Take Heart - You’re Being Re-Gifted

My sad, weary and disappointed friend said to me, “I’ve given up my Ministry. It’s not working. I quit.” His heart was breaking. He had worn the cloak for 30 years. He’d been called out at fourteen years old.

To preach was his calling. There had never been any doubt in his mind until that day. He thought he would always stand behind a pulpit. It was his vocation and his life. Now, he didn’t have a pulpit to stand behind. It was gone and he didn’t know what to do next.

I said to him, “I know exactly what you’re going through. I’ve either walked in your shoes or you’re running in mine. I taught the Bible for forty years, but I’m no longer teaching a Bible study or a Sunday school class. I still study as if I’m getting ready to teach the next class on Sunday.

I told him, “Ministry is in you. You can’t help but witness, you’re just going to do it differently. Let’s just say, you’re being re-gifted. You’ve been unwrapped and you’re getting a different wrapping and bow. The gift is still the same inside. Your gift is going to be given to some one else.”

We think it’s always going to be one way when life takes us a different way. If someone told me twenty years ago that I’d have a grandson who was skateboarding on the streets of L.A witnessing for Jesus, I would’ve probably said that’s not the way it’s done. But that’s exactly what he’s doing and that’s how it’s getting done. He’s not standing behind a pulpit, but he’s evangelizing and no one can deny the gift in him.

When I was being unwrapped a couple of years ago, I was also devastated. Because I was a woman I was asked to step down from teaching. Women aren’t to teach men you know. It’s the law. As I type this, I still want to cry. But, it brought me to grace and into a bigger place. I couldn’t see it then, but I see it today.

With a sad heart, a friend said to me when it happened, “Because you are a woman they’re putting a berka on you. When I look at you, it reminds me of Sarah Attar, the first Saudi woman athlete to compete in the Olympics. She ran in the 800m heat wearing a berka.  They’re doing the same to you.”

Another friend said to me back then, “You’re still teaching through your books and writings, you just don’t have a title or a position. You have a bigger audience. Rather than your Sunday school class of ten or your Bible study of seven, you’re being read all the time.”

I understood what my weary preacher friend was going through. It’s all about losing our identity among our church friends. When the position is gone, we don’t know where we belong. I remember getting a word from God, “Man can take the position and title away from you, but he can’t take your gift. The gift of teaching will always be inside of you.”

My prayer every day is, “Lord, make my life count for eternity. Touch earth through me today.” God has a specific plan for each one of us. We are all in the race and running it. Some of us thought we had to run it in a berka and come under the law. When we took it off, we lost our position and title, but gained greater understanding of grace.

Final Brushstroke! I said to my weary and disappointed friend, “I ran the race for years wearing a berka, but no more. Don’t distrust the sincerity and integrity of other Christians. They don’t understand the race you’ve been called to run. They’ve taken off your Nikes, but you still have to run the race. See those old, beat up, no-name shoes on your feet, they are tried and true. Let me take your hand, I’m running in your shoes and I’ll run the race with you. I’ve been re-gifted, too. We’ll make it to the finish line together.”

Da charts! Da charts! Da Charts!

I asked My Sweet Al for his take on this article. He said it’s different and confusing. I told him it’s a metaphor, and unless you’ve been to the island and walked among the nuts and fruit, you wouldn’t appreciate it. Here goes. Please indulge me with my guilty pleasure.

“Da charts! Da charts! Da Charts!” Tippy-Toes yelled as her charts flew away from the Greek speaking, Nobody-Wants-To-Be-Here Island.

At one time, many hopefuls wanted to be on the island. They longed for handpicked fruit and nuts from the tree of life. They savored the taste of the luscious flavor of fresh words and their meanings.

There are only three requirements needed in order to stay on the island, stick-to-it-ness, do the homework and be committed to the Greek language. But, one by one, the weary and the not-so-fascinated students of Greek 101 flew away in the same plane that brought them in. The plane is called, I-want-it-but-not-bad-enough.

