by jphilo | Mar 27, 2009 | Current Events
I’m up early this cold morning, waiting for the sun and the temperature to rise before I take my walk. Waiting can be hard. I cope with it by finding something constructive to do because the activity, no matter how meaningless, gives me an illusion of control.
For days now, the residents of Fargo have been waiting for the Red River to crest. My cousin Karen and her family live near the flood plain. Their days and nights have been filled with activity. They’ve helped sandbag the river and moved everything to the second story of their house. Two of my southwest Minnesota cousins have daughters at college in Fargo. While the kids are sandbagging the city, their parents wait for their children to call or email, and make plans about how to get them safely home.
With a catastrophe this large, there’s no way to create an illusion of human control. Everyone in Fargo and all of us watching know this situation is beyond us. We need more help than men can offer, hope beyond what we can see. That’s why people, including many who claim not to believe in God, resort to prayer.
Waiting isn’t easy. Most of us turn to it when we come face-to-face with our own helplessness, when there’s nothing more to do. I’ve been in that place often in the last few years. Whenever my lack of control drives me to prayer, the same truth emerges: kneeling before the God who is in control is the most constructive thing I can do.
Father in heaven, only you can help Karen and her family, Kalli, Briana, and all the people suffering in Fargo. Give them wisdom. Keep them safe. Give them the hope of Christ, the God who suffered for their sins and rose again. Amen.
by jphilo | Feb 13, 2009 | Current Events
Today is Friday the thirteenth. Listening to the radio this morning would have sent me into a tailspin if I was superstitious: the stock market was down again, too many people were killed in a commercial airline crash in Buffalo, the bloom is off the stimulus package rose, and a snowstorm is bearing down on the “Highway 30 corridor.” Since I live 100 feet north of Highway 30, my town is in for it.
But I am not in a tailspin because today is Valentine’s Party day at every elementary school in America, and I am not in a classroom riding herd on a passel of kids aiming for the mother of all sugar highs. Many of my friends in this town are are, and I’ve been feeling sorry for them all week. With the snowstorm moving in (one snowflake floating gently to earth outside a classroom window has the power to whip the most placid child into a frenzy), I’m feeling even sorrier for them. Thankfully, tonight’s not a full moon (kids get weirded out when the moon’s full), or I’d feel obligated to enter the lion’s den and give one of them a hand.
Instead, all I have to do is feel sorry for them, pray for their perseverance and sanity when I think of it, and keep writing. In my book (no pun intended), this Friday the thirteenth is a marvelous, wonder-filled gift I don’t deserve. I’ll try to use it well.
by jphilo | Feb 2, 2009 | Current Events
In my estimation, the winter of 2009 is progressing at glacial speed. Even though the arrival February meant it was time to pay the bills and stare at our dismal checking account balance, I was ecstatic. Grim January was finally over and yahoo, yahoo – and February, a more hopeful month had arrived.
Some of the things that give me hope in February include:
- It’s never more than 29 days long. That means winter is 2 – 3 days shorter than it would be if it had 31 days.
- It has great holidays – Groundhog Day, Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays, and Valentine’s Day. Now that I don’t spend Valentine’s Day with 20+ kids on sugar highs, I love Valentine’s Day.
- The days get significantly longer this month. Even though it’s only February 2, you can already see the difference. The road is as snowy as weather, but the sun was reflecting off the trees by our house when I walked before 8:00 this morning. Even two weeks ago , they didn’t do that.
- The Superbowl hype ends. Last night it ended without our home state boy, Kurt Warner, leading his team to victory. But since the game had a nail-biter of an ending (and somebody kept Al Madden from overusing his marking pens, this Iowan isn’t too disappointed.
Now, if any of you know how to contact Kurt Warner or his wife, please let me know. I’d love to have them endorse my book. It’s a long shot, but they might just do it. After all, it’s February, a month of hope.
by jphilo | Jan 30, 2009 | Current Events
Yesterday morning, after listening to another gloomy economic report, I started obsessing about my son’s job situation. Will he find work? How will he live? What’s going to happen to him? In the afternoon, I talked to him on the phone. “It’s easy to get depressed when new layoffs are announced ever day,” he said. “But God will provide.” His steady, quiet voice calmed me, and for the first time that day, I found peace.
This morning, he peace continued, and my sense of humor returned when the radio announcer said the latest figures showed the economy shrinking at its greatest rate since the first quarter of 1982. That’s the year Allen was born. He came into the world right about when the scope of that year’s economic downturn was hitting the airwaves. He was greeted by parents who earned less than $20,000 a year and didn’t know how they would pay the $100,000 worth of medical bills their son racked up in his first year of life. They didn’t know where the money would come from for their mounting travel expenses either. But somehow, in those hard economic times, God provided all they needed, and every bill was paid.
Now, almost twenty-seven years later, God brings Allen out of the monastery and into our world again, healed and whole after PTSD therapy, smack into the worst economic conditions since he was born. How could my sense of humor not come back in the presence of God’s perfect comedic timing? When I listen to the news, Allen’s chances of finding a job seems impossible. But when I remember how God provided for his needs twenty-seven years ago, hope returns. Today I stand expectant, waiting for the punch line, ready to laugh.
by jphilo | Jan 27, 2009 | Current Events
Six years ago I met Ashley. The G.R.I.P. (Growing Relationships in Pairs) mentoring coordinator in our local school introduced us. Ashley was a second grader when we met, and though she’s now now in seventh grade, we still get together for a half our once a week at her school while it’s in session.
We meet outside of school sometimes, too. We do things like going out to lunch for her birthday, baking treats for our families before Christmas, attending the high school plays and the Grand March before prom, watching the Anne of Green Gables videos together. One sultry summer evening, we sat through a tornado warning in our basement. We’ve attended some G.R.I.P. sponsored activities: roller-skating, the annual carnival, and our favorite an afternoon at the butterfly and horticultural garden in a nearby university town. That’s where we took the picture of the pond above. Later, when we saw our reflections in the photo, it became a favorite, too.
Because January is National Mentoring Month, Ashley and I, along with the G.R.I.P. coordinator, were interviewed at the local radio station this past Monday. During the interview, the coordinator said their program serves over a hundred children in our county and another fifty kids are on the waiting list. Fifty kids. In just one county. Take that number times the one hundred counties in my state and take that number times fifty states, and you have a crowd of kids waiting for an adult to make a difference in their lives.
If that number disturbs you, consider becoming a mentor in your town, even though you’re busy, even though you don’t think you have time. Seven years ago, I wasn’t sure I had time in my life for a little girl. Now I can’t imagine my life without Ashley, a seventh grader who maturing into a lovely young woman, being part of it.
Ashley and I aren’t mentee and mentor anymore. We’re friends for life. You need a friend like that. And somewhere, there’s a child who needs a friend like that, too. Is it you?
by jphilo | Jan 20, 2009 | Current Events
Today’s inaguration of our first African-American president, Barack Obama, fulfills the dream Martin Luther King put into words when I was an elementary student.
One of my former elementary students recently put words to one of his dreams recently. Nic, who is fighting cancer for the third time in his fifteen years of life, shares his dream at his family’s CaringBridge page. Click this link to get to the CaringBridge website. Type “nicroney” in the box to get to his page. Then click on “Read Journal” and scroll down to the January 19, 2009 entry to see what he wrote. And please, will you join me in praying that someday, perhaps soon, his dream of a cure for childhood cancer will be fulfilled?
