by jphilo | May 19, 2015 | Uncategorized
A few Sundays back, our pastor spoke about the importance of leadership in the church and in individual lives. He then paid tribute to 10 people who had influenced his life in profound ways. He encouraged everyone listening to do the same thing. After giving the matter some thought, my list quickly grew to 20. Not being able to prune the list to 10, I solved the dilemma by making 2 lists: one of influential women and the other of influential men. To prove that chivalry is not dead, the women’s list comes first.
10. Mrs. Margarent Eggleston, Franklin Elementary 2nd grade teacher, who presented her students with oodles of opportunities to be creative…and let this girl use show and tell to hone her stand up comedy routine.
9. Mrs. Zoe Hemmingson, Franklin Elementary 4th grade teacher, who made social studies come alive for her students. 10 years later, she taught social studies elementary teaching methods at the college where I learned how to make social studies come alive for my students.
8. Betty Kingery, Westmar College elementary education professor who had taught elementary school for many years and passed her practical wisdom and humor on to a bunch of wannabe elementary teachers, one of whom wouldn’t have made it through her first year of teaching without the wealth of resources she provided.
7. Cheryl Gottschalk, the Harding County Schools elementary principal who gave specific feedback after every classroom observation and submitted my name to Who’s Who Among American Teachers. Until then, I had no idea whether or not my teaching was up to par.
6. Dr. Ruth Monroe, Westmar College theater professor. She was a strong, independent, creative, single woman who opened doors to the world to her students. She took us to the Guthrie in Minneapolis, to Broadway, to Washington, DC, and demonstrated how to mount professional productions in unusual and unexpected places.
5. Dorothy Pederson, head dietician at Brentwood Good Samaritan Center, who was my first boss. Under her tutelage, I learned time management, efficiently, and quality control. She promoted an insecure high school junior from dishwasher to assistant cook and made me feel competent.
4. Jane Bricker Lindell, who into our neighborhood between our 8th and 9th grade years. At the beginning of 10th grade, she suggested I read the textbooks and complete my assignments on time and then made sure I did. Because of her, I became a good student and had a magical high school experience.
3. Judith Markham, who was an editor at Discovery House Publisher when we first met. She encouraged me to pursue writing and publication through traditional publishing houses. She championed the book proposal for my first book, A Different Dream for My Child, and edited the project. Without her, I might not have become a published author.
2. Donna Hoey, my aunt and Mom’s younger sister. Words aren’t enough to tell what a presence this woman was and still is in my life. She was unconditional love, security, kindness, and stability to a little girl whose life was upended by her father’s illness. When she hugs me each time we meet, she still makes me feel safe. (On the left in the photo above.)
1. Dorothea Stratton, my mom who carried three young children and a disabled husband on her determined shoulders throughout the 1960s and 70s. Because of her, I am an educated woman. Because of her relationship with Dad, I understand what it means to love someone to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. (On the right in the photo above.)
Who are the people who profoundly changed your life? Give some of them a shout out in the comment box. I’m looking forward to meeting them.
by jphilo | Apr 24, 2015 | Uncategorized
Watching our children mature and strike out on their own is a great joy of parenting. This Fantastic Friday post first appeared in April of 2009, but our delight in the way the boys who once graced our home have become men continues. And our memories of them are still as strong and sweet as ever.
Our Boys Are Men
One of our favorite people in the whole world ate supper with us last night. Adrian, a Romanian foreign exchange student who lived with us for several months in 2001, was back in Iowa for a week before starting his new job in Singapore. He walked in the kitchen, and it was as if he’d never left, as if we were still an integral part of his life.
The best things about Adrian remained unchanged – his enthusiasm for adventure and travel, his love for his family and his delight in the people who have been part of his life. But, as we caught up on each other’s lives, we could see how our boy has changed. His story of landing his first job showed us how determined he’s become, how serious he is about contributing to society, how sober he is about the present financial downturn.
Allen’s attitude on the phone last weekend was a duplicate of Adrian’s. He was serious about life, grateful to have found his dream job in a down economy, responsible and optimistic, apprehensive about the future, but determined to move forward.
I reflected on their similar attitudes and realized what has happened to them since 2001. In spite of the times, or perhaps because of them, our boys have become men. Unless I am mistaken, they will be fine men, the kind who not only make the world a better place, but also find joy while doing so, even when times are hard.
Our boys are men, and my heart is glad.
by jphilo | Mar 9, 2015 | Uncategorized
When He had taken the book,
the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb,
each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense,
which are the prayers of the saints.
