing that for our family as well. Things may have felt like they were falling down around us but He still had each of us in his arms. He had my mother wrapped lovingly in His arms. He held our son safe and secure in His arms. He held Gary and our girls safe and secure in his arms. There was never a time I felt like God was not there. I may have not understood how He was working but I knew He had a plan and He loved me. So this week if you feel like things are falling down around you; remember the nuts and bolts are still in tact on the shelf, God is in control and holds you safely in His arms.

Have a great day in the Lord

 

Cathy’s Corner

 

By the time you read this I will have spent part of my weekend celebrating my grandmother’s 100th birthday. We’ve been planning it since January and there are about sixty people that have said they are coming and she is very excited about it. She can recall what happened yesterday and what happened a hundred years ago. When I talk to her she sounds weak but she knows the names of all our kids and their spouses and always asks about them. She gets up every day and puts on a dress, usually panty hose but no make up unless she’s going somewhere. She’s in relatively good health except for she has a hundred year old body. Can you imagine all of the things she has lived to see?

Leatrill Catherine Loard was born May 25, 1909. She was the oldest of three daughters and married Herb Lockhart in 1926 at the age of sixteen years and nine months. They had four children in eighteen years. My Aunt Evelyn was 18 years old when my grandmother has my Uncle Ted and the first place she took him was my aunt’s High School graduation. My aunt was mortified. My granddad died at the age of 95 in 1999.  My grandmother has outlived her sister, husband and two of her children, one of those being my mother. My Grandmother and aunt who is terminally ill live together with my uncle Ted and he takes care of them.

Theodore Roosevelt was president when my Grandmother was born and has seen eighteen presidents follow and outlived fourteen of those. She worked hard raising her children and they lived in Oklahoma, California, North Carolina and Texas. My grandparents owned their own grocery store from the time I can remember. The best times were going to stay with them in the summer and walking out of the front door of their house about twenty feet to the back door of the store and getting to pick out whatever we wanted for breakfast. That was when my brother, sister and I developed the love for eating Campbells Chicken noodle and vegetable beef soup for breakfast. My parents were appalled! We loved it. In the 70’s they bought a farm and my granddad raised cattle and peanuts until he was forced to semi-retire in the 90’s. He still had a couple of cows until he and my grandmother moved to Amarillo to live with my uncle in 1998. My grandmother has seen the discovery of penicillin the “miracle drug” and also seen the development of the aids epidemic. She’s lived through World War I, World War II, The Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War and Iraqi Freedom. She saw the invention of radio and  television and that explode into VCR’s, Cassettes, DVDs, Blu Rays and HD. She can work a remote better than I can. She’s seen the invention of computers, the internet. Six years before she was born was when the Wright brothers invented the airplane but I don’t think she has ever flown on one. She has seen the best of mankind and the worst of mankind. She survived the Great Depression when everyone helped their neighbors and watched as people gained more and more “things” that they can live without.

She also was the spiritual backbone of our family. I remember going to church with them when I was very little. She raised her girls in a Christian home. This weekend my brother, his son, Caitlin our youngest daughter and myself will form a quartet and sing several of the old gospel songs my grandmother and my parents used to sing when I was growing up. My grandmother will love it. Thanks grandmother for laying a spiritual foundation for my mother and for me and my children.

Have a great day in the Lord.