Pastor John's Journal: God Loves Even the Wicked

Pastor John's Journal: God Loves Even the Wicked

I like this. God wants us all to come to Him. He is a most loving and gracious Father. And when we finally realize just how much we are loved by our Creator, it is so much easier to love our brothers and sisters. Grace and compassion, not judgment and disapproval.

Busted

Ok, Jules, you busted me! It has been way too long since I posted - I evidently immediately forgot my resolve to post at least once a week, which is what happens when I try to discipline myself. Stubborn as I am, I don't even like ME telling me what to do.

So - new tactic is to write first, play later. Before I get on the "Innertubes" as my son calls it, I go immediately to my novel that I am writing. Once I start writing or revising, I am hooked. It's the getting started that I have problems with.

A wise woman with a very happy husband once told me, " I used to never want to have sex with my darling husband because I was tired, thinking about the kids, interested in something I was reading, etcetera. But I noticed that once he convinced me to turn everything off and go to bed with him, I had a wonderful time. It was just getting started that did not seem to appeal to me. So I very wisely told him to just start with me and I'd catch up!"

Writing seems to work that way. Just start and your Muse will run to catch up.

Yes!!

I can post on this blog from my I phone. Yay! This will be short till I figure it all out.

Daydreaming, not Blogging!

It has been too long a while since I posted. As any inveterate daydreamer can understand, I got caught up on Facebook and its Farm Town, and posting on CoachCreativeSpace. Then my laptop crashed - serious withdrawal!
We had also been driving all over the country with little time to write. Our dedicated run from Atlanta to Chicago and back, twice a week, died last fall when the economy tanked.
We are back on that run now, so maybe I can discipline myself to blog more often - I am setting a goal of once a week. That I can do.
As to Facebook and Farm Town - I think the new will wear off eventually

Easter Dreams

When I was about ten, and far too old for the Easter Bunny legend, my parents still went through the whole Easter egg hunt thing for my younger brother and I. My mother would boil and color the eggs - I remember once she dipped them in such a way that they were plaid - and Daddy got the job of Easter bunny.
To this day, I can't bring myself to cut the grass before Easter Sunday. You have to have longish grass to hide the eggs in. And, of course, the tiny new spring flowers, the violets and the jack-in-the-pulpits and the little white and gold flowers have to be left, just for pretty.
There is this magical moment when you are little and rush out onto dewy grass, basket in hand, and gasp as you see the first egg, just barely visible in a tuft of grass. You scoop it up and scan the yard for the next one, run toward it stumbling with glee. There is finally a moment when you just can't find any more. Someone has to come and gently lead you back to the house, distracting you from the fever of the hunt with the promise of chocolate.
Like Christmas, even the secular part of Easter is still about love - love that parents have for their children, when they create those magical moments. And the spiritual side of Easter is about the greatest love imaginable.
I learned about a Father's love the Easter I was ten and awoke that Sunday morning, looked out into the back yard from my bedroom. I saw my Dad in his bathrobe and bare feet, loaded basket hung over his arm, gingerly making his way from tuft to tree root, carefully placing each egg in its hiding place. Hiding treasures for us to find, if we searched hard enough.
My earthly father is gone now. I have carried on his tradition with my own children, and soon will share it with grandchildren.
My Heavenly Father is, I believe, still hiding treasures for me to find, if I just look carefully enough.

"Disabled" Dreams

I collect stories of people who refuse to stay as small as other people's definitions of them. Of people who dream bigger than they "should". Who defy the odds, refuse to stay defined by a disability. I'd like to do a book about them. Not just the spectacular ones who go surfing with no arms, but the quiet ones who become ministers despite severe dyslexia, who start their own business because others would not hire them, who battle depression daily, yet soldier on. My heroes are the people who get out of bed each day, lift their chins and say, "What can I do today?" Not, "Who has to help me?" or, "I can't do anything, I have_______."
They come up with creative solutions to get around their disabilities. They refuse to be victims, don't need pity, and usually can be found uplifting someone else.

If anyone has a story I can use for my book, please contact me at:
junebugnbulldog@yahoo.com
These folks need to be celebrated.

Love Dreams

I have been married for over thirty-six years. I've been in love with him for forty-one. Maybe it's Valentine's Day that started me thinking about love.

Little girls dream of finding that one true love, aided by books, movies. Often unrealistic dreams are encouraged by the "happily-ever-after" stuff of fairy tales. So that when a perfectly good man comes along, we sometimes don't see him. Or if we marry him, we expect perfectly loving days and nights of glorious passion.

Here's a news flash, girls - it's not like that. It's much less, and much more. It's real life, and real love.

One of my favorite songs id from "The King and I", called "Something Wonderful". The king's head wife sings of the reality of loving a real human man:

"He will not always say
What you would have him say,
But now and then he'll say
Something wonderful.

The thoughtless things he'll do
Will hurt and worry you,
Then all at once he'll do
Something wonderful.

He has a thousand dreams that won't come true.
You know that he believes in them, and that's enough for you.

You'll always go along,
Defend him when he's wrong,
And tell him when he's strong
He is wonderful.

He'll always need your love,
And so he'll get your love.
A man who needs your love
Can be wonderful."

It sounds so old-fashioned in this day of lack of commitment, quickie relationships, divorce and do your own thing. But Robert Heinlein said, "Love is that state in which another person's happiness is essential to your own."

Really? Not, "He doesn't make me happy" or "She doesn't want sex with me often enough"?
We should be trying to make them happy? How odd.

But, as many odd things do - it works. When we try to make the other happy, we get back what we want, usually more abundantly than we would if we stood around yammering about our needs and wants not being fulfilled.

I love my husband. He is honest, hard-working, kind to strangers, loving to our sons and me, not to mention our three dogs and grandson. I plan to live the rest of my life with him, unless he goes first.

We met when I was fifteen and he seventeen, and bonded like swans, for life. I told my father I was going to marry him someday, and he said, "Oh, you're too young to know that. You'll fall in and out of love a dozen times before you marry."

I said, "Oh, no! I can only do this once!" It was too big and all encompassing, this love, this absolute pit-of-the-stomach certainty that he was The One. I have no idea how I knew. I married him five years later, when I was twenty. We eloped and later my father wrote me a sweet letter wishing us well.

There have been many trials through the years, many times when either one of us was tempted to chuck it all and be single. But there remained the bonding, the certainty that we were supposed to stick. So we have apologized, looked the other way at each other's foibles, fought loudly and passionately when we couldn't look the other way, and ultimately fallen asleep in each other's arms, cuddling like puppies.

This is real love, I'm afraid. I think we are stuck with each other. And as I watch him sleep, I think I love to be stuck loving him.