The Spectacular Neighbors

If I am to be honest, I venture as we peel away from our fantasies, I really don’t care that much for the perfect house. Sure, it would be nice, but what REALLY matters to me is the people who live inside.  And the people I would LOVE to be my neighbors are the ones on the other side of the lake.

Which ones? Anna is as much, or perhaps even more intrigued now by the people I want for my neighbors.

You know, the ones who decorate their house for Christmas and Easter… and Hal…

Oh, YES! A sand hill crane swoops up  into the air at the sound of her scream. Can you imagine being THEIR neighbors???!!!

No! But that would be incredible….

We walk in silence for a bit, each reflecting on what it would be like to know the people who decorate their house like that for the holidays.

Clearly they are soooo creative.

Clearly they are off-the-charts fun.

They are sweep-me-off-my-feet imaginative, extravagantly ingenious, and flamboyantly artistic. 

Their house decorations for holidays are world-class theme park worthy, and yet tasteful, although I know this sounds like an oxymoron. 

… To have them as my neighbors…

I would love to get inside their head… I muse…

I would love to get inside their storage shed!

We both laugh at the thought of space it would take to store the decorations, the logistical nightmare of putting on a show like that and the impracticality of such family enterprise.

Where do they keep all that stuff???? Anna has always been the more sensible one.  Man, it must be exhausting to put on such a spectacular show every time...

Hmmm, I never thought of that.

I never thought what would really be like to live next-door to people who always have to go all out, not just big but GIGANTIC… not just good but AWESOME….

For whom a simply good is never quite good enough.

The relentless, maybe internal maybe external pressure to outdo themselves each time, year after year… 

Are they ever able to descend?

Are they ever able to shrink themselves to small? 

Can they handle being... invisible? 

Can they tolerate the mundane, ordinary grayish days... ?

Or do they always have to command the stage and everyone’s attention by spectacular?… 

On second thought,… I start, but before I am able to finish, both of us are stopped in our tracks. 

The Story of Three Houses

Ever since my sister left last summer, Anna and I have been going for morning walks together, continuing on with the habit that somehow created itself apart from any intent, will or determination of our own.

We are not fanatical about it. We don’t go every day. We don’t have a set time.  Our morning walks meander through our lives, adjusting to its ebb and flow, rhymes and seasons  (even when there is no discernible reason).

Sometimes abundant, sometimes scarce, but every time these walks happen, they seem to hit the spot for both of us.

Our path takes us through our neighborhood, across a busy street into another quiet neighborhood with a trail around a lake skirting a small patch of woods the developer thoughtfully left behind after plowing down everything else to build the mini-mansions. 

We admire those mansions. But, we are more likely to be taken by the giant blazing fireball glowing on the east horizon and the interplay of its glory with the clouds in the sky above and the lake below. 

Or by angelic winged creatures unceremoniously wading through the shallows on their two stick-like legs, raking the bottom muck in search for a snack. 

Yuck!

Life is inhaled and exhaled between our breaths and steps, life is chewed, tasted and digested as it falls like crumbs off our breakfast tables on these walks.

Sometimes we fantasize about what it would be like to live inside one of those gorgeous houses in a perfect neighborhood with a lake and a path through the woods.

I LUST after that house, I moan.

Which one? She is suddenly animated beyond what is suitable for the morning hour. 

The one at the very beginning of the trail. On the edge of the lake. In the cul-de-sac!

Oh YES! Me too!

If that house ever goes on the market, we have to enter a bidding war over it.

No, we’ll just sell everything we own, buy it and move in there together. It’s big enough for both our families.

We laugh as we imagine life with BOTH our families inhabiting the house's secret interior. 


Its owners are as mysterious and invisible. 

We wish we could meet them and ask what it feels like to actually live the dream… Is it worth the sacrifice? Do their kids like the trade-off? Does their spouse love or resent this slab-and-concrete perfection?

But we never see them. 

So, our questions are doomed to remain unanswered as we continue on our walk, leaving the lusted-after mansion and it's perfect location behind. 

What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for? Matthew 16:26

Of Water, Vivaldi and Wine

Some may think they got the short end of the stick. 

