Archived posts from December 2007
A few blogs ago, I wrote about Leo almost getting in the hot tub with me. Leo is a boy, a tomcat, he’s big and he’s tough and fearless. He’s only six months old, but he’s huge, a big yellow cat. Tonight, New Year’s Eve, Pip and I cleared the snow and ice that accumulated today and got in the hot tub for a bit before going to our service at the church.
Once again, Leo hung around the edge acting like he wanted to get in, and we decided to help him over the little bit of fear that held him back. I reached out, grabbed him, and slowly submerged him in the warm water. He didn’t love it, but he didn’t hate it either. He didn’t struggle (much), and we let him swim a bit before I got out and took him in the house.
Summer, 1944. My dad, Ron, was 9 years old. Jack Howe, the neighbor boy who was fifteen and best friends with Ronnie’s big brother, was moving away with his family across the state to Hannibal, Missouri. The truck was packed and there was no room for the big toboggan, and so he made a gift of it to his buddy’s little brother.
I’m sure he never guessed how many years of fun our family would have with that sled. My dad kept it through his teen years, and we rode it countless winters through my childhood, and my children’s. There was room for four or five people, and the more you put on, the faster it flew.
This is Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky (aka Leo and Fyo) under the Christmas tree. What a life.
This afternoon we have experienced one of the biggest snowstorms I’ve seen around here in a few years--it started about 11 am and we have had some whiteout conditions and several inches of accumulation. Philip, who’s 15 and works at a car wash, called around 2 to tell me he’d been in a wreck riding with his boss, Scott, on the interstate. He assured me quickly he wasn’t hurt, and had waited until they got back to the carwash to tell me. Thank God for those angels that surround my family on the roads. He said it was a 50-car pileup--let’s hope there was some teenage exaggeration there. But the interstate is now closed all the way to Iowa due to the many accidents that were occurring. My daughter in law Ashlie is stuck at her Mom’s house about 20 miles up the highway and will be spending the night.
Wonder of wonders, the infinite God became one of us! He was born to a poor Jewish teenage girl whose family would have been horribly shamed, but lucky for them and for her, was hastily married under questionable circumstances. What a strange way for the Son of God to enter the earth!
I read Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt when it came out last Christmas, and it stayed with me. I didn’t agree with it all, especially the parts where Jesus as a child did miracles (more like magic tricks) but it did a good job of making Jesus human, something that’s tough to do. He had feelings, emotions, human emotions. Sometimes he was sad, sometimes he was puzzled. He had relatives, brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts. But he lived this life without sin, amazing. I’m re-reading it again, starting today!
The following was written several days ago, but posting was delayed due to The Great Ice Storm of 2007. We’re still without internet, but much more fortunate than many who still after four days have no power. More on that later.....
It’s 4am, and I don’t want to be awake. But I am.
Lord, sometimes He talks to me at the most inconvenient times! Several days ago, Brian came to me with book in hand and said "You gotta hear this."
That’s a frequent occurrence in our life. What he read me stuck in me, and I drug out of bed a little bit ago hoping he had underlined it in the book he was reading. Here is what I found:
Last Tuesday was my parents 50
th wedding anniversary. They were married on Thanksgiving Eve, a Wednesday night, so that they could have a four day weekend honeymoon and be back to work on Monday morning. They were young, just 18 and 23.
Their three grown children were planning a surprise evening for them—they knew it was coming, they just didn’t know what. We wanted it to be a special evening for them, but part of the surprise was how special it turned out to be for the rest of us!
