Dennis Sherbeck was a temporary employee; he worked as our audio engineer and sound editor for our daily radio show, The Chapel of the Air, which broadcasted daily over 500 outlets nationally. Usually, the Sherbecks served as missionaries to Pakistan, and Dennis worked with us when home on furlough.

After I sat in my husband’s office one morning, I felt I had been neglectful in not getting better acquainted. He and his wife, Diane, recounted the Sunday morning when they had been leading worship in a church that was bombed by extremist followers of Islam. Six were killed that morning and many others injured. “Normally,” they explained, “we sit on the side where most of those who died sat, but this Sunday morning, since we were in charge of the service, we were sitting up front.”

Though even the recounting of this memory brought back intense feelings, which the whole family was still dealing with, the Sherbecks nevertheless added, “We had many remarkable God Hunt sightings.” The God Hunt is a spiritual game we taught to our own four children, then to thousands of radio listeners, and finally included in several of our 50-Day Spiritual Adventures, a church-wide spiritual growth event.

They told of the attack on the grade school their 11-year-old son attended, how the terrorists were delayed in their plans and arrived 15 minutes after the children had all been called back into class from recess on the playground. They told of the Pakistani Christian worker who hurried to escape but couldn’t climb over the high fence behind the school building. Suddenly, two men wearing long white robes came and said, “Let us help you.” One kneeled so the fleeing worker could stand on his back; the other boosted him over the barrier. When he turned to thank them, they were gone.

It occurred to me, as David and I listened to these remarkable stories, that in this world where death seems to be rising at the hands of lawlessness and increasing militarism, that we need to know (and teach our children, our grandchildren and others) how to find God in the everyday.

The God Hunt is a simple practice that yields profound results. “Seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” proclaims the prophet Jeremiah on behalf of the Lord. Jeremiah 29:13-14a.

Let’s concentrate in the next few blogs on learning to go on the God Hunt—a kind of spiritual quick-stepping (in light of the dancing metaphor I have been employing to open our thinking about stepping into God’s sacred rhythms) that makes us aware of God’s daily activity in our lives. When we learn to intentionally seek for God every day, we can become breathless with how frequently He extends His hand to us, pulls us close and twirls us around.

The first question we must ask is: Am I looking for God in my everyday world?

The second question we must consider is: Am I finding Him?

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

I had no idea that the colorful foliage on the poinsettia plants is not the flowering part of the plant. They are actually leaves that start out green, turn color, then change back to green again.

Did you know this?

My husband, David, surprised me one year by taking me to a poinsettia show sponsored by a nearby greenhouse at the Cantigny Gardens. Though I order poinsettias every year, I was amazed by what I didn’t know about them!

First, there was the fact that what I thought were the flowers were really the leaves, called bracts. Then, there was the bit of information that the true flowers are the little berries in the middle of the bracts, called cyathia. We were taught not to buy poinsettias when the cyathia has begun to bloom (sprouting little yellow flowers). I had never, ever, checked the little yellow buds for over-ripe maturity.

Poinsettias originated in Mexico and were discovered by Joel Poinsett, a Southern plantation owner appointed in the late 1820s as the first United States Ambassador to our border neighbor. But it was a community of Franciscan priests, settled near Taxco in the 17th century, who found the bright red plants blooming naturally on the slopes during the season of Advent in December. They used it to adorn their Nativity celebrations.

What fascinated me most in our informal lecture was the rhythm of growth native to these lovely plants. (These series of blogs are considering the rhythms that occur naturally in our living and in our spiritual experience—and how “out of step” most of us feel, disconnected from any kind of natural rhythms). The colorful bracts resort back to green in late winter, are severely pruned, planted outside when the temperatures are above 65 degrees at night, watered thoroughly (they are thirsty plants), then repotted in early summer, pinched to make them bush-like, cultivated with nutrients, and the bracts begin to turn color again in late October or early November. This growth cycle occurs year after year.

Have you been thinking about natural (and sacred) rhythms?

This rhythm of the life-cycle of the poinsettia is one that I put on my collector’s list. The Cantigny greenhouse was lush with rows of color, deep crimson plants with variegated leaves, salmon poinsettias, whites, new hybrids—it was a glorious display. Yet, more remarkable to me was the fact that they were all living according to some divine dance God had built within their genetic structure.

What a marvelous thing is this gift of life we have been given!

Are you one of the many who feels like you can’t get your life into any kind of lasting rhythm?

Think about a green poinsettia. Have you ever seen one? Step into a greenhouse sometime this season and look at the rows and rows of poinsettia colors.

