Because I travel, and generally someone picks me up at my destination airport, I have heard the question “How was your flight?” hundreds of times—literally. The answer after flying into Washington, D.C. last weekend was different than my usual response of, “Oh, fine. The flight was fine.” On this flight, the pilot and air stewardesses coached us through an emergency landing.

Fifteen minutes out from Reagan International Airport, flying from Chicago, the pilot’s voice, calm and reassuring, announced, “Ah, folks. We’re having some trouble with the flaps; they seem stuck in the down position. This is nothing to worry about. We’re going to try some flight maneuvers and will be circling the airport for a little while. We’re in contact with the ground mechanics who are seeing if there is anything else we can do. We’ll let you know more in a few minutes. But I repeat, this is nothing to worry about.”

The stewardesses went about their landing procedures, collecting garbage, checking seatbelts and whether luggage was properly stowed and if trays and seats were back in their upright positions.

During the 20 minutes until the second announcement, I had time to observe my own reactions. Certainly, my role was to pray for security and safety for everyone on the plane. I particularly asked my loving Heavenly Father to send His guardian angels to surround our airborne 747. The Scripture came to mind, He will give his angels charge over you lest you strike your foot against a stone. I thought of my husband, David, with love and with no regret for the 49 years we have shared life together. And I heard an inner voice (my own) repeating, My life is in Your hands … my life is in Your hands.

The pilot’s voice came on again: “OK, folks. We’re going to make an emergency landing without the flaps functioning properly. Again, I repeat: This is nothing to panic about.” Indeed, his voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “We’ll be approaching the airport from a different angle, going at a faster speed than you may be used to. Some of you may notice emergency equipment on the runway—fire engines and ambulances. This is merely a precautionary measure. Again, this is nothing to cause panic. Cabin crew, prepare for landing.”

And we landed—actually one of the smoothest landings I’ve ever experienced. The breaks did not overheat, although they were checked by the fire department before we were given the go-ahead to proceed to our gate. However, it was interesting to compare
my peace-given reaction with a colleague who was flying with me (also with my sister who was also in the back of the plane).

“The lady beside me was just tight with panic, her knuckles were white from clutching the armrests. So I told her that she shouldn’t worry, that two of the most powerful pray-ers I knew were on the plane. [I think she meant ‘my sister and me’—no pressure there!) The lady said, ‘Oh, really?’ and seemed to relax.”

I thought the pilot and crew had handled the situation admirably, that it was one of the smoothest landings I’d ever experienced—no bumps, no jarring crosswinds. My friend thought we had blown a tire—she had felt a definite whomp on landing. She also stated that the pilot’s announcements had been worded poorly (her ex-husband was a Navy pilot who eventually flew commercial airlines. That insider-wife’s vicarious expertise is not always calming in crisis experiences).

So, later, when I had time, I considered the slight difference in our reactions. Power pray-er or not, I had been surrounded within a bubble of peace, doing whatever work prayer does when we link our finite beings with the infinite divine. And that work had left me with the impression that it was one of the smoothest landings I’d ever known.

Which was the reality—hers or mine? I really don’t know.

“Well, it couldn’t have been too bad,” I said to my friend. “We weren’t instructed to go into the emergency-landing tuck position”—heads down over our knees with our arms locked around them. I thought about this, of course, after we landed, not as we were rushing, without functioning air flaps, toward the hard concrete of the landing strip.

But human as we are, we made something out of this with family and friends. I called David, just to let him know we were in the hotel but that the landing had not been an ordinary one. “Oh, something kept nudging me,” he replied. “So, I checked the radio to see if there were reports of an airplane crash. When I didn’t hear anything, I concluded you were all right.”

“No. No. If you feel nudges like that, you’re supposed to pray—not check the radio!”

The rest of the family (my sister’s husband and sons) were rather nonchalant about what we were now billing as a near-death experience. “Is that so? Glad you’re all right.” No one seemed to make a connection that both their mother and a well-loved aunt might have perished in a fiery landing.

So, I called my son-in-law who graduated as a theatre major from Miami of Ohio University. “I need someone to get a little dramatic about this,” I laughed, telling him the story of our emergency landing.

“Just a minute; let me get my actor’s hat on.” His voice came back over my cell: “WOW! Are you OK? Do you need to take the afternoon and rest? I can’t believe you had that close of a call! We’re so glad you’re still around!”

Silly as it is—this made me feel some slight comfort, even though we were laughing at my wanting a little drama in my phone call responses.

“Not only did we almost crash, but Valerie Jarrett was also on the plane.”

“Who’s Valerie Jarrett?”

“Oh, she’s one of the Chicago Circle, who functions as an advisor to President Obama. She was sitting a row behind me and I kept thinking, Who is that woman? Where have I seen her before? Then I realized that I’d seen her on the news. I appreciated the fact that she was flying in the economy section, not in First Class.”

“Well,” said my son-in-law. “If your plane had burst into flames, no one would have known that you and Valerie Bell were on it. But everyone would have known about Valerie Jarrett!”

An incident like this is sort of an unfolding revelation. I registered at the hotel desk, signed in at the conference table, collected my packet, found my room, unpacked clothes, called another colleague who had arrived a little earlier than ourselves. We made one of those complicated group decisions about where to have dinner, found a taxi, and then called an end to a long day by returning to the Sheraton where we were lodged.

I’d pooh-poohed my friend’s designation that my sister and I were “power pray-ers,” but the thought suddenly occurred to me in the middle of the night that maybe we (and other unnamed pray-ers) were on that very flight to pray it down safely, to give the pilots calm and proficiency, to not allow panic to spread through the cabin.

None of us know about the web of prayer that surrounds our lives. We have no way of measuring how many times prayer has protected us, preserved us or assuaged our distresses. We just complain about what goes wrong, howl over the suffering that, unwanted, comes our way; shake our fist in the face of God and cry, “Unfair!  Unfair!” But we do not count the ways we have been kept safe, nor measure the days that have been shot through with happiness.

We have no idea how many times He has given his angels charge over us, lest we strike our foot against a stone.

“How was your flight?”

How is your flight through life, through the moments of the days? Begin to look for the gifts of prayer, see if you can detect that figurative flash of wings, the hidden sound of something beating beneath the surface of things. Concentrate, instead of what has gone wrong, on what has gone right.

I promise that this is one of the better ways of gettin’ thru’ the days.

Karen Mains
KM2-62

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Burton Mains’ other involvements these days, apart from praying in airplanes when flaps don’t work, is writer mentoring. She and 11 other people are teleconferencing for one hour, twice a month, in order to become better memoir writers. A waiting list is now forming for the new Cycle. If you are interested, please contact Karen at the Hungry Souls office, info@hungrysouls.org. Karen is also involved with an international team of concerned friends who are launching the Global Bag Project, encouraging seamstresses to sew reusable shopping bags to provide themselves with sustainable incomes. Visit the new Web site, www.globalbagproject.org.

Among other things, Karen Mains is an award-winning author, a spiritual coach, Christian blogger, and Director of the Hungry Souls ministry.

I remember a friend, a young mother, with three children under the age of seven, saying to me (also a young mother with four children and a busy husband), “I just wish someone would tell me when I’m doing a good job. What I really want to know is that I’m not raising juvenile delinquents!”

This lament—of not knowing how we’re doing and suspecting we may be doing it all wrong—is felt by many who are plodding through the shifting sands of family life. We have a haunting sense of our own inadequacies in establishing good family-systems. And the truth is, when we think we may be doing pretty well, many of us don’t have anyone who says to us, “You know, you really are doing a good job raising those kids.”

About 30 years ago, several major universities launched research projects to discover what made healthy families healthy. Thousands of families in the U.S. and across the world were carefully studied. The cumulated data was eventually shared in a National Forum on Family Well-Being sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. At this time measuring tools were established to help family professionals (including parents) recognize the traits of healthy families.

The traits are as follows:

1.    Healthy Families Have Good Communication
Good communication results from a loving relationship between parents. The healthy family:

a.    Listens and responds rather than listening and reacting (reacting: projecting one’s own feeling and experiences; responding: empathizing with the other person’s feelings).
b.    Develops patterns for reconciliation (including having a good sense of timing for heated discussions).
c.    Controls television viewing.
d.    Recognizes nonverbal messages (lack of eye contact, mumbled messages, etc).
e.    Places importance on intensity and spontaneity in conversation rather than on propriety.
f.    Recognizes turn-off words and put-down phrases (a comment made in jest to one person may be an insult to another) and works on eliminating hurtful words and name-calling.
g.    Encourages individual feelings, independent thinking and uniqueness.

2.    Healthy Families Spend Time Together
Times spent together are both planned and spontaneous times, serious and fun times. The healthy family:

a.    Allows themselves time to play and relax, time to dream without guilt (laughter causes remarkable physical relaxation—humor banishes the tightness and severity necessary for anger).
b.    Prioritizes activities:
   -    Why do we want this activity?
   -    What will it replace?
   -     Will it affect our life together?
   -    Is it worth it?
c.    Values table time in conversation—the dinner meal becomes an important   part of the day (activities that infringe on this time are discouraged).
d.    Maintains a balance of interaction in its time together (discourages cliques among members while still encouraging individual members to spend time together).
e.    Doesn’t allow work and other activities to infringe routinely on family
time.
f.    Occasionally participates as a unit in activities chose by individual members—other members compromise even if that activity isn’t their choice.

3.    Healthy Families Encourage and Affirm One Another
The parents have good self-esteem and pass this on to their children by:

a.    Expecting family members to affirm and support one another.
b.    Realizing that support doesn’t mean pressure (to succeed, look good, win, etc).
c.    Giving genuine approval and support to help children develop good self-
esteem (rather than being concerned about causing them to become conceited).
d.    Maintaining a basic positive mood.

