Sounds of Hope

How many times I got “saved” under the ministry of David Wilkerson is anyone’s guess.  I got saved a lot as a child.  I had a lot of guilt.  The guilt was always temporarily relieved by saying the sinner’s prayer.  I encountered David Wilkerson in person, through multiple readings of The Cross and The Switchblade , his magazine or a tract.  It seems from his bursting on the scene in Brooklyn in the late 50’s, he was always part of my life.  I don’t remember when I first heard of him.  I remember watching him on our old black and white TV as a small child.  His choir had familiar faces including those of my brother and my soon to be sister-in-law.  Teen Challenge invaded our little Norwegian church.  It was one of the rare times there was color in that church.  These were true sinners, the first I ever encountered. I now view my adolescent rebellion through the lens of grace and understanding.  Absent is the guilt that dr...

My Easter worship came last night.  This seems to be a year of liturgical firsts.  Last night my Easter worship came at St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church.  It was a long Mass.  It was an interesting Mass.  I had a personal reason to be there.  My oldest daughter has decided to become part of the Roman Catholic church.  I watched her be baptized for the fourth time in her life.  I thought of her first baptism. My husband was the first to spot her.  She stood by the side door of the church.  I looked.  I looked again, and again… I thought is that Bethany?  Her hair is now a subdued brown much like my natural hair color.  I looked several times.  Once again, it was looking in the mirror.  I thought that can’t be Bethany.  She’s a woman.  I’ve known in my head that she’s a woman for a long time.  Yet, looking at her last night I saw myself.  I saw myself when I was that age.  I saw myself and...

It’s been a long time since I was excited about Easter.  From a spiritual perspective, I always am thankfully excited about Resurrection Sunday.  But Easter as a holiday has been very flat for a long, long time.  I reminisced about my childhood Easters on Kingdom Bloggers this week.  You can read it here . Earlier this week I told you about sewing at midnight for my children.  I’ve told you about the Easter that my oldest son Nathan was dedicated to the Lord .  Easter does hold many precious memories.  However, I honestly can’t remember when was the last time we really celebrated the holiday of Easter.  I am preparing to grill out tomorrow.  I always have to remember that here in the south if you say you are going to Barbeque it means something entirely different.  My daughter and her children are coming.  Our other two children that live in the area will be here.  I’m excited.  I bought some treats for the kids. Shh, d...

It was a beautiful Tennessee night last night.  The air was cool.  The trees were luscious with new life.  Flowers were blooming.  As I walked into the church last night, I noticed the small dogwood near the cross in front of the church.  The cross was draped with royal purple.  Encompassed in a circular planting, the dogwood stood behind it. I didn’t know what to expect as I turned the gold handle of the glass door to the church.  It had been a struggle to decide to go to church last night.  The little Methodist church that I have been attending was having their Maundy Thursday service.  I had never been to a Maundy Thursday service.  I knew they were going to wash feet and have Eucharist.  I knew the foot washing was optional.  I knew I would opt out. I had an internal struggle all day.  I am uncomfortable when I attend this church.  It isn’t the formality of the service.  It’s that I feel so out of place....

It was spring of America’s Bicentennial year.   It was the year my step sister married her husband.   Like this year, Easter must have been late.   The wedding came before Easter as their anniversary celebration did this year.   My sister’s wedding was a big deal.   She did it up right!   Everyone was beautiful.   The bride was radiant as all brides should be.   Dressed in a powder blue tux, her husband was the dashing prince.   Her huge wedding party did not include me.   I was asked to be the guest book attendant.   That meant I got to choose my own dress, as long as it was blue. Granny dresses with pinafore ruffled sleeves were popular.   I knew how to sew.   I liked to sew.   In my little trailer home I made a floral blue pinafore granny dress.   I had little room for a sewing machine. Nevertheless I would sit for hours constructing garments for myself and my children.   Then it was economical to sew. ...

It was a bit like looking in a time warp mirror.  There sat my daughter, my oldest daughter.  The one that has always been told she looks so much like me.  When she was about 8 my favorite Tante, my Tante Bitta saw her and started to laugh.  In Norwegian I could understand she said “she looks just like you did when you were that age.”  As an adult, we still look a lot alike.  Her youngest daughter looks just like her (and me).  It’s like the two of us all over again but with dark hair.  My daughter is beautiful.  The stress in her face often hides it.  I have often wondered how she could look like me and still be beautiful.  As I sat across a table from her at a local IHOP, I heard her lament.  Trouble, sorrow, and want never seem to be far from her.  This time her lament was deep.  Life is beating her up once again.  I have admitted long ago my inability to fix things.  Oh but I wish I could.  I alw...

I just finished my weekly blog on Kingdom Bloggers .  It’s a pretty good blog.  I hope you’ll read it.  But as the late Paul Harvey would say, let me tell you the rest of the story.  In that blog, I speculated about the crowds of Palm Sunday and the crowd who yelled, crucify Him.  If they were the same, perhaps they were so angry that Jesus didn’t do what they thought He would that it drove them to bitterness and hatred. Now before I go any further, I have never been guilty of such heresy.  Thankfully, I have never reached the place of consuming bitterness and hatred.  But I’ve had moments.  Perhaps I could spot that potential so well this morning, because I had one of those moments just last night. I like to listen to talk on the radio.  It has nothing to do with my politics.  I can listen to NPR or Rush Limbaugh.  I just like to listen to talk.  My primary talk radio choice in Nashville is politically conservative.  As...

Now that we've had some fun with women's hair rituals and devoted a whole blog to Spoolies , I want to get serious.  The headlines are very disturbing.   Afghan riots over Quran-burning: 2 days, 20 dead .    The article goes on to tell that 80 were also injured.  That's 100 people who've been hurt or killed because of Dr. Terry Jones.   I wrote a blog about "Dr." Terry Jones last September . I was hopeful after he backed down.  I hoped that the damaged could be minimized.  But he put the Qur'an on trial and found it guilty.  I am not sure guilty of what.  I also wonder what authority he feels he has to make such a decision and maniacal behavior. We often hear that freedom isn't free.  Now people are paying the price for Dr. Jones freedom.  The damage has been done.  The damage is irreparable.  Like a game of "telephone" where one person tells another and by the time it gets to the end of the line, it no longer res...

Lin won our contest and named the pink do-dads.  Congratulations Lin! There back - the good old days are back!  You can now buy spoolies again.  Interested? Go to  www.spoolies.com The good old days can be relived with spoolies. On a serious note, I understand that some of the proceeds from the "new" spoolies go to a mission project that helps girls go to school.  For that reason, I changed this blog (I don't get anything out of this).

I think every child loves Saturday.  Saturday is that day when you don’t have school.  It is the day to sleep late and play.  It was on a Saturday that my father would take me on excursions of delight.  Holding his hand, we’d place our token in the turnstile to ride the 4 th Avenue local.  However, there was one part of Saturday that I did not like. Saturday night meant a soak in the tub.  Ours was an old tall claw bathtub.  We had no shower.  While we each had our own bathwater, one by one, we’d make the trip into the tub to be clean for Sunday.  I often entertained myself in the tub with boats sent to me from my relatives in Norway.  I enjoy the tub.  What I didn’t enjoy was the shampoo.  I’d cover my eyes with a washcloth as the cups of water were poured over my head.  Usually some got in my eyes and I’d wince or cry.  My ears, between my toes, and my neck were all checked to see if they were clean.  There w...