Monthly Archives: March 2005

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Email Funnies

My friend Cathy sent me these questions and and answers given in courthouses all over the country. They are from a book called, "Disorder in the American Courts," and, as the email says, "are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place."

Perhaps you’ve gotten this email. If so, feel free to skip this post… But this email gave me a good laugh and I thought I’d share that with you…. so here are my favorites:

Q: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
A: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
______________________________________

Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
______________________________________

Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
______________________________________

Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?
______________________________________

Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q: Were there any girls?
______________________________________

Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
______________________________________

And the best one yet….

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

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Half Your Age Plus Seven

This is interesting. I hadn’t heard of the Half Your Age Plus Seven rule before.

If Your Age is 39:         26.5 to 64
If Your Age is 40:         27 to 66

I’d always felt that 10 years was the breaking point for age-difference in relationships. Any more than that and you start getting into serious generation gaps.

For most of my life I wanted to marry someone my age or older. I never considered marrying someone younger. Not until my friend Holly began encouraging me to marry someone younger, based on her experiences with her then boyfriend-now husband, Erik. did I ever entertain the thought. Now I think it would be very refreshing to marry someone younger. Heck, I wouldn’t mind just dating someone younger….. Heck I wouldn’t mind just dating….

At any rate, I certainly ain’t gonna marry no 60-something year olds. I can’t even see myself with a 50-something — even if he were Richard Dean Anderson, who’s somewhere around 54.

Well… okay… I would marry Ricky Dean…
….I mean, look at him. Who can resist this!

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Beautiful Day

I’m sitting on my porch, looking out at the greying sky. The sun has just set, in a storm of reds and yellows. I felt sad when I saw it  disappear beyond the horizon. It was such a beautiful day, it seems a shame to let it end.

I washed my car today — just the cheaper, drive-though kind where I vacuumed it myself and drove out still slightly dripping water. Isn’t it amazing how good a freshly washed car can make you feel!

I spent over 20 minutes scraping off this obnoxious sticker the apartment complex had put on my front windshield, right in front of the driver’s seat. They claimed, in this sticker, I’d be towed if I parked where I was parked again. Even though there are no "No Parking" signs or red curbs anywhere to be seen. The complex manager — a rather obnoxious jerk of a man — said Metro Police had put the sticker on. Come on. Would a Metro officer really be stupid enough to put a sticker that won’t come off right in front of the driver’s side? I don’t think so. Law enforcement gives tickets and warnings… things in PAPER where they have a copy of it for future reference (also, and more commonly, known as CYA). Anything more permanent than that tends to come with an outrageous fee you must pay them in order to get your car back in driving condition.

I’m pretty much over the whole thing now. But I was very steamed when it happened. Parking is so horrible here that if I don’t get home before 4pm, I’m generally stuck parking about two to three buildings away from mine. Very annoying. Especially late at night, when I’m tired, and its raining. And especially since I then have to walk back down there in the morning, when I"m generally running late for work.

Ah, well. The "joys" of apartment living. When our contract is up in October, Adria and I are moving. She’d already told me she wanted to move closer to downtown and the east side where she works. I still like living in the south, and had at first thought about just finding another roommate. But now I’ve decided I want to move up that direction too — though I’d prefer more around West End or Hillsborough/Vandy/Belmont areas, or a little farther south of there toward Green Hills.

Check me out! I’m finally starting to get to know Nashville the way I know LA. Cool.

I went shopping today too and got sucked in by the 9 West Awesome Clothes Beast. I spent more than I probably "should" have, but I came away with a very cute jacket I can wear with all my business pants, a new pair of pants and two beautiful silk tank tops. Those were the killer items the Beast used to lure me into her lair. And there I succumbed to fashion as I never have before. I went in a level-headed woman, and came out a giggly teenager too excited by her purchases — and the 35% I saved on them by opening a Hecht’s account — to worry about the vast amounts of cash that had just left my possession, albeit through a credit card rather than the cold hard stuff, but gone nonetheless.

Worth it, I say. Completely worth it. I felt pretty in those clothes, something I don’t feel often these days. Definitely worth it.

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Living in a Movie

Is it real life, or is it reel life?

