Sacrificial Rams

Last night in our study/service, we watched the second session of The Story, which dealt with Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah.  In the course of the video and discussion following, I realized something that I had never realized before.

In Genesis 22, Abraham is told, "...take your son, your only son, Isaac..." and go to Mt Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering to God. 

Wait, what? Isaac was NOT Abraham's only son.  Oh, yes, he was Abraham's only son with Sarah...but he had another son.  A firstborn son.  With Hagar.  Remember Ishmael?  You know, the one that was born AFTER Sarai gave her servant Hagar to Abram?  You know, Hagar, the one who Sarai then dealt harshly with after Ishmael was conceived?  Who left, then went back, and then was sent away with her child?  You know, Ishmael, who got the bulk of the inheritance circumcised at 13 (ouch!) and then after being sent away was laying under a bush in the wilderness where his mother put him to die, until God showed her more water so they didn't die in the wilderness?

It didn't please Abraham to put Ishmael out.  God told him to do what Sarah said (happy wife, happy life to the extreme???).

So here we are, back to Mt Moriah and the almost-burnt-offering of Isaac.  Abraham is told to take his only son to the mountain. Those of us who know the story, know that THE ANGEL OF THE LORD showed Abraham a ram caught in the bush AS HE HAD HIS HANDS IN THE AIR ABOUT TO BRING THE KNIFE DOWN AND KILL HIS SON.  So he didn't have to sacrifice his son.

But Abraham had, in effect, already sacrificed his first son, Ishmael - to the elements, to the kindness of strangers.

What do we deny because it's convenient for us?  You KNOW that Abraham could have kept Hagar and Ishmael around, but Sarah would have made his life miserable (yes, more miserable than  being circumcised at the age of 99).  What do we do wrong, then make others suffer the consequences of our choices? Sarai did not have to give Hagar to Abram - but when Hagar got pregnant, Sarai didn't want her around - even though it was HER FAULT (yes, yes, Abram could have said no - but then there's that whole saying no to Sarai/Sarah thing).

We are not asked to take our children to the mountain to give them up as burnt offering.  But there are things we are called to sacrifice.  Are we as willing to give up what we love, what we cherish, as we are willing to give up the things that are inconvenient?

New Normals

So remember that time I fell down back in June?  No?  Well, I do.  When last I wrote typed I had just gotten a splint - and a bad haircut. 

Splint didn't work.  Cortisone shot didn't work.  Third haircut did work. ;)  End of Oct, after almost 3 months in a brace, I had surgery on my wrist to cut the sheath around the tendon to the thumb.

Not going to go into all the gory details.  Let's just say that the brace has been off for 2 weeks and I'm starting to get my hand back...I think.  I don't know.  I've never had this kind of surgery before.  I've never had my hand and wrist immobilized for four and a half months before.  So I can't close my hand into a fist yet - and I can't squeeze a stress ball much (although I'm doing better than the first day that I tried) - and I can't really cut my meat yet - but I can butter bread and put cheesespread on a cracker.  My hand and the knuckles on all my fingers are swollen.  I can't carry a laundry basket upstairs, but I can use my good hand to drag it done, and can use both hands to handle the clothes.  I can fold clothes, and turn a doorknob. Hal had to put up our Christmas trees (yes, that's plural) and take boxes up and down the stairs, and a friend helped me decorate. 

What I'm saying is this:  if you know me at all, you know I'm not a patient person.  Ok, that may be an understatement.  I want "normal" - and I want it NOW YESTERDAY!  I am, though, learning to accept small advances instead of trying to force normal. 

That's so hard to do, isn't it?  We want to force things to be the way we want them to be - the way we are used to them being.  Sometimes we try so hard to do things that we don't allow healing.  Whether physical or emotional, we need to allow time to heal wounds before we move on to the new.

I lost my uncle yesterday.  Two of the people in our church lost family members on Christmas Eve, and a friend lost her grandmother on Christmas Day.  Just as my hand needs time to heal, so do my family and friends.  We think we'll not ever be normal again, that things we did with those loved ones will never be the same.  And we're right - things won't be the same.  But normal will come again.

My hand may never be the same, but as time goes I'll be able to do normal things - either with it, or I'll learn to use my left hand. 