Only three guests, captured by the Greek language, remain and refuse to leave the island. There is the Bouncer, who leads the group and totes a pistol. His two students are Tippy-Toes and Hurry-Up. They are in their third semester and have become the best of friends on the isolated Nobody-Wants-To-Be-Here-Island.

Co-existing on this island, the three have learned a lot about themselves and each other’s study habits. Tippy-Toes has cleared her schedule and given up her life for Greek. She spends hours upon hours of homework time. She makes charts for every verb and noun ending. She carries 3X5 flashcards and has filled three recipe boxes full of every Greek word she has learned. She’s serious and answers her phone with “Greek Central.”

Hurry-Up is trying to keep up with her full schedule and is determined to stay on the island. She has a life and can’t dedicate her whole life to Greek. The island has minefields and open meadows. Hurry-Up is running through the minefields with no harm no foul, while Tippy-Toes is tiptoeing through the tulips, smelling the flowers, sampling fruit and enjoying the island breeze.

The Bouncer announced to his class of two, that if a stranger comes on the island, they should use the seats on the turquoise chairs as shields. He believes that strangers could invade the island, but not to worry, he has a gun and a license to carry it.

Tippy-Toes went into a tailspin. She said to Hurry-Up, “Our backs are to the door.  We don’t have a chance. We’ll have to rely on the teacher to warn us. Can he be trusted?”

Hurry-Up assured her, “Surely he can. We’re his only students. If anything happens to us, there won’t be anyone on the island to teach.”

  

The leader announced to his class of two, “You’ve had two semesters of beginning Greek, now you’ve graduated into the fun stuff. Forget about the book, we’re going to translate controversial scriptures from the Bible. Start with one verse and we’ll add to it.”

Tippy-Toes came unglued. “We have two more lessons in the book. I haven’t learned about imperative moods and infinities yet. What about my charts? I can’t forget the book and my charts.”

Hurry-Up is overcome with glee. She’s doesn’t have charts and doesn’t care about Tippy-Toes’ charts. Hurry-Up and the Bouncer are holding hands and dancing to YMCA. They’re shouting, “This is what we’ve been waiting for all year. Let’s party.”

“No! No! No! I can’t go on until I finish the book.” Tippy-Toes hugs her book and refuses to move forward.

Hurry-Up throws her book and restraint into the air. It’s book-burning time. Hooray. She’s ready to go on. But, with only one other student on the island, she realizes she needs to console Tippy-Toes. “It’s okay. We’ll do the book on the side and do what the teacher says. After all he’s got the gun.”

Hurry-Up decides she needs to put more study into Greek. She loves the language and her vocabulary words consists of three 3X5 cards in a plastic Ziplock bag. She hasn’t progressed to the recipe box, yet, but she has made labels for her workbook and continues to order Greek books from Amazon. She studies but is stumped. She calls Tippy-Toes.

She meets Tippy-Toes smug response. “Laugh at my Charts. You need my Charts. You and the Bouncer can dance all you want, but we have to finish the book. I’ll never give up My Charts.”

Even with three people on the island, enjoying luscious fruit and nuts, beautiful emerald waters, and warm skies, they still have to learn how to study together and embrace each other’s crazy ways.

Tippy-Toes will always need her charts. Hurry-Up doesn’t want to take time to make charts. But she has learned not to make fun of  Tippy-Toes’ charts. And the Bouncer is waxing eloquently, sipping pina coladas and basking in the fact that his two Greek-speaking students are still on the island.

Final Brushstroke! Between you and me, there are a couple of nuts on this island. I won’t mention any names. We all process and see things differently. Without these two nuts, the island wouldn’t be as vibrant and colorful as it is and I also might have left the island in the plane called, I-want-it-but-not-bad-enough.

No. No. No. Don’t do it!

I yelled at the wrestler on television, “No. No. No. Don’t do it. Don’t let him talk you into it.” Then I yelled at the man who was supposed to be his sponsor, mentor, and friend, “He trusts you. Don’t give it to him. You are taking away his future.”

My screams didn’t go any further than the room. The television couldn’t answer back and my family looked at me as if I was crazy. It was a gut wrenching moment.

