Tools of the Trade

 The world can be conquered with simple tools.

I’d like to make it clear I was minding my own business when he found me.  I hadn’t asked for help, because I knew what I needed to do.  “Jack” dropped off my replacement washing machine the day before and while switching it out, asked why the exhaust pipe behind the dryer wasn't cut to size.   I politely explained I had no idea and Jack proceeded to list 7 reasons why it should be adjusted.  His list was persuasive, starting with the mental health of my dryer in particular and ending with the balance of the universe in general.  After such a convincing manifesto, I vowed to adjust the dryer vent the following morning.

I did not need help.

After a merry morning of tea and toast, I putzed around until my family was busy with their own activities.  When their attention was diverted, I fled downstairs.  Knowing time was limited, I set to scooching the washing machine over in order to pull the dryer from the wall.  That part was easy.  The dryer was feeling obedient and it too, slid along the lino as I created a work space behind the appliances.  While I was there I swept and dusted because lint is an enemy that must be engaged whenever the opportunity is forced upon you.  A trip to the kitchen to find my tools and I was happily ensconced in the land of home repair, behind the dryer in the laundry room.  

I like fixing things.  So I was happy behind the dryer, loosening bolts and adjusting the exhaust pipe.  It was a nice time.  Of course every Saturday home repair job comes with a moment of hellish vexation but that is to be expected.  No plan for efficiency goes unpunished in the world of DIY.  My enemy of the hour was the worm clamp that needed to be tightened in order to hold the exhaust hose to the machine.  I like worm clamps in theory, they offer the promise of easy tightening without needing to grow extra fingers to hold the bolt but in practice those things are beasts.  They are impossible to position and after tightening them for 40 minutes, you find them in the wrong place and need to unscrew the critters and start again.  However, I did not need help. 

I was therefore, surprised when my husband burst upon the scene and asked me (somewhat enthusiastically) what I was doing.  Now, sometimes questions strike me as rhetorical and in all honesty, identifying rhetorical questions is not my strength.  Which is probably why about 3 answers jumped immediately to my mind but were fortunately squashed by the sentry assigned to my mouth.  I played it safe by asking what my man meant.

“I mean, what are you doing?” He said slowly, banishing all my hopes that the question was in fact rhetorical.
“I … am … fixing … the … dryer … hose.”  I replied in turn, showing respectfully that I too, was being literal.
He wasn’t buying it.  I filled him in on Jack’s recommendations starting with the dryer mental health plan and ending with the polar bears.  My hubby rolled his eyes and turned to leave when he spied my tools behind the dryer.  “What tools are you using?” He asked in a mildly screamy way.   Refusing to be daunted by the blinding realization that I was fixing the dryer with kitchen utensils I stood my ground. 
“Tin snips?” He looked at me in amazement.
“Bread knife!” I countered.  As the look of incredulity took hold I quickly picked up my kitchen scissors, “Plan B!” I shouted.
“It’s metal,” he tried explaining.
"It’s tin foil!” I attacked, bending the extra dryer pipe to display its flimsiness.
“Screwdriver?” He asked as if pleading for mercy.
“Butter knife….” I sing songed, holding up a very sturdy specimen of a butter knife, not the slightest bit sharp and very good at moving in circles.

I smiled proudly.

He turned on his heel and left.

My victory complete, I said a little prayer that I wouldn’t maim myself with the bread knife and set to finishing my project.  My victory would not be as sweet if my hubby had to take me to the emergency room. 

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon I realized my guys’ point: I fixed the dryer without visiting the toolbox.  Though it is desperately old school, I used my familiar tools, kitchen things, to meet the needs I faced.  Embarrassing but true, why use tin snips when I have a 20 year old bread knife right in front of me?  We use the tools we are given.  Have you ever noticed that some of your friends have ministries, or Jesus work, they do with their lives? 

Two girlfriends come to mind.  The first is ridiculously practical: task completion, one foot in front of the other is her gift.  Which is why, at any given time, she has befriended women who are devastated by divorce.  With patience, she sits at kitchen tables, listening to broken hearts and then sets to moving boxes, cleaning garages or delivering paperwork.  She hasn’t become a certified social worker, she uses the time and resources she has putting women on their feet again.

The second collects waifs and strays.  Her home is a safe place for Christian kids who have messy lives.   If you think Christian lives aren’t messy, you might need to reread some bible stories.  In considering her latest furniture purchases, she chose couches that could double as beds because inevitably there will a teen body that comes for a night but stays for a weekend.  Her ability to support kids while honoring their parents is god given.