Our lives are never the same after the loss of a loved one, but life will become "normal" again.  It must.  It will be a "new normal" - a different normal - that is, we will still feel the loss, but the memories will live on.  Rest in peace, Uncle Bruce; Rest in peace, David and Jon; Rest in peace, Wilma.  We will miss you, and we will see you again someday.

Hair today...

I hate getting my hair cut.  With a passion.  I don't know that I have ever had a cut that makes me happy, which is why I wear my hair long - I can not worry about how it looks.  Braids, buns, pony tails, or just loose.  And I love it.

Back in NJ, one time, I asked for my hair to be short, but not so short that they had to shave the little pointy areas that come down the back of my neck.  What did I get?  My hair so short that they SHOULD HAVE shaved the little pointy areas, but didn't. An inch of pointy hair stuck out - and didn't look good.  Once, I asked for just a trim.  Just a trim.  JUST.A.TRIM.  And the hairdresser cut TWO.FREAKING.INCHES off of my shoulder-length hair.

So remember that time a couple of months ago that I fell down, went boom splat?  Finally, after 2 1/2 months, xrays, being told my wrist wasn't broken and I should just live with it, I got to an orthopedic doctor.  Same one I ended up with my dislocated shoulder (same arm).  I have DeQuervain's Tendonitis.  So I'm in a brace that immobilizes my thumb.  No opposable thumb on my dominant hand.  Needless to say, really hard to braid, bun, or pony long hair with only one usable hand.  So I go to get my hair cut where I've gone before.  Except the stylist I've gone to is no longer there.  I show my brace, tell her I need it short enough to finger-comb, that she's the expert at what she does, and that I really just don't want to look like a man.  She repeatedly asked if I would be mad (my hair was past my shoulders) - I repeatedly told her that I could not care for my long hair and needed it short.  Repeat.ed.LY.  She tells me SPECIFICALLY that she won't make me look like the guy from the Three Stooges.  Seriously.  Then she makes me look EXACTLY like Moe Howard.  I guess she meant she wouldn't make me look like Curly.  She asked me what I thought.  I told her that I wanted some more layers above my ears.  She told me that she couldn't do that.  I cringed inwardly.  And, like the well-trained, polite woman doormat that I am, I not only paid full price but tipped her.  And then I went, 1 1/2 weeks later, I went to a different salon and asked for a cut to fix the cut.  I explained what I needed, explained why I was unhappy with their competitor's work, and asked for help.  Shown a pixie cut, I said, "YES!!  I couldn't remember what to call it, but that's exactly what I had asked for!" - and proceeded to get a pixie cut - which I am mostly happy with...except that one side is 1/2 - 3/4" longer than the other.  Why???  For the love of Mike (who is Mike, and why do we love him???), WHY?  And, again, I paid and tipped.  So in a couple of weeks, I will probably be looking for the third cut to fix the bad cuts.

Maybe I need to be less critical of how I look with short hair.  Maybe I need to find someone who knows how to listen better.  Maybe I just need to shave it all off and start over...

We all Fall Down

Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I fell a week ago today.  I stepped on a small rock/piece of gravel, my foot rolled out from under me, and I fell.  Hard.  On my right knee (thankfully, on the knee that is already giving me problems, so I still have one good knee!).  Also on the heel of my hands; even though I know from karate that I should fall onto my forearms, I put out my hands instead.  I let out a little "ugh!" when I fell.  I knew that I was ok, but not ok.  I knew I needed to get out of the road, but I was enough on the side of the road that I really didn't want to move for a few minutes.  I wanted to wiggle toes and see if I had done more serious damage than I had.  My husband came to my side, got the ice that I asked for, and the people whose home we were in front of, on our way to get some information, came out and helped as well.  I got to the grass, laid my head on a cushion that happened to be in the car, and had my knee cleaned and bandaged.  Hal continues to clean it and dress it, because I can't reach it well am really useless with gross stuff. 

All it took was a small rock.  Not big enough to notice outright, but big enough to trip me up and lay me low.  A stumbling block, if you would.  Don't we all have stumbling blocks in our lives?  Some are physical, as mine was - addiction, sexual misbehavior.  Some are situational - the loss of a job, a promotion going to a lesser qualified (at least in our eyes) colleague, failing a class.  Some are temptations, things or ideas that get between us and God.  Food, shopping, alcohol...oh, just one more piece of pie...just one more drink...I NEED this new pair of shoes Incidentally, I was wearing a new pair of shoes when I fell - I told Hal to take them off my feet and THROW THEM OUT - thankfully he didn't (but they are still in the car).  It was not the shoes, after all, that caused my fall. But I was looking for something to blame, aside from my inability to watch where I was walking. 

