I heard from an old friend recently. He and I have exchanged a few texts and emails over the years. He went to the same high school as I did but was a few years ahead of me, so when he was playing basketball for my dad, I was a gangly and buck-toothed nine year-old. He and I have both suffered loss, and even though we’re never supposed to rate and compare others’ losses, I believe his is the kind that carves a deep valley into a soul, never to fill up again. At least on this earth. He is a man of strong faith, so I know he knows where Comfort comes from, but even so. I think there are wounds and gashes that just won’t be made better until we are with Jesus beyond this earth someday. There is a kernel of peace in accepting that.

The people I’ve known who don’t accept that pain and loss must eventually arrive on our doorsteps, the ones who think God should come through for them, seem to always wonder why He isn’t and when He will and what have they done that no relief comes.

I point the finger at no soul. I too, have wondered why my prayers seem to be too faint or anemic to reach God’s ears, or worse, why He would hear my sobs and see my blotchy face, and not rush to help me when I was in such anguish. I understand a tiny bit about wondering.

I have also experienced beautiful and breathtaking answers to prayer. God has been extraordinarily merciful to me.

There are some losses that show up without even giving us the courtesy of being able to steel ourselves against them. A dread disease shuts down a young and vital body. A hurtling car severs nerves and mobility is lost. A long marriage, a secure job, the sense of smell, a beloved pet; who doesn’t know someone who has had to learn to navigate life when something or someone previously depended on is gone?

I am very skilled at losing relationships. My first marriage ended in a pretty quick and unexpected divorce. I was almost a baby when I naively decided that marrying someone who had not been faithful to me in courtship would somehow be faithful to me in marriage. My father, God bless his soul, actually held his tongue. While that season of heartache is something I see countless riches from now (including, hello, clarity!), I still know there was heaviness and uncertainty my two little girls should have never had to bear.

I lost the relationships that could have been with my older brothers. They both had jarring issues that prevented us all from loving each other and being close siblings, but I feel my own part in those losses, how effortless it was for me to say, “They’re not well, no one can deal with them, they’re impossible. So I won’t take their calls or answer their emails.” Which, by the way, alternated between gushing with love and admiration for what a wonderful sister I was, to being told I was comparable to an ape, a sneak who literally tried to poison their food, a thief who had stolen what was theirs. I realize how insane it seems to type those words, but alas, they are true.

I always look upon those people with loving families with a mixture of wistfulness and wonder. How in the world did they do that? How do they love each other so loyally, even though they argue and get annoyed? Did their parents plant the seeds and this is the natural harvest? Was our family just warped in some way, genetically predisposed to estrangement and vitriol?

I looooove nature shows. I have wept at the mathematical skill of the plain little Japanese pufferfish, laughed with joy at mother hippos bearing their babies to the surface for a first breath, felt paralyzed by astonishment at the color variations of nudibranchs and the ability of sperm whales to kill someone with their high-decibel clicks. I gaze at the TV screen like a wonderstruck and curious child at the zoo looking through the cages, fascinated by what she sees. What does the monkey comprehend? How can the giraffe kick so accurately? Where did the otter learn her devoted, tenderly maternal ways? Why did God make so many kinds of birds? Similarly, I stand outside the unified families I’ve observed and wondered, how did they get past that trouble? How have they stuck together for so long? What makes them want to do things together long into their adulthood? Look how they celebrate and cheer one another on, in spite of their differences! How did they achieve this? Some have had their Christian faith as the glue. Some have claimed their mother or father as the core. Others grew close because of family hardships as they were growing up.

All I know, is it has never happened with my family. I am the only one left now. My parents have both passed on, and my older brothers died in 2016 and 2020. I exaggerate not by saying they both left wreckage in their wakes. So in some ways, I’ve absolved myself of the loss of whatever relationship could have been built with my brothers, because there wasn’t a lot of stability there for a foundation.

But now I’m thinking of the loss of friends. Have you ever lost a friend and been surprised by it? I have. One time I lost a treasured friend for a few years and then God restored the friendship. I tried to learn from it and asked God to help me humble myself through the suffering and shock. Our relationship today is a blessing to me.

I lost another friendship several years ago without a word of explanation. She moved away and never contacted me again. That one was perplexing for a time, but not painful, because there were non-nurturing things she would say that I knew I was better off without.

I lost a friendship a few years ago I thought would exist until one of us died. Decades of close friendship, cards from her saying I was her dearest friend, countless phone calls sharing our lives, walking each other through valleys of death, a warm, reliable and helping hand by my side in some of my darkest times. I looked back recently over our years and years of text messages, sharing laughter and tears and the minutiae of our ordinary lives.

And then, it was done.

Contact became sporadic. Eventually my texts went unanswered. Closure is always helpful, so I wrote to reverently and sorrowfully pile up some stones of remembrance into an altar for our thirty-plus years of friendship. She wrote back and graciously told me that yes, she was laying down our friendship for a number of reasons. Some of the things she told me I’d done, she had done to me years before, yet I’d honestly let them go and thought little of them, because we were friends and she was hurting. She didn’t know. And what I had done was careless and never ill-intentioned. If she had approached me about it, I’m pretty sure I could have received it and tried to remedy it. She didn’t think we were worth remedying.

If there was one thing I learned the hard way in my family growing up, you don’t cast people aside. You don’t jettison a relationship because it gets turbulent. I hadn’t even known we were in a rough patch. Maybe I was a little self-focused and self-pitying because Michael had died after being pounded by Parkinsons and Lewy Body Dementia for years. Maybe I was difficult. The sad thing is, I didn’t know I was. That’s what is unsettling to me. I didn’t know that me being me was so challenging, that a faithful friend just couldn’t take it anymore.

I am the common denominator in these losses. I say it out loud and as humbly as I know how. I have a lot to learn. I am trying to learn. I apologize frequently and sincerely. I ask God to change me, and to help me cooperate with what He would like to do in my life.

But I can feel that I am altered. I emote less. I speak my mind in a frank manner much more infrequently and have an internal knee-jerk reaction when I do, like “Oh, why did you say that?! You should have just kept quiet!”

I used to go deep, now I dog paddle closer to the surface. Talk to me about recipes, Netflix series, weather patterns and books.

It’s an odd and deadening thing to feel that the person I am deep inside, all lumps of dirty coal and a few little sparkly jewels that do occasionally reflect His light, in a very short period of time, could be forgotten. Pushed away. Never spoken to again. Contemptible, even.

And oh — the photo above is Lloyd and me, last summer, near Mille Lacs Lake, MN.

Hello friends. If any of you are in Community Bible Study, you know that every class worldwide is studying the Gospel of John right now. I don’t know that I’ve ever read it like I have this year. I have needed the words of Jesus these past months, as so many other voices have filled my ears and mind with everything that has happened in our world.

This week, our class is in the 17th chapter of John, which covers Jesus’s high priestly prayer in the presence of His disciples just before He is arrested. It brought back memories of 15 years ago, when I was the Associate Teaching Director of our CBS class, and one of my times to study and present the lecture was when we were in John 17. I remember being so moved by Jesus’s focus on His Father, His disciples and on all future believers.

