Lines in Pleasant Places

PSA: Few things are happier than a freshly walked Sunday with her head stuck out of the car window. Also, somehow it took me 25 years to discover how much a hot, thirsty dog can slobber.

Episode Let’s Take a Drive Just for Fun, featuring Sunday, AKA the slobberiest, friendliest black mutt

In other news, my new glasses came in today. I decided that, for the rest of my glasses-wearing life (so, potentially forever, unless someone wants to sponsor my LASIK surgery), I’ll probably get brightly colored frames.

As I told Curtis (he’s very wonderful), “People usually assume that if you have colorful glasses, you’re a little weird. And I’m a little weird. So why would I mind people knowing?”

In which I realize that my two front teeth are not exactly the same size—and now you’re looking. But mostly, THE NEW FRAMES WOOT WOOT

On a less newsy note, I’ve been thinking a lot about Psalm 16:6 lately: “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

Boundary lines determine a lot. Where you can go, and where you can’t. Where it’s safe and where it’s not. Often, boundary lines are marked by fences that keep the good in and the bad out. They can mean a lot of other things for us too—where we live, what we do, how we spend our free time, even what happens to us outside our control—some things that we see as positive, others that we see as negative. But at the end of the day, whether we view them as beneficial or annoying, boundary lines exist for each of us.

And that’s good.

A life lived without boundaries is a life headed toward disaster, like a car careening off the edge of a narrow mountain road with no guardrails. It’s natural for us to want our boundary lines drawn in easy places. We’re happy to keep the rules if they’re not hard, and we’re glad to go through something as long as it’s not too challenging.

But as I’ve thought about it, I’ve realized that perhaps that’s the wrong view. The space inside my boundary lines may be pleasant, but that doesn’t mean it will always be easy—but after all, the lines are there to keep me safe, whether or not I understand them.

The sheep might want the greener grass on the other side of the fence, but the wolf on the other side would make a quick dinner of them the minute their hooves hit the ground on the far side. My boundary lines may fall in pleasant places (they certainly have) and I’ll have a delightful inheritance, but there’s no promise that life will be easy inside the lines. And sometimes, it’s really not.

But there’s eternal safety and a delightful inheritance in store, so even when the boundary lines are hard, living in them is worth it.

Pure Gold

After what feels like 250 days of winter, summer has finally arrived in northern-ish Michigan. The good news is, between biking, swimming, and getting caught up after eight months of vitamin D deficiency, there’s not much time for boring things like chores.

There is no bad news. Summer in Michigan is pure gold.

Possibly the best news here is that I HAVE A BIKING BUDDY.

Sitting in the Parking Lot

I go places with Curtis (he’s very wonderful) just so we can have the car ride together—then, when we arrive and he has responsibilities or chores, I sit in the car and read or write.

Last night, I sat in our Jeep and wrote, talked on the phone, and watched the sun set. When people see you sitting in the car with the windows open in a nearly empty parking lot, they all have the same response: they stare. Something about being in the car makes people assume maybe you can’t see them watching you.

Sometimes, I stared back. Sometimes, I pretended not to look.

Social interaction code is interesting. You can look at people, but only if they don’t realize it. If they do realize it, you have to look away quickly or pretend to be looking at something else. Somewhere along the way it became rude to look at people, even though at their core, all people really want is to be seen.

Epsom Salts and Cat Urine

I’m sure you’ve already guessed that this is going to be a good one. And you’re not wrong.

As I previously mentioned, our cat Brave had kittens a few months ago. Adorable, curious, and playful, the kittens are a treat to have around. However, I don’t want to be the proud owner of eight cats, so we’ve been giving them to friends. And, to curb any future eight-cat possibilities, we scheduled an appointment for Brave to get spayed on Monday.

That’s how it all started.

Early Monday morning, we drove 45 minutes to bring Brave to the vet. On the way home we got gas, coffee, and donuts. When we got home, it turned into spring cleaning for the animals. We cleaned out Sunday’s crate and the cat bed, and washed the blankets. But our productivity screeched to a halt when Scout (our tomcat) came limping into the yard on three legs.

Whining grumpily, he sat down in the driveway. One of his back paws was swollen into a useless club. After a brief examination, discussion, and google search, we decided that epsom salts would be the best solution. We fed him copious amounts of food, prepared some warm epsom salt water, and put his back leg into the saltwater.

If you’ve never tried to put any part of an angry, injured tomcat into any type of water, I have two suggestions for you: First, just don’t. Second. Really, just don’t.

