Nancy

The End of the Journey…or the Beginning?

April 3, 2014 by Nancy 14 Comments

If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, then the journey to having a book you’ve written appear on your doorstep should begin with the first word, right? Actually, with The Hope of Glory: A Devotional Guide for Older Adults, it began long before the first word was written.

Back in 1999, the Lord placed on my heart the desire to do all I could do to connect older adults with their faith—or to introduce them for the first time to faith in Jesus Christ and the blessed assurance of eternal life that could be theirs. I was at a book group meeting and heard one friend ask another if she would be interested in facilitating a Bible study at an assisted living facility. She said no, she didn’t have time. Even though I only overheard the conversation, I felt the Holy Spirit tapping my shoulder and saying, “That was supposed to be for you.” I followed up with a phone call to the friend with the information a few days later, got in touch with the facility, and began a weekly Bible study with a fascinating group of residents there.

After about a year I realized I needed to devote more time to helping my mom and mother-in-law, so I stopped going. But by then the Lord had planted in my heart and mind the idea for devotional lessons directed to the aging population. I began working on the project as I had time, calling it The Hope of Glory after the verse in Colossians 1:27, Christ in you, the hope of glory. I tried shopping it around to publishers but didn’t get an acceptance, so it just joined other back-burner projects in my files. In fact, as my friend Merrily says, it’s possible I took it off the stove entirely!

But the Holy Spirit didn’t forget about it. In May, 2010, I began visiting my friend Denise in the assisted living facility where she had just moved. At first it was difficult for me to even enter the building, as it brought back so many memories of my mom and mother-in-law, both of whom had passed away. But I kept going back because of Denise, and I began to feel more comfortable there. One day I stopped to look at the activities calendar posted on the wall. I noticed there were no Bible studies listed. The Holy Spirit used that information to get my attention again.

A few days later I was leaving our church, which is almost across the street from the assisted living facility, and I heard the Spirit say, “Why don’t you just go over there and ask them if they need you?” So I did. I walked into the activities director’s office, introduced myself, told her where I went to church, and said, “Do you need someone to lead a Bible study or anything?” She smiled and said, “I left my card at your church, but I haven’t heard from anyone yet.” I got chills as we both realized God had sent me. Not only did I feel that I had a new assignment, I sensed the Lord not putting my writing project back on the stove, but rather of His taking it off a high shelf, blowing the dust off of it, and handing it to me saying, “Now, after all you’ve been through with your mom and mother-in-law, you are ready to finish this.”

Just weeks later I began volunteering, writing a new lesson for the class each week. Once I had 52 lessons, plus five more for special holidays, I began the search for a publisher again. The Hope of Glory: A Devotional Guide for Older Adults, was released by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas in March 2014. I’m not telling you all this to promote the book (although I’d love for you to see what it has to offer the elders you know and love), but to share two important lessons learned from the most drawn-out writing project of my life.

First, if God gives you an assignment, He won’t let you forget it. I hate to use the word “nag” in relation to the Holy Spirit, so let’s call it “encouragement that can feel like nagging!” Second, the completion of this book should reassure us all that God has not forgotten the older adults among us. In fact, His heart burns with love for them, and He sends His people to minister to them and share the life-saving truth of the gospel with them.

That’s why I pray that seeing the book in print on my doorstep, at long last, is not the end of this journey. I pray it’s the beginning of how the Lord will use The Hope of Glory to accomplish His purposes. My job now is to stay out of His way.

Redefining Love

February 13, 2014 by Nancy 14 Comments

I remember the Valentine’s Day in elementary school I dumped all the valentines out of my construction-paper covered shoebox and counted them. When I realized I got the same number as everyone else in the class, no more and no less, the valentines lost their meaning.

“They had to give me these valentines,” I thought. “It doesn’t mean anyone really loves me.”

Maybe your kids will come home this week feeling less than loved because their bags of valentines were just like everyone else’s, or they didn’t receive all the valentines they wanted.

Psychologist Myrna Shure, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, urges parents to deal with such disappointments by helping children to talk about what they like about the valentine givers instead of the valentines, and to focus on the valentines they did get—not the ones they didn’t.

These are good suggestions, yet they overlook the opportunity parents in this situation have to teach kids three truths about love: First, love sometimes hurts. Second, love also heals. And third, there are many different kinds of love.

These truths are often obscured by the hype of Valentine’s Day. Each year Americans celebrate the holiday by sending over a billion cards and 60 to 70 million roses. All this emphasis on romance and the idealization of perfect relationships can lead children to believe falsely that love is all hearts and flowers.

Yet the young woman facing the break-up of a relationship or marriage knows love hurts. The parent whose child has taken a destructive path on the way to adulthood knows love hurts. The 80-year-old watching a beloved spouse slip into the fog of Alzheimer’s knows love hurts.

Children need to understand that love can hurt so they will learn to appreciate that love can also heal. A hug and a listening ear are signs of love’s healing power at work at any age. Kids need to experience both often.