I don’t know when this all began in my mind, but I was very young when it did. I mean very young.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived my life like I was in a movie. It made life more interesting to play at home, do my chores, attend church 3-plus times a week, go to school — especially go to school — imagining someone was watching what I was doing at various moments of the day, to see life through the "eyes" of a camera lens — long before I ever had one of my own, I took in my surroundings as if I were a camera panning and zooming, tracking and rack-focusing. This propensity didn’t fade as I got older. Even now I will drive to work, sunroof open, music blaring, and take in my surroundings as if it were a scene in some movie, unfolding the drama of life with every mile, whatever cd currently playing becoming the soundtrack.

I watch movies and find msyelf captivated by the feelings and emotions they invoke. Just the simple pan-back, pull-out movement of a "happily ever after" type ending entices me to live, to have an adventure, to suck the marrow out of life. I see the beautiful sky, the vibrant colors, the joy, contentment, and rest our heros now enjoy and I want it. I want to experience it too. I want life to be like a movie. Adventure, drama, tears, laughter, love — especially love, the kind that fights for what is right, for what is best, no matter the cost — and happy endings. Especially happy endings. I could use one of those about now.

I guess I really am a drama queen…

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Eye-Witness

Tony Nolan is a new friend. Friday night he spoke at a Youth Evangelism Conference at MTSU. We’d spoken over the phone, and I’d read his testimony and checked out his website, but this was the first time I’ve heard him speak.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous about what I was going to hear. I had some preconceived notions going into it, based on what I’d read, and wasn’t sure if I was going to connect with his message.

Tony blew my mind. First, he’s such a dynamic speaker. He’s like

Erwin on speed.  Well, really more like Alex on speed (Erwin on speed would be very scary). He bounces around the stage and yells and carries on. He’s got the energy and child-like mind to connect with and entertain the minds of teenagers and students. But he also has the passion necessary to captivate their hearts and awaken their souls.

I think, however, it’s his desperate love for people that makes his message so relevant and compelling.

See, Tony’s one of those…. um, how do I put this delicately??… What I usually call "hellfire and salvation" kind of speakers. At least that’s the first impression I got. That doesn’t really sell with me. I’ve never been all that attracted to Gospel presentations that focused on people going to hell and their need for salvation. I think that’s why I so connect with Erwin’s sermons. He always focused on the Life-giving aspects of the Gospel, how people could live abundant lives

today rather than how they could get to heaven in the by-and-by. People want Life today. They want to know how to get through the stuff right here, right now. And I’ve never heard a speaker or preacher effectively communicate the Life-giving Good News of Jesus through a hellfire-salvation sermon.

Until Tony.

He told a story of a young man he once knew. The details are sketchy — perhaps when I get them later I’ll fill them in here — but this dynamic young man was involved in a horrific chemical fire. He was burned so badly that his whole body was black and charred. In short, he was the crispy in search of the creme… yeah, bad pun. Where’s Larry when you need him?… No one at the hospital would wrap the poor kid’s fingers, for example, because they were afraid if they touched them his fingers would just crumble. Tony’s friend, a pastor, went to visit this kid, and the just the sight of him was so bad the pastor wanted to leave the room as soon as he came in. He said it was so painful to see this young man so horribly disfigured and in such obvious excruciating pain that he just wanted to run from the room. The kid would just shake and jerk, from the screams of every nerve in his body.

As Tony went on to describe how the intense heat of the fire had ravaged the young man’s body, my mind spun with images more grotesque than any I’ve seen in the worst horror films. The room, a basketball stadium seating well over 10,000 teenagers and a smattering of adults was silent except for the sounds of people shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. I found I couldn’t even look at Tony, or rather, at his gi-normously large image on one of the two giant screens over his head. — Why is it that we are always drawn to an image projected on a screen even when the speaker is standing right in front of us in live, person-to-person living color???

I looked back at Tony, however, as he described how this young man tried desperately to speak to his pastor-visitor-friend. The pastor had to draw very close to hear the young man’s words.

"Kill me! Kill me! Kill ME!!" Tony’s voice was a whisper. The air was filled with tension. It was as if the entire auditorium had leaned in to catch Tony’s words and were at once repulsed and grieved by what they heard.