Today I searched my computer for the lecture and read through it, and was a little discouraged that my life hasn’t seemed to change much in these last 15 years. Eye-opening and humbling.

I am reprinting it here in its entirety (it’s loooong), and I’ll just mention that when I wrote it, I was picturing the dear women of our large class, in particular a very beloved and diminutive Betty Olson, who is in heaven now. It was a hard passage to write a lecture on, but here it is:

The Prayer of Prayers

John 17

Jesus had…

…glory on His mind (verses 1-5)

Good morning. You may or may not have noticed than on occasion I like to begin by taking informal surveys.  Last year I asked anyone who had ever dreamed of being beautiful to raise their hand, and I think every hand went up.  A couple weeks ago I asked if anyone was interested in having a personal trainer, and about three quarters of you responded affirmatively. Earlier in the year I asked for a show of hands from those who had college degrees and many hands went up.  Well, I have another survey I’m conducting this morning.  How many of you have climbed Mt. Everest?  No one?  Laurel, I thought you said that you had climbed Mt. Everest?  No? I can’t remember who it was – Betty, is it you?

As I studied John chapter 17 this week, I felt like I was encountering the Mt. Everest of prayers.  If you’ve ever seen anything on Everest expeditions, you know they always set up a Base Camp on a lower slope. Well, in this chapter I barely even made it to Base Camp, and as I stood at the bottom of this towering prayer, I couldn’t see the summit, just cloud cover. But I’m believing in faith that there’s a majestic peak 29,035 feet above us. We’ve heard expressions like King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and we know these are pinnacle titles – phrases that mean there are no other kings or lords who are higher or more powerful than Jesus Christ.  We know that the Holy of Holies means there is no holier place. What would be the Book of Books?  The Bible.  And the mountain of mountains?  Everest.

Our title this morning is The Prayer of Prayers.  The last supper was finished, most of His final words to His disciples had been said, and in a very short time Jesus would be betrayed, arrested, tried and crucified.  Just as His last instructions to His disciples would be very important, Jesus’ last prayers were concentrated and weighty. As we look at the outline we’re going to see that as Jesus talked to His Father in front of His disciples He had glory on His mind, He had His friends on His heart, and He had you and me in His sight.  There are deep theological concepts in John 17, so let’s turn there and ask the Lord to help us grasp what He has in store for us this morning.  Our Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for your love. We ask you to come and teach us – send your Holy Spirit to quicken this passage to each woman here.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

I think one of the most stunning things about this whole passage is that Jesus prayed these words when He knew He was hours from being beaten and scourged beyond recognition, spat upon, reviled and screamed at, and nailed to a cross like a criminal.  Not only did He know this was imminent, but He knew that the worst torture was that He was going to be heaped with every sin that ever was or ever would be committed – that He who was the spotless Lamb would soon be sin.  And yet while this was only hours away, Jesus Christ had glory on His mind, His friends on His heart, and you and me in His sight.

Verse one: After Jesus said this, He looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” He didn’t bow His head, fold His hands and close His eyes. The Jewish posture of prayer was to be open-eyed with head up.  I think this was more than a posture, however. I think Jesus looked beyond the stars, outside of time and into another dimension, and locked eyes with the One who had sent Him out of love for us. I think He was able to look into the Heavenly realm and see the expression on His Father’s face. Would that expression have been tender, because He was so pleased with His Son? Would that expression have been sorrowful, since God knew that very soon He would have to turn His face away from His beloved Son when He bore the sins of the world?  Was the Father’s expression joyful, since He knew that the cross would reconcile people to Himself?

So, speaking of the cross and the awesome work that was going to be accomplished there, Jesus continued, “For you granted Him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given Him.  Now this is eternal life; that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” 

We’ve talked about the word glory before, but we need to concentrate on it here if we’re going to understand this passage at all. The word in the Greek is doxa, and it’s very difficult to adequately define in English.  It means splendor, radiance, shining brightness, magnificence. To glorify is to praise, to magnify and honor, to recognize the importance of another.  Yet all of these definitions only dance around the fringes of what true glory is. Doxa also means tremendously weighty, heavy with importance.  Another helpful definition is that glory is what makes God recognizable to us.  It is the god-ness of God, if you will.  And yet even this definition falls short of the enormity of what glory means.

So when Jesus asks God to glorify Him, He’s asking that God make Himself known and recognizable through Jesus’ death on the cross. That’s a strange way for God to want to make Himself known, we might think. But God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. If we’re listening carefully, when we behold the cross we hear the voice of the Holy Spirit whispering our names and saying, “Do you see God?  Do you recognize Him?” When we look at the cross we see all the attributes of God. We see the love of God and the holiness of God like nowhere else. At the cross we see God’s hatred of sin and His refusal to compromise with it.  At the cross we see His love for us in the vast cost He paid for our redemption. When we look at the bloody cross of Christ, we see God’s glory because His attributes have been made visible and recognizable there.  So the Holy Spirit stands at our side and says, “Do you see it now?  Do you recognize how holy, how loving, how faithful, how generous, how magnificent your God is?”

So first in verse five Jesus prayed that God would display His character on the cross, that through Jesus’ obedience to the point of death, God would be glorified.  Secondly, in the same verse we see another dimension to the word glory, when Jesus prayed, “and now Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”  Before He came to earth Jesus possessed an inner and an outer glory in Heaven.  He laid aside the outer glory while on earth. He cloaked His resplendent outer glory with the extremely limited mortal body of a man. But He still possessed His inner glory, which made the character of God visible to anyone who had eyes to see.  Many refused to see, and picked up stones instead.  Is it any surprise that Jesus expressed a yearning to return to the outer glory that He was adorned with in heaven?

I don’t think we can fully understand how limiting it must have been for Jesus, the second person of the Divine Godhead, to dwell in human form. Picture yourself choosing to leave behind your magnificently designed and highly functional human body and dwelling in the body of an earthworm for 33 years.  Imagine how anxious you would be to once again have legs that could run, arms that could hug a loved one, a voice that could sing out in joy, and an environment a little prettier and more varied than just plain dirt, day in and day out. This analogy is exaggerated, but not in the way we might think. The disparity between the Son of God coming to live in the body of a man is much larger than if a human could become an earthworm. The glory He gave up to save you and me is something we can’t comprehend, something we don’t even have good words for.  It’s for a return to this outer, dazzling glory, which is His natural state, that He prayed.

With the disciples listening and watching, Jesus turned His eyes to His Father and prayed, with glory on His mind. He knew that His reason for coming to earth was to bring glory to God, and it’s the reason we’re here, the reason we woke up drawing breath this morning.  We were born to glorify God, to make Him recognizable to others by the way we live our lives.