“God has made everything beautiful for its own time” (Ecclesiastes 4:11a). I believe that the internal structure of creation, the very microcosm of it, is a mirror of the whole of life, of a way of living God intends for His creatures—humans as well as vegetable. What are we missing? How are we misusing this natural order, particularly if we don’t know anymore that it exists? What can be done?


Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

“Not all breads are created equal,” states a header from a Mayo Clinic newsletter. “Breads vary in their nutritional value.” Not that we don’t know this; but sometimes a low price or a specialty bakery item or a sweet tooth tempts us to wander from the truth.

Whole-wheat bread is the best. Made from whole-wheat flour, it is a good source of fiber that contains vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. Wheat bread has the next-highest nutritional value, but it is enriched bread where some whole-wheat flour has been added, and contains smaller amounts of fiber and phytonutrients. White bread is enriched flour, and the nutrients it contains are additives.

Eating whole-grain breads or cereals may reduce the risk of colon cancer and other forms of cancer, lower cholesterol, decrease the chance of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and help relieve some menopausal symptoms.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how Americans, the most overfed nation on Earth, are often still hungry after eating huge meals and after snacking in between meals. Scientists tell us this is because the body is not ingesting foods from which it can draw the nutrition it requires. Surprise! Junk food really is junk food. Eating food with fiber helps fill the stomach and gives people the needed bulk to keep the digestive system running smoothly.

In order to be healthy, we need to (among other things) learn to eat whole-wheat bread and buy cereals that are made from the whole grain. Experts recommend six to 11 servings of grain a day. One slice of whole-grain bread counts as one grain serving.

Christ said to His followers, “I am the bread of life. No one who comes after me will ever be hungry again” (John 6:35). This often is the spiritual “whole-wheat” bread that our famished souls lack. Nothing satisfies like the bread from heaven.

May I ask:  Exactly how are you feeding on Jesus?

Five years ago, I was designing teaching material for 160 young women in India who were preparing themselves for ministry. I asked myself, What can I give to them that will feed their eager spirits? Then one morning I turned to the Gospel of Luke and began to read again about the life of Christ. There was healthy oat, wheat, rye and multigrain flour for the soul indeed.

How are you feeding on the Bread of Life? Could you find time to read from one of the Gospels, one chapter each sitting? Chew your food slowly. Take notes. Savor the taste.

Perhaps you are a hungry soul because you have been snacking too much on white bread.

Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for wannabe (…better) writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

One of the great malnutrition killers is the disease kwashiorkor. Infants and children who suffer from this condition have been starving for a long time. Kwashiorkor is basically a protein deficiency, though it can also be caused by a deficiency of one of several types of nutrients.

Adults can get by on a heavy starch diet for a while, but children must have protein for their growing bodies. A starving child has used up all the reserves of fat and muscle—the body actually cannibalizes itself for the sake of life. You’ve seen the news pictures and the appeal letters from groups that aid children in peril—spindly legs, bloated belly, dusty skin, black hair bleaching reddish. A starving child at this stage is beyond tears; it is waiting for death.

Dr. Paul Brand writes about being at the bedside of children in this near-terminal condition. He tells how they actually refuse food, turning their heads away from a spoon or glass of milk. In a hospital, the hunger patient can be given intravenous feedings, or a persistent helper can sit by the bedside dosing the child with minuscule portions until the swallowing reflex takes over. Dr Brand writes, “The reward comes when, almost suddenly, the child looks at you, and opens his own mouth for food. Appetite is coming back! A sense of hunger is awakening … life will return.”

Perhaps you are suffering from a case of spiritual kwashiorkor. It has been so long since any real food reached your soul that you are starving for nutrients.

The purpose of my Hungry Souls ministry is to pray for an awakening of your hunger. Soulish Food is a feeding program in the form of a biweekly e-newsletter. Bit by bit, I hold the morsel to your lips. Over time, spiritual mentors can become experts at the “drip method.” They know the Holy Spirit and are confident He can restore our appetite.

Don’t struggle. Don’t try to whip yourself into a feeding frenzy. Just rest. Just rest.

Hear these words whispered into your weariness (you can hardly lift your head): “Taste—just taste—of the goodness of the Lord.”

“Some wandered in desert wastelands. … They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. … Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds to men, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.”
(Psalm 107:4-9)

My prayer is that you will be satisfied, little one, that you will be able to sip, then swallow, then chew again. But for now, be still. Someone else is tending to the feeding.

Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for wannabe (…better) writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

“Hunger is a wonderful thing … it gives us life. It’s the body built-in alarm that it’s time to eat. Hunger is what makes eating a pleasure. Without it, we could easily forget to eat; we might even starve to death.”
Dr. Paul Brand, The Forever Feast


When I was a young woman, someone remarked to me that no real spiritual growth could occur without a hunger for God. At that time, in my early thirties, I realized I wasn’t hungry—not for God, at any rate. And I was intellectually honest enough to know that this lack of desire, this nonchalant Christianity minus longing, put my soul in a precarious place.

So I began to pray, “Lord, give me hunger—”

Now at 67 years of age, I agree with that anonymous adviser from my past: Spiritual growth boils down to discovering a hunger so intense it propels us past our human ennui. We must become like infants howling for the breast. That kind of hunger is overwhelming. So must be the hunger that we seek, a starvation for God.

The American church suffers from information overload. So many spiritual resources are available to us, it’s like forced feedings. My father once tried to spoon oatmeal down me at the breakfast table. I did what any child would do: I resorted to a strategic defense. I vomited up the oatmeal.

We of the Western church are in a regurgitation mode, and none of the nutrients are reaching our souls. The big idea behind my ministry, Hungry Souls, is to take one growth emphasis, and slowly, slowly, over the course of a whole year, walk around it, touch it gingerly, kick it with a toe, push it, lean against it, decide it is safe, nestle into it and finally become hidden by it.

Growth, applied understanding, doesn’t happen overnight. It must be tenderly nourished. Truth must be heard over and over again. It must be tasted, tested, rolled on the tongue, chewed, then swallowed. And then it must be applied—absorbed into the blood.

We have to learn what it is to be spiritually hungry—really hungry. We have to challenge ourselves to consider for what we are truly starving. We have to shake ourselves and ask: Am I really hungry for God? Or am I longing for some replacement for God? Then we need to pray to develop an authentic craving, a soul-addiction that cannot be satisfied by any sugar substitutes. We have to become replete with soul fatness, to learn how to suck out the marrow of God’s nutrients.

And we must find companions to make their way with us to that feast. Intriguingly, the word companion comes from the Latin cum, meaning “with,” and panis, meaning “bread.” We want to be with companions at this Table. And we want to do more. We want to become hungry ourselves again; we want to dine; we want to rest satisfied, having fed richly at His Royal Spread.

Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains

“Lord, give me a hunger for yourself that cannot be sated by any other human thing.”
Thomas Merton

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for wannabe (…better) writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

One of the great tools of the wise mentor is to ask questions that rise out of wisdom granted by the Holy Spirit. The answers to these questions are never easy; sometimes they take months to consider. When the questions come, however, from the exercise of the spiritual gifts of discernment and knowledge, they can potentially change lives. So approach these questions seriously, and take your time to consider them prayerfully.

One of the ways we can look honestly at the nature of our hungers is to examine the people who attract us, sometimes strongly. In other words, who is it we admire? Whom do we look to as models?

The questions:

What types of people most attract you? Describe them.


Is there one person in particular whom you deeply admire? If so, why?


What kind of a person would you like to be in twenty years?


Who do you know exemplifies what you have described?


List a variety of people who are models for you. What are their strengths?


Now consider whether any in your list are spiritual models. Are any of them hungry for God? How do you know?


If you have no models, what does this say about you?


Have you ever been disillusioned (or nearly destroyed) by people you admire?


Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains

I have had all year to think about the natural rhythms God has built into life. Actually, this has been a wonderful thinking process. I found that there was a lot I was taking for granted. As we move into the concept of “Dancing With God: Stepping in Time to His Sacred Rhythms,” take some time (several months would be good) and build a long list.

To get you started, let me include a quote from Wayne Muller’s book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives.

“Carolus Linnaeus, an eighteenth-century Swedish botanist, became so enamored with the rhythmicity in plants that he grew a garden that could tell time. He planted flowers that opened or closed their blossoms an hour apart, from morning to evening throughout the day.

“All life vibrates to this inner music. The daily rhythms of many living things approximate a twenty-four-hour cycle, even when isolated in a laboratory. These circadian rhythms (from circa, “about,” and dies, “daily”) live deep in the body, are nearly impervious to alteration, and refuse to be extinguished. In normal daylight, mice in laboratories begin running on an exercise wheel about dusk, run intermittently through the night, and sleep during the day. Even when their cages are kept artificially dark for long periods, the mice maintain this circadian rhythm for several weeks.