They also need to learn to recognize the many different faces of love. Charlie Brown will return from the mailbox empty-handed if that little, curly red-haired girl rejects him again, but he will go home to a family that provides for him and a dog that accepts him just the way he is. He is loved.

The single man or woman whose friends call and want to get together is loved. So is the big sister whose little brother waits patiently by the door for her to get home from school so she can play with him.

We need to encourage our children to continue seeking and celebrating love in all forms, in spite of the pain it may bring, because of the incredible power it has to make life worth living.

Leo Buscaglia, in his book Living, Loving & Learning, writes, “I’m really convinced that if you were to define love, the only word big enough to engulf it all would be ‘life.’ Love is life in all of its aspects. And if you miss love, you miss life. Please don’t.”

This week our pastor reminded us of the greatest truth about love: Loving God first makes it possible for us to love ourselves and love others (Matthew 22:37). Tell the kids, and believe it yourself. Love is much bigger than Valentine’s Day.

Happy Fresh Year!

January 2, 2014 by Nancy 16 Comments

New snow. The first rays of dawn. A crisp apple. We appreciate all these things and more because they are fresh—unspoiled and full of promise. Should we appreciate this fresh, new year any less?

The problem many of us have is not how to appreciate the freshness of the new year, but how to keep it fresh. A diet that includes plenty of healthy fruits and vegetables is always a good idea, but that alone won’t sustain freshness. No amount of Tupperware® or Saran Wrap® will do the job either. We have to make a conscious effort to keep things fresh all year long—beginning with our own attitudes.

What comes to mind when you think of celebrating and sustaining freshness in your life? I’ll list just a few thoughts in hopes of motivating you to think of more:

Fresh marriage. My husband and I celebrated 25 wonderful years together last summer, but I never want to take God’s gift of a second, redemptive marriage for granted. I’m going to look for ways to keep our love fresh as we move toward a time of life neither of us has experienced before—to be open to new places, energizing experiences, and innovative living arrangements.

Fresh work. I’m writing a new book: a creative exercise with all the joys and angst of birthing a baby. I want to keep my work fresh—to use more primary resources and less of my tried-and-true secondary ones. To think thoughts I’ve never had and use vivid, descriptive words so that I deliver a fresh manuscript to the publisher by the April deadline, not a stale one.

Fresh friendship. This year I want to be totally present with friends old and new. To truly listen when they speak and find a fresh level of intimacy with each one. Friendship is a treasure to cherish—and keep fresh.

Fresh faith. A new year means beginning a new daily devotional, but what else will be fresh about my faith? According to Isaiah 43:18-19, we can always count on the Lord to bring freshness and renewal. The Lord said through Isaiah, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?” I don’t want to miss any fresh, new thing the Lord wants to do in me this year. In fact, I want to recapture the freshness of the hour I first believed.

How about you? How will you keep 2014 fresh until the last day of December? May you have a happy, healthy new year—and may it stay fresh!

Bethlehem Bound

December 22, 2013 by Nancy 10 Comments

I recently read that the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is being restored after 600 years, and was reminded of this column from a few years ago. Merry Christmas to you, wherever the Lord leads you!

Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened…Luke 2:15

How often we look back on the way God orchestrated something in our lives, something so totally opposite from what we had planned, and say, “But, of course, it had to be just as it was.” Such was the case when Mary and Joseph traveled over rugged trails into Judea to the little town of Bethlehem. Certainly Mary didn’t expect to be having a baby so soon, and definitely not so far from home. But the journey fulfilled prophecy, for it is recorded in Micah 5:2: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel.”

Surely the shepherds didn’t expect to be visited by a heavenly host that starry night either–nor to travel to Bethlehem to worship a newborn King.

As Christmas comes this year, the question on our hearts needs to be “Where are you leading me, Lord? What plans do you have for me that I don’t even know about yet?” When we ask those questions sincerely, we can celebrate Christmas Bethlehem bound, ready to go where He leads and ready to humbly worship at the feet of our Lord.

My husband and I were privileged to travel to Israel in 1998 and Bethlehem was one of the stops along our way. We were somewhat surprised by what we found there—not the idyllic scene portrayed on greeting cards, but an enormous, ornate Greek Orthodox church, the Church of the Nativity, built over the spot where Jesus was said to have been born. Pilgrims to Bethlehem step down cavernous steps inside this church into a small enclosure made even closer by the many tapestries and incense-burning lamps hanging all around. In turn, each traveler gets down on hands and knees to peer into a grotto of sorts where a 14-pointed star is embedded in the floor to “mark the spot” where Jesus was born. Jewish tradition ensures this spot is accurate, but it’s now so different from what it once was—and from what we expected.

At another stop along our tour, we saw a typical manger from the time of Jesus’ birth. It was not a wooden structure filled with hay, but a chiseled stone watering trough. Thinking of these things now, I realize there’s no better time than Christmas to set aside all our preconceived ideas. Rather than celebrate just as we always have, let’s open our hearts to the plans the Lord has for us this Christmas. Like Mary and Joseph may we be, in heart and spirit, Bethlehem bound.

