Category: a hope and a future (Page 11 of 20)

Spread the jam

August 5, 2015 / Michele Minehart

Yesterday was pancake morning in our home. We offer a variety of ways to top your ‘cake around here – with or without almond butter, with or without blueberries, and with either jam or syrup. (We have dunking cups for the syrup – no dousers allowed.) With such a smorgasboard, kids have to do a little of the pancake-topping work.

I noticed one particular pancake with a large glob of jam and its owner getting ready to scoop more. I warned her to stop and she protested, “but there’s none on the edges!” I explained, we don’t need more. We just have to put it in the right places.

That’ll preach.

Moving, buying a house, leaving the work in which I had been engaged, allowing our primary salary to land on a scale considerably less than our former potential… all of this adds up to a bit of money stress. Of course, we willingly took it on, we weren’t blinded. And we’re no different than any other family. No matter the income level, my friends are typically trying to stretch their dollars.

Then one day, I stumbled into a little passage in Deuteronomy 29. “I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot.”

In the Christian circles, “God will provide” is common language. And he does. I love the stories of the groceries arriving on the doorstep on the exact day or the check appearing in the exact amount. These things happen. The ways in which God is faithful to provide can often be found when we’re stretched to the point of need, rather than want.

This passage, however, tells us of another way that “God provides.” He simply takes away the need. God, being the Creator of the Universe, could have created Shoe Valley, in which the Israelites stumbled into a land of Nikes. (But probably not, because they’re not fair trade, and we know God is not into child labor.) This take on provision would’ve made a killer climax in the Exodus story. People would remember a land full of shoes.

But he didn’t. He simply made last what the people already had. They didn’t get new shoes because he made it possible to not need new shoes.

I have to wonder, especially in our current context, if the long-lasting shoe version of provision might be more applicable than the miraculous appearance provision we often anticipate. God could, indeed, drop a check in my lap. Or an opportunity to make more money. Or a really great sale on back-to-school supplies.

Or I could find that he has allowed our dollars to [miraculously] stretch. We could see God as the source of a smaller income that still pays all the same bills. We might discover the blessing of needing less.

There are times when the jam doesn’t reach the edge of the pancake. Right now, I’m making sure the jam might not need spread out a bit.

Every 7 Years

July 20, 2015 / Michele Minehart

When I was pregnant for the youngest and miserably waiting to go into labor and life was hard and my facebook friends were tired of hearing how I STILL had not gone into labor, one of the hardest days was the one in which I dropped a bowl on my big toe. At that point, I plead with God to induce me, fully believing that I would never feel the first pang of labor because my toe hurt so badly. (This never happened. Although it did for a cousin, which I found to be a phenomenal story.)

Months later, I noticed the gash of black and blue left by the bowl had crept all the way up my toenail. That dead spot, complete with unique curvature, didn’t stay put. Then, it was gone. My toe recovered. If you look at the nail now, you would have no idea I had ever cursed a bowl. This was both exciting (no gimpy toe) and also, sad. As if a part of my physical self that had been present for my final birth story was now gone, forever.

I’ve read/heard from multiple sources recently that your physical body is a different one from seven years ago. Our personal collection of flesh and bone contains a rhythmic dying and rebirthing cycle in individual cells, tissues and thus organs. It’s not like your entire spleen died off at once and got a newer, younger version – only that none of the cells that were functioning there seven years ago are still alive and working today. It’s the same, but completely different.

At the cellular level, we are different people than we were 7 years ago. In full truth, we’re different people than we were yesterday, as some of that life/death rhythm happened in the past 24 hours. But in totality, we’re different bodies. I can tell you, as a mother, it’s quite obvious that my body is different from 7 years ago when I started the birthing process. But it’s not about my midsection. I find this bit of information quite freeing, to know that my body matches my mind and my heart and all the rest of me in being different than it/I was 7 years ago.

If you start looking through the world with eyes for the 7 years, you see it everywhere. The Waldorf philosophy (of education) takes this 7-year cycle of change within the same human being pretty seriously. My MIL’s pastor says that we must recreate ourselves professionally about every 7 years. Marriage gurus speak of the “7 year itch” which makes sense – we’re sharing space and days with someone who is, quite literally, a different person than you married. But the same person. What do you do with these changes in the midst of the consistencies?