After an extended period of hissing, squirming, and caterwauling, he finally realized his efforts to escape were futile, and settled into Curtis’ arms, whining occasionally. We soaked his foot for at least 20 minutes, then put him in our big dog crate, planning to repeat the treatment later in the day.

We thought the exciting part of the day was over. Then we went to pick up Brave from the vet. When I paid and talked to the desk worker, she gave me what I assumed was just the customary warning.

“Brave could be a little nauseas from the sedative, so just be aware of that for your ride home, especially if it’s long.”

I carried the cat out and gave her to Curtis, telling him about her possible nausea. He held her on his lap, and the first half of the ride home was spent in comparative peace and comfort. The kitty slept, Curtis pet her, and I drove. About half way home, Brave woke up and started moving around, trying to situate herself more comfortably. Well, that’s what we thought she was doing.

But as she moved, suddenly Curtis started saying,

“Oh, oh. What’s the matter with our car?” Simultaneously, he looked at his lap. Then he groaned. Brave wasn’t just trying to get comfortable. She was peeing. All over his lap. By the time he fully realized what was happening, it was too late. His lap and the seat of the car were both soaked in cat urine. Hot, smelly cat urine.

At that moment, our plans for the evening changed drastically to include cleaning the seat—which has continued into the week with baking soda, vinegar, and hydrogen peroxide.

What did we learn from this? Life is a lot easier if you don’t have pets, but the stories are worth it.

Well, after the fact.

My First Rodeo

Last night we went to a rodeo. There wasn’t bull riding, but there was goat tying, pole bending, and barrel racing. Horse after horse charged into the arena, some skillfully guided by experienced riders, others barely directed by children who looked no older than five.

I was impressed by the courage of many of the riders who urged their horses to breakneck speeds through the soft arena sand around metal 50-gallon drums.

Photo by Christine Benton on Unsplash

And I decided two things: horse people are super cool, and I probably will never be a horse person.

The event continued until long after dark, with over 60 riders competing in some of the events. Around 11 Curtis (he’s very wonderful) and I were getting ready to leave when a teenage girl came racing into the arena on a white horse. She sped around the barrels and exited the arena just as quickly as she entered. But as soon as she crossed through the gates, something went terribly wrong.

There was an audible collective gasp as her horse tripped on a mound of dirt in the dark and flipped—nose under tail—right on top of the girl. The announcer, announcing the girl’s time, took a second to realize what was happening.

“She’s down? Oh no. She’s not getting up? Is she up? Is she getting up?” Brief pause, then a gasp, and “Oh, Lord. *click*” Less than two seconds later, the announcer was running full tilt down the stairs and out to the corral.

At least 60 people were still at the rodeo. Some were on their horses, and many leaned against the brown wood arena fence. But as the 60 of us stood and waited, you could have heard a pin drop into the sand. Every single face was turned toward where the girl was lying on the ground, unresponsive. The wait dragged on.

And on.

And on.

Every face was somber, no one spoke. Finally, after what seemed like forever, a mom from our group came back with news.

“Knocked out cold, but now she’s awake. She remembers her name and knows where she is. The ambulance is on its way.”

Tangible relief spread as the news filtered through the small groups facing the prostrate girl. The murmur of quiet conversation picked up, as people started to share their own stories: “I took my daughter out of a rodeo once in an ambulance,” and “I left a horse show in an ambulance once.” Matter of fact. Solid. Sympathetic.

As people talked quietly, the announcer climbed back up into her booth and came over the speakers, sharing the news that the girl was talking and the ambulance was coming.

And then she said, “Let’s pray for her.”

People all around the arena removed their cowboy and baseball hats and bowed their heads, as she asked God with brief, sincere words to let the rider be okay and comfort her family. Prayer over, hats went back on and quiet conversation resumed. Eventually paramedics came to check her out, then she went to the hospital, just for a more thorough check up.

The barrel racing resumed, but with a slightly more somber air. Hundreds of pounds of horse is a lot to land under, even on soft corral dirt.

That Time I Burnt the Eggs

Here’s the interesting thing about stories: They’re only interesting if there’s some sort of climax, and usually, unfortunately, that’s a negative climax.

You wouldn’t want to read about my successful egg boiling situation, because, well, that’s boring. You’ve boiled eggs successfully hundreds of times in your life. Why would you care that I can do it too?

HOWEVER. If I had an egg boiling ALMOST DISASTER, wouldn’t that make you just a little bit curious?