My heart broke. I could hear the young man’s voice echo my own. I would ask for the same. It seemed to me an unholy thing for this young man to suffer so. Why did God allow it to happen?

Tony turned his attention from the story to a passage of Scripture. He read about a lake of fire that all those who were not followers of Christ would be thrown into.

His voice broke as he addressed the students, "I hate this part. Please hear me! I hate telling you this. I hate it! I don’t want to say this, I wish it weren’t true, but the love of Christ compels me…." Tony cried as he broke the news to everyone in the room who had not yet made a commitment to follow Christ. "You will be thrown into a lake of fire. Where you will burn, but never, ever taste the sweet release of death." He continued to cry, his voice a hoarse whisper as he fought back tears. "You will cry, ‘Kill me! Kill me! Kill ME!’ and never receive an answer. For all eternity."

The room was silent. I don’t even think people were shifting in their seats anymore.

As Tony moved toward the conclusion of his talk, I looked down at some students sitting in on the main floor of the gym. Two kids had caught my eye earlier, during worship, as they hung on each other and sang. I don’t know why, but I’d whispered a quick prayer that this weekend would be more than just a love-fest weekend for their teen romance. As I looked at them during Tony’s soon-to-finish talk, the girl — a stunningly beautiful Filipino — caught my attention, and my heart. Everything about her screamed, "Don’t mess with me" from her downplayed hip-hop white low-rise boot-cut cords,
to the gel bracelets all the way up her arms. She sat slouched back in her chair, legs stretched out in front of her, arms crossed and a look of defiance on her face. She was daring anyone to just try to mess with her. That’s when I noticed her black eye. It was healing, but I’m sure a couple of days before it was a real beaut.

My heart broke for her. And even before Tony led us in a time of prayer, I was crying out to God to just wrap her in His arms and love on her the way He’s loved on me so passionately over the last few years. I told Him to give her whatever she needed, to just lavish her with His love in a way that she’s never experienced before and to keep doing so forever. I begged Him to hold the enemy at bay, to not allow him even the slightest chance to keep her from experiencing the fullness of His love in this moment.

After Tony prayed, he asked all those who had made a commitment to follow Christ to stand. They got a few moments to summon the courage to declare themselves followers while Tony talked about the importance of making our relationships with Jesus public and the pull of the enemy to keep the relationship "private". When he asked them to stand…. the young girl I’d prayed so passionately for stood. No hesitation. No sheepishness. She was full-on. Standing strong, yet humble. Gone was the attitude. In its place I saw humble resolve.

How awesome is that! Tony loves to say, "Go God!" I’ve not used that phrase in ages. But I found myself practically shouting it when this young girl stood. Go! God! Who can compare? Who can match what You do?

Man, I love Him. He changes lives and takes what the world would say is a lost cause and transforms it into the most amazing work of art anyone has ever seen. And last Friday night He was kickin’ butt and takin’ names!

I wanted to talk with this girl afterwards, encourage her and celebrate with her. But I got distracted by others I was with and by the time I turned back toward her seat, she was gone. I guess it wasn’t meant to be… perhaps God only intended me to be a witness, not a participant, this time.

I went to MTSU to hear a new friend speak. What I got instead was a front-row seat to the birth of a New Creation in Christ. I got to witness a L.I.F.T, a heart transplant of epic proportions. Man, I am blessed.

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A Harry & Sally Moment….

In "When Harry Met Sally…" there is a scene where Sally calls Harry sobbing, so he rushes over to her apartment to see what horrible disaster has befallen his friend. Turns out her ex-boyfriend is getting married, and the news has had an unexpectedly painful effect on Sally. When Harry asks her, "If you could have him back today and he asked you to marry him, would you want him?"

Sally responds quickly and vehemently, "NO!!"

This leaves poor Harry absolutely flummoxed as to what the problem is. You poor men! There is no way for you to ever comprehend how a woman’s mind and heart work — and how they work in tandem, tag-teaming to drive us nearly insane with a bizarre combination of logic and emotion, that ultimately winds up distorting all reality and yet at the same time getting it so keenly on the mark.

Sally uncovers for us the real reason for her tears. "I thought he didn’t want to get married. But the truth is, he didn’t want to marry me. He didn’t love me."

