Here we go!
I must confess my laxness in very nearly everything in my life, and especially in writing my monthly blog! (How can you call yourself a writer and not write?)
The past several months, OK, 18 months, have been very trying for me. When you consider left total knee replacement and physical therapy, followed by rotator cuff repair and physical therapy, breast cancer and radiation therapy, and now left knee replacement and physical therapy, I've had a time of it.
Not complaining. Well, except for my first orthopedic surgeon retiring after the first knee (Dan, you know who you are!). And now my oldest sister is living with us. Between the two of us and our doctors' appointments, we really get around. And it takes time. And we sometimes don't get around to doing the things we are called to do and then we feel really awful. But, hey, that's life - right?
To show you how good the Lord is to provide, my husband and I spent the past two days cleaning my storage room down in the dungeon. As we were going through boxes and labeling tubs, and all that stuff, what should fall out of a box, but an early piece written 20 years ago for our Sunday School Class Newsletter! Don't tell me it was a coincidence! I know the Lord has heard all my pitiful whining about not writing my blog (since AUGUST!!!). He said, "OK, here ya go, kiddo. Maybe this will help get the ball rolling..."
I hope you enjoy 20-year-old thoughts! Some things never change.
Photo by Harley-Davidson on Unsplash
Get A Life!
How many times have we heard that phrase? How many times have we uttered that phrase ourselves? It seems to be the one thing that we are all in the middle of, all pursuing, and all in various states of success or failure within, and yet still we mutter, or yell, or hear, "Get a Life!"
When do you find it most appropriate? How about when someone is whining about his little aches, pains, sorrows, or whatever? I mean, there are people with Real problems, REAL, SERIOUS problems, and yet we whine about this guy's driving, or a sore finger, or a case of sniffles. It's when we are most into our own little world that we deserve to be brought up short and challenged to "Get a life!"
What is so significant about that? I think it might be the old saying that there is no dress rehearsal for life. What we have each moment, each day, is all there is. Why spend those precious moments whining? This life is the preparation for our souls. We need to be getting ready for our real future - the job we will have in heaven - that place where we won't have to be told to get a life! But a lot of people don't seem to realize that they are not just existing in the here and now, but that they are preparing for the great beyond. Columnist Tad Bartimus wrote: "There is only one way to get ready for immortality, and that is to love this life and live as bravely and faithfully and cheerfully as we can." I think that is a splendid idea. If we really did that, how often would we be told to get a life?
Don't breathe a word of this to him, but one of the people I admire the most is my husband, for that very thing. One could write a volume on how he loves life, and lives it as bravely, faithfully, and cheerfully as he can. Of course, he has his occasional down times when the old Houk family motto has to be dragged out: "Thou shalt not whine!", but for the most part, he seizes life by the horns and engages it entirely. He's a person who is really alive! I guess that's why he got a motorcycle.
Yeah, a motorcycle. The license plate reads: "Jn2115". I'm not sure if a midlife crisis can be gotten at the age of 52 going on 53 in August, Seems a little beyond that somehow. But a motorcycle it is. Life just can't go along serenely and smoothly. There has to be adventure! There has to be excitement! There has to be a challenge! So, he got a motorcycle. Braving African rebels in Sierra Leone wasn't enough anymore. Claiming new territory for the Kingdom in Africa wasn't enough. It's almost as though he isn't happy unless he's on the cutting edge! So, yeah, a motorcycle. How edgy is that?
I, on the other hand, am not a pioneer, not a cutting-edge person, not an adventurer. In my own little world, when I have control over my own little life, I am a safe person. I am a predictable person. (I am a boring person.) I am a nurturing person. I am a planning, careful person. I have a plan A, followed by a plan B to fall back on if plan A goes awry, and a pretty generalized idea of a plan C, just in case.
So while Lonny could be described by the above quote, I am more nearly tucked neatly into the words of George Washington Carver: "How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak - because someday you will have been all of these."
Cutting edge people, movers and shakers, doers of great things don't worry about how far they are going in life, because they are in the midst of the engagement of life on their terms.
Sometimes taking time to be tender, compassionate, tolerant, or sympathetic just kind of gets in the way of the grandeur and glory involved in that riotous engagement. It doesn't mean they do not care about the young, aged, striving, or weak; just that they have mountains to climb and battles to fight and dragons to slay. And besides, there are all those other people like me who want to and can do that tender-compassionate-sympathetic-tolerant stuff. And those careful, planning people don't even want to go out and fight the battles or slay the dragons or climb the mountains. It's just not in us.
Or is it?
My helmet reads, "Feed My Lambs". Maybe it was time for another slice of life.
***
I hope you will not pass off my blog but will continue to read it. Perhaps, now that the Lord has smiled on my consternation and given me another chance, they will just keep on coming.
What's 20 years when you've got a life?
Love,
L. K. Houk
News
So pleased to let you know Book #5, A Job for Dancer, will be here shortly! You can get the Down Home on the Farm books directly from me. Contact me through my website. LKHouk.com
Books make a terrific gift!
I have four books out in the Down Home on the Farm series. You can get them directly from me. For information about my books, further reading comprehension questions on each book, and future releases, please visit my website: LKHouk.com.