4.    Healthy Families Deal Positively With a Crisis
Children learn to solve problems by living in a family that solves problems. parents give children the hope and conviction that “when things get tough we’ll be able to cope.” The healthy family:

a.    Expects problems and considers them to be a normal part of family life.
b.    Develops the skill of knowing when a problem is a problem (doesn’t become overly concerned by annoying events).
c.    Develops a skill for identifying potentially serious problems and tackling them early, which helps avoid a crisis.
d.    Allows give-and-take in negotiation—if a problem concerns the whole family, everyone gets a chance to speak.
e.    Possesses high initiative for helping itself, but isn’t afraid to reach out for help from support groups or professionals when facing a problem too big to handle alone.
f.    Stands together in bad times as well as good.

5.    Healthy Families Have a Commitment to the Family
The husband and wife share a consensus of important values. If parents aren’t committed, neither will children be apt to be committed. The healthy family:

a.    Treasures its legends and characters—the past is preserved and passed on to future generations.
b.    Honors its elders and welcomes its babies—all the seasons of life are appreciated by others.
c.    Makes a deliberate effort to gather as a people—strong families enjoy being together and make any excuse to do so.
d.    Views itself as a link between the past and the future (family members don’t end with death—deceased members are discussed so others feel acquainted with them) and instinctively warns individuals to reach out and hold other members for as long as they have the privilege.
e.    Cherishes its traditions and rituals, thus helping the family members celebrate life and one another.

6.    Healthy Families Have a Religious Orientation
A question to ask each other: How are you doing spiritually?


How frequently, when I teach on these, parents respond by saying, “That’s just common sense. We could have listed those ourselves.” That’s true. Yet when the academic community and the social services community link their research to the efforts of family specialists, it is a comfort to know that our common sense is basically valid.

These common traits gave concerned parents specific areas where they needed to improve; but the indices of well-being also allowed parents to pat themselves on the back and say, “Hey! We really are doing well—here, here and here!”

Sometimes, when you’ve got a house full of kids, and you’re wondering how you’re going to make it through the days, it’s a good idea to pull out this list and say, “Hey, we’re not doing all bad here. In fact, we’re pretty good at some of this.”

Intriguingly, most of those research studies begun 30 years ago listed a spiritual orientation as one of the common traits of healthy families—healthy families have some kind of spiritual life together. This trait is not such a big surprise to those of us in faith-based communities: Establishing healthy families, after all, is one of God’s Big Ideas.

As you consider how you’re doing if you are in the middle of the parenting juggling act,  make a point of taking time to hear God say, “You really are doing a good job!” Then invite Him to be the Teacher who helps you truthfully evaluate where it is you need to improve. You may discover that He is a better Family Counselor than you ever dreamed.

No, despite those momentary fears, you are not raising juvenile delinquents.

Karen Mains
KM2-61

About Karen Mains:

Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write new content for her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day." Through her Hungry Souls ministry, she serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and has started teaching a mentor-writing class.

Karen and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David is completing a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and he and Karen are considering if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

This baby, our eighth grandchild, is round.

His mother had the stomach flu last night, so I received an early-morning call of desperation from my son, the father. “Mom, can you watch Eliana (aged 29 months) and Neeham (7 months) while I teach class this morning? Angela really needs to sleep. I’ll be done around 1 p.m.”

Fortunately, I have the kind of work where I can set my own hours, and while waiting for the little ones to be dropped at the door so their father could rush off to teach his Spanish class at a nearby college, I decided I was not going to try to do anything else but just play with them.

I took off Eliana’s pink winter (fake-leopard-trimmed) coat, got her started playing with the toys from the cupboard that holds stacking blocks and magnetic-footed circus people, plastic spiders in a plastic jar, easy puzzles, a big container of farm animals, and the inevitable stack of books.

Then, I stripped the baby’s brown bear snowsuit off and lifted him out of his carrier chair. My goodness!—he’s a heavy chugalug. If you hauled him around all day, there’d be no need for weightlifting exercises! “Was Jeremy this big?” I asked my daughter at a recent family gathering; she is older than her brother and seems to remember more about my babies than I do. Granted, Jeremy weighed 10 lbs., 13 oz. at birth, but did he have these thick thighs and rolls after rolls of leg fat? “Oh, Mother,” Melissa recalled, a little disdainfully (Where was my memory, after all? She would never forget such pertinent information about her children!). “Don’t you remember? Jeremy was a chunk. He was every bit as roly-poly as Neeham. You used to call him Buddha-baby.”

OK. I’ll take her word for it. Today, I tested Neeham’s sitting-up abilities. Pretty good, although his weight does tend to make him roll forward or sideways. But for the most part, the back muscles are strengthening and his balancing ability is balancing.

Two months ago, I rushed (as the result of another emergency call—Jeremy and Angela could not quite match their work schedules) over to the house to filled in for that intermediate hour where the parental tag-match didn’t work. Neeham took one look at me, crumpled his mouth into a huge pout and began to wail, What? You’re abandoning me to this lady? Who is she? What does she have to do with me? Does she do milking? Where are you going? Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a. He was not to be consoled and wept himself to sleep. At that point, I decided I obviously had not been spending enough time with my youngest grandson.

So today (after some corrective measures in between), when he came to my house, with a sister happily stacking soft Beanie Babies on all the bookcases shelves she could reach, Neeham and I played in the sunshine that was falling this winter day on the dining-room rug. Oh, now we’re friends. Everything this lady does is funny. He chortled and chuckled over my blowing air into the crevice of his neck. He thought my ah-boos were hilarious. When I changed a diaper, he pulled his feet up to his mouth (how do babies do this?), and I couldn’t resist the temptation to roll him on one side, then back on the other. Freed from garments, he kicked his toes in glee, laughing all the while. His round bald head, the darling butt baby-bare; everything was ovoid. This was pure delight to me. Now diapered, he sat on my lap on the couch where I tested his standing-straight propensities. (“Biggie boy. That’s a biggie boy!”) Soon, cuddled in my arms, his mouth latched onto his thumb and the sucking commenced. In no time, he was sound asleep. I pressed my nose to his fat cheek—nothing on earth like that baby smell.

What a happy morning. By this time, Eliana had systematically progressed through her caravan of play—first the Beanie Babies, then the farm animals set to standing by the fireplace, then the books, etc. I carefully placed the baby in his carrier and sat my granddaughter on the kitchen counter. She demanded an apple: “Ap-pop.” I sliced and peeled one and fed her tiny bits. Eliana is being raised bilingually. She looked up at the plates hanging on the soffit and said while drawing circle with her hands, “Círculo.” This word I knew, and think she is impressive making her way in both early Spanish and early English. Obviously, I’m going to have to come up to speed with some basic Spanish myself if I’m going to understand her.

The children’s father came home at the time promised; now the baby had wakened and Eliana was asleep on the living-room couch. “Your daughter’s diaper was so wet, I had to take off the onesie. It was soaked.”

“Oh, I know, Mom,” he said with a grin, scooping them both into car seats, spreading the pink winter coat over the daughter and the brown bear suit over his son. “We are just really bad parents.” And after thanking me at least four times, he and his carload were off.

Stepping back into the now-quiet house, I picked up all the scattered toys. This familiar pickup routine only takes me a few minutes. Really, I thought, I should have thanked my son. I’d had an exquisitely happy morning and had loved the fact that Eliana is content here, loves to play with the toys, sits on my kitchen counter, eating like a little bird the tidbits of apple I popped into her mouth. How great is it to know that my grandson no longer puckers and pouts and howls when he is left with me.

It occurs to me that this is one of the primary ways of getting through the days. Find something young, babyish, and enter into play. Borrow babies from a friend if you don’t have any—they’d all love a break! Serve in the church nursery. Pick up a couple kittens; dangle a string or push a ball of yarn their way. Stop at the chicken incubator in a nearby farm in the city and take time to watch the tiny beaks peck their way out of the shell, wet feathers eventually fluffing themselves under the heat of the lamps, then little chicks waddling about, bumping into other chicks.

There is something about going back to the beginnings, something about being near newness, close to fresh starts, something about rediscovering origins. Everything is tactile with babies. We hold, we nuzzle, we press our face against their skin; we pinch and tickle and pull at their soft cheeks. We give our fingers to be grasped in their tiny fists. We place them on our tummies and nap while they nap. We crawl on the floor chasing after them; we catch their ankles and roll with them protected in our arms as they chortle with delight. This sensory interaction is some of the closest connection we adults allow ourselves. It is healing all around.

Once during an extremely stressful time in my husband’s life, he spent every Saturday morning with our first grandchild, then a toddler. They ran errands together. He would pick her up and, in these days before car-seat laws, buckle her into the front passenger seat. Her little legs were too short for her knees to bend over the edge, so they would stick straight out, gym shoes pointing up. To the bank they would go, to the post office, to the drugstore. Often they’d get their hair cut in the same salon, and always, afterwards, they would buy sugar cookies at the bakery on the same block and eat them while driving home. This happened week after week. I often thought that Caitlyn, by just being so adorably new and by just being eager to go on errands with “Papa,” probably saved his life. I am serious.

How lovely that babies are given at a time when their grandparents are in the aging process.

We are watching the film How to Eat Fried Worms a lot right now with our 10-year-old grandson Elias. Evan Almighty is another kid favorite. Right now, both these films never seem to grow old to them. I love to hear my grandchildren laugh. I promise you, if you can get back to the beginnings, back to those who see the world the ways that you have forgotten to see the world; if you can rediscover the origins, you will make it through the days. And if you can find a baby who thinks everything you do is funny, you are most blessed.

