A Trip to the Moon and Back

I have no photographs of the event, no snapshots except in my memories, but then again, we rarely do for our most profound moments.

Today July 20 commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Neil Armstrong's dance on the surface of the moon.

For some reason, on that hot summer day in 1969, I was not working one of my many part time jobs as a teenager.  I was not quite 16, the legal working age at the time, but I had worked for years in a variety of tasks that I could find, including babysitting for 50 cents an hour.  My dad had been out of work at this point for a couple years, and after a while, when no jobs materialized, he decided to start his own company, cobbling things together in our basement, inventing in borrowed lab space from a church friend, and selling dental materials of the trunk of his car.   My mom contributed the best she could by teaching beginning violin students in our living room at all hours of the day, for five dollars per hour, and sometimes for the music alone. 

My grandmother, who had lived with us from before I was born, held us and the household together in more ways than one.  My grandmother cleaned, laundered, and creatively stretched every dollar, "making do" with whatever was in the cupboard.  We never went hungry, but we had some rather unusual meals, and she thought that we didn't notice when she watered down the milk to make it last longer.

But on that momentous day, she dropped all her daily urgent duties and hobbled down the linoleum tiled stairs to sit in the dark coolness of the basement with my youngest brother and me --the only ones home at the time -- to see the Apollo 11 spacecraft perilously land on the moon and see the astronauts walk on its surface.  We sat together, sometimes commenting on what we saw, sometimes in silence, sometimes in awe of what was happening like a suspense movie on the small screen of our only television, relegated to the shadowy dank basement.

But with all the drama played out before us, what stood out to me was sitting together with her.  As soon as we heard Armstrong's voice, "A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind," she was reluctant to leave and instead lingered, just being with us in those sacred moments.

When I look at Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
      which You have set in place,
what is man
   that You are mindful of him,
and the son of man that You care for him?

                                      Psalm 8. 3-4



"And to think," she finally said in her gravelly voice, "I went from horse-drawn wagon to seeing a man walk on the moon.  Imagine that."  This wrinkled gracious woman, who could now barely walk with her arthritic knees, was born in 1882 in rural Kentucky.  As a girl of eight, she traveled with her family by wagon to dusty Fort Worth, Texas, which I am sure seemed the other side of the moon to her at the time.

What I remember most about that day in 1969 is that she didn't rush off when there were so many other pressing and visible needs calling for her attention.  She saw a different angle on significance.   

As I can see it now -- as a grandma myself-- one of her pressing needs was just being with me.  Over the few years I had with her, she had a profound impact on my life in the way she daily lived out her faith in God in word and deed and never with the remotest shadow of fanfare.  She lingered.  And that is what impacted me.  Just being together.

Little did I know that in just three short months, her heart would run out of beats one morning, and she would slip away suddenly to the Other Side of life.  And those ordinary daily moments when she'd stop everything to listen to me, help me with some impossible dilemma that seemed insurmountable at the time, or just to be there, those moments of incalculable value are still fresh in my mind and heart, fifty years later.

Two evenings ago when I was helping out at our daughter's home here in town, my four-year-old granddaughter, trying as usual to stretch out the day, chose two books to read before bed, one about Penny the mouse and the other about Pickles the fire cat.  We lay down on her little bed with its puffy blue and pink unicorn comforter, side by side, reading page after page past her bedtime.  And I thought:  What will she remember 50 years from now?

I hope the lingering.

Faithfulness means...

As I was running through the sweat of the forest this week, I began thinking about people I have known, even when I was a little girl, who I remember as the faithful ones.  I observed so many people working hard without fanfare, hearing snatches of conversations around the dinner table and in the church lobby, faces and names and experiences sneaking in and out of my thoughts as I climbed another hill and went around yet another bend.  And as I wandered, the incredible dimensions of faithfulness to God surrounded me.   

What does faithfulness look like?

Left out sometimes to be available for something else.
Being taken advantage of.
Standing out. Being silent. Covering the gaps.
Navigating it differently.
Bring grace to it. No matter what.
Praying anyway, and not giving up.
Assured this life is not all there is.
Willing to be used, willing to look ridiculous.
Another chapter, a different season, not the end at all.
Unencumbered.
"After you."
Let go of what doesn’t matter to grab hold of what does— and know the radical difference between them.
In the steep parts, knowing the other side.
Not a dead end, not a detour, but going through.
God never promised life is easy, but “I am with you.”
Watches for ambushes, steps carefully through mine fields, doesn’t quit in the miry bogs of which there are many.
A state of being, a foundation of doing.
Not esteemed, but doesn’t need it.
Rooted and holding fast.
Carrying on.
Not seeing results,
    but trusting His.
Doing the same thing over and over. Just because.
The glue of our faith.
Doing the right and kind thing anyway.
Willing. Ready to follow God in this. Shoes already tied.
The upper room always ready.
Not having to be the best, or perfect, or winning the race, but helping another cross the line before you.
Keeping on.
Be strong, courageous and kind even when everything in you says the opposite.
Knowing little things matter more.
Walking toward any available light in the darkness and in impossible situations.
Stickiness.
For His glory. For their good.

But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD
                 never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
        great is Your faithfulness.

                    Lamentations 3. 21-23

But during the night

an angel of the Lord

opened the prison doors

and brought them out...

