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Oh, the joys and trials of being a homeowner!

When I did a final walk-through of the place I was signing on nearly one year ago, my realtor gave me several great pieces of advice. Among them she admonished, “And it’s a good idea to seal your basement floor, to keep cracks from forming and to prevent foundation damage.” A good idea indeed…though, I confess, the past year has gotten away from me.

Early last week, I made a trip to the basement for clean laundry and promptly ran back upstairs to call a local plumbing business. Turns out the hot water heater was dying. And though they replaced it, related issues brought them back three more times throughout the week. After half the basement floor was covered in water for many hours, places that had previously been completely smooth began to show small but steadily spreading cracks.

(The realtor had told me I could do the sealing work myself, but though I have happily done several small home repairs, I was nervous to take on a task of this size with such materials all alone.)

Enter handymen Rick Sr. and Rick Jr.

They came in to fill the cracks and seal the entire basement and garage floors, leaving both solid and beautiful. Saved me a ton of money over hiring a big company…and saved me a bunch of stress in figuring out how to use the various products and apply them all myself.

After I recommended the two of them to other folks on social media, the younger Rick told me, “You are a blessing in disguise.”

That made me think and chuckle. If we notice something good or redeemed and are thankful for it, doesn’t it cease to be a blessing “in disguise” and become, instead, a blessing plain as day? And if there are truly good things around us all the time, every day, how can we develop eyes and hearts that notice them more automatically?

Maybe it starts with a simple prayer, lifted up every time it comes to mind: “Help me be the blessing, see the blessing, pass the blessing on. Amen.”

 

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Last week I began teaching a new group of Asian students – those who were fresh off the plane and fighting jet lag to stay awake in class.

From the first day, I have tried to draw them out to actively participate, think critically, and ask responsive questions. Anyone who has worked with Asian students trying to adjust to American academic expectations knows all of this is quite counter-cultural.

At one point on that first day, a young man in the front row mumbled under his breath, “We have questions. But we don’t know how to ask them.”

How ironic: earlier in the same lesson I’d been trying to explain a new word – appropriate. And this student’s barely-verbalized thoughts so appropriately described the feelings of every person in the room.

This made me think about all the questions at every level that my students carry and may want to ask (from the meaning of an unknown word to things that run far deeper)…and even all the questions that average people around me want to ask – or don’t even know they have. Even my own questions: am I asking the right ones, seeing them clearly, speaking them aloud when necessary?

Ultimately, where will the answers to all these questions come from? Who is trustworthy to answer them? And Who is worthy of trust to lean on even when answers are illusive or beyond grasping?

That last question is, perhaps, the one that trumps all others.

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At the start of the year, I wrote about wanting to show more compassion to others in 2018. It is no coincidence, then, that on this birthday morning, God led me to a key verse for my new birth year.

In Luke 6, Jesus teaches, “Be merciful, just as your Heavenly Father is merciful.”

In honor of the Father who is merciful and who has given me both birth and rebirth plus a million second chances, I now pen this short poem-prayer as His gift on my birthday:

Kindly lead me in the paths of goodness

And show me more of Your ways

So that I may kindly be

Example after example, Day after day,

Though never perfect on my own,

A fingerprint-reflection of Your grace

In a world that needs more truth-filled mercy

Like the night

Needs daybreak.

 

Note: In order to focus on other projects, I am taking a break from blogging for the next several weeks. I plan to return with weekly posts in early August. Happy Summer!

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I stand on the threshold of my thirty-ninth year, but my earliest memory still remains clear in my mind. Daddy scoops me up in his arms and takes a seat in his worn living room chair. He drapes me on my tummy across the soft cotton of his shirt, my little arms and legs relaxing over his then-smaller belly, my cheek and ear pressed just so over his heart. And I fade to sleep while that beat resounds through the deepest parts of me.

My dad is a saint because he is redeemed, but he is not perfect. Yet, through the course of my life, from birth until now, he has stood by me or held me through a hundred sorrows and smiled with me through a thousand joys.

Funny, how both of us are creative introverts. This is a strange combination, because we are always seeking and appreciating good words, and trying our best to aptly describe what we are thinking. And yet, in our quietness, there are things we have never said to each other, other things we rarely talk about, and still other things we can never repeat often enough.