The 7 year switch becomes the queen of spades when returning to the town where I emerged into adulthood. We left 7 years ago, barely pregnant with the firstborn, with different jobs, beliefs, tastes in books and ways in which we spent our time, energy and money (all of which – we had no idea – we had so much, in comparison to the present). We were different people. And everyone who remained in the 419, to whom we now return and look forward to spending time with – they’re entirely new people, too. The same. But different.

The same, yet different. Now, I wonder what happens next, when we all give space to one another to be the same, yet different. It’s not just that I don’t eat the same foods or that a friend doesn’t live in the same house or have the same job. Those realities simply mark time in the continual process of becoming different, yet the same. Others might call that growing up, but that comes with a connotation that 7 years ago I wasn’t quite there. Not yet enough. Only a part of the whole – and that’s simply not true.

I was fully myself 7 years ago, when I lived in this town the first time. And I am fully myself today. The brown parts of my eyes look the same but the tiniest pieces that make them up are new and different. My heart does the same work of pumping blood to the rest of my body, but the tissues that come together to do this work weren’t around when I drove a silver Accord. The minivan scene is all they’ve known. Yet my Odyssey is something that no one in my new/old town ever knew of me.

Perhaps, then, the greatest work we can do is be present to our realities of today. The past 7 years have formed us, but it is not our make up. That will change in the next 7. We can take comfort in the fact it’s supposed to be that way. To try to remain something we once were becomes a futile effort, filled with expensive beauty treatments and riddled with disappointment. We cannot – nay, I say, should not – be what we were. We should be what we are, and give everyone around us the gift of that freedom.

Image via CC by Weinstock: https://pixabay.com/p-92596/?no_redirect

Poison

July 5, 2015 / Michele Minehart

Yes, dear children. That man was sick. That stinky pile over there, where the bugs swarm and the dogs sniff, remains evidence of his sickness.

No, young twenty-something. There’s no need to lie or cover up. He didn’t have the flu.

The simple truth is this: too much of anything in this world will poison you.

Last night, for this man, it was drink. It probably happened to many people, with the holiday and all. But it’s easy to point out someone else’s poison and label it bad, wrong, evil. But abstaining from alcohol won’t help you if your poison tends to be carbs, shoes or a growing Swiss bank account. You can give yourself a little pat on the back for shying away from the brown bottle, but it won’t heal your soul of its own tendencies to self-medicate.

Honestly, our numbing agents are relatively powerless until they’re mixed in to our souls. In and of themselves, the contents of a bottle, a shopping bag or a wallet have a neutral effect. They simply are. Until your soul attaches meaning to them, gropes for them in the midst of heartache or jealousy or hatred. Then those potions become poisons.

First it affects your body. Your body is the first line of defense. It’s where we feel, where we experience, where we synthesize what is happening in the world. And when you let in too much of anything, your body is the first part of you to tell you it’s too much. Listen to your body.

The poison will also begin to effect your mind. Your thoughts go toward it in the light of day and in the deep of night. Beware, sweet child. When you find your mind saying, “if I could just have one more…” then you’re probably being poisoned by your own hand.

Sadly, it will settle in your soul. It doesn’t make you an evil person. Our society tends to believe that a poisoned soul is the result of poor decisions and a lack of fortitude. No self-control, self-sufficiency, self-respect. I have trouble believing the exaggerated versions of our own struggles can be so other.

Fear not, my children. For every poison there is a remedy. Our sicknesses of self can be healed. The most common antidote is freely available and widely popular: love. Love for self, love for others, love for God, love for the created order.

Many old farm houses came equipped with 2 water sources: a cistern and a well. I imagine we all have within our souls two deep reservoirs. One is more like a cistern, catching whatever comes in. When it goes sour, it takes some work to return it to health. We use this kind of water for flushing and rinsing, maybe watering the garden. Another place in your soul is rather like a deep well. The water there is pure, good for drinking. Incredibly, it can meet the thirsts of others. The key to a good well is to dig deep.

You can spend your days trying to fill the cistern. Or you can put your energy into digging the well deeper. With every loving action and every generous intention, we drill another meter closer to the source. God put a well of love in you, an unlimited supply from which you may draw forever. If you find it running dry, perhaps it’s because you’ve been going to the cistern instead of the well.

When you start seeing evidence of poison, it’s not because the well went bad. You’re simply living off of what you put into the cistern. Get to the well, my children and keep digging until you drink clean water.

Category: a hope and a future (Page 11 of 20)

Spread the jam

Every 7 Years

Poison

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