After all many things in life renew themselves, day always comes after night, the seasons are on a yearly rotation, the earth goes again and again around the sun. Old friends come back into our lives. We celebrate the holidays every year. Some things always come around again. Death and resurrection are renewable. It is all “círculo.”

Karen Mains
KM2-60

About Karen Mains:

Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write new content for her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day." Through her Hungry Souls ministry, she serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and has started teaching a mentor-writing class.

Karen and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David is completing a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and he and Karen are considering if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

For some reason I made a beeline to the church kitchen. My husband was the guest speaker for the Raitt Preaching Series at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Santa Ana, CA. He preached Sunday morning and Sunday evening, then three times (the same message in the two morning sessions), once at 6:30 a.m., then at 9:00 a.m., then in the evening at 7:00. Perhaps, it is because I have been a pastor’s wife, and in the ministry all our married life, that I appreciate the hard work (and often un-thanked work) of the people behind the scenes. I wondered who would be taking care of the continental breakfast so early in the day.

“Hi! I’m Karen Mains. Just wanted to see what was goin’ on back here.”

My attention was immediately grabbed by the slices of oranges being arranged on trays. They were juicy and ripe and almost red-orange in color. “Oh, oranges!” I exclaimed as though no one else in the room knew what they were.

“Yep,” said the gentleman slicing the fruit. “They’re navel oranges. They’re from our trees. Help yourself.”

Shamelessly, I began snarfing up the slices, almost as fast as he could place them on the trays. Now, fresh citrus fruits in California are commonplace. Ripe fruit drops from the trees in fields and over backyard fences, and the harvest is so plenteous that wind-fallen grapefruit and lemons and oranges may just rot on the ground. But for a Midwesterner who is used to imported fruit, picked too early, shipped by trucking routes inland, I am aware that we rarely eat citrus at the height of their ripeness.

The wife piped up, “Oh, we make fresh orange juice too, but most of it was drunk in the 6:30 meeting.” I realized these new friends, both in their lively 70s, had English accents.

We chatted about the qualities of different oranges—they have 13 trees on their property!—Seville, navel, tangelos, and Valencias. And somehow, we got onto the topic of making marmalade. I had spent a Saturday last year experimenting with a whiskey-marmalade recipe. We three agreed we loved good marmalade, but my new friend made it clear that the preserves in our American supermarkets were too sweet—not “tart enough.” Certainly not as good as the British variety. I heartily agreed—English marmalade is exquisite—a good enough reason to travel overseas!

“Do you know how marmalade began?” queried the citrus-grower, still slicing oranges. Marmalade, legend has it, was a chance invention. Some time in the 18th century, Mr. Keiller, a grocer from Scotland, acquired a load of Seville oranges when a ship was driven ashore by a storm. His wife, Janet, experimented with recipes, added sugar (Sevilles are very bitter) and invented the chunky orange marmalade that became Scotland’s own. The preserves sold so well that it soon became a staple of every breakfast table in the land, and the name of James Keiller & Sons is still associated with it.

David, my husband, preached in those early sessions, and I was proud of his command of the Book of Revelation and of his great gift of reducing the most complicated of passages to their essential meaning. But I made sure I didn’t return to the guest house where we were staying without transcribing the marmalade recipe that lodged in this man’s mind onto a scrap of paper I found in my purse. Here goes:

British-like Marmalade

Take one large lemon, two white grapefruit (not ripe, because there is more pectin in the skin), and seven Valencia oranges (which must be very sweet).

Slice them, leaving on the skins and instead of water, combine all with the juice of one orange. Add 3/4 cup sugar if you like a tart taste; one cup if you like it sweet. Boil everything down for about 5 hours, stirring occasionally over a low heat in a five-quart pan until the contents are 25% reduced.

Stir in 5 tablespoons (we’re guessing here—I’m thinking it may take more like 1/4 cup) of whiskey or Grand Marnier. Let the ingredients sit for one-half hour to cool.

While still warm, spoon into sterilized jars (use any leftover jam and jelly jars). You do not have to add pectin because there is pectin enough in the skins and the juice. Screw on the tops. Cheerio!

Without a doubt, one of the great gifts of life is meeting enchanting people, people who carry on a kind of romance with life. People who enliven rooms just by being in them. People who open doors and show you intriguing vistas you have never seen.

I’m an introvert and it takes a little effort for me to strike up conversations with strangers. My natural default procedure is to be politely withdrawn and to stand back observing, but lately, perhaps due to the aging process, I’m not so shy, and I’ve met the most surprising folk. Everyone is fascinating (well, actually, some people are boring—they just haven’t reached their fascinating potential yet), but truly evolved personalities strike matches in the soul, stimulate the minds of their listeners, arc high in the back-and-forth swings of discussions, love the world. Finding them is worth the few who make your eyes roll back into your head.

For instance, my new marmalade friends. Although retired now, the gentleman was an aerospace engineer and worked, among other things, on the project that developed Teflon for the space program. After retiring, he helped some ailing friends with their produce truck farm (“The loam of the San Joaquin Valley is 12 inches deep in some places,” he informed me). He sold the produce in local farmer’s markets, which make fresh vegetables and fruits straight from the fields available year-round. What an intriguing second career!

Are your days a little dreary? Well, winter months in Chicago can certainly become wearying. We have had cold weather and snow on the ground since November (it is now February 9). I will be returning home in two days. I think I’ll find me some interesting people.

“You like being here with these folk,” my husband said to me, noticing my liveliness. “I do,” I responded. “They have been wonderful to be around. Did you know that orange trees have three blooming seasons in a year? There are oranges on the trees now that ripened in June. There are oranges on the trees that are just beginning to ripen. And there are blossoms for the ones that will ripen this summer!”

This is one of the ways for getting through the days. Find people who are bearers of light. Learn from them.

Karen Mains
KM2-59

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is beginning to build distance-learning opportunities, teaching wannabe writers how to be better at their craft. She is offering telementoring conference-call training twice a month for eight months. This current cycle is filled. If you are interested in future cycles of training, the Web site www.KarenBurtonMains.com is being built to facilitate this effort. We invite you to check it out for announcements of future classes.

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

The north edge of Phoenix still has vistas that remind the viewer of what this desert was like before population sprawled. No matter where I am, I play a little game: I try to imagine what the location must have been like before man casually and all too carelessly began tramping across the terrain. For instance, where I live—Illinois—what was the geography like before the forests and prairies were hewn away to make place for farmland? What was the swampy shoreline like that breached Lake Michigan before Chicago began to rise in her concrete and multi-storied splendor?

The parents were off vacationing in Florida, the grandkids had gotten themselves off to school, and I, on recess from grand-parenting, took off looking for a Starbucks where I could access a Wi-Fi connection. Suddenly, in the distance, beyond Interstate 17, beyond the shapes and forms of the new shopping mall, I could see a patch of what looked like twenty-or-so pillars of light ascending into the morning clouds. Rains had come to Arizona, and the morning horizon was crowded with billowing harbingers of more storms on the way—but light going up!—I must be seeing things.

That’s strange, I thought, steering myself around the unfamiliar streets. What would make light appear to be shining up? I am trying to discipline myself to pause in the daily run of things when these sudden instances of beauty catch my attention, but morning traffic pushed me along.

By the time I had turned off  35th Avenue onto Happy Valley Road and was driving east, the direction of the pillars of light ascending to the heavens, they were gone. This was a matter of three minutes. In just a flash of my life time, I had spotted something magnificent, something I had never seen before and will probably never see again. The grey morning without the startling pillars of light was still beautiful framed by the roiling clouds, their edges shot with rising-sun silver, but I had seen this beauty before—I am from the Midwest, after all, where rainy days and storm clouds are common. I was haunted all day by the thought that I hadn’t paused to drink in the holy metaphor of these pillars of light no matter their cause—the earth sending up an ethereal sculpture of praise for the drought-parched land finally receiving drenching sustenance.

I should have stopped the car by the roadside, opened the door and stood gazing at this phenomenon with nothing to distract my attention. Were there beacons set into the land that Phoenix uses for special days of commendation and I had witnessed an early morning test? Were there atmospheric conditions, just right at that moment, so wind and air and moisture could produce a light show from the desert floor? Like many, however, I suffer from a common human failing: My personal agenda sets my path. Consequently, I am prone to miss exquisite moments of sublimity.

Jesus, frustrated with the denseness of many of His followers, pronounced an analysis that has been common to mankind throughout the centuries, “You have eyes to see but do not see…” I want to be a see-er, someone who is not negligent in observation, someone who is not rushing so much that wonder is abandoned. I want to become habitual in stopping, in looking, in attending. I want to have eyes that see.

I should have gotten down on my knees and raised my hands to the heaven, prayers of praise and worship rising from one human devotee there on the desert roadside in the same way the pillars of light rose to the sky. I should have breathed in the rain-blessed earth. I should have listened to the cry of the still-wild things and known myself for an intense fraction of time in harmony with all things that be, lifting my head to the graying, looming skies, my soul crying Selah!
 
Noticing is one of the better ways of getting through the days. If we do not turn to see, we all too often plod, the soul heavy, not knowing that the pillar of lights are shining skyward.

Karen Mains
KM2-58

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is beginning to build distance-learning opportunities, teaching wannabe writers how to be better at their craft. She is offering telementoring conference-call training twice a month for eight months. This current cycle is filled. If you are interested in future cycles of training, the Web site www.KarenBurtonMains.com is being built to facilitate this effort. We invite you to check it out for announcements of future classes.