Don't we all?  It's not MY fault that I weigh more than I did 10 years ago, it's those darn cookies.  It's not YOUR fault that you lost your temper, he made you mad.  And so rather than be on the lookout for those stones along the way, rather than land on our forearms so we can get up more easily, we look for scapegoats - like my cute new shoes - and eliminate them rather than get to the real problem.  And we fall again, and place blame elsewhere again, and...well, you get the point.

My knee is healing well.  My pride - yeah, that is healing too.  But I should not have fallen in the first place.  None of us should.  Let us look around at those things that make us stumble.  Let us keep our eyes on our path - not downcast, just alert.  Let us step well, let us step firmly, and let us step on solid ground.

Have You Been to St. Ives?

Remember the old rhyme/riddle about St. Ives?  "As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives.  Every wife had seven sacks; every sack had seven cats, every cat had seven kits.  Kits, cats, Saxon wives sacks, and wives, how many were going to St. Ives?"

We were asked this in a class in elementary school.  So, I did the math.  (One of the few instances, in fact, where "doing the math" involves actual calculations.  You know, like, "So, I'm working in the restaurant, and Joey comes in with Anna Maria, and he pulls out a box, and he gets down on one knee, and she starts crying and nodding yes - well, you do the math" - see, no math involved)

And when I said that there were 2800 going to St. Ives, 2802 if you count your self and the man (because the riddle leaves out the man and the person speaking), I was told that I was wrong.  Because, you see, I was going to St. Ives, and I MET the others as I PASSED them on the road as they were coming BACK from St. Ives.  And I looked at the teacher, and argued about it.  Because that's who I was.  I have always questioned authority.  Now frankly, if I was carrying 7 sacks with 49 cats and 343 kits, as were the other 6 women I was with, we would have been walking slower than one person who was not as encumbered.  Logically, they could have passed us, walking in the same direction, because they were quicker than we were, and they could have met us as they passed us.  Or at a bistro (or rest stop).  The teacher was not pleased with my argument.  I think I saw my first adult facepalm.  The discussion, as I recall, was cut short .  Maybe I just shut down because I was told I was wrong, when, in fact, I was merely thinking outside the box and not giving the expected answer. 

Don't we do that a lot?  We're no longer encouraged to think for ourselves, rather to spew back "expected" answers.  Not just in education situations, but in the workplace, in political dealings, in personal relationships.  We're expected to fit into neat little boxes, where we can stay as long as we like, as long as we please the one who puts the box parameters in place.  It's when we begin to question, when we begin to seek alternatives, when we begin to question the status quo, that we are shamed, as that teacher tried to shame me, into leaving the box.  And that may not be a bad thing. 

It's messy outside the box.  Sometimes a little scary, too.  Outside, though, is where we are best able to find our own parameters, where we can test our ideas and see which work and which don't.  Where we encounter those who, like us, question "expected" answers.  I am thankful for people who have thought outside the box before me, and hope that I still have enough rebel in me to question things that make no sense - or, that make sense in more than one way.  Because, as my husband frequently tells our my felines, there's more than one way to skin a cat.  Let us always look for the unexpected.

(Anti-) Social Media

Yesterday I went off Facebook.  And what did I do?  Finished (except for mugs, music, and movies) putting away Christmas.  Finally.  And my snowmen (which is what I put out when I take Christmas stuff down, because the house is too empty with NOTHING there).  Stacked the boxes downstairs.  Moved nativities to the empty spot on the mantle, rearranged them til I got them how I like them.  Emptied another box in the room from hades craft room/library.  Handled a phone call or two.  Visited with someone for an hour (SOCIAL non-media).  Shopped (didn't buy anything, just shopped).  Put gas in the car ('cause I don't live in Jersey anymore).  Napped.  Did another 20 rows on a baby blanket I've been working on (which leaves me with16 rows and some trim stitching, before I do the next blanket).  Finished a book I've been reading (Jen Hatmaker's 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess) and started another book (Chris Seay's A place at the Table:  40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor).  Talked about what's going on in the world with my husband.  Laughed with my husband.  Groaned over silly jokes with my husband (him over mine, me over his).  Written this blog post (my first in over 6 months), because I'm not writing in snippets.