I’m in a Sally moment. Of sorts. There are things I’ve realized I don’t want, situations and people I don’t want to commit to. But, like Sally, now that they are moving on and making commitments with others, my ego is taking a hit. My ego hurts. And it’s crying out in Sally-like pain, "No?! I don’t want them… I wouldn’t commit to that if they asked… but…. they didn’t ask. They aren’t asking. They don’t want me.

Ouch.

I know God has His hand in all this. I know Him. If this these things were His desire for me, the situations would be much different. He has a way of making things come together, even when we’re not sure it can, or should… or if we want it to….

But, dang. My ego hurts! I want people to want me. I want people to think I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread. And when they don’t — for whatever reason — I feel like I’ve failed.

I’m learning to fight those thoughts with God’s Truth about me. I’m not a failure when people don’t see my wonderfulness. I’m just not the kind of wonderfulness they need — or deserve (so says the snarky voice in my heart). But knowing these things, fighting the failure-feeling with these Truths, doesn’t take the sting out of rejection.

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Passionate Love

I just got off the phone with  Nina, my sister — and one of my best friends — who adopted two kids out of the foster care system nearly 9 years ago. She called while I was at Mosaic, but didn’t leave a message. I called her as I was leaving and have been on the phone with her ever since — over two hours.

That’s not all that spectacular as conversation times go. We’ve been known to talk for over three hours on the phone before. Part of the deal for me on these calls is that I just don’t want to say goodbye. I don’t want to cut the connection — even when we’re not talking about earth-shattering deep things, at least I hear her voice. Hanging up cuts off that sound and leaves a huge void in its wake. It’s like those pangs of homesickness I’d get every time I left my parents’ home. My heart hurts.

Nina’s daughter, the second of two siblings she and Toby adopted, is not doing well. Nina is once again at the end of her rope. Frances has been through hell in her short 18 years on this earth. There are things buried so deep in her past — abuses of all sorts — that we only know they are there from her violent reactions to even the slightest touch. She was doing so well — she progressed through a program at a facility and was finally able to come home, for the first time in over three years. Not only that, but she actually wanted to come home, wanted to live with Nina and Toby, wanted to get her life straightened out, go to college, become more than she currently is.

She’s been home maybe two weeks and already has gone back to old behaviors, patterns of manipulation and out of control actions. It’s less than it was in the past, but severe enough to send Nina back into post traumatic stress overload. For you to fully comprehend and appreciate what Niina and Toby have been through and how traumatic this current turn of events is for them, would take longer than we have here. And besides, that’s Nina’s story to tell, whenever she’s ready.

The bottom line is that wounded people wound others, and the deeper the wounds on the former, the deeper they cut the latter. Frances’ wounds run too deep for us to fathom. She in-turn inflicts deep wounds that  cut to the core and leave Nina and Toby decimated.

Nina’s heart is huge. I mean HUGE. She loves with a passion that I can only dream of. She loves the unlovable. As a teen I just thought she had poor judgment in friends. But as an adult I see that God has gifted her with a tremendous capacity to love beyond all reason, a longing to nurture others and a passion to invest her life in bringing healing to those who are incredibly broken and needy. Even as we spoke of a need for her to set boundaries of acceptable treatment from Frances, Nina’s main and overriding concern was for Frances’ current and future well-being.

I know where Nina got this from. Our mom loved with a passion like this. But Nina’s passion mixes with a stubborn resolve she got from both parents — and a healthy dose of self-respect (which, unfortunately our mom often lacked) to create a most formidable Lover Of The Unlovable.

So many would have given up on Frances long ago. The false accusations of abuse, the verbal and physical assaults they’ve endured, the endless nights worrying, crying, praying, the pain of no one understanding what they were going through…. Nina and Toby have never surrendered. They love Frances passionately even now. Even in the midst of more-of-the-same painfully deep woundings.

Nina leaves a mark on everyone she touches in life. Her mark on my life is deep. She’s my older sister, so of course I never appreciated her growing up.

But I do now. I see now how blessed I am to know her, and even more so to call her my sister and my friend.

Please pray for her and Toby as they walk through this latest dark night of the soul.