I thought so.

Me: The Unsuspecting Gardener

I got back from my bike ride this morning, went inside, and put a small pot of water on to boil with three eggs in it. I’ve done this dozens of times, but usually I’m taking a quick shower, and it produces the perfect hard boiled eggs (but that’s not very interesting, really). This time, instead of taking a shower, I went back outside. I made a mental note to come in after a few minutes and turn the pot off.

I took Sunday (the dog, not the day) out. While refilling the water in the garage for her and the kitties, I realized my flowers needed to be watered. So I gave the dog breakfast and watered my flowers. Thinking the eggs must be just about done, I headed for the house.

And as soon as I opened the kitchen door, I knew that something had gone terribly wrong. The house smelled awful, an acrid mixture of smoke and burnt eggs. My pot lid was whistling. I crossed from the door to the oven in two steps and pulled my pot off the burner, to discover that the water had boiled out of the pot all over the stovetop.

After determining the two culprits, an over eager burner and my forgetful gardening impulse, I brought the whole mess outside and put it on a trivet on the front stairs, where two of our cats stood and looked at it.

Fortunately, that’s the happy end of the story. I cleaned the pot with dish soap and steel wool. The cats didn’t make the terrible mistake of eating the burnt eggs. I made more eggs, and ate them on a bagel with cream cheese (10/10 would recommend, using not-burnt eggs and not-stale bagel—but The Stale Bagels will have to be Part 2). I did scorch the trivet, but that’s an insignificant damage, all things considered.

Humpty Dumpty—The Sequel

After the positive conclusion to the whole episode, I had an interesting realization.

What are the momentary emergencies—watering flowers—that distract me from important priorities, like cooking eggs and keeping the house from burning down?

I’ll be thinking about it, and for now, I might be taking a break from hard boiled eggs. At least during gardening season.

We're Humans. It's What We Do.

What began as every introvert’s dream-come-true (“Hey, everybody stay home for a few weeks.”) has turned into an unsettling episode of a TV show that none of us wanted to watch (even the introverts). As COVID-19 rampages across the globe, disrespectful of life and liberty alike, we’re sitting in our homes wondering how long it’s going to take, hoping it won’t touch any of us personally.

Honestly, there’s plenty to be scared of—I don’t even have to tell you that, the news is doing just fine. At the root of our fear lingers the same gnawing realization: we just don’t know. Could be a week. Could be a month. Could be six months or a year. Could be more.

We’re off our routine, jolted into a new regular, trying to take things in stride. It’s serious, so serious, because everything that involves human life is serious. So serious.

It can be easy to lose sight of truth and good some days, when life seems to have swung off its hinges—but all is not lost.

Here are two important things to remember every day when we turn on the news and the first word we hear is “Coronavirus.”

1. There are still other things happening in the world. Babies are being born, people are falling in love (even from > 6' apart), children are learning the magic of walking and talking, scholars are studying and making new discoveries, and so much more. The precious gifts of life and discovery are still ours, even if they’re momentarily not our main focus. But someday, we’ll wake up and the sun will be shining and the birds will be singing, and the shelves will be fully stocked with toilet paper again. And we’ll sit up in bed and take a deep breath, and sing for joy at the gift of life.

2. We always fight. Humans are this strange, unique, beautiful thing—where every other force on earth believes “reason” and will give up when things get really, really impossible, we always fight back. We’re humans. It’s what we do*.

In my last post of 2016 (check it out here if you want to read the whole thing), I wrote about this, and (if I do say so myself) summed it up pretty well:

Over our Christmas break, we went to see Rogue One. Critique of the actual film aside (it was decent, but there was minimal character development, which was a bummer), there were at least a half-dozen previews before the feature film began. Almost every single one was about humans fighting aliens, humans fighting super-villians, humans fighting crime, humans fighting other-worldly forces, but always, humans fighting. 

I had an epiphany: everything fights humanity.

Because we fight back.

We fight crime, we fight things that are bigger than us, we fight hurricanes and earthquakes and fire, we set ourselves up against insurmountable odds. We do it without question, because it's what we do (like eating and sleeping and hitting snooze).

We live in a world that is littered, left and right, with the evidence of sin trying to win, but we haven't given up. We fight because we are not programmed to back down, because we believe that there is good and it is worth fighting for. We fight because Jesus Christ fought first, fought the urge to choose the easy route, and gave himself be brutally murdered so that we are not doomed to losing eternally.