That they are the second class citizens, the no man’s land dwellers. The lowly servants without a place either in the limelight or in the cushy audience seats covered in darkness.

Neither here, nor there... the backstage crew.

They are the conductors of empty chairs, the directors of beat-up music stands, the composers of chocolate chip cookies.

They are the shadows dressed in black, blending with the background because they are meant to be invisible.

They are meant to be unnoticeable.

There is no question in anyone's mind that they aren't the real gig. 

They arrive before the lights are on and leave after all the lights are out, not because they have to, but because they want to.

They are there when the only music heard is the scratching of the grand piano against the wooden floor and the clanking of the stands against each other.

Some may think they got the short end of the stick…

… maybe because they don’t understand…

...that their ear is the first to recognize...

... when notes become music…

… when syllables become a song...

Their lips are the first to taste water-turned-into-wine...

They are the first witnesses of the resurrection of Vivaldi and Mozart from the dead…

Still, some may think they got the short end of the stick…

When the host tasted the water that had become wine (he didn’t know what had just happened but the servants, of course, knew), he called out to the bridegroom, “Everybody I know begins with their finest wines and after the guests have had their fill brings in the cheap stuff. But you’ve saved the best till now!” John 2:9-10

The Resurrection Duck

We watch him, a tormented soul, standing on the grassy easement of a narrow two-way street near our house.

It’s Easter morning. The sun has just risen so the traffic is light.  Those who were going to the sunrise service are singing hymns celebrating the empty tomb.  The sleepy-heads are still sleeping in their beds waiting for the second resurrection.

He waddles to the curb and as he is about to step onto the street, the car comes from around the bend so he hops back to safety.  He hesitates for a while, gathering courage for the next attempt.

On the other side his three friends look helplessly, waiting for him to join their party.

His next attempt is interrupted with the speeding motorcycle zooming from the opposite direction.

He races back as fast as his short webby feet would allow him. Back onto the green. Back to safety. 

With each failed attempt the road grows wider and more menacing to his unblinking eye. Practically impassable.

I can’t stand watching his tortured existence any longer.

I look to the right and to the left -  the road clear - I spread my arms wide, a  featherless monstrosity flailing furiously, bearing down on him full speed.

The prospect of becoming an unexpected addition to the main course of an Easter banquet, overrides his paralysis of fear.

For a split-second I think I gave him a heart attack, before he lifts off and flies across the road.

When he safely lands among his friends, I don’t think he fully realizes yet that he has wings… that he can fly. The adrenaline is still rushing through his body, a whale of a story forming inside his little head to tell anyone who is willing to hear. 

His terrifying attempts to cross the road. The feeling of being stuck. Alone. The hopelessness. The paralyzing fear. The ugly mean giant who viciously attacked him... 

... when it finally hits him,

I can FLY!

The Missing Child of Easter

Tucked between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is mostly overlooked, largely neglected middle child of Easter.

Saturday, also known as Sabbath.

The Day of Rest.

In this country, it is a day jam-packed with chocolate bunnies and jelly beans, church potlucks and carnivals, Easter egg hunts and other fun activities to kill the time between Good Friday and the sunrise service on Sunday.

I often wonder, though, about that first Sabbath, the first day of rest after the crucifixion of Jesus.

After the drama, the chaos, the noise, the horror – the nightmare of the day Jesus died, how in the world did the friends of Jesus find it in themselves to honor the commandment of God to keep the day of rest as they obviously did??

Everything happened so fast.

Everything happened so unexpected.

Were they reeling from all the thoughts and emotions that swarmed inside them, drowning in confusion and the turmoil that they were simply spent? Emotionally, physically, spiritually exhausted, so they entered a coma of sort, shocked and disengaged as they reached the threshold of human limit to bear grief.

Or did they, while going about their day, slowly, gently, quietly wrap in burial cloths their hopes and dreams, and lay them to rest alongside Jesus’ dead body, remembering with shudder the rolling of the stone, closing on the grave with the final thud?

Were they gathering the little strength that they had left to prepare for facing unimaginable, facing the new week, the first day of the new Jesus-less era, wondering how were they going to survive a minute, an hour, much less an entire day with him gone… knowing its forever?