“Sometimes when I walk the beach at nigh, there is a luminescence in the waves. a microscopic alga that illuminates at night. This algae is nonluminescent during the day—even under artificially darkened laboratory conditions. Circadian rhythms will entrain, or adjust to an artificial light-dark cycle—but only if it does not deviate drastically from a twenty-four-hour cycle. A test animal exposed to eleven hours of light and eleven hours of dark will gradually entrain to a twenty-two-hour cycle; if exposed to thirteen hours each of light and dark it will entrain to a twenty-six-hour cycle. But as soon as the artificial cycle is removed, the natural cycle returns. If the cycle is varied too much—if we try to entrain an organism to a thirty-, thirty-five-, or forty-hour cycle—the creature will soon give up trying to adjust, and return again to its original twenty-four-hour rhythm…

“Most organisms have more than one circadian rhythm. In human beings, different circadian rhythms govern the wake-sleep cycle, glandular secretions, highs and lows in body temperature, and the retention and excretion of urine. Despite all external manipulations of light, hours of sleep, or changes in nutrition, even under the most constant laboratory conditions, no organism can ever be completely entrained away from its true inner rhythm.”

NOW, START A LIST OF THE RHYTHMS YOU CAN IDENTIFY. Take your time. This exercise can become the platform on which we begin to dance with God!

Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains

In marketing circles, “buzz” is the sum of all comments about a certain product that are exchanged among people at any given time. Newsweek magazine defined buzz as “infectious chatter; genuine, street-level excitement about a hot new person, place or thing.”

This last week David and I visited a church in South Holland, Illinois where our hosts could not stop talking about the exciting things God was doing. They were part of what is called a “turnaround” church, an older body that had carefully focused its vision to concentrate on the “spiritually disconnected” and then had changed its approaches to make that vision possible.

Now, the church is experiencing dynamic conversion growth, seeing lives changed in powerful and dramatic ways, and everyone is scrambling to create new ministries to meet the needs of all these “spiritually disconnected” folk who are finding God.

Scripture says, “I will tell everybody about the wonderful things you do.” Psalms 73:28b.

I came away from this exciting place with a couple questions for myself. I share them with you.

1. How much “infectious chatter” about God is part of my daily conversations?

2. Why am I not telling all the spiritually disconnected folk I know about the wonderful things God is doing?

These questions are relevant for all Christian men and Christian women today. I encourage you to take some time to quietly contemplate these questions.

Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains

Are you eating the right spiritual food in the right way?

Sometimes we as Christian men and women eat the right spiritual food, but we consume it in the wrong way. The body can only absorb so many nutritional supplements before sloughing them off as waste. Similarly, Robert Mullholland Jr. of Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky makes a powerful point about spiritual feeding in his book Shaped by the Word. He distinguishes between approaching the Word of God for information or for transformation.

Informational Reading of Scripture

•    Seeks to cover as much as possible as quickly as possible.
•    Is linear and demonstrates the thinking that reading is little more than covering all the parts.
•    Seeks to master the texts.
•    Considers that the texts exist for us to control or manipulate according to our interests and desires.
•    Is analytical, critical and judgmental.
•    Is characterized by a problem-solving mentality.

Transformational Reading of Scripture
        
•    Seeks to meet with God, taking as much time as needed to pore over the texts until they get through the reader.
•    Is in-depth reading.
•    Seeks to allow the text to master us.
•    Allows oneself to be controlled and conformed by the reading.
•    Requires a humble, detached, receptive, loving approach.
•    Holds an openness to mystery, to the mystery we call God.

Some of us are hungry because we aren’t feeding on the Word in the right way. David, my husband, often has to remind me at mealtimes, “Slow down. Enjoy what you’re eating. Don’t eat so fast.”

Are you eating the Word too fast? Is this one reason your soul feels famished, unsatisfied, without nourishment? Slow down. Savor your meal.

“Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and passed them out to the people. Afterward he did the same with the fish. And they all ate until they were full.” John 6:11.


Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains

The last three weeks have been nothing short of miraculous. I’ve made progress in the house and yard unlike any previous time in my life. My husband, David, and I started working our way down through the mess in the garage because our adult kids set up a small “garage fund” and gave us several hours each for tearing down old pegboard, setting up some industrial storage shelves for books, and starting to roll paint on walls. The completion of that job was delayed until I organized the garage attic and put all the Christmas stuff away that had been stored in the middle of our two-car space.

I am two-thirds done with organizing the attic; the Christmas stuff (all but two boxes) has been stored (along with the spring stuff, the autumn stuff, the canning stuff, etc., etc.).

We are picking up new pegboard this Saturday, the “garage fund” has paid for a new work table, and—really, really important—we should be able to get the car (we only have one) in the garage by the end of next week. Amazing!