When I was younger, I used to compare my life to others wondering why I didn’t do the amazing things my friends were doing.  Now I’m older one of the blessings I enjoy is recognizing the many ways people contribute to their communities.  One woman visits families in hospitals another works with 20 somethings.  Though the work may be different in size or scope, it is significant work that effects real change. There are few things that surpass investing in the lives of others. 

I hope this note doesn’t find you discouraged my friend, thinking that you aren’t doing enough for the kingdom if all you can do is drop off extra soup at a sick friends.  Sometimes, amazing life change happens over a cup of coffee and a Kleenex box.  We serve a God who can pack big meaning into little things.  He loves to hide victory in human weakness and simple faith.

So pick up your tools and get to it.

I’m praying for you this week,

xoxKaren

On Loss and Monsters

Hello Friend!

I know it’s been forever, I’m sorry.  I wish you knew how many times I’ve sat down at my computer and written something, only to give up three hours later.  Writer’s block is real.  In order to fight back, I have declared a pajama day.   I’m sitting in bed with my computer determined to finish a letter.  My phone is beside me and with it, I’m texting family members asking for things: tea, tissues, lunch, you name it.   My goal is to see if I can stay here the entire day.  My family is sympathetic because I am on my second cold this month and I’m entirely pathetic.  My head is aching, my eyes are watering and my nose is running.   I may or may not have a fever, my liver needs detoxification and after running through the field of self-diagnosis, I have decided I am deficient in several vitamins and or key minerals.  

Are you convinced?

Truth? 

I’ve been battling loss.  Not the cataclysmic kind that overwhelms your front door and leaves you broken and cold, I haven’t been there recently for which I am thankful.  No, this is the kind of loss that peers around corners and drags your attention downward.  Just when you manage to place your eyes on the road ahead, it calls your name and you are left talking to yourself, trying to pray the blues away with half formed sentences and thoughts you can’t resolve.  At those moments, it seems my life has dissolved into christianese vomit, as I try to pray/rebuke/rejoice/ myself into a better headspace.  It’s tiring.

I felt I had gained equilibrium after a rough January, until I got a text from my girlfriend saying her cat was allergic to kangaroo.  Yep.  Kangaroo.  Go figure.  Her cat has been sick for ages, so in a desperate attempt to figure out what was wrong with the little duffer they got him allergy tested.  Turns out, for vast sums of money you can learn not to let your cat gnaw on the extremities of any marsupial from the family Macropodidae. 

It was about then I decided the world was getting weird.  No wait!  That’s not quite true.  It was the trip to the beach that cinched it.  When the sun peaks out of the Seattle clouds, all the sensible folk head outdoors.  This afternoon found us walking on the beach when my husband noticed something strange.  “Look at the people walking by,” he whispered.  “They are all looking at their phones.”  “No they are not.” I whispered back and set to observing the oncoming pedestrian hordes.  Darn if it my guy wasn’t correct.  Almost everyone walking toward us, with the exception of the over 60’s set, were holding their phones out staring at them rather than the people they were with.  It was odd.  Eavesdropping lead us to conclude people were busy catching monsters in their phones as they strolled the sea side. 

If that last sentence didn’t strike you as odd, you might as well stop reading. 

Loss is a bit of a monster.  It takes a swipe at your psyche and leaves you defeated, missing something you formerly enjoyed.  It’s hard to fight too, because talking it over with someone doesn’t guarantee it won’t come back and hurt you again.  Just when you manage to wrestle the beast into submission, it hits you from another direction. 

In truth, sometimes when we are experiencing loss we need to stop fighting, what is really need is comfort. 

Monster: an imaginary creature that is typically large, ugly, and frightening

Comfort: the easing or alleviation of a person's feelings of grief or distress

It’s the application of appropriate comfort that’s the tricky part.  In order to catch a monster you need to be able to describe the critter.  This is most effective when done with another person.  Though a bowl of ice cream might distract you from a monster for a season, no amount of brain freeze can keep them away forever.  It’s hard to confess you are struggling but it is even harder to struggle alone. 

Yet struggle alone we do.  The difficulty is we are more likely to engage in distraction than seeking comfort.  When faced with the death of a beautiful family friend, I binged watched an entire season of Grantchester before I faced my grief and wrote the family a letter of condolence.  I sobbed my way through the writing, sparing no expense on time as I struggled to find the words that would honour such a wonderful soul.  By the time I had finished, death was not the horrid specter that smashed into the pillars of childhood memory; it was the means by which a beloved saint got to go home.  The monster of loss was transformed as comfort was applied. 

My dear friend, are you fighting with monsters today?  Are there thoughts in your head that are making you cower?  Are you feeling the effects of loss and need some comfort?  Blessedly, we have a God who is committed to comforting broken hearts. 

