Ty Buddington Tale of Wonders
Part two, Taste of Homeland

Beloved hubby returned from a business trip to the very spot the family once called "sweet home." The kids and their mom confessed jealously. Yet, this mom realized it wasn't the time to revisit that homeland, where life tasted like corn on the cob, banana splits, chili over spaghetti, and chocolate-peanut butter Buckeye Blitz ice cream.
Where is the homeland of"la dolce vita" ? For the Israelites and Moses, the sweet life wasn't tethered to a prior geographic mooring. The sweet life in the US of A ought not tie to a dream home,what with foreclosures and reports of torched mansions in Californian enclaves.

On weekends Ty Buddington and Dad still carpenter the organizer for a closet, the space a Nepali family of eight could mud dung slather to make their bedroom.


Every day Mom awakes from an arena of a master suite. She drifts to the mirror to apply eye drops and determine how far she can stand to perceive her face. Pre PRK and Lasik surgery, without glasses to focus she stood two inches (5 cm) from the mirror. Now one foot (30 cm) away, she beholds the face that hid behind eyeglasses. Ah, there's that wide dimpled smile, tanned skin, two hollowed cheeks beneath high cheekbones, the DNA imprints from her late Daddy.

She now gets the challenge her daughter Maria faced since birth: eyes that work independently of each other. In the struggle to process thoughts Mom and her Maria try to ground their shaky perceptions. Together they do a morning study in the Book that is also a mirror. Through that mirror a Carpenter chisels to reveal the holy imprints of the Father they belong to forever.

For the oncoming months, the halos of corneal repair may blur what Mom beholds. Still each day brings a clearer picture of her Father's world.

A week to Thanksgiving and a month to Christmas! Though snow blankets up north, in the Deep South the maple leaves flame and roses still bloom. And Ty and Dad will be in sync and active, tooling, maybe tandem biking. Soon the two pals will tandem-cook apple pies and cookie bars.

Can you sniff the cinnamon . . . the chocolate, too? Want that taste of home?

It's beginning to be a lot like heaven.
"Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is [anyone] who takes refuge in him." (Psalm 34:8, niv)

Ty Buddington Tales of Wonder
Part One

"Mom, what are you doing?" Buddy glanced at me just as the camera flashed. Those dark eyes, double lashed and curly, stared disapproval, while his hands twisted a screwdriver into a door for a closet organizer. He was just as deft on the cams and screws of the new bookcases in his bedroom.

I needed an action photo of Ty Buddington, the new sobriquet for my special needs adult son. I could have also nicknamed him "Bud Astaire." Whenever Buddy has a fancy for a television show, he choreographs his own dance for the opening credits. During the run of the PAX show Sue Thomas F.B.Eye, he created sign language for F.B.Eye by pointing to his eye and then pointed an invisible gun to make an arrest. For the dramaNCIS, Buddy jigs forward and back, mimicking the actor's quirky expressions.

And for his ultimate show, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Buddy stands with a plastic megaphone.

For those who don't watch each episode centers on a special family in need. Families have their stories taped for submission. Each winning family enjoys a holiday far away while team and contracted builders demolish and rebuild a new home in a hectic week, orchestrated by Buddy's hyper-hero, designer Ty Pennington.

Each episode finds Pennington and the design team sneaking up to the home to shout, "Good Morning (Name of) Family! Come on out!" Blue megaphone on his lips, Buddy joins the screams, as the family spills out the door, well dressed yet honestly surprised.

I wondered how Extreme Makeover evoked such fresh emotions from non-actors in a scripted scene. Last summer I learned families in the Dayton/Cincinnati region competed for an extreme makeover. I knew a Rwandan refuges' ministry house submitted a tape. However, writing colleague Donna Shepherd told me her nephew's family got the winning shout.

Before the planned shout, the show's staff telephones several families on the short list for a home makeover. The staff instruct the families to be dressed on a designated morning and to wait inside the house with the curtains closed.

Can you imagine what happens after that call? See the family jump and cry. See the parents or caregivers get the sweepers moving and the dishes cleaned. Girls will rifle through their closets or piles for the right outfits. Teens will want their hair styled right. Nerves tingle as they wait for a hero's shout to summon them from their curtained room to the daylight of a better life in a new home.

No wonder my Ty Buddington adds his megaphone to the happy shout.

When you have good news, don't you want to shout it?

If you've heard about a hero and a better home to come . . . if you've been rescued by the Supreme hero and are ever grateful . . . if you're happy and you know it, then get ready. Share it. Shout Life!

Whenever you proclaim the living hope in you, you join the best build, the build that makes over hearts and souls to be like Jesus.
"But you are a chosen people, . . . a people belonging to God,
that you may declare the praise of him who called you
out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)

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Why we Vote for Someone

In the final days of a protracted election some friends think voting for "no one" is the highest ground to take as this one world slouches toward prophetic doom. Others urge us to get out the vote and get on our knees, thinking repentant prayer "the only way we can go, if we want to save our nation."

I will pray and I will cast a vote for someone. But what I will do in this election won't change God's ultimate and only WAY to save.

The only WAY settled into a young mom's womb in a forgotten corner of an Empire. Nine months later the only Way appeared in baby skin wrapped in cloths, placed in an animal trough of straw . . . such an odd way to start the only WAY to save.

The baby grew up a good Hebrew son. He obeyed his parents, attended the temple, apprenticed in his adopted father's small business. Around age thirty the one named Y'sua suddenly showed who He was, is, will always be. He is the Forgiver, the Healer, Faithful Friend of the despised and rejected, the least and the outcast. His biography says he was also a man despised, rejected, an outcast to elite rulers of that era.As for looks, he was not celebrity handsome, "no beauty or majesty to attract . . . nothing in his appearance that we should desire him (Isaiah 53:2)."

At his timing, one Passover week, Y'sua let rulers capture, torture, murder, and bury him in a guarded tomb. Two mornings later, despite the clout of imperial designs, He broke out of that tomb as Messiah, the only Savior, . . . the Lord God!

Holy God does not need us to do (or not do) one thing to save--a nation or even ourselves.God alone saves each of us, not merely to live for one government or for human-centered rights or for a particular ideology or "ism" or any peculiar, political persuasion.

Cast aside suspicions and angst this election day. Rest in Jesus faith. God so loved you and I that He alone saved us to be fully loved by Him. God saved us to be his family on Earth.

God sets us in places, in nations, for us to serve and participate and, if permitted,to vote as citizens, to reflect our caring citizenship in the kingdom soon to come.