Or were they somehow, someway able to receive the rest that God gives to all those who trust His goodness even in the darkest, longest night?

I wonder what the friends of Jesus felt on that day...  that must have felt like a thousand-year long sleepless night of rest...

The Taste Test

It really was a dumb, no-win question.  

Are they any good?

If I had thought of it, I would have known that there was one and only one way to find out about the true nature of the advertised mangoes.

I would have to go to the store, get some and try them myself. 

That’s the way with some things in life.

Having stumbled upon enough tasteless, unripe, stringy, woody,  rotten mangoes  – as well as tasted some really good ones,  I find I am becoming more of a skeptic.

I don’t just jump in with both feet simply because somebody posted it on Facebook.

I don't believe it just because I see it, or hear or read about it.

Are they any good?

Well, come and see for yourself.

When Phillip told Nathanael that they found the One promised through Moses and Prophets, Nathanael was skeptical.

There have been too many fake Messiahs parading through history. 

Our age didn’t invent fake news.

How do you know who is the real deal?

Come and see for yourself.

Don’t just trust my word for it.

Don’t just believe because somebody says it.

Come and see for yourself.

O taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8

The Mango Tango

Few days ago the manager of my favorite produce store posted a picture on their Facebook page of a pallet stacked high with boxes of mangoes. There was also another close-up of beautiful shiny fruit with $2.99 a box as the advertised price.

I was hooked.

Those mangoes at that price…?!??! The deal was too good to pass.

Just one box wouldn’t be nearly enough for our family. I was already calculating in my head how many boxes - 

...mango salsa, mango smoothie, mango-Key lime pie, Caribbean mango salad...

- we could accommodate when, What if they aren’t any good?, popped inside my head.  

Remember, last time you bought mangoes they were so tasteless you were the only one willing to eat them…

As much as I hate hearing my Rain-on-the-Parade Voice of Reason, I had to admit he got a valid point.  Even the favorite store has a bad apple - or mango - from time to time. But, I wasn’t going to subject myself to another truckload of unripe fruit that went from mediocre to rotting... and they weren't even on sale!

In order to ensure I won't make the same mistake again, I typed up a simple question in the comment box under the pictures,

Are they any good?, then hit the return on my keyboard and saw my words posted on the Internet for the whole world to see forever.

Are they any good?

ARE THEY ANY GOOD????

It was like a delayed reaction.... What was I thinking???!!? I didn’t mean to be insulting but… what was I hoping for...???

For him to cordially reply with,

Oh, they are terrible, just like last time, but we got so many that we are simply trying to unload them to the gullible fools like you.  

Or,

They are bland but tolerable - what do you expect at that price? 

Or, make some other similar self-incriminating comment posted on Facebook, effectively ruining our relationship and their business forever and ever?

Pleading the fifth in this case seemed like the most prudent approach.

The Walking Wounded

In her book, The Last Best Cure, Donna Jackson Nakazawa quotes a physician speaking at a women’s health conference:

Walk into any of our waiting rooms and it’s full of women in the thirties, forties and fifties. The American woman in her prime is our prime patient; she is the walking wounded of our day.

The quote has been haunting me for months now.

The American woman.

In her prime.

The walking wounded.

Of our day.

Who would have guessed?

Who would have dreamed of such a thing?

The woman who ‘has it all’...

.... her life 'a-dream-come-true' by most standards..

… in the best years of her life…

… living in one of the most affluent - 'the land of promise' - countries in the world…

This woman is a walking wounded of our day.

The irony so severe it would be easy to dismiss as implausible.

On the day when women are recognized and celebrated all around the world,  I marvel at the waiting room statistics that defies logic.

How did we manage to get so fooled?

What happened socially and culturally to perpetrate such tragedy? What is going on inside the American woman to send her on such trajectory of self-destruction?

Every day I am surrounded by ‘American women’ - capable, competent, strong, tirelessly involved  in political, religious, academic arena. 

Always willing to step up to the plate. 

Always there to help and serve.  

Truly impressive.

We applaud them.

We admire them.

Some of us even envy them!

And then, seemingly out of blue…

In her prime…

… the wounds she’s been covering up for so long, now a diagnosis.