…His friends on His heart (verses 6-19)

Jesus then spoke to His Father about the disciples, and in verses 6 – 19 we see a continuation of the deep spiritual concepts that run throughout The Prayer of Prayers.  How do you pray for your best friends?  I thought about this – I realized that when I pray for my friends I often ask for positive medical reports, relief from pain, strengthening for marriages, safe travel, wisdom for child-rearing, financial blessing, and yes, I also pray for God’s will for their lives.  But when we look at what Jesus considered the few most important things to ask for His friends, we see that His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.  It isn’t that Jesus wasn’t concerned about pain relief and finances and families.  He proved that everywhere He went – He glorified His Father – or made His attributes recognizable – by healing the sick, teaching about money and encouraging and strengthening people.  But in this prayer I think it’s safe to say that Jesus got down to the nitty-gritty and prayed for what He knew was most crucial.  In verse 11 He prayed that the disciples would be protected by the power of God’s name, and He asked for this protection so that they would be as one as He and His Father are one.  He knew that if He sent them out into the four corners of the earth still engaging in the shenanigans they had that very evening, the kingdom of God wouldn’t advance properly.  Remember the shenanigans I’m talking about?  Luke’s gospel includes the details about how that very evening in the Upper Room, a dispute broke out among the disciples about which of them was considered to be the greatest.  They had just eaten the Passover meal with Jesus and He told them He was soon going to be betrayed, and what are the words that came to Jesus’ ears?  “I’m greater!” “No, it’s me, don’t you remember He sat with me last week?” “No, no, you’re all wrong – I’m the greatest of the twelve of us!….”

Can we understand why Jesus prayed that His friends would have unity, that they would be one as He and His Father were one?  One commentator said, “Jesus asked (that His disciples have a) unity of nature, not of conformity or of deeds.”  He wasn’t asking that they all do the same thing, He was praying that their hearts would be unified toward one goal, that their lives would glorify God in every way possible.  That’s our Central Idea today – Jesus was born, the disciples were born, and you and I were born to glorify God.  We exist to make Him recognizable in April of 2006 to everyone God puts in our lives.

Sometimes we think it’s hard to know how to be in the center of God’s will – does He want me to take this job, does He want me to quit that activity, should I live in this house, and as we often do, we focus on rules and the external.  But we can always know with certainty that His perfect will for us today, is that with whoever we come in contact with, with God’s empowerment, we are to glorify Him. We are to make His love and holiness, His generosity, kindness and patience, dazzlingly recognizable to those around us.  Think about that the next time you enter a grocery store.  God has a plan and a purpose for you when you get to that cashier, and it’s not just to pay for your food.  You may be the only Bible she reads that day, or in her entire life so far. You exist that day, in that very place, to be a display of His splendor, as Isaiah 61:3 says.  As I was writing these very words I sensed a question from the Holy Spirit, “Julie, do you make me recognizable to the telemarketers that call your home?”  Arghh.  I confess that I am usually abrupt with telemarketers and have been known to hang up on them when they try to keep me on the phone to listen to their spiels. Could God really want me to somehow make Him recognizable to a stranger I’ll never see and never talk to again?  Hmmmm.

In verse 13 Jesus also made it clear that He wanted His disciples to have joy.  Not just a little joy, but the full measure of His joy within them.  The world hated them, and that hatred was about to intensify. They would need His joy to sustain them and keep them loving and focused on Heaven while they endured the hard years of their earthly futures.

Verse 15: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.”  He knew that if they listened to the Father of lies, they would be hamstrung and ineffective, and they had a mission of huge magnitude to accomplish.  He didn’t ask that they be removed from a disagreeable or a dangerous environment. He asked that they be protected from the devil and his schemes instead.

And Jesus’s final main request for His closest friends was that they would be sanctified by the truth, in verse 17.  Sanctification is one of those high-sounding theological terms that we might be tempted to think is not very relevant to us today. To be sanctified means to be set apart for God’s holy purposes, and Jesus said that this process happens “by the truth”.  He then defines “the truth” as God’s Word.

Truth is not relative, contrary to what popular culture would have us believe.  Even some churches are teaching that there is no such thing as absolute truth. We need to be sure our churches and our church leaders proclaim without apology that there is absolute truth, and that this, God’s Word, is that truth.  If you have little ones in Sunday School, make certain that they’re being taught that Noah and the ark and the flood were real, that Daniel was in the lion’s den, that the Red Sea parted, and that this is God’s truth.  If you realize that these accounts are being treated as mere stories or myths, may I be bold? It’s time to look for a new church.  If you yourself struggle with the concept of absolute truth, you might want to read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  If God didn’t want us to believe that there is absolute truth, that sin is absolutely wrong and that a horrible price absolutely had to be paid, then Jesus’ death on the cross was an absolute nothing.  But something in each of our hearts tells us this morning that that is absolutely not true.

Another definition I found for the word sanctify is this: To separate from profane things and dedicate to God. To purify. How appropriate for the time we live in.

James Boice wrote, “It is by means of the Bible, then, by the Word of God, that we are to become increasingly separated unto God and grow in practical holiness.”  And here’s another worthy quote from D.L. Moody, about being sanctified by the truth of God’s Word.  He wrote this in the front of his Bible: “This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.”  We can make that choice every single day.

As Jesus prayed huge, mountainous things for His dear friends, He asked for the things that were most important. He had plans for them! He had impossible tasks and appointments on their Day Planners. They had a world to turn upside down in Jesus’ name! They had eight books of the Bible to write!  They had demons to cast out, people to heal, rulers to defy, visions to see, and martyr’s deaths to face with courage and joy. Think about this:  it’s because Jesus got what He asked for concerning His disciples – protection, unity, tons of joy in their hearts, protection from the evil one, and sanctification by the truth, that you and I sit in this room today.  It’s because the disciples were eventually united in heart and purpose and passion for Jesus Christ that our churches even exist, that we have our own Bibles, that Community Bible Study exists. We are here because of The Prayer of Prayers that our Savior prayed over 2000 years ago.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit, the light bulbs went on in the disciples’ minds.  In Acts we read that tongues of fire rested on the heads of all who were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, but I think these were first century light bulbs.  In cartoons, light bulbs go on over a character’s head when enlightenment comes, when they “get” something.  I think the disciples’ light bulbs went on when they all finally realized, “Ohhh!  We were born to glorify God!  He created us to make Him and His Son Jesus renowned and recognizable in this world!  Let’s get to it!”  And it’s the same for you and me.  We were born to glorify Him in our time and culture.

…you and me in His sight (verses 20-26)

I love verse 20.  Now, I want you to use your imaginations. With the help of the Holy Spirit, let’s try to picture the scene. They were somewhere on their way to the Garden of Gethsemane. Some commentators think they were still in the Upper Room despite the last verse in John chapter 14.  Most commentators think Jesus and His men had paused en route to the Garden at a private place. The setting isn’t as important as what’s being said and the One who is praying The Prayer of Prayers.  Our Savior was a man of sorrows, yes, but He was no Eeyore.  He was not a depressed, timid, weak, melancholy man. He was dynamic, He was full of joy, He loved lavishly, cared deeply, listened attentively, and wept with the deepest expressions of grief we can imagine.