This weekend, I find myself at a point of frustration. I know that the small gifts and card I’ve prepared are a pathetic shadow of how I proud I am to be his daughter and how blessed we are to have each other. And even in writing those words, I know they are not enough to fully express my feelings.

So, I will tell my dad how I feel about him in another language – the language of music.

When I think of all the ways Dad blessed me in my early childhood, this is what my heart says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a20VuIecgM

And when I think of how dear his love and support have been to me through all the additional years of my life, this is how deep and sweet my echoing gratitude sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lS7iU8vXWc

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. This weekend and every day: thank you for cherishing me.

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Tracy Tyner-Padilla passed away a couple of days ago; she suffered from a brain aneurysm about a week before and never regained consciousness. She leaves behind a mother, two sisters, and a thirteen-year-old daughter. She also leaves behind many friends and colleagues who are thankful for the opportunity to have known her.

I am one of those colleagues.

Tracy was a bright light in my working life. Among the hundreds of employees who work for our university, she is/was definitely one of my favorite people.

She wasn’t just a “nice” person, she was a self-sacrificing person. She wasn’t just a “good” person, she was a quiet and beautiful example of a Christ-follower. She wasn’t just an able woman, she was incredibly intelligent and articulate, and she was a great mom and example for her sweet daughter. She wasn’t just another name and face in the world, she was a treasure – whose memory is to be cherished now even as she was appreciated while she walked this earth.

Waiting for updates on her condition over the last week, I was reminded of how suddenly death can often come. Suddenly for us who live in time, anyway.

And I pause now to reflect and be grateful.

Grateful for the legacy each of us can leave behind by our words and deeds, grateful for Tracy’s life specifically, and grateful for the reminder of what a precious gift we have been given with every breath we take.

Enjoy the arms of Jesus, dear sister.

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What do I believe I deserve?

In the grand scheme of things, most people seem naturally disposed to assume that “good” people deserve good things and “bad” people deserve bad things – or at least they deserve less than their “good” counterparts.

A Jesus-centered view of the world sees things in a different light. In the light of His holiness, every single person has done things to distance him/herself from God, and therefore, on our own, we can never truly be good again – we are all correctly labeled as bad, marred, or undeserving. And the only thing we have really earned or deserved is punishment for the laws of God and man we have broken. Ironically, it is also in the light of His holiness, and His blood, that we can be made good again in the eyes of God, and filled with the desire to do good. And so, we acutely feel our struggle against the old wrong while we continue to reach for what is better.

Yet, even such redeemed hearts can sometimes struggle to know what to do with the undeserved. Every day – a hundred blessings are poured out on us. Some seem tiny and others are huge. If we have eyes and hearts to see them, it can still be hard to accept them. We sink back to thinking of what it was to depend solely on self, and we steep our minds in worries over our unworthiness.

But the Bible shows in more than one place that blessings and opportunities are poured on each person, no matter whether we would judge them “worthy” or not. For example, Ecclesiastes 9:11 (NIV) says, “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.”

In The Voice of Melody, there is a point when Owen is acutely reminded of what a treasure he’s been given in his wife, Peggy. And in his words to her, we see the bottom line of our choice for how we will respond to all the blessings we don’t feel we deserve…

We can either deface God’s gifts to us, refusing them or snatching them from His hand with grumbling in our souls.

Or we can open our hearts to let them be poured in by the Blessing Giver, and echo back goodness with words of humble gratitude.

 

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Julie Covington, a fellow creative-kindred spirit, kindly invited me to join her in her booth at the Memorial Day Flea Market in Brownville, NE this past weekend. We spent all day Saturday in the triple degree heat, guzzling liquids and interacting with customers. My little book table was surrounded by her wide assortment of delightful products, including little stuffed friends known as Cuddle Monsters.

Some were sad or goofy looking (like the one pictured), and others were happy or spunky in appearance. But each one was uniquely fun and absolutely hug-able. They also came in a variety of sizes, from the “mini” monsters (my favorite) on up to those perhaps two feet in height.

