LAUS DEO

Caught in flip-flops, Part 2

Forgive me. I apologize sincerely to all the pretty feet readers who have read my blogs and wear flip-flops. Forgive me for sharing my flip-flop sandal aversion in glib or flippant words.

Yes, I have rid my closet of flip-flops, which meant I did wear them. They’re gone but still I hang onto an invisible pair, my cheap flip-flops of mental trust and mistrust. In them my fallen arches of faith easily tire. The soles of my conviction toughen in stubborn pride while the skin between the big and second toe crack raw red from disappointments.

Surely these flip-flops are “Made in Fear.” My fellow countrymen exist in that fear land. They know someone who is jobless. They know a family on the dole. Or they know one of the nearly million discouraged workers no longer searching, not in the unemployed numbers. For this mom it’s been many anxious years waiting for her grown children to find good, sustainable employment.

My daughter Maria had an interview the week before in a setting we believed was her beloved niche, the library. After all, her beloved hero, her late grandmother earned a masters and fine position as a media specialist/librarian.

It’s been seven years since my Maria’s heard her grandma’s pep talks and seen her frugal, exemplary life in God’s word. In those years my daughter has moved to two states, scrapped through temporary jobs, gone back to school, filled out too many job applications, and endured braces. My thrifty girl has never been on the dole, though she has a father who provides for her and lends her “his Elantra” as she calls it.

Today's the last day of the week that the interviewer said he would contact her up or down about the job. I suggested she check out her Bible and call her job counselor. I caught her jotting Bible verses. Then she called the counselor who had her call the interviewer who reneged on his statement. Now her counselor will try to wiggle a work-study job for my girl.

I hear my Maria chat with her brother, just back from another day of job hunting with his counselor. I hide in my bedroom, typing through tears, wearing mental flip-flops.

My Maria just came in to update me about her brother’s job search. She gave me a hug, a big hug. I asked for it, but she gave it. Can you imagine? Then I asked her about the Bible verses she jotted.

“It’s from Lamentations,” she explained, then read aloud,

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. 

Because of the Lord’s great love 

we are not consumed for his compassions never fail. 

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (niv)

Beside my laptop her 2 by 5 inch notepaper sits. I notice my Maria’s comment below the Lamentations’ verse: “He is faithful. May the Lord be exalted forever.”

Oh God, you forgive me!

LAUS DEO

Caught in flip-flops

This year’s weather pattern seemed to skip spring as it hyperdrived from winter’s Icelandic chill to a Tropic steamy summer.

Despite this heat you won't catch me in flip-flop footwear. Even back in third world Nepal, I wouldn’t wear the rubber ones imported en masse from China, sandals Nepalese and even MBH, my beloved husband, often donned.

Feet on Savannah street

These days in the first world nation of America, I note flip-flop wear from cheap to deluxe is THE fashion statement. Slaps and slides echo not just at the poolside but also around frigid grocery aisles and warm church aisles. But not for me. Though I disdain stifling regulations, I resonate with the PA state law forbidding drivers from wearing flip-flops after a gal's loose flip-flop caused her foot to accelerate her car into a store. Crash and sirens at that mall!

At many American shopping areas one finds pedicurists busily buffing feet and brushing toenails barn or blood red to look their best in open footwear. “If the barn needs painting, paint it,” is a proverb I first heard in my Deep South Sunday Class. My toes tend to curl together and under as if to revert en point to the one ballet class I took as a child. Polish and buffing might be my extremities’ necessity, but I refuse to indulge and often hide my tootsies in shoes. If I have to wear open-toed footwear it would be sandals that hide as much of my foot shortcomings as possible.

Jesus, who probably wore sandals, would have willingly worked on feet like mine. History records that Jesus kneeled with a towel and water basin to wash, at least a dozen sets of feet. He scrubbed the dirt, the camel, cattle, donkey and horse dung of the ancient roads off his followers’ feet. Feet certainly as dirt challenged as a Nepali on a steep Himalaya goat trail.

One monsoon summer my beloved hubby trekked one of those narrow trails, wearing blue flip-flops. A civil engineer he along with his co-workers went to inspect the extent of flood damage on the Tinau River Hydroelectric Dam upstream from our village. The trail perhaps was still muddy and, of course, narrow, 100 meters above the raging river gorge.

Tinau River Gorge and Dam

In an instant MBH slipped. Out of his coworkers’ eyesight he vanished. Over the edge of a steep gorge he tumbled.

A meter or so below, a tree stayed his fall. Correction, my analytical husband would state that our Creator stayed his fall with a tree. Not just any tree, but one Nepali tree that God seeded, one tree God watered, one tree God photosynthesized to grow stuck over a gorge to catch my beloved husband, God’s beloved child. Then the Perfect Hand of Mercy helped coworkers’ to pull MBH up, dirty, bruised, alive. Laus Deo!

Ultimate Good, Your Creator, the Perfect Hand of Mercy--God exists. Into our fallen, divisive world God sent his perfect Son to cleanse, to serve, to rescue and save us just as we are ... with or without curled in toes. God loves us so!

LAUS DEO

In Life's Losses

Before bedtime last night my laptop hummed, cluttered with open docs and web portals. As I shut down for the night, I noticed under the clutter a corner of a doc entitled “My 2011 Journey” in blue cut and paste mode. My fingers click clicked, closed, no wait! I reopened the Word document that once had at least 150 pages.

Word had just queried: “Do you want to save the changes you made on My2001Journey.docx?” I answered in foolish autopilot. Despite weariness from a 12-hour workday, my beloved engineer did all that he could to solve my intractable error and no backed up files.

Thousands of recorded thoughts were in that journal. Fertile food for blogs, tweets, Christmas letters, and articles are now blank white. A half a year of scribed memories and reflection, only a single paragraph remains in a January bit file.

Oddly this loss does not undo this writer. God is with me. I now need to discern what He plans for me to reveal afresh from life’s experiences via the lens of His Word.

Like a visit to one home destroyed by a tornado two hours from us in a country hollow between two southern villages.

Howard's End

That lumber pile above was once a three-bedroom house for six people, four of them children. I met their mom, Dawn, a sister in Jesus.

Dawn could never sleep in a storm. With the electricity off and the large propane gas tank removed from their property sometime before, she had the oil lamps flickering that night. The air set heavy with humidity. In the distance she and her sleepy husband could barely make out the horns. But she and her husband heard the tornado train-like roar. Living in a geographic hollow where storm fronts jumped by, Dawn realized the twister would not veer from her home. The lamps blew out before that roar deafened. Her husband ran to a bedroom and grabbed two kids. Dawn ran and grabbed two kids. In a home with no basement, they cowered under pillows in a windowless hallway. Thank God one pillow sucked upward to block the hole above them.

The house’s utter destruction did not destroy this family. Provident God is with them. A day after the storm, Dawn flunked a psych test to become a policeman. Days later her fellow officers said it was okay since they were all crazy, anyway.

Laus Deo. Praises be to God!