Her superhero costume exchange for the hospital gown.

The weight of the whole world she’s been carrying for much too long, pushes her over her weight limit.

The American woman in her prime - the walking wounded of our day...

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

It Ain't Over 'Til It's Overtime

We started getting peppered with, ‘Are we at the point of no-return yet?’  during the first half of the game last night.

It’s still too early to tell…

One touchdown after another…prospects looked pretty bleak.

What about now? Are we now at the point of no return?

Wanting to know the end before the actual ending runs in our family.

We fended off the question with the sagely wisdom of,

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, scooping the home-made guacamole with spicy nacho Doritos, but I admit I had my doubts.

Yes, come backs happen. 

But so do the decimations. 

We’ve seen a few of both with our own eyes and there was no telling what would happen with this game. Will there be an upset? Or, depending on the side you root for, a steady humiliation that ends in defeat or smooth sailing that ends in well-deserved victory?

By the time the half-time show rolled around, I thought Lady Gaga was going to be the talk of the Super bowl 2017.  And the cool drones.

We sent our kids to bed shortly after the second half started, both of them firmly convinced that the outcome had already been decided. That there was not much game left worthy of staying up to watch.

The rest is history.  In fact, a lot of history’s first were made last night. Not being a football buff, I can only name one or two.

The one that struck me the most was the first Super Bowl ever that had gone into overtime.

Sometimes life feels like that. We feel that we've reached 'the point of no return', and that the winners and the losers have already been decided before the end of the first half. Not much game left worthy to stick around for.  

Our best and highest hope is that there will be plenty of tasty snacks to keep us munching away until bedtime.

But, life has a way of upsetting our bowl, of serving us surprises. 

Sometimes (in fact, more often than in Super Bowl)  it actually extends into overtime! 

The clock is up, but the game is not over.

It’s the final stretch, the final seconds that decide. Those can change everything.

This is good news, really good news for the apparent losers.

There is hope!

This is also an unnerving piece of additional information for those of us who think we've already got the victory in our back pocket.

I suppose, that’s what makes life interesting to the very end. And how the history is made along the way.

Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. Revelation 2:10

Lost and Found

This week, on Monday, I lost a hat.

On Tuesday, I lost a bike lock and another hat.

On Wednesday, which is today, I managed to lose my credit card.

I am not joking.

Some may argue,  perhaps justifiably so, that I am losing my mind.

The good news is…

On Monday, which happened to be the coldest day of the year so far, after backtracking a mile and a half on my bike, adding three extra miles to my 8-mile itinerary, I found my lost hat.

On Tuesday, the second coldest day of the year, I found the ‘other hat’ which blew off my head into a busy street, just few hundred yards behind me.  It was ran over by several rushing cars before I was able to rescue it. Except for a few scuff marks, no permanent damage. 

As for the bike lock, I had to ride all the way back home looking for it. I admit, there was some negotiation going on inside my head between me and God - being omniscient, clearly He knew exactly where the lock was.  I scoured every inch of the 4-mile path but didn't see it anywhere. Gravely disappointed and a bit miffed, I made it to our driveway. The disappointment and the miff turned into happiness the moment I saw the lock, basking in the cool winter sun, in the same place where it fell off the bike right before I left home.

Today, while standing in the checkout line at Wal-mart, I discovered that my credit card wasn’t where it should be inside my wallet. I froze in place, even though the weather outside was rather warm. Then, I mentally backtracked my steps all the way to Ross department store where earlier in the day, I used it in the process of returning an item I'd purchased almost a month ago.

I clearly remembered forgetting to remove my card out of the credit card machine.

To drive back to Ross, I spent twice as much gas than the total cost of the returned item - not to mention the time and the stress! All this in 'hope against hope' that the card would be in the possession of an honest Ross’ employee rather than some lucky crook who could be thanking God this very moment for His generous provision of a free $10,000 credit limit at my expense.

The Loss Prevention person greeted me warmly, and after I explained why I was there again, he  asked me for my name, walked over to the Customer Service desk, verified the name on the card and handed it to me.

To describe what I felt at that moment as 'relief' would be the understatement of the year.