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

The tangle of computer cords under my desk kept grabbing at my foot when I left to pull things from the copier, or to attend a meeting. I kept warning myself, Better take care of that, Karen, or you’re going to be sorry.

And I didn’t—take care of it. And I was sorry. The cords finally got a good grip around my ankle and plunged me facedown to the floor, which I hit hard with my right knee before going prone.

I really wrenched that baby. I limped for weeks and took the stairs like a two-year-old, and moved carefully even during the unconscious moments of sleep. Just when I thought the knee was healing, a small sideways motion would wrench it again. Some days I could take the stairs like an adult; other days, I’d be doing the two-step shuffle again.

Bending my knees to kneel was agony, and getting up after carefully maneuvering myself to the floor—to look under the couch, for instance, or to scrub up some kitchen spills—was a prophecy to me of old-age days to come.

So, before taking myself to the orthopedic office (I’m avoiding the medical community these days until our government lands on some kind of healthcare solution), I went back to CURVES. Would this gentle, but regular, women’s exercise rotation strengthen the muscles that were not holding my damaged kneecap in place?

Sure enough, just after a week, I was taking the stairs without pain. My knee felt much, much better (though a little seemingly innocent twist had me shuffling up and down the staircase for a day). Although improved, I’m learning that I regret it every time I feel frisky. Kneeling is still tricky.

As a side effect, CURVES exercises are also working out the sore arm and shoulder that threatened to freeze up on me—a holdover, perhaps, from the days when I lugged suitcases through the airports of the world. Years ago, a doctor diagnosed it as “luggage elbow.” Unfortunately, this was one of the physical annoyances I seemed prepared to live with, so I am pleasantly surprised with this secondary improvement.

The point of all this is that some falls are not falling down—even though our first trajectory seems to be floorward—some falls are really falling up!

I have no choice if I don’t want to become increasingly crippled but to do my exercises. My goal is to get in an hour a day. I’m not thinking about losing weight—which I need to do—or looking good—although that would be nice. I’m thinking about something even more basic—being mobile.

Now the interesting thing about just-being-mobile-exercises is that there are all kinds of side effects. My 46-year-old daughter announced that one of her goals for this year is A Severe Self-Care Regimen. That was a viral thought waiting to be caught.

As long as I was being virtuous in keeping my three half-hour CURVES appointments per week, why didn’t I just go on and add all those nitty-gritty little should-do’s that swirl around in my noggin, crowding out the more important ideas? What would that include?

•    The 7-minute workout morning and before bed that claims to be “the ultimate energy workout.” Two summers ago, I bought a mat for a yoga class (for ages 50 and up) that got cancelled. Now I could use it.
•    The steam machine with a face mask for opening pores for cleansing—hidden away on a closet shelf—was resurrected for weekly sessions.
•    Walgreens’ Alpha-Hydroxy Face Cream for Aging Skin and Walgreens’ Moisturizing Face Cream for Dry Skin (I can afford these). I use them morning and night along with the Wal-Mart-brand Equate Daily Renewal Cleanser (“with gentle microbeads that unveil youthful, radiant skin”).

Oh, you get the idea; my fall down, contrived by a colluding set of computer cords, has really been a fall up. I, a woman not given much to regimens of any kinds, am finally putting into place a self-care program I should have begun 30 years ago!

It seems to me, as I look back on my life, that every downfall has its upfall component. If I hadn’t totaled the car, we wouldn’t have discovered we could do just fine with one vehicle. If we hadn’t lost our business, we wouldn’t have learned to enjoy our marriage in these later years of our lives—because we wouldn’t have had enough time. You get the point.

This has been a good exercise for me—thinking about my downfalls. Perhaps you might want to start a list of your own. Excuse me, though—while you consider that, I need to do my morning 7-minutes (the ultimate energy workout) on the purple exercise-mat, which is spread out on the carpet, right by writing desk. It’s all about feeling good (“stress-free and vibrant, not tired and anxious,” i.e. book-jacket copy). And I certainly want that.

Karen Mains
KM2-57

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains heads the spiritual-mentoring ministry Hungry Souls (www.hungrysouls.org), which is offering an eight-month teleconference training for Wannabe (Better) Writers. This mentor-writing course begins Thursday, February 18. The curriculum will concentrate on Personal Memoir Writing and will meet twice a month by phone for an hour each session. For more details, fees, assignments, the curriculum and how to enroll, go to http://www.hungrysouls.org/events.php. You must register by January 31. Inquires can be made at info@hungrysouls.org.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new "Listen to My Life Mapping" Listening Group as well as two 3-Day silent retreats for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

Karen Mains is also continuing to write new content for this, her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day."

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

We have been snowbound here in the Chicago area for the last three months, since early November. Now, being snowbound is different than being housebound. We can get out and get around. In between snowfalls the roads cease to be icy—but the layer of white that covers our yards has been slowly growing since before Christmas without a single thaw.

“How much snow do you think we have?” my husband asked one morning as we were pulling the car out of the garage. We both estimated that there was at least 12 inches sitting on the flowerpots, which winter over in the garden. In the snow banks where the plows dump, the excess snow is higher, of course—three to six feet high. We are living in a white-on-white world.

For many northerners this presents difficulties. Even though we’ve had a fair share of sunny days, a series of overcast days, another storm that dumps three to six inches can make people weary of winter—it’s just hard to drag yourself through the routine, donning warm extra-thick stockings, a sturdy pair of boots with good treads on the soles, layers of sweaters and wool vests and down-filled jackets, and gloves—how many pairs of gloves do we go through getting in and out of cars? (My goal this winter has been to not lose a single pair.)

Then sunshine-deficiency syndromes take over, vitamin D starvations, which set off physical lethargies that for some folk, tumble into depression. Skin dries in the heated homes, even with digital thermostats automatically turning down the temperatures when we’re working or when we’re sleeping. A warming spell (39 degrees today after weeks of single-digit readings) tempts us with the possibility—maybe we’re done with the worst of it!—but no, in our heart of hearts, we suspect we probably have a few good snowstorms still to come.

Yesterday, one of those bright sunny days that glisten on the white, where the sunrises and sunsets are exquisite, I looked out the back window to see if we needed more seed in the feeders. There were six bright-crimson cardinals on the ground, on the feeders, flying in and out of the bushes. Red birds are beautiful in every season, but in winter, on the snow, when the days have been dull and are for a moment bright and the months ahead are still long—they are breathtaking. One bird would have been enough—but six!

The prize-winning poet Mary Oliver has written this in her book Red Bird:


I guess my responsibility for getting through the winter is to luxuriate in the moments of beauty that “fire up the landscape” of these long months. Next time six red birds come to the feeders, I will stop what I am doing, put on my boots and scarf and down-filled jacket, walk quietly to the back-yard bench, slowly sweep off the 12 inches of snow and sit. I will breathe in the fluttering molecules which must be speeding through the air with all those wingtips beating. I will put my head back and take the deepest sigh I can possibly take and thank Providence that the cardinals, symbols of flying hope, come to my feeder and wing through my spaces. Without snow I would not know this moment.


I hope I have another chance.

Karen Mains
KM2-56

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains heads the spiritual-mentoring ministry Hungry Souls (www.hungrysouls.org), which is offering an eight-month teleconference training for Wannabe (Better) Writers. This mentor-writing course begins Thursday, February 18. The curriculum will concentrate on Personal Memoir Writing and will meet twice a month by phone for an hour each session. For more details, fees, assignments, the curriculum and how to enroll, go to http://www.hungrysouls.org/events.php. You must register by January 31. Inquires can be made at info@hungrysouls.org.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new "Listen to My Life Mapping" Listening Group as well as two 3-Day silent retreats for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

Karen Mains is also continuing to write new content for this, her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day."

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

A feeling of dread is a good indicator that something is not right in the day. We dread going certain places. We dread meeting with certain people. We dread certain kinds of work. Sometimes, we even dread waking up.

Dread is a good reason people narcotize themselves. We use drugs, waste hours in pursuits that have no meaning but anesthetize dread, lose ourselves in pleasures that are often harmful.

What we need to do is begin following the dread thread. What is it we are feeling? When do we feel it most? Is there any thing we can do to avoid feeling dread that is not self-destructive? Is the feeling of dread becoming a habitual default place I go? How can I take responsibility to change the dread habit?

After examining these elements, another series of questions are also helpful.

When is it we don’t feel dread? What people, which activities, what kind of work, and what kind of days give us happiness, make us feel positive and give us hope?

Then, we need to change the balance as much as it is in our power to do so.
At least, I can try to load my day with events and people and places that restore my soul and fill me with peace. For me, living in the western suburbs of Chicago, I can walk in the Morton Arboretum or fun over to Cantigny where the flower gardens seem to grow larger and more beautiful each year. Listening to a favorite musical artist—Chopin always enchants; his short piano works don’t demand high listening skills from me—helps me love my life.

Play—learning to play again—is the venue I’m experimenting with and finding a satisfactory adventure that defeats dread when it attempts to lodge in my soul again.

Stuart Brown, M.D. has conducted over 6000 play histories with people from all walks of life—serial killers, Nobel Prize winners, celebrities, public servants, and ordinary everyday folk—from that life study he has written a book titled Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. In the book, he maintains that it has been proven humans are genetically programmed to play—more than any other creature (although studies have captured all levels of life in play activities, from amoebas to polar bears).

What happens to humans who dutifully or unintentionally program play out of their lives? What becomes of those of us who feel play is “a waste of time”? Dire things, it appears. Brown writes, “On one end of the spectrum, I studied murderers in Texas prisons and found that the absence of play in their childhood was as important as any other single factor in predicting their crimes. On the other end, I also documented abused kids at risk for antisocial behavior whose predilection for violence was diminished through play.”