Being surrounded by those adorable monsters for hours led me to think about the monsters in our lives. Some look a lot worse than others. And some seem comparatively larger or harder to fight. But each of them – or the sum total of them all – can, at times, overwhelm us or bog us down in everything negative, painful, anxious, scary.

Yet in the grand scheme of life and the world, the One who created you and me knows about each monster we will encounter long before we do. Some monsters are truly scary, but He dwarfs them. And other monsters are actually small and harmless, and He shows us how to pat them on the head and send them on their way.

And those times when we may personally feel like monsters? Yes, He can also meet us in those times, at those places, and turn what was bad into something good.

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When it comes to the love between a man and woman, what is romance?

I had an opportunity to attend my older niece’s senior piano recital yesterday. An absolutely lovely experience. All of her pieces were well-done. But the one that she seemed most at home with and the one she had memorized was Romance Op. 24 No. 9 by Sibelius. (Recording of another young pianist playing the same piece can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtxf8OT6z-U)

While I listened to her play this moving piece for the second time, my mind wandered to pose and answer the initial question.

I have heard some people use romantic to describe a type of atmosphere that makes everything cozy. And others have used romance to refer specifically to aphrodisiacs and only physical passion. Still others envision this term as the best of all that is airbrushed in the world of dreams and ideals.

But as I listened to Emma move from one measure to the next and heart-fully spill out Sibelius’s composition, I saw in my mind’s eye something more.

I think that true romance is the soft beauty of first, sweet attraction – and the pure core of devoted other-awareness that remains true when the storms of life blow over…or sometimes when those storms seem like they are stuck and will never leave us truly in peace.

Part way thought the piece, there is a clash, a crash, and a point where it seems like the piano is broken. And then, majestically, the beauty of the initial soul-theme returns to ride atop the last wind gusts at storm’s end. And finally, the bit of love’s first blush floats away in conclusion like a soft kiss offered in the light of a heart-melting sunset.

Such romance is more than eros. It morphs into agape. Or…perhaps…it was rooted in agape in the first place. For no other bond and type of love will ever be so beautiful, nor so persevering.

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In honor of caring women everywhere: a Mother’s Day, every-day poem…

 

Many a womb has brought about

a life both wanted and received —

a life begotten out of love

and raised in blessed cherishing

Many a womb has borne to full

a child whole in limb and form —

a child ignored, rejected, crushed

by worth dismissed, appearance scorned

Many a womb has ached to house

a child’s live and beating heart —

a child who comes but cannot stay

so that the womb cries: hollow, hurt

Many a womb has never grown

any sort of seed at all —

no seed to enter sacred space

within the garden’s secret wall

But many arms have held and rocked

and many hands have nursed fresh wounds

and many eyes have unearthed beauty

and many voices have hummed and soothed

And so, today, no matter what

the state of her womb may have been

I say to each heart that has mothered,

“Thank you for the love you’ve shown.”

 

~Kaylene Powell (May 13, 2018)

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I had an opportunity to sell books at the Old Market Farmer’s Market in Omaha a couple of days ago. It was delightful to meet folks from all walks and stages of life, to sell copies of The Voice of Melody to a number of readers, and to introduce the story to many more.

But being there early to set up meant peeling myself out of bed at 5:30 a.m. As I threw back the covers, I prayed, “God, give me energy to go and meet people today – and bring the people by that You want me to talk to, the people who need to hear this story.”

One of my later sales of the day was to a customer in a bright yellow blouse (my FAVORITE color!). She walked up to the booth and was obviously, instantly captivated by the book’s cover.

After I gave her a brief synopsis, she decided to get one. And I said, “I’d be happy to sign your copy. What’s your first name?”

She smiled and said, “Melody.”

I laughed.

And later, I remembered my early morning prayer. There is something about the men, women, and children of this novel, both the historical characters and the completely fictional ones, that creeps into the inviting heart and makes us think about our own experiences in a meaningful way.

Yes, most volumes written are not suitable for every reader in the world. But I firmly believe that certain readers are meant to read certain books at certain times.

I’m so glad Melody walked by my booth. And I hope she’ll enjoy her journey back in time.

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