(Painting shown is “Adoration of the Shepherds” by Rembrandt.)

Thankful Living

November 27, 2013 by Nancy 18 Comments

When I am a very old woman, I want to be like some of the older women I know. Women who have a perpetual twinkle in their eyes. Women who draw everyone closer to learn the secret to their joy—the secret to their thankful living.

It occurs to me that since we tend to become more of who we truly are as we age, that it’s not too soon for me to practice thankful living: not too soon to turn grumbling into gratitude. I’ve observed that with the perspective of age thankful living has a deeper, broader definition. In years past grandmas and grandpas like us may have found it hard to be grateful if they couldn’t be physically with their kids and grandkids on Thanksgiving. With age, we understand that the real blessing is that these loved ones are in the world, are living the lives ordained for them to live, and that we have them to love. We give thanks.

My husband and I were once having breakfast at a restaurant during the holidays when we struck up a conversation with our waitress. She shared that she was indeed “having a good day” because she was excited about leaving to visit her grandchildren the next day.

“How old are they?” I asked.

“They are eight and six,” the waitress replied.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen them?”

“Oh, I’ve never seen them!” she answered.

I could barely swallow the rest of my breakfast as I realized how blessed we were. Not only did we have 12 grandchildren in our blended family, but we were able to snuggle each one as an infant—and have celebrated many birthdays, milestones, and holidays with various combinations of them over the years. Truly, we are blessed.

So how can we make our remaining days full of gratitude rather than grumbling? How can we engage in thankful living—the lifestyle of thanksgiving that brings a twinkle to our eyes? We might begin like the author Ann Voscamp. When Ann first accepted the challenge to list 1,000 blessings in her life, she had no idea the list would become the best-selling book One Thousand Gifts—or that it would lead to an international ministry. She simply developed the habit of noticing the smallest of blessings: jam piled high on toast, mail in the mailbox, the blue jay singing from the top of the spruce tree. We can do that. What great things will God do with our expressions of gratitude?

When I am a very old lady, I know what the secret will be that puts a twinkle in my eye—but I don’t want it to be a secret at all. It will be the fact that when I sit around a Thanksgiving table to give thanks, I have Someone to thank. I don’t have to thank the universe for my blessings, because I know they come from the Creator of the universe! I thank God. And I pray I can share all I know about His love and salvation until my dying day.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving—followed by a lifetime of thankful living. And may the Giver of all put a perpetual twinkle in your eye! It’s no secret that He wants to give you that gift.

Hay Fever

November 7, 2013 by Nancy 13 Comments

Some aromas permeate our childhood memories like vanilla in cookie dough or yeast in cinnamon buns. They come to mind as surely and sweetly as secrets sisters share growing up. For me, one of those fragrances is the scent of freshly mowed hay in the fall—the last cutting of the year. Call me a hayseed if you’d like, but from an early age I’ve had the best kind of hay fever.

I grew up on a non-working farm in East Tennessee, meaning that farming wasn’t how our family earned our living. But we lived in a big white farmhouse with a screened-in porch that was surrounded by pastures. We also had a large red barn and a couple of horses, and throughout the years of my childhood owned an assortment of dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits, pigs and one notorious goat named Billy (of course). Billy had to quickly find another home after he ate 12 blossoms off my mother’s prized geranium one Sunday while we were at church!

Even as a tiny girl I remember “hay-cutting day” as a time of excitement in our home. My two sisters and I would hear the big combine lumbering down the two-lane road toward our house before we saw it, but we already knew it was time for the hay to be mowed because of the aromas emanating from the kitchen.

My grandmother lived with us, and on hay-cutting day she took it upon herself to cook a big pot of pinto beans for the workmen to have for lunch—along with cornbread baked in a cast-iron skillet. Once a whiff of those two dishes cooking at the same time wafted upstairs, even the sleepiest heads woke up early on a Saturday morning so as not to miss Granny’s home cooking.

Even now on road trips I never fail to notice baled hay in pastures we pass. The bales we watched roll out of the hay-baler in my childhood were the traditional, rectangular box shape—easy to store in the barn for feeding the horses over the winter. But my favorites now are the big circular bales like the ones above that I photographed on our family property in Tennessee last month. I even spied some in Tuscany when we were there a few years ago. Much to my husband’s amusement, I often want to photograph hay bales. No other sculpture speaks to me the same way.

My sister-in-law Mary, since deceased, was an excellent horsewoman and the only person I’ve ever known who was a hay connoisseur. If we were stuck behind a truck full of hay on the highway I might be frustrated wondering how to get around it, but Mary would be assessing the quality of the hay on the truck and whether she would feed it to the horses in her care.

So now seeing hay reminds me of a cherished sister-in-law as well as my childhood home in Tennessee. No wonder I have hay fever.