When adults find time for play, the world lightens (dread takes a holiday). “When we get play right, all areas of our lives go better. When we ignore play, we start having problems. When someone doesn’t keep an element of play in their life, their core being will not be light. Play gives us the irony to deal with paradox, ambiguity, and fatalism. Without that, we are like the Woody Allen character in Annie Hall, who says, ‘What’s the use? The sun’s going to blow up in five billion years anyway.’”

So, as your following your own dread thread, check out your capacity to enter into joyful, healthy, distracting, soul-renewing play. See what it does to dreadfulness. See if it’s an aspect of life that will help you get through the days.

Karen Mains
KM1-55

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently getting ready to begin a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She will be offering an 8-month, twice-monthly, one-hour-each training program on writing personal memoirs. For more information, e-mail karen@hungrysouls.org. This program will begin in February of 2010.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new "Listen to My Life Mapping" Listening Group as well as two 3-Day Retreats of Silence for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Sometimes it is hard getting through the day because we are in circumstances that just drag us down. The car breaks down, a wage-earner in the family loses a job, there are troubles with offspring. What’s more, all these potentially debilitating events seem to hit at the same town. Our emotions spiral out of control while negative thoughts conduct suicide bombings.

Dr. Dan Baker, director of behavioral medicine at the National Center for Preventive and Stress Medicine, writes in his book What Happy People Know, “Your mind, when focused on appreciating, has an unparalleled power to trigger physical and emotional healing.” Understanding that it is difficult in trying circumstances for people focus the mind positively, Dr. Baker has developed the “Appreciation Audit.”

Dr. Baker cites studies that show the brain cannot process both fear (one of mankind’s dominate negative emotions) and appreciation at the same time. So the Appreciation Audit, when practiced, is designed to create a shield in the brain against fear, hate and anger. He recommends a fundamental form of the Audit:


To be intentional about practicing appreciation can cause what the psychologists call a perceptual shift. Things are still icky, but your response to them shifts. You begin to see opportunities in the job layoff—perhaps now you’ll have the time to pursue the career you’ve always wanted to pursue. The car breaks down—thank goodness you became aware of the problem before you took that road trip with the family. A teen’s behavior is inappropriate—but this forces you to look at some parenting habits in yourself that you’re not too happy to discover. Suddenly, you have the power over yourself to change.

Dr. Baker explains: “The Appreciation Audit is a form of focused mediation, which has been shown by innumerous studies to have a powerful impact upon the balance of the autonomic nervous system, the brain’s neurotransmitter profile, the cardiovascular profile, muscular tension, and the psyche. Its effects last long after the exercise has ended, sometimes for several hours. It reprograms the mind and memory by severing the fearful, self-reinforcing thought loops of anxiety that are inaugurated by the amygdale and perpetuated in the neocortex.”

Wow—this is pretty powerful stuff! Scripture also calls us to refocus our attention, but too few of us work to do this three times a day. The Apostle Paul writes, “And now, dear friends, let me say one more things as I close this letter to you. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned from me. … Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need.”  Philippians 4:3-13, NLT

Now there’s a man who will pass an Appreciation Audit with flying colors!

Karen Mains
KM1-54

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently getting ready to begin a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She will be offering an 8-month, twice-monthly, one-hour-each training program on writing personal memoirs. For more information, e-mail karen@hungrysouls.org. This program will begin in February of 2010.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new "Listen to My Life Mapping" Listening Group as well as two 3-Day Retreats of Silence for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

About Karen Mains:
Karen has written some 24 books (several of which were best-sellers), has a background in radio and television broadcasting, has been part of publishing teams, has taken journalism assignments around the world, is a national-prize-winning author, and is now exploring the science of Internet publishing.

This blog is a continuation of Blog 1-52, “The Enemy Despair—Part One.” I refer back to my book, Karen! Karen! where I write about my battle with depression earlier in my life.

There had been wispy thoughts of suicide that month—wouldn’t I be doing everyone a favor if life just ended?—which as yet hadn’t had a chance to possess me. Which would be the easiest and most painless way? These lingering vapors were only introductions to a hell through which I did not have to walk; but they fogged my mind as the blackness increased, until on some days it seemed an effort to breathe, despair had so polluted my inner air.

I hated myself for my ennui, for the dirty house, for the fact that no friends called or cared. Ugly, ugly, ugly be his name. Praise to me in my all-consuming ugliness. Think of Karen; dislike Karen. Adore this awfulness. Don’t lift your head; stay in bed today. If you struggle in this grasp you will only go deeper into the muck, the black February muck of winter.

It came with clarity and life—the thought from my husband’s sermon—he wants to destroy me. David was right, Satan’s desire is to destroy us.

Suddenly I could see the implications of my despair. The children’s lives could be ruined, their mother unresponsive to their needs and eventually resenting and hating their natural demands. Perhaps suicide, or huge psychological treatment expenses that would keep David from functioning in his ministry. It would ruin my parents if I died in this despair. The waves rippled on and on. Satan’s desire was to destroy me.

Something called to me at that moment of realization. I think its name was Love. It asked me to choose. Which did I care for most? children, husband, family, or the desperate wraith of my soul? The answer was obvious. But did I love them enough to struggle to preserve myself and them also? For the first time in my life, I consciously committed myself to spiritual warfare. I was determined that if there was power in Christ, I would find a way to escape the hold of the destroyer.

Recalling part two of David’s sermon, I realized it was my opportunity to overcome. My Christian background hadn’t counted as nothing in my life. As a child I had memorized I Corinthians 10:13:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

I knew the words of truth; my problem was how to experience them. 

I decided I would catch the enemy when he turned the handle on the door to my soul, rather than after he had dirtied the rooms with a few days’ sojourn. The worst thing about depression is it sets off dominoes of emotional traumas. It is like the back injury that causes pain to be felt in the neck although the ailment itself is located somewhere along the lower vertebrae. Helpless to discover the source of depression now that despair’s boa-embrace had severed my nerve endings, I resolved to stop everything the moment I heard the doorknobs jiggling.

When I sensed myself sinking lower than my normal moods, I would sit still and ask, “Now what is it that is causing me to feel this way? What has someone said that has discouraged me? or what have I said that I’m embarrassed about? Do I feel that David is too busy to give me attention? Am I really resentful? or am I physically exhausted and making more of things than they call for?”

I discovered that there was always a hook on which my adversary could hang his cloak.

Once the source of my growing uneasiness was discovered, it became a matter of refusing the enemy an entry. It became an intense battle to “stand firm.” It felt literally as though I were pressing my weight against a door while something heaved and shoved on the other side. I can remember fighting against giving way to my unhealthy feelings, sometimes for hours. “I refuse the power of the enemy,” I would whisper, teeth clenched. “I refuse to give in to this thing which he wants to use to destroy me.”

I would force myself to keep on functioning. Keep cleaning, keep working. Get out of the house, go to the beach, to the zoo. If you are tired, go to bed and sleep. Don’t allow yourself to brood; above all else, keep that door shut.

One morning, after several months of this off-and-on struggle, I had been in conflict for hours. Standing before the kitchen sink, tears streamed down my cheeks and dropped into the dishwater. I was weary with the heat of warfare, and certain I would go under without reinforcements.

“Oh, God,” I prayed, “I’m trying to refuse the power of the enemy in my life. I know he wants to destroy me. I have fought him over the last few months and all this morning. You have said you won’t let us go through anything you don’t think we are able to endure. I don’t think I can endure any more of this. David says your promise is your Presence. I can’t keep my back against this door anymore. If you don’t help me, I’m gone.” For a half-hour I repeated: Help me, please help me. Oh, help, God. Please help.

Soon I noticed that the door was at rest, the knob no longer turned, and when I peeked out, the black cloak had disappeared from the hook in the outer hallway.

By some insight of the Holy Spirit, some rare precognition, I knew that despair was gone for good. Though I had experienced depression in its minor and more severe forms for some eight years, I have never tasted it again since that day. It was the first evidence in my life of the practical, redemptive power of God, of His ability to deliver us from the teeth of temptation.

I was not so naïve as to think my responsibility for personal mental health was over. There were long-range life changes I had to effect. The process of building a whole person was about to begin; the armor of my self-image had huge holes that left me vulnerable to the enemy’s fiery darts. There was mending to do, rebuilding of the chain mail, a new insignia to be painted on my shield, a sword to be forged. Yet I knew the depression was gone, defeated by my Overlord. Instinctively, I was aware a battle lull had been provided for me to spend in preparation, garrisoning, and foraging for provender.

Many have been the lessons in knowing I’ve learned since that day; many have been the failures and successes. When I grow weary, my knees aching, my arms weary, when my vision seems blurred—I think back to the sink and my tears splashing in the water, back to my plea for God’s Presence, back to the instant knowledge that He had truly and finally vanquished my despair.

This buoys me, sustains me, lifts me up. It is my personal miracle of the Red Sea crossing, my water gushing from the rock, my pillar of fire by night. God’s promise is His Presence.

Karen Mains
KM1-53

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains, along with her husband, David Mains, leads Mainstay Ministries. Through their years in broadcasting, both radio and television, they also spoke internationally and between them have written dozens of books. Consequently, thousands look to them as spiritual coaches. Karen’s heart of compassion for those who are struggling and suffering has motivated her to look into her own life experiences and share what she has learned with those who need a word of encouragement. Through her writings, Karen continues to be a spiritual coach other Christian men and women.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
- Preparing to teach an eight-month mentor-writing course on writing personal memoirs.
- Promoting the Global Bag Project and hosting fundraising "Bag Parties."
- Training retreat leaders for future Silent Retreats.