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.  2 Cor 1:3–4

The pain of loss is real; don’t let it grow in the dark of secrecy.  Might I encourage you to fight a monster by phoning a friend? Break out a journal, write a letter, make a connection and describe your battle.  Allow someone to come alongside your heart and do the little they can.  Get into scripture, read promises and the names of God and see if that doesn’t help turn the tide. 

Loss washes up on every shore at some point but please don’t leave the beach, stay and invite a friend. 

I’m praying for you this week,

xoxKaren

P.S. thank you Nicole for the photo, weirdowithacamera.blogspot.com 

Happy New Year my Friend!

Not one, not two, but three sets!  I am very good at online shopping.  

I do hope this note finds you well.  I miss you very much.  After Christmas especially, when I could have used a friendly face to step into the New Year. 

I might as well confess December ran me over.  Everything conspired against me as I attempted to create a celebratory atmosphere of peace and joy in my home.  Polar vortex 2016 and the death of my furnace preceded the sudden and unfortunate demonic possession of my phone.  Out of nowhere, my phone acquired a life of its own and started calling people randomly.  It also cancelled a few email subscriptions, changed some settings and almost ordered a hamster cage from Amazon.    Imagine trying to phone your family and exchange texts through Christmas, only to find your phone is determined to hang up on everyone you call and instead, focus on facetiming  a young man you coach from speech club.   Every time I unlocked the phone:  it was horrifying.  Doubtless, the family in question thinks I am stalking their son and I have added several urgent conversations to my new year’s “to do” list. 

Blessedly, a technician from a local repair shop was skilled in the art of phone exorcism and cast out the offending digitizer and set my phone right.   I wish I could report that, after the appliances in my home started to behave normally, everything became peaceful and sparkly.  That would be lying because I would have failed to tell you about my online shopping experience, a first for me this year.  Online shopping in my home is done exclusively by my husband because 1. Computers and 2. Computers.  When a project at work threatened to swallow his sanity, he set me loose in the world of Amazon Prime.  “Easy!”  He says.  “Use my computer, I’m logged in, shop away, it will practically do it for you.”  Prophets are usually associated with long hair, unpleasant circumstances and fiery sermons.  So when my husband said those words and set me in front of his computer, I can be forgiven for missing the irony. 

Verily, verily I say unto you, my man is a prophet.   

This year, I had to research my children’s Christmas gifts.  UV resin, guitar capos, I was thrown into the deep end of comparative shopping and consumer reviews.  It was stressful.  Imagine me, sitting at my hubby’s computer, merrily opening windows in my Amazon Prime world, researching products and eventually putting some of them in my basket.  Now imagine that I have no idea refreshing certain windows will update the same cart.  Then somewhere in that throw in one click shopping.  Factor in my stunning ignorance and perhaps you will begin to recreate the astonishment I felt as the delivery man kept arriving at my door with packages containing the same or similar products.  It was as if a team of evil Christmas elves decided to send me my children’s Christmas lists daily.  The effect was stunning to both my understanding of online shopping and the visas understanding of the family budget. I was totally mortified as I tried to explain to my husband how I had ordered Christmas presents in triplicate. 

Sometimes, I don’t feel like I belong here.

That dear friend, takes us to the day after Christmas.  I haven’t even touched the rash of celebrity deaths, bad news from my home town, or the fact that I got confused and drank water from a glass that contained my child’s new hex bug jellyfish.  By the time new year’s hit, I limped across the finish line.    Actually, I put myself to bed at 10:50 pm cried myself to sleep and prayed next year would be better.  Have you ever visited the place where survival usurps your celebration?

There is a lovely verse in scripture that speaks to the place of brokenness.  Even better, it tells us what to do in this place…

For though the fig tree doesn’t flourish, nor fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive fails, the fields yield no food; the flocks are cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the LORD.  I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!  The LORD, the Lord is my strength.  He makes my feet like deer’s feet, and enables me to go in high places.  

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Do you see the picture my friend?  No fruit.  Failed efforts.  The prosperity gospel hasn’t got much ground here.  The only thing that counters the desolation is the will to rejoice in the face of failure and lack.   If you have been stepped on my dear friend, and the enemy is screaming your failures can I encourage you to thank God for something –anything?  Perhaps thinking back to when you met Jesus might inspire some praise.  Has anything good happened since that time?  Has the Lord ever saved you from a bad decision?  Forgiven you for a sin more than once?  Take the time this week to force your mind to recount the goodness of Jesus.  Though it is a tough discipline to master any effort to rend our emotions from the throne of our hearts is worthwhile. 

So I am praying for you this week my friend.  That you will learn to praise God in all circumstances, especially when your heart is sore.  That this year will bring healing, hope and courage to stand through the losses and victories to come. 

Happy New Year.

xoxKaren