I believe Jesus was so magnetic that it would have been difficult for people to know Him and then have to leave His presence.  You would have just known that if you had to be apart from Him you were going to miss something.  To be with Him was to have all the treasure of the universe. To be apart from Him was to be impoverished.  I’ll say that again and put it in context for us.  For you and me to be with Jesus, in His presence and to abide in Him, is to have all the treasure of the universe. It makes our Waverly wallpapers and our new SUVs and our 401Ks look like rotting garbage. Which of course they are, compared to Him.  For you and me to be apart from Him is to be completely impoverished.  Open our eyes to this, Lord Jesus.  Move in our hearts here this morning Lord.  So, imagine this dynamic man who was God incarnate, turning His heart from His dearest friends, the disciples, to you. And to me.

Verse 20, “My prayer is not for them alone.  I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.” Are you envisioning this?  Do you see Him with His eyes still looking toward heaven, His arms gesturing and His hands pleading?  He wasn’t speaking in a monotone. He was passionately praying for us.  He was looking to His Father, but He was looking across the centuries, with His eyes on you.  And me. We’ve all read that He knows how many hairs are on our heads, but as Beth Moore said recently, do we know that He knows our fingerprints by heart? He knows every double helix in your DNA. Are we aware that when He prayed for us the night before His death, He knew what our every struggle with sin would be?  That we would have petty arguments and harbor bitterness in our hearts?  That we would be obsessed with ourselves and would need powerful intervention? What are you and I struggling with at this point in our lives?  Will you picture with me, our powerful and compassionate, all-knowing Savior, with the disciples looking on, praying for us, with each one of us in His sight?

What did He ask the Father to bless us with?  In verse 21 He asked that we, too, would be one, just as He and His Father are one, because when the world sees that kind of love and humility, it will sit up and take notice, and may even believe that Jesus was sent by God.  A seventeenth century Puritan preacher named Thomas Manton said, Divisions in the church breed atheists in the world. The converse would be, unity in the church breeds believers in the world.

Verse 23: Jesus prayed that we would be in Him and He in us, and then once again repeated His desire for our unity.  It isn’t that God didn’t hear Him the first time He asked for it; it’s that we need to see how many times He mentioned it.  At the end of the verse He said again that the world needs to know that Jesus was sent from God and that God loves you and me even as He has loved His Son Jesus.  In the Greek, the phrase “even as” means to the same degree as.  When I read that I sat on my bed and had a hard time taking it in.  God loves you and me to the same degree as He loves His one and only Son?  That’s what the Word of God says.  It’s extraordinary. It should change the way we live. There are no limits to His love.  If you’re feeling insignificant today, ponder that phrase in verse 23.

In verse 24 Jesus prayed that we would be with Him where He is – and He wanted us to see His glory, both here on earth and in heaven. Why would He want that?  In our little brains we might think that that’s an egotistical thing to pray for. But there’s nothing ego-driven about Christ – we should see that by now as we follow God’s humble servant to the cross where He laid down His life with us in His sight.

The glory we see on earth through His people is a veiled sort of glory. True Christians do make Him recognizable here – we were born to glorify Him.  But when we see Him someday in all His unveiled glory, we’ll understand why He prayed for this.  Don’t you know that if our human bodies could bear to look upon His glory here and He revealed Himself to us in that way, we’d lose our self-obsession and stop cherishing our sin in about two seconds?  All previous struggles we’ve ever had getting our priorities straight would disappear.

A few years ago my husband Michael and I were home together and the phone rang.  I was in the living room and he was in the kitchen and he answered the phone there.  I could hear him talking with someone, and when he hung up and came into the living room with tears in his eyes I said, “Who was that?”  “Ruth Graham”, he answered emotionally.  “Billy’s wife?” I asked incredulously.  He nodded and his tears spilled over as he told me why she had called.  Most of you probably know that Ruth Bell Graham has been an invalid for years, but apparently she hasn’t let that stop her from impacting the kingdom for Christ.  I’ve read that she studies her Bible and spends hours in prayer each day, and that her passion for Jesus hasn’t been diminished by her suffering. So on this day, Mrs. Billy Graham was volunteering for her son Franklin’s organization, and she called to thank us for giving to Samaritan’s Purse.  Michael and I had sent a small donation a few weeks before.  After she thanked Michael she asked him if there was anything she could lift to the Lord for our family, and Michael asked for prayer for one of our daughters. For the next couple of minutes, Michael bowed his head and tried to keep from sobbing while Ruth Graham powerfully prayed for our girl by name.  I will never forget that blessing, that gift from God to my husband and me – how that encouraged us.  I remember thinking as I did my housework, “Ruth Graham has our phone number!”  And you better believe that I’ve told our daughter that Billy Graham’s wife has prayed for her.  How much more grateful and confident should we be when we know our Lord has prayed, and prays for us by name.

I’ll be honest with you, when I read this intercessory prayer of Jesus over and over this week, I realized how little my own prayers resemble it.  I spend time praying little foothill prayers and hardly any Mt. Everest kind of prayers.  But I want to learn. What Jesus thinks is important, I want to think is important!  If glory, unity, joy, protection from the enemy, and sanctification are what He wants for me, then that’s what I want for me.  Do you agree?  And I just want to make sure we understand that we still need to take everything to the Lord in prayer – even the smallest details.  Even molehill prayers are good. This passage wasn’t meant to discourage us from our “normal” praying.  I think it was meant to expand and lift our scope.

It’s as if, with John chapter 17, Jesus is gently taking our chins and saying, “Look up, child!  Look up above the clouds.  Don’t stay at Base Camp. There’s a mountain to climb, there’s a summit to reach. I’ll help you every step of the way. And wait until I show you the view…”

Dear Heavenly Father, your Word is so rich. We thank you for this passage and we ask you to continue to teach us your ways.  Help us to serve you in unity, protect us from the enemy of our souls, and be the Lifter of our heads.  Lord, teach us to pray, help us to bring glory to you, and give us your joy.  In the towering name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

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It has been six years since Michael left this earth. At the very time of this writing, six years ago I was waiting for the funeral home to come pick up the body of the man I had known and loved for over 33 years. His suffering from Agent Orange-induced Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Dementia was cruel. But he bore it with a patience and a submission to the Lord that still inspires me today, and makes me want to be like that.

I miss Michael’s grin, his huge, kind eyes. His rough hands, rubbing my ankles or clasped in prayer.

I miss how no project was too tough for him. He was willing to work at anything, and he threw his whole body and soul into whatever he was doing. Without ever complaining. Not one word of complaint in over 33 years, even if it was an outside job in 10 degrees below zero weather. That in itself is astounding.

I miss how when something really struck him as hilarious, he laughed so hard he shook silently and tears same out of the corners of his eyes. He laughed at himself, and wasn’t too proud to do something silly to make us howl.

I miss how animals instinctively knew he was trustworthy and gentle. He was a bird-whisperer, for sure.

I miss and admire his heart for the underdog, how all people had the same value in his eyes, and how he never thought he was above anyone else.

His lack of self-absorption was quite refreshing. He never wanted the spotlight and didn’t care a lot about what others thought of him.

Michael asked me to marry him before we ever met. He pursued me across the miles between Duluth, MN and Anaheim, CA, by writing letters and calling me for hours-long conversations every day for three months. Like most couples, we had some bumps in our road, but oh, what blessings have come to my life because Michael was mine, and I was his. I could write pages and chapters, maybe books, about the ways my life continues to be blessed because of my Michael.