We were looking at the movie Foxcatcher. This film is about the greatest Olympic Wresting Champion brothers. They joined Team Foxcatcher, which was led by multimillionaire sponsor, John E. duPont.

The wrestler, Mark Schultz, played by Channing Tatum, was offered cocaine by his mentor, John duPont. Respect for duPont went out the window and Schultz’s potential for Olympic gold spiraled downward.

My daughter said, “It’s a known fact. Half the applicants that applied at Walmart couldn’t pass the drug test.”

I said to her, “What does that say about our town? The people need these jobs to support themselves and their family. Because of drugs, they are missing an opportunity to work.”

We read in the Durango Newspaper that a man is dead because he was in the wrong place. He was shot down by two druggies.

We read in the newspaper about the debate on drugs and how our town is handling the issue on marijuana. I’m sure there is a lot of heat going on against those who have the backbone to stand. It would be easy to waffle and feel like it doesn’t matter. It does matter. Once the door is open, other things will come in.  Other things, like crime, lost jobs and destroyed lives.

To you who are in places of influence and leadership in our town, I want to encourage you to stand fast and hold to your moral convictions against drugs. You are not alone, there are people who are backing you and feel the same way about things as you do.

I yelled at the man, Mr. duPont, who wanted to leave a legacy. I will not remember DuPont with all of his millions. I will remember him as someone who led an Olympian Gold Wrestler astray and shot and killed his brother, another Olympian Gold Wrestler.

It is the most asinine thing I’ve heard, when leaders say that marijuana sells are giving money to our schools. It’s their way of justifying a decision they made. These drugs will destroy the lives of our young people.

This is a subject that breaks my heart. When our son was on drugs, we didn’t know what to do to help him get free of this addiction. He made it through. It was almost impossible for him to break the habit. It ravished our family with pain and heartache for fifteen years. Our family has had two funerals in the last two years because of drug overdose.

You might think it won’t happen to your family. We didn’t think it would happen to ours. Someone in an executive position in our son’s company in Albuquerque was selling drugs to him.

When I told him I was going to the police and blowing the whistle on them, he said, “Don’t, you don’t know how dangerous these people are.” I would have done anything to save my child no matter the danger. Hopefully this article will save someone else’s child.

Final Brushstroke! I know how it feels to put yourself in danger. It is dangerous when you get in the way of someone making a lot of money from the sale of drugs.

 It takes a lot of guts to stand up for your convictions and to do the right thing.  It was Mr. duPont’s desire to leave a legacy, but he didn’t have the moral conviction to do what was right.

Road trip to Golden with Me and Miss Siri

A road trip for our family means we’re having too much fun, we’ll try new restaurants, no telling where we will end up, cramming everything possible into a weekend, and showing up in the nick of time. It’s all about timing and hitting the mark and all the other marks in between.

When our girls’ basketball team won regionals, our family said, “We’ve got to go to State. Our girls have a shot at the State Championship, they’re that good. But, while we’re there, we’ll run up to Ft. Collins, check on a few things, use a $15 coupon for an oil change, do the Kohl’s thing and maybe even get a pedicure and visit Cabellas.”

Our son-in-law had made plans with a friend to go to the NASCAR race in Phoenix, so it would be just the three of us. He was going to Arizona. Sweet Al, Allison and I would be going to Golden.

We jumped into the car. Our daughter would be the designated driver. I’d navigate and My Sweet Al would monitor the bathroom breaks. Before we left town, we ran by the library, picked up a couple of books-on-tape, stopped by the SUN, picked up the newspaper, and grabbed Subway for the road.

We’d be “in like FLYNN.” Not quite. Allison forgot Garmin and Al forgot his hunting magazines. Al picked up some Glamour Magazine in the free bin at the library. We’d have to rely on Siri.

Allison handed me the phone. You’re going to have to talk to Siri and let her talk you through Denver to Golden, up to Ft. Collins and back. Just say, “Hey, Siri, I need directions to…, she’ll answer you.”

“Okay, but I’ll need a quick lesson about following the map on your I-Phone.” I learned everything but how to turn off Siri. Miss Siri wouldn’t stop talking.  In the middle of traffic, Allison said, “Just push that button, she’ll stop talking.” But she didn’t.