Revelation 5:8
According to my mother, I was born talking. She loves to tell about the day she dressed me up in frilly pink dress, scraped my hair into two pig tails–though I dubbed them wiggle tails–and carried me into a store. The clerk made a great fuss, pinching my cheeks and cooing, until I piped up. “Lady, I know I’m cute.”
Abashed, the clerk said she didn’t think I could talk. Mom shifted me from one hip to the other and said, “She can’t walk yet, but she sure can talk.”
I like to think of my ability as a gift from God. A gift I continue using early and often by starting each day in prayer. I talk to God about the day to come, confess my sins, ask forgiveness (those two take quite a while), and share my worries. I spend much of the time asking him to meet the spiritual and physical needs of friends and family members who are sick, hurting, grieving, or wandering away from him. For good measure, I throw in some people whose lives have briefly intersected with mine.
Some of these people have been in my prayers for months. Years. Decades. Even though I lost track of many of them long ago. I keep praying for them because, if my brief glimpse of their lives is any indication, they are lost and have no one else praying for them. I have no idea if my prayers have accomplished anything. Or if they ever will. But since God endowed me with an abundance of words, praying for them seems to be a good way to share my gift of gab.
Then, during a Sunday school class in February, a phrase about prayer jumped out of the Bible and into my heart. Revelation 5:8 says that John saw the elders in heaven bowing before the Lamb of God. Each elder held two things. First a harp, which should encourage worshipers to sing to God, since what’s good enough to occupy us for eternity in heaven is certainly worthy of our time on earth. Second, the elders held golden bowls of incense which are the prayers of the saints.
Talk about encouragement to pray. Why would we all not raise our petitions to God when Scripture says that the prayers of the saints (that’s you and me and all Christ followers) are already in heaven? They are gathered in golden bowls. Offered as incense. Placed at the feet of Jesus by fellow believers who’ve gone before us.
To think that the prayers we’ve already offered for our friends, family, and neighbors, and in some cases strangers, are before Jesus this very minute is a source of great hope. We can hope that our prayers, raised out of compassion and loving concern for those God has placed in our lives, will be answered in his perfect time in marvelous ways we cannot imagine or conceive. The knowledge that we serve such a gracious God is motivation to lift our offering of prayer like golden incense rising to the Father and to the Lamb. Even when we aren’t sure what words to use. That’s rarely a problem for me, but if it is for you, don’t worry. Instead, call me. God’s given me more than a lifetime’s worth of words. I’d love to share them with you.
by jphilo | Jan 26, 2015 | Uncategorized
Since the end of October, my newly released Caregiver’s Notebook has been getting plenty of positive attention at this website and The Gravel Road’s sister site, DifferentDream.com and in Amazon reviews. But in the interest of full disclosure, this post describes my epic fail as a caregiver using the notebook I authored.
The epic fail occurred in December during the month long Camp Dorothy Extravaganza held here at Winter Camp HQ. After a road trip for a doctor’s appointment in Ankeny, the nurse called to inform the camp chauffeur/director/cook/nursing assistant that a certain specimen needed to be collected–I’m trying to be discreet–but that the specimen could be analyzed at the Boone County Hospital lab, much closer to Camp Dorothy HQ.
“I’ll fax the orders to the lab,” the nurse said, “and you can just run it into the hospital lab.”
So after the camp chauffeur/director/cook/nursing assistant enlisted the Man of Steel to assist in the collection process, I “ran the specimen to the hospital lab” just as directed. With the specimen bottle discretely tucked in my pocket, I asked the nice lady at the information desk how to get to the lab. She pointed the way, I trotted over to person at the lab window, and pulled out the bottle v-e-r-y discretely. “Here,” I said.
“Have you registered at the desk?” the nice lady at the lab window asked.
“No,” I said. “I was told to run this to the lab.”
“You have to register first.”
She pointed the way, I tucked the bottle back into my pocket, and trotted over to the registration desk.
Once the nice lady at the registration window had keyed in Mom’s pertinent information, she asked, “Do you have her insurance cards?”
I blinked. “The nurse told me to run…something…to the lab. She didn’t say anything about insurance cards.”
The nice lady’s attempt to not level a are-you-kidding-me look in my direction was her epic fail for the day. “Well, do you have her numbers? Anything?”
That’s when I remembered Mom’s copy of The Caregiver’s Notebook. Which I would have brought with me if the nurse had mentioned it. Or if I’d watched any of the vlogs in The Caregiver’s Notebook Vlog Series. Which I haven’t yet. But that is on my to do list. I promise.
Anyway, I knew exactly where the notebook was at home, so I called the Man of Steel who was filling in as Camp Dororthy activities director while I just ran a little something to the hospital lab. “Would you check the insurance section of Mom’s Caregiver’s Notebook that’s on the table beside my chair in the living room?”