I rarely stand in line at a grocery store without thinking of Michael. For some reason, he always thought waiting in line with our cart was a good place to wrap both arms around me in a big hug, plant a kiss on my cheek and whisper an I love you into my ear.

He became aware of the love of Jesus for him when he was thirty years old, dove headlong into that ocean, and never came out to dry off.

I’m so thankful for his beautiful life, and the unlikely way the Lord brought us together. Even though six years have passed and I’m happily remarried now, I don’t ever feel like I’m moving further and further away from Michael. On the contrary, I feel like each day brings me closer to him again, and thoughts of what he might be doing in heaven make me smile and yearn.

Friend, if you are reading this today, did you know Michael? What do you remember about him?

Good Sunday afternoon to you, friends. I woke this morning to a freshly fallen three inches of snow, and it’s lovely. Especially since it’s above zero degrees, which is always a bonus in usually bone-chilling January.

After I got up in the dark and went down the hall, I turned on this little lamp in the hutch in the kitchen. I poured my cup of cold brew coffee with a little splash of Nutpods and a little splash of organic half and half, then I fed Old Millie the schnauzer and let her outside. She looked at the snow on the front deck like do I really have to put my warm little doggy feet in this again? After she came back in, I settled into my plaid chair in my bedroom to read, do my Community Bible Study lesson, to pray, and to cry. My husband Lloyd worries about this a little because he’s not accustomed to someone whose eyes brim with tears so many times in one day. I reassure him it’s pretty much who I am. If I sit down with my Bible and devotionals and journal, I will probably cry. Sometimes I can put my finger on what I’m weeping about, sometimes not. My soul just cries out to God in words I can’t express. If I don’t bring a handful of tissues with me during my quiet time in the morning, I’ll be getting up and down numerous times, so I try to be prepared because I refuse to blow my nose on my flannel nightgown. I also wrap my cold neck with a prayer shawl my daughter knitted for me years ago. I light a beeswax candle and turn on my bedroom fireplace. I have very soft music playing that helps elevate my thoughts and spirit.

We are spending thirty weeks in the Gospel of John this year in CBS, and I can’t remember when a study has been so needed and weighty for me. This morning, I camped on the lesson where Jesus washes His disciples’ feet before He goes to the cross. He calls these grown men “little children,” and I learned that this is the only time in the Gospels the Greek word for “little children” is used. I pictured Jesus calling me “little child” or “little daughter” and the tears came. Don’t we all hope that God will deal with us tenderly, that we will know without a doubt that we really are His precious child and that He speaks to us in a Fatherly way?

Then, one of the questions that followed was, “Has being able to call God Abba (Romans 8:15; Abba is the Aramaic term for ‘Daddy’) ever reassured you when you were frightened?”

I thought about that for a while. I don’t usually call God “Daddy.” I call Him Lord, or Heavenly Father, or I often speak the wondrous name of Jesus. This made me think about two people I’ve known who addressed God in a way that struck me.

One man was a friend of Michael’s years ago. He was a big, hulking guy with a beard, unruly shoulder-length hair, and piercing blue eyes. He had too many cats to count, lived by himself in a cabin, wore plaid flannel shirts, jeans with suspenders, and took a bath every Saturday night. He was a gentle giant who was humble, hardworking, and was always there to lend a hand, whistling cheerfully no matter how hard the labor. Michael loved and trusted him, and hired him to help with carpentry a lot. This man also loved Jesus and knew his Bible backwards and forwards. Decades ago he heard me talking to Michael (tearfully, of course) about someone who had wounded me. This person was a believer. Michael’s friend slowly shook his head from side to side after he overheard what I had shared, looked into my eyes and said, “That’s not Dad.” He called God Dad, and he was trying to help me see that God was not the author of what was being said to me. He didn’t condemn or judge the person who had hurt me, he didn’t say anything at all except those three words. And over the years I heard him repeatedly speak God’s name as “Dad,” and it touched my heart.

Michael and I used to be in a Bible study group called a cell group in a church we attended for many years. The people in the cell group were like family and we met weekly to study, pray, do fun things, and grow together spiritually. The oldest member of our group was named Arlene. She was in her eighties, a widow, was a tad bit quirky, and had the biggest smile ever. One time after church I stopped to chat with her and she told me her feet were hurting her. I remarked, “You need someone to give you a good foot massage.” Arlene’s eyes lit up and she replied, “Thank you! Can you come over this coming week!?” Uhhh, that’s not exactly what I had in mind, I thought. But I went to her house a few days later, which was jam-packed with interesting things, she made me a cup of tea, and I massaged her feet, ankles and calves with lotion for a good long time. The main thing I remember about Arlene is how she addressed God when she bowed her head to pray. She called Him “Father Dear.” And her voice would get softer and more intimate, like He was right there beside her, and she was speaking to the person she loved the most with her whole heart.

Dad. Father Dear. Abba. Daddy. I know that Jesus has invited us into that kind of loving familiarity with the Creator of the universe, but I have yet to settle upon that kind of a name when I speak to my heavenly Father.

When you pray, how do you address God?

Have any of you ever received a really special invitation? Some normal folks have been invited to the White House. I was invited once to be on the Oprah Winfrey show. I believe we receive other invitations by special delivery every single day — invitations to despair, to lose hope, to rely on ourselves, to fear. These invitations come to my house by the dozen, unbidden. They arrive by television, radio, or the newspaper, magazines, and sometimes the enemy even uses an unknowing friend’s words on the telephone to invite me to go to the dark places of fear and despair about what is going on in our world, or about the concerns I have in my own life, and in the lives of those I love. Often these unwelcome invitations come to me in the middle of the night when I’m trying to sleep. Do you sometimes feel your mind being lured to dark, fearful, doubting thoughts? Do you occasionally receive those nasty invitations too?  I have a bit of advice — throw them out. Don’t even open them up to see where the party is being held — just toss those invites in the trash and instead watch for the ones that come from a Heavenly sender. We are told by the Lord not to despair, not to lose hope, not to fear, and He doesn’t say “unless your country is on the brink of civil war,” then you can fear.  No.

We are to open up and RSVP to the prestigious invitations we receive from the Holy Spirit each day. There are many of them. Are we noticing them? I am blind to them way too often. I’m asking the Lord to animate this in our imaginations — to help us open up our envelopes in our minds right now.

Picture this:  the envelope that is being delivered to you right now is of the finest, ancient parchment. The name and address on the front of the envelope are written in a fiery, blazing gold script. The golden letters seem to be pulsating. They spell out Julie, Susan, Diane, Nancy, Steve, Christy, Mark, Pat… your name is there. The letter is warm to the touch and has no stamp because it did not have to go through the United States postal system to reach us. If we turn it over we will see that it has a seal on the back of the envelope. A seal with an imprint of three overlapping images: a crown, a dove and a cross. And it isn’t sealed with wax, but with what appears to be dried blood. Inside is a living, powerful, life-giving, invitation that cannot be discarded — it requires a reply. You can try to drop it in the garbage but it will just reappear in your mailbox at another time, its presence insisting on a reply. You may answer yes or no to this invitation, but you cannot ignore it. Then after we receive and respond favorably to that one, fateful invitation that requests the honor of our presence in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, we may be surprised to find that more invites keep coming. They have that same, golden, blazing calligraphy, that same seal on the back, only these invitations might say something like “The Almighty God of Heaven and Earth requests the pleasure of your company this morning at 6:00 a.m.” Or “The King of Kings and Lord of Lords requests your quiet trust in the matter of your husband today.” Or perhaps the invitation will be to obey Him in a certain area that we’ve avoided dealing with.