Thoughts on Hatmaker's book - some of the things she did and wrote about, I've done.  Perhaps not for the reasons that she did.  It strikes me that she comes at this from a place of privilege, and I don't begrudge her that.  I applaud that she realized that she was being called to this.  Please understand that.  But I grew up below the poverty level, and she spent the last days of her experiment on her parents' 300+ acre ranch.  So yeah, we don't all have the ability to hang out on Mom & Dad's ranch. I've done the October Dress Project 2 years now, and given away excess clothing...twice...and yes, have purchased more, and also have more to give away.  I don't think I'll ever get to 7 items (not counting underwear, as she said) - or be like the character in Not a Fan who gave up all his clothing except a few items.  But I am conscious of what I wear and what I buy.  I shop at thrift stores because it was instilled in me early that I'm not too good to have another person's cast-off clothes (I was, after all, the youngest of 4, with 2 older sisters) or other belongings.  For Pete's sake (who is Pete, and why do we do things for his sake?), I see my grandchildren once or twice a year, and am not going to spend ridiculous amounts of money on toys they will outgrow before they play with it ten times.  My "fine china"?  The 50 cents a piece with a $5 purchase at Foodtown (mind you, Hal has purchased some of the serving pieces, which were NOT 50 cents a piece).   As for food, Hal and I garden and can, make real homemade soup, bake, etc.  I know that I have things that have too many items with the wrong (read: chemical) ingredients in them; we're trying to phase those items out.  Could I live with only 7 food items for a month?  Probably.  But I won't.  I could go on and on about the other chapters...but I won't do that, either (at least not in this blog post - perhaps in a later post).  Here's the thing.  I would rather make lifestyle choices that stick, rather than do without something for a short period of time, knowing that I will be able to go right back to where I was.  If a month of something gives one the ability to go somewhere in the middle, that's great for them.  But it's not for me.  I've tried that.  Depriving myself, makes me want things more.  So, my mutiny against excess has been, and will continue to be, the other way - looking at what I have, what I use, and what I can do without, and giving those items away.  Looking at the things I'm putting in my shopping cart, and putting them back on the shelf because I really don't need them, regardless of how inexpensive or attractive they may be.  Using my funds to support companies, ministries, and people that work towards what I work towards, and not giving my funds to those that work against what I work towards. 

Overall, would I recommend Hatmaker's book?  Yes, if you want to see how one family dealt with living with less, and living more intentionally.  I would also recommend Kyle Idleman's Not a Fan. 

And yes, I'm posting this to my Facebook page.  But comment here, because I'm not reading comments on FB.

Stories for Another Day, part ? - My Great-grandfather, the Scoundrel

So...I don't remember if today's "Story for Another Day" is part 1 or 2.  But it comes from my Memorial Day post from 2010, so long overdue.

My great-grandfather John Salter came from Liverpool.  We don't know much about his life in England, except that he served in the military.  We also know that he had a wife, and, from what we understand, children.  We know that he and his brother came to the US in the late 1800's to find their way in this fledgling country.  We know nothing about his brother after that point.  We know that our great-grandfather went back to Liverpool, as he had found a place to settle.  He went back to bring his wife and family here.  From our understanding, she wanted nothing to do with coming here. 

So my great-grandfather stayed in Liverpool with his wife and children and lived happily ever after left his family, came back to this country, married my great-grandmother, had 7 more children that we know of.  Four grew to old age - my grandfather, John Kenneth Salter, his brother, Warren, and sisters Ruth and Ena (who we always knew as Auntie).  Three children did not live past early childhood.  Louis and Earl died fairly young.  My grandfather was born a twin; his twin sister was stillborn, and my grandfather weighed less than 3 pounds - in 1896 - before neonatal units.  Always wondered what a female version of my grandfather would have looked like.  Always marveled at how close I came to not being here - if my grandfather had been stillborn, or if he, like two of his brothers, had not survived infancy...

But I digress.  I am the great-granddaughter of a rogue and scoundrel.  There.  I said it.