He found it, I handed my phone to the nice lady at the registration desk, and she keyed in the information as the Man of Steel read it off. Then she handed the phone back to me, I thanked the substitute camp activity director, and turned off the phone.
“Do you know what’s really bad about all this?” I inquired of the nice lady at the registration desk.
“What?” she asked.
“I teach people how to organize caregiving information, and I wrote that notebook.”
She giggled and handed me a piece of paper. “You can take this to the lab. Do you know where it is?”
“Sure do,” I responded and then trotted over to the lab window. I fished the well-traveled bottle from my pocket and v-e-r-y discretely placed it on the counter. “This is for you,” I whispered the nice lady at the lab window.
A few minutes later, I was driving home, mulling over my epic Caregiver’s Notebook fail. Until I realized that perhaps it wasn’t really an epic fail. After all, without the completed insurance section of Mom’s Notebook, a trip home to dig through Mom’s purse to locate her cards and a trip back to the hospital would have been required to get the information for the nice lady at the registration desk.
And who knows what might have happened to the discretely hidden specimen bottle in my pocket with all that extra running to the hospital lab. I really don’t want to think about it. Do you?
by jphilo | Dec 17, 2014 | Uncategorized
With Camp Dorothy in full swing, and its namesake not too excited about getting 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, I was delighted to pick up a half peck of Golden Delicious apples from the cart of clearance produce at our local grocery store. Each piece of fruit had a blemish or bruise, perfect for making homemade applesauce. Also, homemade applesauce means the cook can control the amount of sugar added. Which in this case was very little since Golden Delicious is a sweet variety of apple. Here’s how to make it.
Ingredients:
1/2 peck of apples
sugar to taste
cinnamon to taste
Steps:
First, wash, peel, quarter and core apples. Or use a handy-dandy apple peeler-corer to make the job easier.
This much easier. Just cut the peeled apple in two, and you’re hand will be full of thin, beautifully sliced apples
Second, rinse sliced apples. Cover bottom of a large pot with 2–3 inches of water and add the apples.
Third, put the pot on the stove over medium-high heat. Bring pot to a boil, turn down to simmer, and cover. Cook for about an hour, stirring occasionally…until the apples are cooked down and fall apart.
Like this.
Then, turn off heat and mash the apples with a potato masher to the consistency you desire.
Finally, add cinnamon and sugar to taste. Consider engaging a taste tester for quality control.
Pour into a serving bowl and serve warm or cold. Store in the refrigerator. Or ladle sauce into freezer containers. When thawed, frozen applesauce tastes as fresh as the day it was made!
by jphilo | Nov 11, 2014 | Uncategorized
The Top Ten Tuesday list will be back next week. This week’s Tuesday post is dedicated to remembering the veterans in our family with an updated version of a piece written for Veteran’s Day, 2012.
Yesterday was Veteran’s Day, and in my world it went out with more of a whimper than a bang. However our state’s major newspaper, The Des Moines Register, in a moving salute to World War II vets, had the soldiers tell their stories in their own words.
That story, combined with the passing of my husband’s Uncle Harold, a World War 2 pilot in October of 2012, was a reminder of how little time remains for our nation to say thank you to the men and women who risked their lives in that great war. Here are the heroes in our family–some still living and some gone in the past few years–I am proud to call my uncles, and for whom I am grateful today.
Harold Walker, Hiram’s storyteller uncle, and pilot in the Pacific Theater near the end of the war. He died in October of 2012.
Marvin Conrad, my piano-playing and very musical uncle. I believe he served in the Navy in World War 2. He died in 2010, only a few months after visiting Washington, DC on one of the Freedom Flights.
Ordel Rogen, my cattle-raising uncle. He served in some branch of the armed forces in World War 2, though I’m not sure of the details. He died several years ago in December.
Leo Hess, who told harrowing tales of fighting during the Battle of the Bulge in World War 2.
Jim Hoey is my history-loving uncle. He was also a dedicated friend to my dad during his long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Jim served as a Navy medic in the Korean War. He turned 80 in June of 2012 and still loves to travel and write letters to his grandkids and great-nephews and nieces.
Dear uncles, our thanks for your service is not enough, but it’s all I have to give. Thank you for fighting for freedom.
Because of you, our shared family histories continue.
Because of your sacrifice, our family is able to reunite in the summer to reminisce about old memories and create new ones.
Because of you, little children play without fear.
Because of you, elderly men and women are cared for and safe.
Because of you, we live in peace.
Because of you, we are who we are.
Because of you, we are blessed.
Because of you.