I can tell you some of the heavenly invitations I receive daily. “Julie, the Lord God Almighty invites you today to totally entrust your daughters to Him. Please reply. Yes or no.” If my reply to Him is no, I have walked away from the path of peace — my peace will not be flowing like a river. It will be more like a stagnant little pond. Another invitation He regularly sends to me reads something like this — “Your heavenly Father invites you to taste and see that He is good — that doing His will is better than food — that He is your portion.” I see that blazing invitation out of the corner of my eye about ten times a day, and it calls for a reply each time. They all do. Yes, or no. Confidence, or fear. Rest, or torment. Obedience, or rebellion. Freedom, or captivity. Peace, or chaos.

The goal of life is not the absence of pain and hardship, it’s the presence of glory. His glory in our lives, and our lives bringing glory to Him. Somewhere along the line the church has gotten the idea that the Lord wants more than anything else to relieve us from our pain and steer us clear of adversity, but that is not the Biblical model. He does relieve our pain, He does steer us away from adversity, but God is intent on purifying His people unto Himself, and He often uses adversity, and yes, pain, to accomplish His purposes in us. He did this with His own Son, who learned to be obedient unto the point of death. I want to desire to obey the Lord above all things. I want to be one of His children that brings Him pleasure and not grief. I know many of you feel the same way.

Oswald Chambers said “sin dulls our senses.” A more modern Bible teacher wrote, “Pain and hardship intensify our spiritual senses.” Two different authors, two different centuries, but I thought these phrases went beautifully together. Sin dulls our senses. Pain and hardship intensify our spiritual senses. We can see these two principles perfectly illustrated in the Bible time after time. Generations of sin had dulled the senses of the people of God — they failed to hear Him and obey Him anymore. They said no to His precious invitations. So in the Lord’s great, mysterious mercy, pain and hardship in the form of exilic captivity was one of the prescriptions He used to begin to turn them toward their Father again.

Jesus was the responsive Servant who was without sin. His senses were not dulled in the slightest — He heard from His Father and obeyed Him perfectly, all the way to the cross. What pleasure Jesus brought to His Father.

What is the Lord using in our lives right now to intensify our spiritual sensitivity to Him? Depending on what our response is, whatever it is we’re going through could be the very thing the Lord wants to use to teach us to obey Him more fully.

I believe even today we will be given an opportunity to RSVP to an invitation from the Lord. For those who have never said yes to His offer for salvation, He may ask for a reply again today. He’s relentless in His pursuit of our hearts. What a miracle that is.

For those who have already responded to that invite, we’ll still find Him beckoning in other areas of our lives. Those golden invitations with our names emblazoned on them will most certainly arrive.

I ask Him for the grace to help me respond to His leadings today.

“The basic premise of religion– that if you live a good life, things will go well for you– is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet He had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.”

~~Tim Keller

Hello friends, and a happy Advent to you. I never grew up celebrating Advent, but now that I attend a liturgical church, I’m learning about some of the riches of ancient traditions. Advent is a time of waiting. Waiting in the dark, preparing our hearts for what Christmas really means. To me, Christmas means that Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, came into not just the darkness of the world, but my own deep darkness, to save me from my own wretchedness, show me His love, and put my feet on His path. I think part of the reason many of us might feel that let-down on Christmas afternoon, no matter how wonderful a time we’ve had, is that our culture drums into us that we are waiting for present opening, waiting for new toys, looking forward to a family meal, or whatever we make a big deal over on the 25th. And all of that is so special — who doesn’t enjoy seeing little children open their gifts and experiencing the happiness of having your family around your table? But I still have this sense of waiting, even on the 26th of December. I’m waiting for more transformation in my life, more grace to learn to love, which has not been my strength in life. I’m waiting to feel more of Jesus’s presence, waiting for the day when I might finally leave this sod and look upon the One who has been so patient and kind to me. Do you observe Advent in some way?

Now on to my towel. Years ago I published this old post.  I bought it for our master bathroom in another home, and kept seeing one face in the black and white designs. Some of you saw too. Well, I live in another house since that “Roar-schach” post went up, but I’m still displaying the towel. I have it hanging at the foot of my bathtub, and when I soak in the tub, I still see the same leonine face there. But now, after literally years of looking at this towel, I see other things too. Clear, detailed things! And if I turn the towel over (as it is pictured below) and the pattern is there in opposite colors, I see new things.

So for fun (as if you don’t have much to do during the Christmas season), I would love to know if you see what I see. Or if perhaps you see things I haven’t seen yet.

It’s the black and white hand towel.

Here’s what it looks like on the other side, and the face below was the one I mentioned in my long-ago post. Do you see him? I see Aslan the Lion, but he looks a bit concerned, and he has the tiniest crown on his head. And a tidy little Elizabethan ruff for a collar.

Now you can see the “negative” side of Aslan with the towel turned over. Same as above, just reversed. But…. since I turned it over and hung it, I see Paul McCartney (of Beatles fame) in a black decorated turban. He has a mask over the lower part of his face (because COVID), but those eyes and brows of his are right there and exactly him. Does anyone see Sir Paul below?

And now I’ve seen this too: a foreboding looking owl. Big hollow eyes, a tiny beak, a lace necklace over his chest, or maybe those are feathers, and very pointed ears. He’s a rotund owl. Do you see him below?

I see these things best when my glasses are off (and I’m legally blind in my right eye) and things are blurry. If you squint your eyes to blur things a bit you might be able to see Paul and the owl. And I see more than that, but will share another time.

Lastly, here’s what I see in my bedroom each night. I light my little faux fire, which has fairly realistic dancing flames, turn on my cardinal lights from my dear friend Sue Peterson, put on some soft music that plays out of the Bose speaker there, and enjoy some quiet time before bed.

I like to do my Community Bible Study lessons right here. I am pondering Advent right here. Praying for you in this spot, my friend.

Let me know what you see in the towel, and I hope your week is touched by God’s peace and joy!

Hello friends. I love alliteration and know I take it a little too far sometimes, like in today’s post title. How are you all doing? I hope if you’re in another stay-at-home order, you’re coping, trying to find things to be thankful for, praying, learning to rest in God’s sovereignty. Because as silly and trite as this sounds to some, He is in control. Are we guaranteed pandemic-free lives? Giddy, happy times every day of our time here? Of course not. But we are promised some things that are pretty important, and one of them is if we put our whole trust in Jesus, He will give us rest and peace.