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Weekend Kisses

Some moments in life are kisses on the cheek from God. I had a weekend full of them. And it’s not Monday yet. How blessed I am.

I live on a roller-coaster of emotions. I try so very hard not to "live" in the place of sorrow. I try so hard to pull myself out of it every moment of the day. But the truth is, this is where I am. I dwell in a land of sorrows, of grief, of loss. I wish I could say I’m over all the things I’ve lost. It embarrasses me to know that I still struggle with this grief and depression… I feel so weak and…. immature in the faith. I wish with every fiber of my being I could say I’m past it all. But I cannot.

I keep discovering new things that were destroyed in the landslide of my life. It’s as if God has chosen this time of my life to completely remake me. And he started by demolishing all I was, all I had, all I thought was me.

I believe He is making a New Me. It is a matter of life or death for me — as long as I believe, there is still a spark of life in my spirit, but if I stop believing my spirit will die. So I believe with every ounce of strength I have. And then I cry out, "Lord, help my unbelief!"

My week was filled with such struggles. I tried to deny I was still in this dark place over the last few weeks. Events and situations, God and His provision all buoyed my spirit and aided my self-deception. But a few key events toppled my house of cards. By Wednesday I was exhausted, frustrated and unable to lie to myself any longer.

Last night I went to a Youth Evangelism Conference. I was so tired I really just wanted to stay home and sleep. But a new friend of mine was speaking and I wanted to go hear him and meet up with him for a bit afterward. It was a much longer drive than I anticipated. It seems all of Tennessee was going to this conference. There were over 10,000 people there — at least that’s my estimate, considering the place holds 10,000 and we were so maxed out they ran out of seating and had people sitting on the floor all over the place.

There was amazing worship. Mosaic kind of worship. You don’t get that very much here. Oh, you can get the music and the songs. Great music, great musicianship, great songs.  But not the Spirit. It’s the Spirit-led part that makes Mosaic worship so amazing and refreshing. This was Mosaic Spirit-led kind of worship, with Dave Hunt leading.

Little side note: Barney had given me Dave’s number and has encouraged me many times to get in touch with him. I was just too chicken to call…. you know, that whole "I’m a friend (well, okay, Barney’s my counselor, but also my friend… right?) of so-and-so and he recommended I call you…." Bleh. I’m so bad at that. And I hate doing it. I always feel I’m imposing on people.

I’m not sure all the reasons Barney wanted me to connect with Dave, but I know why God wanted me to. What an amazing worship leader! He reminded me of my friend David Files. David is a tremendously gifted worship leader. Dave Hunt is the same. He led us to the throne of God… over 10,000 of us a singing, dancing and lifting our hands to the Awesome Lover of our Souls.

I felt drenched in holy water. I felt so drenched! Soaked in His love, wrapped in His arms. So, so loved.

How do people live without this love? I don’t know how they do it. I would have killed myself by now. I could not live one single day without it. It calms my spirit when my world is crazy, brings peace to my soul even though the waters we travel are roaring rapids, and quiets the storms of my heart even though they rage out of control. My life didn’t change in that time of worship.  I’m still parent-less. I’m still job-less — permanently-speaking. I’m still at a loss as to why I’m here.

But my heart is full.

Tony’s speaking was amazing — more about that in a moment — and I got to witness God answer a prayer and begin a heart-transplant-life-transformation, even though it was from afar. I spoke to Tony for a moment afterward… and I connected up with Dave for a moment… I drove home not so much happy as content. Not content-for-all-time. Just content.

I got off at a different exit on the freeway than I was supposed to (still got home fine) and meandered through country roads for quite a while — and even that seemed to be a weird divine moment. A time for God to drench me again in His love as I drove and worshipped and talked with Him.

Today was a day of much-needed rest. I attempted to meet up with Tony again down in Murfreesboro, but I just didn’t head down there soon enough and missed him. I spent the afternoon driving through the country-side of Middle Tennessee, talking on the phone with Nina and shopping. All throughout the day I felt God’s kisses and embrace. Everything seemed to shout His praise and caress me with His love… The sun shining through my sun roof, the wind blowing my hair, the beauty of Tennessee, the heart-filling-spirit-refreshing conversation only a sister-best-friend can give….

Oh, how I am blessed.