Every day this week, I’ve spend extra time, energy and money to retrieve my lost belongings. Even though their monetary value was negligible, I went through all the trouble, in the cold weather, riding against the wind on a bicycle, looking for them until I found them. 

Crazy, isn't it?

Then it struck me.

If these lost objects made of wool, metal and plastic were valuable enough to me to go through all the trouble of finding them, how much more are we - body, soul and spirit - worth God's 'trouble' so we can be found?

It’s so easy to get lost, to feel lost - a small, insignificant person in a large, big-issues world of refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, Presidential orders, Supreme Court appointees. 

A tiny, disposable, replaceable cog in a greater machine with the mission to save the world...

It’s so easy to compare ourselves to others more important, more successful, more 'this' or 'that' than us and doubt whether anyone notices... whether anyone cares...

... that we are lonely...

... that we feel forgotten...

... that we are drifting away like a wind-blown hat off somebody’s head...

Perhaps all this is so easy because it is so hard to really believe that we are worth the bother...

...worth the effort...

 - by God and by man -

... that it takes to be found again. 

If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? Romans 8:32

Chain Reaction

It really isn’t as uncommon as one may think, this still-as-a-glassy-surface-of-a-lake-on-the-outside-but-churning-like-a-magma-chamber within.  

Smiling on the outside, broken within.

Calm on the outside, raging within.

Poised on the outside, ridden with questions and emotions within.

Eventually, the veneer cracks, volcano explodes or we simply get exhausted, get desperately weary of wearing a mask, and the inside seeps out.

The inside belches out and usually we are the ones most surprised of all by what we hear and see.

We are the ones most shocked by the discovery of how woefully little we know and understand ourselves…

This fresh awareness of the discrepancy, even contradiction between the appearance and the substance, the 'inside' and the 'outside' which dawned on me in the linear accelerator room triggered an interesting chain reaction (yes, pun intended!)

By its sharp contrast it reminded me of the words I've been chewing on since Christmas.... the words which suddenly struck me as incredibly radical and insanely rare:

…The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood... 

... Like Father, like Son,

Generous inside and out

True from start to finish.     John 1:14

Not,

Generous on the outside, but kind of stingy within;

Not,

True when he started but turned out false at the end.

With Jesus, it’s what you see is what you get.

Generous through and through. True at the beginning and all the way to the finish line. 

The way he talks, the way he lives in every detail, all the time!

No faking it. No masks.  No need to impress or manipulate. 

No overpromising and under-delivering.

No hidden agendas or ulterior motives. 

No fears and insecurities, and buckling under pressure. 

No packaging falsehood as 'alternate facts'.

Yes is yes and no is no.

How deliciously refreshing!

How delightfully simple!

How absolutely, totally, completely humanly impossible…

Inauguration Consternation

With half of the country cheering and the other half booing on this Inauguration Day, with friends and family equally agitated on both sides of the great divide, something completely different occupies my mind today.

It’s something totally unrelated, something quite personal and, in the large scheme of things minor, almost insignificant  relative to the most controversial, most divisive elections we've had the privilege to witness in the history of the United States.

I even hesitate to bother writing about it.  But, the bur is real, and write I must, if for nothing else than to scratch where it itches me the most...

Shay and Jenny were my technicians today. I've just met them, so I can’t say much about either of them, other than that for about forty-five minutes, as a part of their normal, day-to-day job, they’ve jostled me around  on the top of the table inside the linear accelerator room like a human Raggedy Ann doll. They squeezed and bunched up my skin and arranged my bones in the most awkward, unnatural positions ensuring that everything was just so.

In response, I instinctively kept realigning my neck and my limbs, looking for a more comfortable placement.

We’ll do all the work, they try hard to be patient with me, but, you HAVE TO be still. You can’t move. You must remain still.

I don't know whether they are authorized to speak on God's behalf or not, but they use the kind of voice as if this is a matter of life and death, or at least serious injury.

I take a deep breath but keep the, Easier said than done, tucked inside the inaudible under.

My mind orders my rebellious body, STOP fidgeting. Just BE still.

My body backfires like a grumpy toddler, I can't 'just be still'! I am hurting. This is painful. It’s taking too long. I am tired and my nose is itching.