One of the things that makes it hard for many of us to make it through the days is that old human enemy—despair or depression or a soul-souring discontent. Thinking about this made me turn to some writing I had done earlier in my life. Often I try to catch the pain when I am really in the pain. It’s just too easy, when life becomes beautiful again, to remember how bad the bad days were.

This from my book, Karen! Karen!:

Having heard my husband David’s sermon on temptation repeated numerous times, I could almost deliver it from hear myself. The text was from The Living Bible, 1 Peter 5:8. Be careful—watch out for attacks from Satan, your great enemy. He prowls around like a hungry, roaring lion, looking for some victim to tear apart. Stand firm when he attacks. Trust the Lord.

The sermon’s three points were simple enough: “1. Satan’s desire is to destroy you. 2. Your opportunity is to overcome. 3. God’s promise is His presence.” I had even edited his sermon manuscript into an article form.

It wasn’t until one long February (it is not the shortest month of the year for some of us) when the winter slush, the interminable gray Great Lakes skies overcast my own spirit for twenty-eight days, that I realized I was in some icy solstice of the soul, looking my adversary in the face. With a start, I realized—he did want to destroy me, and through my destruction wreak havoc in the lives of the children, and ultimately damage my husband’s vital ministry. His desire was to destroy me.

I can’t remember exactly when the depressions began, and by “depression” I mean a debilitating gloom of the psyche which renders one nonfunctional. I am not referring to vague feelings of discontent, or to having a lousy mood. I mean waking in the morning and barely being able to lift one’s head from a pillow, feeling the heavy hood of some medieval falconer blinding my soul’s eyes, his rope tethering my emotions. I mean facing the day with dread because the minor functions seem to be impossible. Making beds and doing dishes and combing one’s hair are vehicles for a confusing desperation. The made bed looks lumpy and welted, corrugated with wrinkles. The washed dish is spotted and sooted, the dishwasher slime. Combed hair is a web of cobstrands, dusty and lusterless. The mirror reveals splotches and ugliness.

Why try? Don’t do it again. Everything you turn your hand to is failure. You are a failure. Your very breath is stale, stale life.

There truly was a pit of darkness into which I was descending.

It seems amazing to me now to realize that my own husband and family were unaware of my descent. Yet unless one has experienced desperation, it is easy to overlook the symptoms in others.

When the mood had done its work, I was released, springing vitally into life, into the sweetness of each breathbeat, into the glow of the children’s eyes and the beauty of my husband, into the world of people and activities. The darkness was forgotten and I learned to keep the despair to myself, because I didn’t know how to speak of it, nor did I realize where it was tunneling.

Early in our marriage a pattern seemed to emerge. Married at 18 to a man seven years older, I stepped from the shelter of my family to the shelter of my husband. There was little time for balanced personality development; my adult maturity had to occur within the confines of our marriage, and within a few years my growing room was crowded by cumulative pregnancies and the responsibilities of child-rearing. I began to experience crying jags, inarticulate effusions of frustration that left my husband helpless and myself drained.

“I can’t do anything well!” I would weep. It was true; a little bit of this and a little bit of that, detours into crafts, but no discipline into art. Stepping from the refuge of my father’s home to the refuge of my husband’s, there had been no time to develop to develop specialties, and I lacked the personal fortitude to become anything’s master. This was an area of vulnerability of which the crafty prey-monger took note.

Through the years I began to experience periodic, though unpredictable, visitations. Something was gnarling my twentysomething-year-old being into ugliness. Admittedly, there was a part of me that loved these orgies of self-pity, so in a way I opened the door of my spirit to a malignant artist painting his meaningless impressions in my inner chambers. Seemingly without cause he would come, this lover of despair, stretching his stays from afternoons to days, until he embraced my soul for weeks before going. Finally on a desperate February day he wearied me fully, and somehow David’s words, which I had heard so often, broke through the clouded gloom.

To be continued … Blog 1-53. See how Karen applied her own husband’s sermons to a brutal battle with the enemy despair.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is a bestselling, nationally award-winning writer who is the Co-Director of Hungry Souls ministry. Consequently, Karen has become a spiritual coach to thousands who look to her work for its authenticity, passion and practicality. Right now, Karen is developing a template for a 3-Day Retreat of Silence, as well as working with a team to develop program for the training of retreat leaders for silent retreats.

Karen will also be teaching a mentor-writing-format teleconference course on "Personal Memoir Writing."

She also continues to be involved in Global Bag Project efforts, including hosting "Bag Parties."

I can remember the times in my life when I thought I never was going to laugh again. I can name various passages in my life when this suspicion has haunted me. The days were wearying; the nights were restless. Everything felt grim. The days were grey.

But guess what?—laughter always does come again. In time, on its own volition, it catches us unawares and despite the pain, despite the anguish, despite the feeling that life will never be the same, never again be normal, suddenly, unplanned, without our doing anything, a belly roll of laughter bubbles up from some archived spot in our soul. We throw back our head, we howl with delight, and we think, “Oh, my goodness, where did that come from?”

If you are having a hard time getting through the days, if you are suspecting that you will never laugh again, let me make a promise to you: Yes, you will. Yes, you will.

Laughter is where you least expect to find it.

After one of those niggling days where you come home concentrating on everything that’s gone wrong, I looked out into the yard. It was September and I had filled the birdfeeders. The garden seemed to be a flitter with wings, and birdsong, and chickadees rushing at the sunflower seeds. I’d broadcasted mixed birdseed so ground feeders, the doves and the flocking grackles were feeding on the earth—suddenly my heart lifted and I laughed. Comfort just erased the worries I’d been gnawing at, little worries, not the major heartaches, but ones that can ruin beautiful days and lovely moments. My heart just healed suddenly from that day’s aggravations, and I took a coffee cup out to a garden bench and watched the riot of feathered things racing through the trees and swooping to the feeders and calling across the acres to one another—Food here! Fresh birdseed! Last one out is a pokey birdling!

After a long season of sorrow, the major kind, I decided to fill my life with the kind of people I liked, people who knew how to play. And I was happy again, and we laughed together doing unimportant but life-giving things—cooking meals, canning peaches, going to movies.

After that same long season of unending stress and loss, a son said to me, “Oh, it’s just good to see you happy again!” I had forgotten that other people watch us, and gauge our happiness aptitude, and our sorrow or our joy rubs off on them.

Yesterday, I sat with a granddaughter who is reluctantly practicing her lessons. “Here,” I said. “Let me play with you. I’ve wanted to take up piano again. Let me see what I remember.” So we fingered the chords and figured the time—one, two, three; one, two, three … and the onerous piano lesson became a laughing place. And we raced through our scales—together—When the Saints Coming In and What the World Needs Now Is Love … and a couple upper-clef trials for some piece from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Definitely, I was laughing again. And my granddaughter was laughing so much she didn’t want to leave the piano when I was done.

So, if laughter seems far away, find the people for whom laughter is easy. Shamelessly ride on the coattails of those who delight in the ridiculous. Let the people who love you report to you on your happiness aptitude. Immerse yourself, completely and forgetfully, in some childlike activity—with a child. Laugh with them all—practice laughing again if you have to. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha (it works). Get down on the floor with a child (or on a piano bench). You won’t have to look for laughter. It will find you.

This is one of the things that will get you through the days.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen and a group of volunteers are putting together a 24-Hour Advent Retreat of Silence and planning the template as well as the retreat-leader training for 3-Day Retreats of Silence. Visit the Hungry Souls Web site for more information on the Silent Retreats.

Karen is also part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a microfinance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She is also continuing to developing both her Christian blog, Gettin' Thru the Day, as well as her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com. She is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing,” which will be posted on her site.

What if you could take a dose of medicine that would cure non-clinical depression, crankiness, anxiety, personality complaint disorders, feelings of deprivation, as well as love neuroses? Would you take it? Furthermore, if this medicine was free, had no negative side-effects, caused no drowsiness, did not interact dangerously with other medications, was safe for children, and could be used despite pre-existing diseases of the heart and thyroid, high blood pressure and diabetes, would you use it?

Then, what if you discovered that the cure affected by one dose had measurable impact, and that by taking daily doses, like vitamins, you could keep the cure working?

Is there such a wonder drug? There certainly is. It is called thanksgiving. Being grateful. Giving thanks. When I was a younger woman, with four small children, a husband who was an inner-city pastor, and insufficient funds to manage all this, I decided that my gratitude aptitude was deficient. So I spent three months journaling only prayers of thanks—no requests for those three months, no “gimme-gimme-gimmies”—just a growing list of things God had done for me that I added to each day. The phrase “all good gifts come from God and from Him are all things given” has become a breath prayer, begun long ago, that I repeat over and over. I find myself whispering it in my soul almost unconsciously.

What are the results of developing this “attitude of gratitude”?

The systematic study of positive emotions within psychology only began in the year 2000 due to the fact that this field was mainly focused on the negative impacts of distress. Since then, scientific research has gathered evidence from controlled studies indicating that grateful people experience higher levels of well-being. They are happier, less depressed, less stressed (were you aware that an estimated 90% of health problems doctors see are stress-related?). Grateful people are more satisfied with their lives and social connections. They feel as though they have greater control of their environments, they are more intentional about personal growth, have more purpose in their lives, can reach out for support from other people when they need to do so, and when hit by negative circumstances they can reinterpret and learn from them (this is called resilience, a substantial indicator of emotional and psychological health).