Humans are the chosen enemy of every fictitious and fantastical world, because we are the only ones who will oppose them, who will stand and deliver in the face of impossibility, who will get knocked down and get up, again and again and again. Humanity is, to the avid warrior, the best opponent, because the human spirit exhibits unquenchable resilience in the face of insurmountable odds. 

We keep on fighting. Because even when the tunnel is caving in, even when it's dark outside and the stars can't make it through, we cannot just give up. We have to keep trying, even if the victories are infinitesimal, even if it's one step forward, five steps back.

I'm not given to profanity, but 2016 was a h-e-double-hockey-sticks of a year for a lot of people. Really, every year is. But it was also full of hope, redemption, and little kindnesses.

And God was gracious, and let us live in His green world, day after day.

2017 might be a piece of cake. Or it might be even worse. History proves that every year has the bitter and the sweet, intermingled throughout. 

Either way, we'll keep fighting for the better, fighting because God made us to be full of courage, not fear. We fight because the landscape of eternity is much larger than we can even imagine, but what we do still matters.

We are fighters, and even after a year that knocks our wind out, we'll take a deep breath and surge into the next one.

It will be delightful, and there will be delicious moments and snapshots we'll treasure forever. 

It will be brutal, and sometimes we will wish to crawl into a large cave and hide forever.

It will be 2017, and we will fight to live it better than we lived 2016.

We’re humans. It's what we do.

*Maybe it’s because we’re created in the image of God, and He first modeled stopping at NOTHING to get what was the most important to Him: us.

The Past Four Months

Sorry. It’s been awhile. I’d love to share some long, drawn-out story about how we went on a long voyage, got shipwrecked on an un-charted tropical island, and were stranded there for the entirety of the Michigan winter.

What actually happened is that life shifted into overdrive, and between the holidays, wrestling our house into submission, and lots of other things, writing time has been at an all-time low (excuses, excuses).

It feels unfair for me just to launch back into blogging without at least some sort of update, so here are some pictures to catch you up, before I start randomly saying things again.

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The kitties are still going strong.

I turned 25.

Thanksgiving in MI!

New family member: Sunday.

PUGLY sweater contest.

Christmas!

My favorite retreat speaker.

Snow in the back woods.

Coached girls' basketball.

Sunday is doing well.

Tongue tattoo (jkjkjk)!

Curtis (HVW) lint rolls our kitties.

A Wedding and a Funeral

In the past three weeks I attended a wedding and a funeral. Both couples loved each other deeply—one pair with starry-eyed passion, the other with the deep, steady commitment of more than 50 years together.

It’s remarkable what a different meaning wedding vows have at a funeral.

I, _____, take thee, _____, to be my wedded husband/wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward . . .

Wedding: I’m so glad I don’t have to say goodbye every night anymore, and now we can wake up together every morning.
Funeral: I spent every day of my life loving her, holding her, sacrificing for her. Now she’s gone..

. . . For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer . . .

Wedding: We don’t need money, we don’t need good times, all we need is love and each other.
Funeral: Remember back in the early years? When all we had in our tiny apartment was a bed, a bookshelf, and a footstool? We used to take turns sitting on the stool instead of the floor while we ate dinner. It wasn’t always easy—but in the end, even that small consistent sacrifice made us love each other more.

. . . In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish . . . *

Wedding: I’ll take care of him when he gets a cold, and we’ll watch movies together all day when we get the stomach bug.
Funeral: I took care of her through her pregnancies, decades of raising children, and menopause. I cared for her when she got sick, caught what she had, and still went to work so I could provide for her. And after all those years, I nursed her through an illness that made her forget who I was.

*In marriages that can pull for the long haul, I believe the following syntax and punctuation is a more accurate promise: To love and to cherish in sickness and in health. Cherishing a healthy person is easy—it’s when someone gets sick that the rubber of commitment really meets the road.

. . . Till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge myself to you.

Wedding: I get to be with you forever.
Funeral: I will always have a memory of you here, and someday I’ll get to join you again in heaven. But for now, I’ve lost you.

It is an invaluable privilege to have a heritage of faithful marriages, and to hear someone reflect back on more than 50 years of marriage—both the golden years and the lean times—and say, “Yep. I would do it all again.”

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In other unrelated news, 1) I almost got run over by a self-driving floor cleaner in Menards, 2) it snowed in Michigan, and 3) we’re trying hard to keep up the appearance that we don’t let our kitties walk all over us (but photographic evidence tells the real story).