In our state (Minnesota), things are spiking here. Our governor has mandated that all restaurants, bars and fitness centers close for at least four weeks, and all schools are distance learning. No matter what people think about masks, we are wearing masks. Or at least I am. I talked to a wise Christian man who cares for vulnerable people not long ago and asked if he had felt jerked around by all the conflicting information. (“Masks protect. Masks are useless. Look at the science — masks do help. Look at the science — masks do nothing. Mostly only old people are dying. COVID is being listed on death certificates even when someone dies of another primary reason, skewing the data. This news agency is inflaming things, this one has the truth, this one is more neutral and reliable.”) My friend said that yes indeed, he and his wife and family had grappled with wondering who to believe, how to live during this time. And after a lot of prayer and contemplation he said, “If I get this wrong on the easy side, and behave as if this virus isn’t as dangerous as most say, and one person in my care contracts it and suffers, or worse, dies, it would be horrible. But if I err on the side that the virus could be worse than we think or are being told, and my family and our people are vigilant and more careful than is comfortable, chances are I will not regret that.”

That made sense to me. So I’m being careful, not going out much unless it’s on a drive or a walk, having my groceries delivered, and watching The Crown, which I love.

Because I have more time on my hands, I’ve been slowly going through my list of things I want to organize during this time. So far, I cleaned out my office closet and organized it, my toy closet (thanks to my granddaughter Margaret who helped me right after I came home from donating Justine, my left kidney), a kitchen hutch, my kitchen baking cupboard, and my under-sink bathroom cabinets.

I have wanted to get my freezer in order and have tried many times, but it never stays that way. It’s full of food, and we end up digging around to find things, and all attempts at keeping it organized have eventually failed. Until I saw a professional home organizer on Instagram – her account is @hellohappyhome. She’s so good! She posted a method of organizing freezer drawers I thought would work for me, and I ordered the containers from The Container Store and waited.

When they arrived, I took everything out of my freezer, and took a picture. You can see the coffee grounds that had spilled out of their bags years ago, and some sad frozen raspberries. That middle divider is part of the freezer and can slide to the left or the right. The little round thing you see in the bottom left corner is a baking soda freezer deodorizer, which I removed.

I cleaned out the coffee and berries. Here’s a picture of one of the multi-purpose bins I bought:

For my size freezer drawer, six of these bendable plastic bins fit. See how promising this looks already? You know you’re getting old when things like this make you so happy you could skip around if you didn’t have a knee replacement.

The next photo is what my freezer drawer looks like now. One of the bins holds frozen vegetables. The one in front of it holds frozen fruit. The one in front of that holds our nuts. We eat a handful of nuts every single day, and since they have so much oil in them that could turn rancid, I’ve always kept them in the freezer.

Another bin holds bread products, mostly Sprouted Grain Ezekiel English Muffins that I love for breakfast sometimes, with a honeycrisp apple. In front of the bread bin is a meat/protein bin. There is some frozen shrimp, chicken and sausage there. The bin in front of that has grass fed ground beef, and my favorite breakfast sausage — chicken and sage sausage made by Applegate.

There is a smaller, shallower drawer above this one, and you can see containers with red lids in the photo below. I have coffee, baking yeast, frozen cauliflower pizza crusts and a few other things there — all nicely organized.

This freezer drawer has stayed organized for weeks now, and I know it always will, because finally, Everything. Has. A. Home. No digging around. No buying something because you didn’t know you already had some, buried in the bottom of the messy pile.

What do you think? How do you organize your freezer? If you’re interested in the bins I used, here’s the link. I used the medium sized.

Here’s an abrupt segue. (Have you ever noticed anyone using that word but spelling it segway? No.) From freezer organization to my father.

The other day after working in my office for hours, I happened upon a site where old high school yearbooks could be viewed online, page by page. It was free to view them, so of course I spent a long time looking through the old Covina High School yearbooks. I grew up in Covina, California, graduated from Covina High School in 1975, and my brothers Larry and Steve graduated in 1960 and 1965.

My father was a well-known basketball coach at my high school, and he taught and coached there from 1947 until he retired from coaching in 1974. A lot of people land on my blog after Googling Doc Sooter. Anyway, we had yearbooks in our house, but not from his earliest years at Covina High, so it was very good for me to sit and scroll through photos I’ve never seen of my dad.

He was 29 years old in this one, taken in 1949, and my brothers were 7 and 2 at the time. Look at those lapels! And that shirt collar.

This might be my favorite below, a headshot taken in 1952 when he was 32 years old. That hair! I see myself in this picture a little — the deep set eyes, the low brows. And I have my father’s ears.

Another picture I’d never seen, taken in the early 1950s before I was born:

I’m grateful that often the passage of time blurs memories a bit. I don’t want them blurred too much, but the way the harsh edges are softened can be a good thing. My dad made some choices that affected our family in ways some never recovered from. But he also worked hard, loved people (especially the underdog), listened well, remembered names and knew how to be a good friend, had a whip-smart mind, was the best grandpa who ever was, and he loved me. Perhaps one of the most remarkable gifts he gave me was loving my company. If I wanted to go with him somewhere, the answer was always yes. If I had questions, he had time. He told me and showed me that he loved me. And wonder of wonders, my dad was the son of a pastor who took me to Sunday School from the time I was three years old, where I heard about the love and power and mercy of Jesus Christ.

Honestly…. that changed everything.

Have you heard the phrase “less is more?” I’ve heard it used when referring to minimalist decorating, about writing, and about decluttering and getting rid of excess possessions. And I usually agree with the idea that “less is more” and that fewer words, fewer items, can have a greater impact artistically and aesthetically.

Unless you consider my bedroom mantel.

My little fireplace mantel is a “more is more” sort of mantel, and I’m okay with that, for now.

I am continually decluttering and donating things, although pretty slowly. I have been told that my decorating is spare and minimalist, but I don’t quite see it that way. I don’t like a lot of visual clutter, but as you can see, one exception would be all the things I keep on the mantel.

Each thing means something to me, or is useful or sentimental. Well, there are a couple of things that aren’t that useful — I don’t usually light the candles, but visually they seem to add height or texture or volume in a place it’s needed. I think you can click on this photo to enlarge it. The print on the left was a gift form my daughter Sharon and quotes the song “Count Your Blessings” from the movie White Christmas. I’ve been literally counting my blessings in print for so many years now, I’m not sure how I would go for very long without this practice. I come from a family with depression and mental instability, and I was not exempt from this. Writing down my gratitude to God I believe has changed my brain chemistry.

The fox in the middle is astounding to me. My oldest grandchild Clara did this on a scratchboard with a scraping tool, pulling away tiny strokes of black until the fur and smile of the fox and the stars in the sky were revealed. Her talent is amazing, her heart so lovely.

The word board on the right is a gift from my daughter Sara, who knows I love words, love the Bible, and need reminders each day to calibrate my mind and path. I chose this verse from the ninetieth Psalm because I have squandered so many days and opportunities in my life, that I’m asking God to help me remember how quickly I’ll be gone, and to live more fully for Him.

The little wooden blocks were gifts from my daughter Carolyn, and I especially love the one on the right. I feel that above all else, I am a mother, and I want to be a better mom the older I get. I may not see my children as often as I did when they were growing up, but I certainly pray for them more, bring them to Jesus so often for every little thing they need, and hold their hearts and concerns so tenderly in my heart. It may sound cliche, but my daughters are truly woven into my very being.