I say out loud, on behalf of my nose,

My nose is itching.

Jenny leans over and scratches my nose with the corner of the cotton blanket.

Thank you, says my nose, that feels much better.

I take another breath and find I am able to relax a bit. I close my eyes, embracing the moment of rest, unwanted as it may be. 

I lay so still I feel Earth’s rotation under my back. My body, indeed, is perfectly still, I realize, but inside, my soul is in uproar. 

This is so interesting, I observe, How’s it possible for a body to be so perfectly still but on the inside a storm is raging on…? 

...for the exterior to be as calm as a glassy surface of a lake, while the depths are churning like a magma chamber?

Speechless Christmas

It’s really quite unlike me.  Words have always come easy to this a mile-a-minute girl. Some might say, Too easy.

As far as I can remember, I could talk.  Very quickly writing followed all that talking.

Most of my life, I’ve been expressing myself through words.

Spoken words.

Written words.

But this year… this year that changed.

I’ve been struggling to put into words the thoughts and emotions of this year’s Christmas season like never before.

It’s not that I stopped thinking and feeling – quite to the contrary!

It’s just that I continually find myself laboring over finding the right words to clothe those squirmy thoughts, those wiggly feelings sloshing around my soul. I browse through my internal dictionary and thesaurus, pick a word, maul it over, only to discard it as woefully insufficient.

There is a mile-high garbage pile of words resting in the cluttered corners of my mind.

How do you condense life into a mere string of syllables? How do you confine what moves and breathes, sighs, laughs and weeps into motionless scribbles, quick sound-bites and 140 character tweets?

I am frustrated and humbled by the process.  I feel out of control and vulnerable. 

I feel like my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth and my pen has dried up.

I am through with you words!, I want to say. I am done with you and your impotent, insufficient ways! From now on, I am a gardener!

Then a thought catches me by surprise,

Maybe there is something to this… perhaps that’s what Christmas, sort of, is … might be… could be... all about…

The Word – The Word! -  that spoke world into existence, the Word who talked to Moses and children of Israel, poured his heart out to prophets and kings… The Word who spoke and was ignored, dismissed, misunderstood, thwarted… the Word who fell silent for 400 years…

The Word finally said,  

Enough is enough. I am done with mere words. I am going all out here… I am going… human! I am going naked! Male child… A boy… No more mere words… no more empty talk… I am going out on a limb here… No shortcuts… no shorthand…. From start to finish, with My people… from the beginning to the end… their God. In their joy. In their sorrow. Their joy, my joy. My joy their joy. Their sorrow my sorrow. My sorrow their sorrow…

And so it begun. God-Man, wordless, speechless babe cradling inside its soft flesh the living breathing Word.

 The Word became flesh and blood,
    and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
    the one-of-a-kind glory,
    like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
    true from start to finish. John 1:14

The Shortest Distance the Longest Journey

Bethlehem lays six miles south of Jerusalem. Six miles isn’t really that far. It’s within reasonable walking distance, a day trip. But some of us find it incredibly hard to turn away from Jerusalem’s thrills – exhausting as they can be - away from the endless supply of adrenaline rush we spiritual junkies crave so much.

Most of us don’t do it willingly.

Most of us rarely choose this path.

More often than not, we are thrown on it.  Our Jerusalem party is interrupted by a phone call, a tap on the shoulder…

… and we set out on what feels like the most treacherous voyage. 

The darkest night. 

The loneliest place on Earth. 

All one can do is put one foot in front of the other and the next… again and again… 

Some call this journey the longest, 18 inch journey that leads from head to heart. Some of us take years, decades, perhaps even a lifetime to walk this path. 

Then we stumble upon (or perhaps are guided to?) an intersection - a strange juncture where songs of angels are mixed with bleating, mooing and the smell of farm animals, and of shepherds who, of course, also smell like animals. It is likely that we don’t even realize we are drawing near… near the place where Hope is wrapped in the soft baby skin, and the Word is silent in the makeshift bed of hay…

…the embodiment of unsparing grace at the sight of which angels fall prostrate…

… the unfailing love made human, in whose arms both children of Jerusalem and children of Bethlehem can find rest for their weary souls at last.