                Acts 5. 19

(God specializes

in impossible situations.

Sometimes God 

literally opens locked doors

            for His purposes,

            for the gospel,

sometimes He keeps us

    right where we are,

    for the same reason.

His reality does not hinge

      always on what is next,

but the fullness 

                  of what is.)

O LORD,

Help me to remain 

  faithful to You

whatever,

wherever,

whenever,

however,

        and why,

to respond to You

   and follow You in it.

Even in the unexpected 

and the most unlikely,

   may Your purposes prevail.

The Hiddenness of Things

I can run the same loop in the woods a thousand times, the rote memorization of steps, like reciting a poem in seventh grade, the rhythms, the rhymes, but still be shaken awake by a newly scribbled stanza, or a word I need to look up, or a truth hobbling oddly across my path like an otter playing hooky out of the muddy river, finding his way home, or trying to escape. 

 

One morning, scanning the open field around me as I jogged past, a silent deer observed me, only his head visible above the tall grasses, like God watching, even when I don’t know it.  And the next day, feathers incredibly blending into the rotting base of an old tree, a barred owl not ten feet away, standing guard over his kingdom, my slowness enlarging my eyes to what is actually around me.  I hear the presence of invisible creatures rustling the leaves, no longer noises of fear but stirring my curiosity.

I know my four-year-old granddaughter Lu will not be asking, “Did you see anything on your run today?” but “What did you see?”  She expects wonders and what is precious embedded in every sunrise, around every corner, on the floor of the car, she who is reluctant to release the day for fear of missing something or letting go the lingering sweetness of what is left or what can be yet squeezed out and discovered, maybe what she was looking for hiding under the bed, or finding the missing pieces covered by the rug, or discovering one lone cookie in the bottom of a seemingly empty bag. 

What was that?  Did you hear that noise? She grabs at the thinnest ray of hope, even the most obscure, to stay awake a few moments longer, to stretch out the day.  Always more, always more. In an effort to slow down that sprint, we lay down side by side, watching the smoke detector light on the ceiling flash at intervals, and I hope that she falls asleep between those visible beeps of red, but she never does, just squirms some more, asking, asking, first of water and then of me when I was a little girl, stories I tell about the olden days, which to her would be last week, things that really happened to just another little girl, which was me before I got old like this, under another layer of paint every ten years or so, faded from my 40 days and nights on the ark.  We are two little girls. The number of my years do not matter to her, but the stories.

I am running differently now.  What will I see this day?  What will keep me awake tonight, reluctant to let go?  Live in Lu’s kind of wonder, the fullness of what is.

This is the LORD’s doing;

it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day

     that the LORD has made;

let us rejoice

     and be glad in it.

            Psalm 118. 23-24

Calling Card

Even as I am writing this morning, our front door is being repaired.  It had been crying visibly for some time to be scraped, sanded, re-stained and covered in a new coat of varnish.  Blistering hot, deep Southern sun had daily bombarded its finish, until it hung visibly distraught and vulnerable to further damage.

Sergio is the skilled individual who is doing the work.  It is obvious in how he does his job and how he approaches it that he views his work and himself, not as just a workman, but as an artisan.  This is not a mundane job to him, but a work of art.  He sees restoration in what he does. He does it with excellence.  And tomorrow, he will move onto another scheduled appointment.

But a painter of doors is not all who he is or to what he is called.

The world's idea of calling is that the one and only thing you are good at will bring you significance, happiness, and purpose to your life. And if you don't find that one thing, your life will not have meaning. You missed out. The world says "you were meant for this, and this alone."

But God says I am not called to a singular profession, nor any at all.  We are not called to something but to Someone. Our identity significance, meaning, and purpose are not manifest in what we do, but to be found in Him. 

From that point, His appointments are limitless, and every good endeavor, however small or big, visible or invisible, bears the mark of the Almighty. Everything fits together without seams. I don't have to understand something for it to carry profound purpose for untold numbers of people in manifold dimensions and for His glory.

The world says what you do
                        is who you are.
But God says,
               you are Mine.

God calls us to Himself.
He appoints us
  not necessarily to what we are good at,
        gifted for,
    or sometimes even like doing.
His purposes and power go way deeper than ourselves.
His capacity is not limited
                        by my capabilities.

Our life's work
              is worshiping the LORD,
no matter what that looks like,
      manifest in daily appointments. 
The most significant thing I can do today
                     is to be faithful to Him.
Not just what I do --no matter what--
 but how I do it with all my best,
                      and why I do it:
                                  to glorify Him.
His glory can't help but get all over everything, even the unexpected, the impossible, the not obvious at all.

I glorified You on earth,
having accomplished the work
that You gave me to do.

                     John 17. 4

In whatever appointment God places before me today,
             may I be faithful and fruitful.
Nothing but nothing, no one but no one,
      is insignificant in His kingdom.
I can bring Him glory in every detail of my day,
                            even in my attitude.

Please help me, O LORD, to see my work
                      as worship to You,
in the big stuff and even in what I can only see as mundane.
I am called to You.
My relationship with You impacts everything I do,
changes what I think,
and profoundly influences everyone around me.
Be glorified, O LORD, even in this day.

Years ago, when someone came to a house or office, they would leave behind a small card with one's name and address to reveal who had been there.  

May my calling card be not what bears my name,

                     but His.