This has made me think how frequently it is the starters and boosters in our lives that get us going. A small gift of unexpected funds is great, but mostly, it is the people who give us a half-day, a couple of hours, who help lift the stones that are too heavy, or who move the table that doesn’t work up the basement stairs and the one that does work down the basement stairs. It is the father of a daughter-in-law who not only installs two new outdoor garage lights but teaches you how to install the third one (by the front door) yourself.

What a gift extra hands are!

A friend who is a wonderful Christian woman, but honest enough to deal with the perplexities of faith, said to me as we washed plaster dust off the kitchen decorative ware (we also replaced drywall in three rooms this month), “You know we Christians do a lot of good things in the church. We do meetings well; we are great at bringing tasks to completion. We are project-managers extraordinaire. But we do not know how to do living together. Somehow we have lost the lore of jumping in and helping one another dig out of life’s messes.”

I agree. This has been a lesson really learned this past year. With just a little bit of help that gives me a boost and gets me started, I can go on and complete huge projects—all on my own. What a gift! What an immeasurable offering—a couple hours of time.

It makes me wonder, though. What kind of booster and starter am I in the lives of those I love—in the lives of my own friends and family? Perhaps I need to tune my own booster and starter abilities.

Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains

Why is it that we do big messy jobs for other people that we need to do but have neglected to do for ourselves?

 

My husband and I are spending two weeks grandparent-sitting while our daughter and son-in-law are in Israel. Although the house has been cleaned, there are still proverbial “pockets of poverty”; wastelands of homemaking neglect—the laundry room, the Chevrolet Suburban, the top shelves in the two-floor-high living room and family room, and the garage. It took me three days to conquer the first-floor laundry room, a day to empty the car and another 139 bucks to have the outside washed and the inside detailed, and considerable balance to angle myself on the ladder so I could pull down the décor pieces and scrub away four years of dust.

 

I figure I’ll let the garage go—but then, I just might get inspired somewhere in the second week; who knows what extremes a Christian woman might go to for her daughter?

 

What is interesting to me about all this is that my own laundry room is not in the greatest of shapes, the tops of my armoires are also accruing dust, and due to a lack of time and organization, the garage is so full we haven’t been able to park the cars for a couple of years.

 

So why am I going to all this effort for my daughter?—whom I love, of course, but who is also younger than her mother (of course). Why spend three days cleaning her laundry room when about two to four hours of labor would bring my own into good shape?

 

I found myself pondering, I don’t remember anyone—not my mother or my mother-in-law—doing this kind of work for me. But I do clearly remember the clean clothes stacking up on the laundry table in our century-old house in Oak Park, Illinois. I do remember, how, with four kids, an inner-city pastorate and a number of young-adult live-ins, just the simple materiality of life could become overwhelming.

 

I don’t remember anyone doing this kind of work for me. Perhaps that is the clue to why I am working so hard to put these physical spaces to right. People did other things for me—Mother never came to my house empty-handed, my father swooped his grandkids up to spend weekends at the retirement farm, and my in-laws were great about taking us out to restaurants (as well as keeping a pool cleaned and open for terrific swimming Sunday afternoons).

 

However, there just wasn’t much help for me when I was a young mother, with the purely physical labor of life.

 

I have a friend who is a near saint, and as far as I can tell, who survived an emotionally deprived childhood. In addition to her own offspring, my friend and her husband took in her grandmother as well as her younger siblings—one to love into death, the others to love into life. One of my friend’s brothers was mentally disabled. “How can you give to others what you have never received yourself,” I once asked her—because that is what I now observe her doing. She smiled and answered, “But that’s the point, isn’t it? I always try to give away what was never given to me.”
 

I think this is what is happening with my daughter’s laundry room. I am doing for

her what was never done for me. And instead of letting my act of love descend into onerous comparison (No one ever helped me with my piles of neglected work. So why should I do this for someone else—even a daughter?), like my friend, I need to learn better to give away the gifts I have never been given. And I must remember to do this intentionally—because there is something reciprocal that occurs. We do this giving what we have not been given for others, but we also do it for the sake of that self still within who was once neglected.

 

I must do this giving simply because I know what it means to get behind with the laundry (and the car, and the high dusting, and the garage); to give the gift because I remember what it is like to move children through the days (day after day) all the while trying to live my own demanding life too. This is what a Christian woman should do—love a daughter (neighbor) as herself. 

 

Something amazing happens when, like my saintly friend, I intentionally give as a gift what I never was given—it heals the little deprivations and neglects from the past that still sometimes gnaw at my present. 

 

Oh, heck!—perhaps I’ll tackle that garage after all.

 

Your Christian Blogger,
Karen Mains
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