And with fresh eyes we see that our journey has only begun.

When God Misses the Target

Just six miles south of Jerusalem lies the place God chose as the birthplace for his son. If it wasn’t impossible for God to have bad aim, one might be tempted to think that he missed his target by six miles.

By all human standards, Jerusalem had everything going for it as an indisputable favorite to host such momentous event. 

Rich religious history. 

Impressive tradition. 

Glowing reputation.

Its facilities and resources were far superior to anything Bethlehem had to offer for hosting the birth of God incarnate.  In the eyes of the event planners selecting the caterer, Jerusalem would be the New York City’s Le Bernardin and Bethlehem...?

A banged up food truck!

The real estate agents tell us it’s all about location. Location, location, location.

I find this very interesting.

Something inside me is naturally drawn to Jerusalem - its buzz, action, excitement, the promise of significance and validation it seems to offer. It’s the place to see and be seen. 

I can be inside Jerusalem, so engrossed by all the fascinating who’s whos from the invitation list and their impressive resumes that I completely miss the Guest of Honor!

I can be inside Jerusalem and miss God by six miles.

The Lesser of Two Evils

Nobody noticed we were slowly but surely painting ourselves into a tight culinary corner. With time, all the wonderful vast choices the good Lord put within our reach were reduced down to two.

It was either Tyson or DiGiorno.

Personally, I didn’t care for either. And against my better judgment, I willingly conceded to both.

We never put our foot down to stop the insanity. We must have been fooled by the fact that nobody appeared to be dying of hunger around us. Our stomachs were getting filled plenty but it was more like eating Styrofoam than sushi or sarma.

In the process, our palates atrophied along with our taste buds. Our children couldn’t tell the difference between a turnip and catnip, Our noses vandalized by seductive air-fresheners and scented candles, couldn’t smell basil from cilantro anymore.

We started slathering Chick-fil-A sauce on everything and calling whatever was buried under ‘tasty’.

Forgotten were the days of thyme and sage in our messy kitchen…

Gone was the smell of bacon fat and caramelized onions that made our stomachs growl like a roaring lion…

Gone was the fire of all four burners running red-hot, the bobbing lids making our house steamy and us sweaty yet glowing…

Our onion-tears dried up. 

We were eating without tasting.

Watching without seeing.

Listening without hearing.

And even though our stomachs were filled to the brim every night, they felt strangely empty…

Which made me wonder...

What is worse… ?

Eating without tasting...?

Or not eating at all...?

Breaking the Speed Limit of Life

Some may say it was simply life catching up on us.  We were two busy, exhausted parents dealing with rather significant health issues...

Who could blame us for wanting a break, for taking a short-cut or two?

Especially when we discovered that our more discriminating toddler actually preferred surrogate dinosaurs-shaped chicken over its more gruesome counterpart? And that we could save time, energy and eventually even money while still having our hungry bellies filled...

Who could resist such a deal?

Others may shake their heads and say that just like everyone else, we too were duped into mindless following of the global frenzy of busy...

... two arrogant fools hell-bent on saving the world while squandering our own and our children’s souls, accelerating when we should have been stopping and evaluating...

... breaking the speed limit of life and praying to God we won’t get caught.

Regardless of reasons or faults, we joined the army of parents all around the country who were chomping off tiny dinosaurs’ legs in PG-7 rated family dinners, pretending to have fun while kids giggled, making sure they don’t see through our charade.

None of this happened overnight. We slowly slid and skidded. Nobody meant any harm. Everybody thought this was actually helpful. We were ‘spared the hassle’. We had ‘more important things to do’… 

Like the Once-ler's Thneed, we became convinced that we needed it!

Thus our bustling, blood-and-gut splattered, alive kitchen turned into a fine dining for the toddlers containing warmers for nutritionally-empty artificially-flavored convenience foods prepared by nobody we knew, and nobody that knew us.

The Fine Dining for Toddlers

It hasn’t always been like that around here – I mean, frozen pizzas, the 3-minute Ramen Noodles and 11-minutes assembly-line chicken nuggets in the shape of little dinosaurs. We never meant for our house to become the fine dining for toddlers!

Our chickens used to have legs and breasts, gizzards, back and neck.  