The little black and white transferware plate is there because it’s the right size, is round to add visual disparity and interest, and because I am drawn to toile and transferware and don’t know why.

The cross on the left was a gift from my friend Vicki, and is quite intricate in its woodworked detail. Vicki has brought so many important things into my life and how we met was sort of miraculous — another story for another time.

The large round candle on the left was a gift from my dear friend Pat, a fellow SAG member. I love its container, the bear, and it reminds me of her. She is fun and smart and supportive, and so loving, and I’m reminded of her when I see it each day.

The Bose speaker on the doily isn’t necessarily pretty or sentimental, but I use it every single day. I have playlists on my phone and I don’t go a day without music. Right now I’m listening over and over to The Poor Clares of Arundel. My friend Lorrie in South Carolina recommended their music to me and I can’t get enough of it. It’s sacred, soothing, ancient and transcendent. It feels like my soul is being fed when this album is my background music all day.

Behind my Bose speaker is a Sequoia pine cone. I brought it home from the Sequoia National Forest last March when Lloyd and I visited California. Sequoias are the largest trees on earth. Some in California existed when Jesus walked the earth. They are resistant to disease. They have super thick bark, and depend on fires to regenerate. There are so many life lessons to be learned from a Sequoia, and I want to be like one — thick-skinned, fruitful in hard times, quiet, straight and true, resilient.

The little black remote is how I turn on the fire in my electric fireplace. It has a realistic flame, really puts out the heat when needed, and is so comforting when I sit in my plaid overstuffed chair to read and study and pray.

The little wooden cross on the right is a gift from my friend Penelope Wilcock in England. If you haven’t read her books, you must. Start with The Hawk and the Dove. You will be overwhelmed and blessed, and will want to give that book as a gift every time you can. The little cross was carved by nuns in England and fits perfectly in my hand; I sometimes hold it when I pray.

The black candles at the right I had on hand from years ago and I thought they added height to this little crowd of items. I plan to donate them someday.

And the cardinal? I have many cardinals which have been gifts from the most thoughtful friends over the years. If you don’t know why cardinals are so precious to me, you could click here to read a short semi-autobiographical children’s story I wrote about a cardinal years ago. Plus, some sort of color was needed in among all these black and white items, right?

I love Monday mornings. I write down all the things I need to get done on my to-do list/daily planner: do laundry (except my dryer died with a deafening, scraping scream yesterday), write a foster care report, finish my CBS lesson, run one errand, reconcile my bank statement with my checkbook ledger.

Next time I might share how Lloyd recently rescued a slug (not kidding), how Madge the Muskrat made eye contact with me and made my day, and how I’m doing with only one kidney, whose name by the way, is Verna. In which case, I’m hoping less is more.

Recently, to celebrate our one year anniversary, Lloyd and I spent a few days in Northern Minnesota, just a stone’s throw from the Canadian border. We went to the same place we stayed for our After Wedding Trip, except we stayed in a slightly larger cabin this time. Here’s a view of East Bearskin Lake from our cabin door. The first day was drizzly, but the wood stove in the living room warmed us up and we kept it stoked almost the whole time we were there. I’ve since wondered, how can 70 degrees from my forced-air furnace feel so unbearable, and 82 degrees from a steady, radiating woodfire feels so wonderful? I’m sure there’s a scientific answer to that.

There was a double swing and some Adirondacks on our dock, and I went down to read on the swing as the sky was clearing — you can see a little blue on the right of the photo below.

This is our cabin (Balsam Cabin, #4) from the dock. We were tucked away in the woods and could have stayed for much longer, if not for the toilet. This was an old cabin at a great resort that had been nicely remodeled, meaning they put new flooring down, new kitchen cabinets, new wood stove. And they tiled the tiny bathroom floor and put in a new toilet and sink, but they must have purchased the toilet at www.HobbitPotties dot com, because it was like using a mixing bowl. Soooo low to the floor (a challenge for someone with a knee replacement), soooo tiny of a seat circumference, so precarious a flusher. Lloyd and I laughed about it a lot, but by the time we headed home, I was surprised how much I was looking forward to seeing my own toilet in my own bathroom. How ridiculous is that?

No wi-fi, no televisions at this resort, hardly any noise. It was heaven for two introverts who love the beauty of outdoors.

We took a long hike one day, up, up, slowly up, toward Canada, on winding paths with lots of rocks. We stopped and smelled the white pine needles, the balsam too, and hoped to see a moose. Here’s the little map that showed the hiking trails available to us.

You can see the red star where we stood, and of course I wanted to head up the trail that led to the “Moose Pasture.”

This is Lloyd getting suited up, since it was chilly. We parked on the side of an old logging road and set out. I have walking poles and by the time we got back, I wished I had taken them. The big rocks sticking out of the paths at times made me feel unstable and I walked like an old lady.

Below you can see the type of path we were on for at least half the time. Lloyd rubbed my sore feet that night, God bless him please.

But the smell! Oh! It was like heaven. The autumn leaves on the ground, the dry air carrying the various evergreen fragrances everywhere, I could have just set up a camp chair, lifted my nose and sat and sniffed all the livelong day. I could have switched my vocation to Professional Pine Sniffer.

I thought these needles were interesting — like hundreds of tiny witches’ brooms hanging up waiting for their diminutive riders.

We saw zero moose. Others were posting pictures on Instagram from all up and down The Gunflint Trail that day, with moose and their babies crossing the road, bull moose browsing the low-hanging twigs of the forest. We saw blue jays, grey Canada jays, chickadees, woodpeckers, eagles, ruffed grouse, red squirrels and a bushy-tailed red fox, which were all so delightful anyway. Lloyd made a pot of chili at his cabin before we drove north, and we had that for dinner two nights in a row. He has always eaten chili over rice, so I made a batch of brown rice and we enjoyed it that way — very good! I made muesli for breakfast and we had grapes and Honeycrisp apples for snacks.

We read out loud to each other and are still thoroughly enjoying this book, about a couple who left their jobs in Chicago in the late 1950s and bought a run-down cabin off the Gunflint Trail, staying for sixteen years. He illustrated the books she wrote about their time in the forest. With a little online research, we were able to figure out what their address had been way back in the early 1960s, and we drove north to Gunflint Lake, driving down the little road they lived on so we could get a feel for what she was writing about.

Today as I type in my office, there is snow on the ground from an early storm that blew in yesterday. I like snow. I love Minnesota. But I would prefer if my snowstorms would come in early December, just in time to put us all in the Christmas mood (although this hasn’t worked for me for quite a few years). I am getting too old to be chipper about snow in October. I had to be out driving in it last night and it was slippery, and I thought to myself, “Ooooh yes, I remember this. And I think I’ll go see what the vrbo winter rentals in Florida look like.”

So I’m having a cup of tea with creamer made from PEA PROTEIN, because I took a food sensitivity test and it turns out I’m very highly reactive to milk and eggs. But that is another story for another day.

How are you? What is your weather like? What animals have you seen lately?

Thanks for stopping in,