The list of proven impacts from giving thanks goes on and on, and is so lengthy we will end here (except to mention studies indicate that grateful people sleep better!).

As a personal observation, I will testify that the impact of practicing gratefulness was so tremendous on my personality, lifting me from the default position of the icky catalog in the first paragraph, that I have practiced it since every time I turn to work in my prayer journal, which except for rare occasions, is daily. I generally find at least a dozen things I’m grateful for each day. But more than a dutiful practice of developing a helpful habit, I find that now, after decades, there is an inner joy of giving thanks that seems to be going on inside me all the time that I notice only when I turn my attention inward. Perhaps this is what writer David Steindl-Rast, in his book Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, meant when he said, “Prayer is grateful living.”

So if you are really having trouble “gettin’ thru the day,” try thanksgiving. That lovely Scripture from the Psalms is short and sweet, easy to remember; “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalm 106:1b, NIV.

In order for gratefulness to have lasting effects, however, you will have to make gratitude an attitude—it can’t just be a one time dose that you take. Even pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors sometimes need a week or two to kick in before they have positive impact. Since it takes at least 30 days to break a bad habit as well as to make a good habit, begin by listing all the things you can find for which you are grateful. Try to add to your list every day. I promise, the practice of gratitude will help you defeat the demons that beset you.

Steindl-Rast talks about the person who does not believe in God. If you are in that category, please hear that gratefulness works for people like you just as it works for those who attempt to be devout believers. “Even people whose worldview does not include a divine Giver to whom their thanks can be directed often experience deep gratitude in those moments. They experience it no less strongly than others, even though their gratefulness gets mailed without an address, so to say. In any case, we know from experience that whenever we are truly awake and alive, we are also truly grateful.”

Gratefulness is a medicine that can help you make it through the days. And unlike sleeping pills, soporifics, it actually wakens the inner slumberer, the dormant sleeper, the inattentive snoozer missing the beauty in each moment and the meaning that is in all of living.

It is a medicine that, unlike some, goes down smoothly.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains is part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a microfinance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Furthermore, Karen is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com, in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published.

One of the worst things that happens to us when we are in pain is that we enter into a kind of isolation room that sometimes seems as though it has no door. Terrible things may happen to all kinds of people, but the pain we feel is our own, no matter how common it may be for others.

In our own pain, we are alone. And if we will let it, that pain will become the sole sucking-force of our being, turning our full attention, our active thoughts, the very meaning of who we are, toward its focus.

Our job is to not let that happen. Sometimes, things are so bad in ordinary life, we just barely make it through the day, but when the day is filled with terrible hurt, no matter what the cause, we now have the additional task added of not letting it consume us.

What makes this worse is that where as once we had a culture that was built on community and interaction, we now because of busyness, the technologies, and the distances we have to go to connect with friends are facing a culture that is being built to enhance isolation.

In an article by Janet Kornblum, USA Today reported that Americans have one-third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago. This is something of a seismic shift. “You usually don’t see that kind of big social change in a couple of decades,” reports Lynn Smith-Lovin, co-author of the study reported in American Sociological Review and professor of sociology at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them. By 2004, that number had dropped to two confidants, and the findings determined that consequently, 25% of Americans have no one in whom to confide.

Smith-Lovin explains, “Close relationships are a safety net. Whether it’s picking up a child or finding someone to help you out of the city in a hurricane, these are people we depend on.”   

The USA Today article makes the point that research has linked social isolation and loneliness to mental and physical illness. If that is the case, can we not also conclude that our mental and physical (and spiritual) health improve when we are socially connected and not living in isolating environments?

So, here’s the thought for this blog: Do not let pain isolate you completely. Do not let it swallow you into itself. Find one friend. Search out an old companion. Join a group. Volunteer where people are present. Put yourself into a happy (and healthy) social environment. Become a member of an accountability group or a recovery program. Just don’t face this terrible season of life by yourself. You can open the door in the isolation room. Don’t stay there so long that you begin to think it’s normal, or you begin to love it.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains, published author with a background in radio and television, has supervised more than 250 Listening Groups that provide a place for people to hear one another and be heard in turn. She leads women’s Retreats of Silence, is a spiritual coach to hundreds, and is the author of the best-selling Open Heart, Open Home, a book about using the home to alleviate the isolation in our culture.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Somehow, growing up, I totally missed the popular-music culture. “That’s your era, Mom,” a son will say to me. “Don’t you know who this is?”

No, I don’t know who it is. Between birthing and raising four babies, helping my husband plant an inner-city church in Chicago, taking young adults who needed a place to live into our home, and launching my own professional writer’s life, there simply wasn’t time to become an expert in pop music. Ask me about the civil-rights movement; ask me about the economics of poverty; ask me about building churches around the gifts of the laypeople or about creative worship philosophy; ask me about child-rearing theories; ask me what I read during my own young adult years (a lot); ask me about the mystical writers—I can hold my own on any of these topics. But truthfully, I wouldn’t know The White Album from Purple Rain.

Church music?—well, my father was head of the Music Department at Moody Bible Institute. It would be an understatement to say I was overexposed to sacred music. Classical music?—my husband and I have loved the world-class Chicago Symphony, and, when we have any money, have held season tickets. We enjoy the intimacy of chamber music and are supporters of the Orion Ensemble. We have profited mightily on long car-drives, listening to CD’s from The Learning Company; right now, we’re playing The History of Classical Music.

Finally, in my sixties, I am attempting to rectify my pop-music ignorance by listening to “Greatest Hits” and “Best of” albums. Recently, I’ve enjoyed Van Morrison’s Still on Top. In fact, this Sunday on the way to church, I was captivated with the seeming religious progression of his lyrics. The album begins with Gloria, Here Comes the Night, Brown-Eyed Girl, then eventually progresses to In the Garden with its amazing invocation of praise to the Trinity. What caught my attention most, however, perhaps because I have been thinking about this blog, was Stranded.

The writer is “stranded at the edge of the world,” and this is a succinct expression of the ennui so many feel caught in the “hustle and hustle” of modern life. We don’t know where we are or why, there’s no one to “give us the time of day,” and “every day, every day” we’re stranded.

All great artists, and Van Morrison’s biography seems to indicate that he is considered to be a truly great artist, voice the inner anguish and distress of our common humanity. This is one reason I need to listen to their music: What are these people saying? For whom are they speaking?

You may be one of those folks who is having trouble “just getting through the day.” If so, think about this (a thought that has been deeply medicinal to my soul during rough passages—really rough passages): There is nothing you have experienced that literally hundreds of thousands haven’t experienced before you. This thought doesn’t trivialize my anguish; instead, it comforts me. While being stranded at the edge of the world, between “the devil and the deep blue sea,” I am not alone. Others are familiar with this pain, this cessation of desire, this lostness.

Not only is there comfort in misery, but hundreds of thousands of others have found a way through the desert, through the wilderness, through the vacant lots, through the sour soil of living. Listen to the music and you will find this thread.

Morrison, on this one album, takes us through “the dark night of the soul” in Tore Down a la Rimbaud, to “can’t stand up by myself; don’t you know I need your help” in Real Real Gone, and to the lyrical moment of recovery, of finding one’s self again in The Healing Game—“Here I am again, back where I belong … back in the healing game.”

All great artists face periods when the music stops, the words go, the inner vision is blackened, the math no longer makes sense. Van "The Man" Morrison, the mystical, the magical, searching ever for “a certain quality of soul,” has known them well.

Once, at a younger time in my life, when I had exhausted myself and was real, real gone, I listened over and over, for six months, to the music of Chopin, until finally I was back in the healing game, inner-city ministry. Perhaps if you’re in one of the stranded places, at the edge, the precipice, with nowhere to go, your soul will find some peace in the music of those who know, have been there, and can sing forth that message of comfort in commonality.

We have been where you are; we have survived. Life is good again. Stay with us.

Karen Mains
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Karen Mains is the Co-Director, with her husband, Dr. David R. Mains, of Mainstay Ministries. She leads silent retreats, is a spiritual coach to thousands who have followed the Mains’ ministry through radio and television broadcasting and their writings. Karen is the award-winning author of the “Tales of the Kingdom” Trilogy, and is now crucially involved in a team that is creating a microfinance for women project in Kenya.

This blog is about—guess what?—getting through the day.

I ask people, “How ya’ doing?” And so often I hear the same response. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day,” people answer. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day.”

Believe me, I know where these folks are coming from. In some circumstances, getting through the day is almost more than any of us can do.

However, at my age (67), I’ve learned a few lessons and have advanced, for the most part, from “jes’ gettin’ thru the day” to attempting to live each day as though it is a minor work of art (some days are major works of art). And yep, some days are just plain blah!—but not many, not many at all.

After years of being in ministry, and after conversation with friends who are on local church staffs, we concluded that some 80% of the people in congregations are facing problems too big for them to handle. For these people, getting through the day is a major undertaking.

Perhaps, some of the things I’ve learned and am still learning, some of the things I’m facing and will face, and some of the life lessons I’m activating, will help that 80% who just don’t know how they’ll make it from day’s beginning to night’s end, not to mention the nights in between.

The first thing I know—I positively know—and have taught to my children, all of whom are adults now and married with children of their own, is that we all have a choice. We can make this a good day or a bad day. We can make it a good life or a bad life.

“Look,” I’ve said umpteen times during the child-raising years. “You have a choice. You can choose to make this a bad day or you can choose to make it a good day.”

As hard as this may seem for those facing horrendous situations, this is a basic interior attitude over which we do have control—we don’t have control over most of the bad things, minor and major, that happen to us. We do have control over how we will respond to it.