We didn’t hire hit-men from Publix for $8.99 to execute the dirty work for us, to bail us out of the mess and the gore that eating fried chicken represents.

The mess and the gore were an integral part of each meal, not sanitized out of it..  

When we got married, our kitchen became one-of-a-kind, steamy, sticky, bustling melding pot of two very, very different worlds and styles, taste buds, culinary experiences and philosophies. We had almost as much fun there as in our bedroom. 

At first we fought a lot because we didn’t understand how our different personalities could possibly work together. Eventually we were able to relax and enjoy some of the best home-made foods from around the world and share it with few gutsy friends and neighbors willing to join us at our dining room table.

Stuffed Peppers. Paprikas. Sarma. Curry. Musaka. Chilli. Sopska salata. Masala. 

You could never predict what might be cooking in our household. Until you could actually smell it.

And it smelled gooood... at least most of the time.

I brought the Europes and the Balkans and my husband contributed the rest of the world spawned out of his international travels, which we later were fortunate enough to combine.

Chinese.

Indian.

Nepalese.

Indonesian.

Thai.

Mexican.

Ethiopian.

We had the best of both… no – the best of all worlds under our roof. 

And then… I don’t know what happened...

I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able. I Corinthians 3:2

The Kick-Pork-Butt Roast

Every so often, usually when the dinner table is cleared and the dishes piled in the sink, there is a knock on our front door. It’s dark outside and I am already  in my bathrobe, settled in front of the TV watching reruns of Criminal Minds while the rest of the family is too preoccupied with whatever they are doing to even hear the knock-knocking.

Hey! I yell, Can somebody get that door – I am in the bathrobe!

It’s me, Juergen, I recognize our neighbor’s voice coming from the outside. My mind and heart at rest that there is no serial killer or a door-to-door Kirby vacuum peddler, I unleash the kids who swing the door wide open, all too eager to see what Juergen is bringing to us this time.

See, he conditioned our kids perhaps too well. He never comes to our door empty handed, and most of the time he apologizes for the late arrival – the dinner took much longer to cook, or he was kept late at work so he had to start late, as if an apology is needed when you are on the receiving end of a gracious gift.

I hope you enjoy it – it took ten hours in the smoker…

For the family accustomed to frozen pizza, 11-minutes Tyson chicken nuggets and 3-minutes microwavable Maruchan ramen noodles bowls, ten-hour-smoked-pork-butt-roast represents a life in a galaxy far far away, even if it’s only two doors down.

Even though I already ate, I can’t resist.  I don’t share my family’s enthusiasm for convenience food and whenever the opportunity knocks to enjoy some real, home-made-from-scratch adult deliciousness, I take it.

Mmmmmmm… this is sooooo good!  My pleasure is contagious, at least to the other adult in the household.  We don’t even bother with forks, scooping pieces of meat with the tips of our fingers, holding off the licking part until we couldn't take another bite.

It’s a bit of a delayed reaction, but eventually it hits us both – first me, than my husband.

This has a KICK to it!

Yea, it’s a kick-pork-butt roast!

Everything that Juergen has brought to us over the years has been delicious. One may even say, inspired. He is a hard working truck driver with many overtime hours, but he loves to cook. And his love shows in every meal he prepares.  His cuisine generally hugs the mild and gentle side. Tasty and mild.

But this… this charted a whole new territory. It was still as inspired as ever but the added kick made it awesome.

Next time I saw him, it was pre-dawn morning a couple of days later. I was going for my walk and he was heading for work. I waved his red truck, he rolled down the window.

Juergen, that was awesome! Thank you so much.

Oh, I thought it had too much pepper, he said in his usual modest way, but that’s what the recipe called for...

It was PERFECT amount of pepper, I assured him. EVERYONE in our family LOVED it!

In that case, next time I’ll make two batches…one mild, and the other...

No! Noooooo!!! That’s not what I was trying to say….I am mortified. You…you  are just making me...

…lazy!

But he laughs and waves…  

…And inspired…

…puts his engine in gear …

… to make some 

sloooow-cooking, 

smokey-hot, 

kick-butt roasts of my own…

…as he rides off.

Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage. Matthew 5:13