Our daughter was concerned that Al and I weren’t drinking enough water. I told her quit reminding your Dad to drink water, we have to look for another bathroom and it’s throwing off Siri. She’s serious and staying her course. We’d see a McDonalds or another gas station and we’d fly off the freeway for another break.

We took Pagosa’s mud with us. Even after a quick run through the local car wash the wheels were packed with mud and now off balance; the car was shimmying.

 “Stop the car, I see a do-it-yourself carwash. This car is shaking me to pieces.” Allison pulled off the road.

Back on the road, we still hadn’t gotten all the mud out of the wheels, another carwash ten miles down the road, dropping off some more mud. We picked a bay behind some young clean freak with a neurotic obsession about his truck. No turning back, we were jammed in between a Ford Ranger Pickup and a red Excursion. We waited for Mr. Clean to run his debit card through the slot and stop his obsession. Our first hope was he would run out of quarters, no such luck! He had the energy to scrub and wrestle that high-powered wand for at least 30 minutes.

Our daughter said, “The scheduled 5:30 ballgame will give us plenty of time to make it to Ft. Collins and back to Golden. There’s so much traffic, let’s take the road that parallels the freeway.”

 I wasn’t sure if Siri got the change of plans. She insisted that we stay on I-25 and all she could think about was that we needed to be on I-25. We were all running on adrenaline, even Siri. I couldn’t believe we came this far to see the girls and we almost missed the game. Allison said no problem, we have plenty of time, I can squeeze in another ‘I need to stop here,” thing. And, Al needed one more bathroom break.

We made it barely in time to find a parking space four blocks away and huffed up the hill to the sports center. We spotted seats down in front, directly behind the girls from Sterling and their tall, tall coach. We listened to their coach tell them how they could beat the Pagosa girls. I was still stoked from traffic and Siri’s incessant talking. I wanted to jump out on the court and ring someone's neck. The energy level was frantic!

The game was fast, furious and nail biting. Our girls fought for the win and title. Our hearts were pumping blood as our girls won the coveted State Championship Title.

After the game we had worked up our hunger and chose Olive Garden before hitting the bed. It was late, so the house salad with breadsticks sounded perfect. Our waitress’s timing was off. We wanted just the salad. She wanted to follow her mode of operation and move us onto the main course. She took our salad plates before we were finished. We said we weren’t through. She took the big salad bowl anyway. She couldn’t understand we just wanted something light. I said, “It’s all about timing, she couldn’t get her stride or maybe it was our timing that was off”.

The next morning, we ran for the 30% off sales at Kohl’s and had our Kohl’s cash in our hand. We stopped at Qdoba Mexican Grill. We had just missed the bus full of Champions on their way home. The servers’ were on a fast track and I said to our daughter, “I don’t know if I should get the #1 Craft or the #2 Craft and I don’t know how to craft it. Please order for us. We’re holding the servers up and I can’t think that fast.”

We hit Wolf Creek Pass. I felt like singing C.W. Mccall’s song. “Me an’ Siri, haulin’. We woke up the Glam Mag, bathroom monitor in the back seat coming across the Great Divide.  He was still looking for Cabela’s and another bathroom break. 

Our daughter downed her water grabbed up her lunch and said if we hurry we can catch the bus at Overlook Pass. The sheriff is in the parade and we want to be in that parade too! She mashed her foot on the throttle shot through the tunnel at a hundred-and-ten, truckin’ on down the other side.

I said, “Miss Siri, this hill will spill us. We better slow down or you’re gonna kill us. Just one mistake and we’ll be meeting the parade at the Pearly Gates and miss the bus as we go over Look Out Pass.

Final Brushstroke! We’ve learned about timing. For the young, it’s fast and furious and they don’t want to miss a thing. For the old, it’s slow down, digest, where’s the next bathroom, and can’t we savor this one moment? Me and Miss Siri have become the best of friends. She’ll be going with us on the next road trip. She’s learned how to quit talking and how we operate and I’ve learned how to operate her. It’s been a Golden Trip.