If you’re part of the 80% just getting through the day, how are you going to make it a good day, despite the circumstances? Do you want to choose to make it a good day? Or are you going to let all the woes, the worries, the injustices rob and cheat you of a good day and a good life?

Love to hear how some of you defeat the darkness on this most personal of levels—choosing to make it a good day.

Karen Mains
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Karen Mains is a national-award-winning author of more than 26 books. She is involved right now in helping to create a microfinance women’s pilot project in Kenya—the Global Bag Project, which seeks to sell reusable shopping bags made to provide sustainable income to help bag-makers around the world lift themselves from poverty. Her book about the refugee crisis in the world, The Fragile Curtain, won the 1982 Christopher Medal, which is awarded to works that uphold the highest values of the human spirit.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Also, Karen is preparing for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreat, which is still open for registration (see the Hungry Souls Web site for more information; click "Retreats of Silence").
 

Yesterday morning, I and my grandson, Elias John Mains, skipped church. It was an exquisite September day, the ground kissed with early light; David, my husband, is overseas in Kenya. A busy week had prevented me from making time for my seasonal gathering—clipping tall swamp grass, beaded dock and fuzzy cattails that I combine with artificial sunflowers from Hobby Lobby and realistic-looking but plastic pumpkins for the arrangement on my front porch.

It’s all too easy to cram grandkids into our adult schedules and something told me that the holiest way I could pass this morning with this grandchild was to go out into the fields and gather—Elias is delighted with the natural world. “Let’s go clip cattails,” I said.

“Oh, Nina,” he said. “I love cattails!”

So we did. We found stands of tall grass, clipped enough to fill the natural wood basket I had hauled home one year from West Virginia. We found the cattail pond, stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast, then parked our car to take a walk down the Prairie Path—the old Chicago, Aurora & Elgin train line that has now been turned into a pedestrian path for strollers and joggers (and for bikers and for the few horseback riders who still exist in our area). We brought the hand-clippers and began snipping enough late summer weeds, some blooming and some past bloom, sections of curling vines and interesting branchets—field daisies, rose hips, all wild things happily living their cycle of life out in the proper season of life.

These all were for a bouquet—Elias pronounced the T. After several false pronunciations, I corrected him and explained that bouquet was a French word and in France, the consonant at the end of the world was not pronounced. “We have a lot of foreign words in our language because people have brought their words with them when they came to America,” I explained. “We think they are English words, and sometimes we speak them in English ways, but we have become so used to them we forget that they are not really English words.”

“Oh, like placate,” Elias responded. He had been studying Julius Caesar in school. “Yes, that is a Latin word, and in Latin, it would be pronounced pla-ca-te,” I explained. Who could have imagined that this walking in the exquisite morning world would have included a discussion on etymology with a nine-year old? This is why I love spending time with children; they are always so much smarter then we think they are.

We watched a flock of Canada geese fly overhead and form a V-wedge. We noticed grasshoppers hopping in the sunshine. We clipped enough for two bouquets (pronounced the French way now)—one large bouquet and one smaller. Elias is a chatterbox with many intriguing thoughts bouncing around in his mind—a startling good mind. So, I love to get him alone, relaxed, and without distractions. I never quite know where our conversations are going to go. Tracing our way back the Prairie Path, he slipped his hand into mine and we carefully watched for bikers who were now more frequent as the day aged. “Biker behind us,” Elias warned. “I saw a flash of metal.”

When we returned home we went to the back patio and arranged the larger plants in the earthenware jug and the smaller in the Chinese teapot—Elias took joy in filling the containers, and I slipped in some late summer roses from my garden.

“They look good, don’t they Nina?” Yes, indeed. Our hodgepodge of late summer cuttings looked great. I hoped I would have time to gather a larger, more spectacular group sometime in the week. “You know, Elias. Everything God has made is beautiful in its own way.” And that is true for those who have eyes to see, who take the time to attend, and who care to step in the rhythm of life, each season at its turning, each month in its appropriate calendar place, each week, each day—morning, noon and evening.

Each creature—animal or plant or human—is beautiful in its own created way.

I am a person who finds the Presence of God in the natural world. I am enthralled, filled with awe, full of praise in my garden, at the seaside, before a grand mountain and walking along the Prairie Path in Illinois with a nine-year-old grandson’s hand in mine.

It is beautiful.

Come to this dance that is life, join in the steps, join hands with others who walk beside you and sing the praises of the One who teaches us the steps. (And if you can, take a child’s hand as you do.)

    I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
    And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
    And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth
    —at Bethlehem I had my birth.
   
    Dance, then, wherever you may be.
    I am the Lord of the Dance said he,
    And I lead you all, wherever you may be
    And I lead you all in the dance, said he.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Ken Medema, the Christian musician, is blind. When I heard him sing this song decades ago, I was moved by the meaning of the text. I am still moved. I hope this dancing metaphor has stimulated strong images and associations for you. Today, please consider the question: Who is it who is extending the invitation to you to dance?

    She asked me to dance and I’d never tried dancing before.
    I had visions of everyone laughin’ us right off the floor.
    No, I protested, it just wouldn’t be any good.
    She gently insisted and finally I told her I would.

    Unforgettable, she was a fresh breath of Spring on a cold winter’s day.
    Unforgettable, she taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

    Well, he asked me to dance and I’d never tried dancing before.
    I had visions of saints and angels laughin’ us right off the floor.
    No, I protested, it just wouldn’t be any good.
    He gently insisted, and finally I told him I would.
   
    Unforgettable, well, He was the coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day.
    Unforgettable, for He taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

    The coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day…
    taught me to sing in a whole new way…

There is a moment in every Christian journey when the reality of Who is extending this invitation just hits us between the eyes. This One wants us to be in step with Him—not just pacing to theological formulations and ecclesiastical schedules. He holds us and there is rhythm in the motion, laughter in the pure joy of stepping together, love in His eyes.

I hope, if you have not, that you will reach that reality soon. Someone has extended a hand to you.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “Wannabe (Better) Writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

The film Signs, starring Mel Gibson, is a profound meditation on the loss of faith. Employing the plot device of an alien invasion (not my favorite narrative arc), the story looks at the Hess family, which has been shaken by the brutal accidental death of its mother and wife.

Graham Hess, the father, an Episcopalian priest, has forsaken his calling and no longer believes, but the alien visitation forces him to look at issues from God’s perspective. The one scene in the film I find breathtaking is where the Hess family spends a night of terror in their boarded up farmhouse. When the attic is breached by an advance alien contingent, the family of father, uncle and two children retreat to the basement. This trauma sets off a severe asthma attack in Morgan, the son. The father holds his son, the child’s lungs swelling as he struggles for breath and life. “Breathe with me,” the father says. In and out, in and out, they labor for breath together. “Don’t be afraid, Morgan. Breathe with me. You and I are the same. Together, breathe with me.”

If you haven’t already seen this already, you need to rent this video.

During a time when I was meditating on Christ’s words from John 15:4, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you,” I thought about the Apostle John with his head on Christ’s breast during the Last Supper. When your head is that close to the body of another person, you can hear the heartbeat, feel the pulse; you are aware of breath being inhaled and exhaled.

I realized that when I pray, I should be resting my head against the breast of this One. I should hear the heartbeat, feel the feathery aspiration on my face. Not only this, I remembered Christ’s words from John 14:20, “I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” When my head is on the breast of Christ (through meditation and prayer), my being tucked within His embrace, Christ’s head is also on the breast of God. The Son is enfolded within the embrace of the Father, and I within the embrace of the Son. Breathe, they say to me through the Holy Spirit. And in prayer we breathe together; in and out, in and out. You and I are the same. Don’t be afraid. Together. Breathe with me.

Sometimes life strikes blows. Terrors over which I have no control torment me. I fight for enough air. If I can just remember this sacred rhythm, one so subtle it is easy to forget, but if I can just remember to become one with Christ who is one with God, then it is as easy as breathing in and out, in and out. I have moved into the heart of the perichoresis koinonia, the theological term that infers that the Trinity is a fellowship of Three Holy Dancers; we have moved into the deepest part of the sacred Dance, where God is.

Karen Mains
KM1-44

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “Wannabe (Better) Writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Falling asleep each night has been called “the little death.” In a way, we practice for the final death that will eventually beckon to us all. Night after night we give ourselves to God and relinquish the failures and successes, the frustrations and delights of each day into His hands. The childlike prayer many of us once prayed holds profound meaning despite its simplicity:

Each night before we fall asleep we should prepare our souls to meet God. We tuck away the cares and concerns of the day and, like Christ, we find ways to pray, “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit.”

I have noticed that when I put my soul to bed each night (in contrast to watching videos, reading secular books in bed, or just flopping down exhausted) my rest is more tranquil. If I wake, I wake in prayer. Then I even slip into morning prayer more naturally. It is a 24-hour cycle I fight to establish and maintain.

Arthur Paul Boers writes in The Rhythm of God’s Grace, “Evening prayer is a small death; we surrender ourselves into God’s hands. The morning is a small rebirth and resurrection. We often give thanks for a new day and its opportunities. This dying and rising is relived in each daily cycle. Thus, as we observe the morning and evening rhythm, we also have opportunity to live deeply and enter into the most basic and important truths of our faith.”

A book of Daily Offices, or fixed-hour prayers, helps us establish this evening/morning rhythm. I love this nighttime prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps it will be useful to you this evening.

“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels and saints charge over those who sleep. Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Shield Your joyous ones, and all for your love’s sake. Amen”

Rest well tonight, beloved ones. Learn the sleep cycle practice of putting your soul to bed with God.

Karen Mains
KM1-43

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.