Summer Scribbles No. 1: A Question of Packing

The SITS girls had a list of blog writing prompts for June, and I've selected ones I particularly enjoy, and which I'll be sharing with you on Wednesdays throughout the summer. Sometimes using prompts helps ignite my creative juices and give us some variety in the content we have here. And it's summer, so we might as well have fun with it, right? 

The first prompt is: 

What is something you always take with you when you travel? 

Besides the medical equipment--CI cleaner, CI battery charger, the huge medication bag (which is smaller than it was pre-transplant!)--and the normal stuff, there are two things that always come with me when I travel:

Tea and Jane Austen. 

I realize those things are probably connected. 

I started taking Bigelow tea bags last fall when I went out of town for a wedding. I found it was so nice to have the option of hot tea in my room at night--if there's a coffee machine, I can heat up the water for tea, and if there's a microwave, I can even reheat tea again in the morning. I brought an entire box to California with me, if you can believe it, and it came in handy on the last day, because I caught a cold and having tea was definitely helpful! 

The other thing I always bring is a hard copy of a Jane Austen novel. Usually it's P&P. For Pittsburgh, it'll be Persuasion, unless I finish it before then, in which case it'll be Emma. When I' tight on space and/or I have my iPad, all of Jane's books are loaded on there. Her books are sort of my literary security blanket. I know I'll always have something to read!

What is something you always bring with you when you travel? 

Ordinary Joy

I have to start by saying: I am so humbled--and so surprised, honestly--at the reaction I received over my last piece. I am so honored to have received so many beautiful comments, both here and throughout social media, regarding it. Thank you for your lovely response! 

A lot of the writing I do here chronicles my daily life--ordinary joy. I write because that's what I do. It's my main creative act, the way I focus the lens of life. I write about books, and knitting, and travel, and theater, and my faith. And generally, my posts are pretty small. They go out into the world and a few people read them, and I get a few comments here and there. 

But Friday's post really clarifies why I write about the small. I write about the ordinary joy. I write about my constant use of the knit stitch and Jane Austen and sometimes I write about hospital stays and problems with insurance and IV woes. Because those tiny, ordinary things are what make up a life. It's a life I'm blessed to live, and to share with all of you. 

"Earth's crammed with Heaven", Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, " and every common bush afire with God; but only him who sees, takes off his shoes."   

I want to see, and I want to share those moments here in this space. I want us to take off our shoes. 

Ordinary joy, ordinary faith, ordinary life--and how extraordinary it is, that I get to live it at all. That any of us get to live it, at all. 

Gratitude in All Things

“I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

Ann Voskamp


”

Gratitude is an overused theme during November, because it's the month of Thanksgiving. It's the "Month of Gratitude"--facebook status updates start with "30 Days of Gratitude", tweets are all about it, newspapers run specials about things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

This is good. We should all take the time to count our blessings, to be thankful. 

But what if we did it....all the time? Not just when someone gets the job, or the baby is born, or the cancer is in remission. It is, of course, good to praise God at those times. But the Bible doesn't say, "In happy situations, give thanks." It says, "give thanks in all circumstances."

 You've probably heard of Corrie ten Boom. If you haven't: Corrie and her family hid Dutch Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland during WWII. They hid them in their house and watch/clock repair shop, building a "hiding place" in case of raids in the back of Corrie's tiny bedroom. 

Corrie and her sister, Betsie, and her father, Casper,  who lived above the shop, were not young. They were not rich. Betsie wasn't even in very good health--she had pernicious anemia. But they hid Jews and worked with the Dutch underground to give hidden Jews ration cards, false ID cards, and whatever else people needed to save their lives, to keep the Jewish people in their care alive during the Nazi occupation, while trains took millions of people away by the boxcar full, all over Europe. 

Eventually, they were caught, and Betsie, Corrie, and their father were shipped to concentration camps. They were separated from their father, who died in a camp hospital, but Betsie and Corrie were sent to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp in Northern Germany. 

"We stepped out of line with a dozen or so others and stared at the long grey front of Barracks 28. Half its windows seemed to have been broken and replaced with rags.

A door in the center let us into a large room where two hundred or more women were bent over knitting needles...On either side doors opened into two still larger rooms...Our noses told us, first, that the place was filthy; somewhere plumbing had back ed up, the bedding was soiled and rancid. Then as our eyes adjusted...we saw that there were no individual beds at all, but great square piers stacked three high, and wedged side by side, and end to end with only an occasional narrow aisle slicing through...

We lay back, struggling against the nausea that swept over us from the reeking straw...

Suddenly, I sat up, striking my head on the cross slats above. "Fleas!" I cried. "Betsie, the place is swarming with them!" 

We scrambled across the intervening platforms...and edged our way to a patch of light. 

"Here! And another one!" I wailed. "Betsie, how can we live in such a place?"

"Show us. Show us how." It was said so matter of factly that it took me a second to realize she was praying..."Corrie!" She said excitedly. "He's given us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does! In the Bible this morning. Where was it? Read that part again!" 

"It was in First Thessalonians," I said..."Here it is: 'Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always see to do good to one another and to all...'" 

"Go on," said Betsie. "That wasn't all." 

"Oh yes: '...to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus--"

"That's it, Corrie! That's His answer. 'Give thanks it all circumstances!' That's what we can do! We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!"

I stared at her..."Such as?"

"Such as being assigned her together!"

I bit my lip. "Oh yes, Lord Jesus!"

"Such as what you're holding in your hands."

I looked down at the Bible. "Yes! Thank you, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here! Thank you for all the women, here in this room, who will meet You in these pages."

"Yes," said Betsie. "Thank you for the very crowding here. Since we're packed so close, that many more will hear!" She looked at me expectantly. "Corrie!"

"Oh, all right. Thank you for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed, suffocation crowds."

"Thank you," Betsie went on serenely, "For the fleas and for--"

The fleas! This was too much. "Betsie, there's no way even God can make me grateful for a flea."....

[Weeks later] there'd been confusing in her knitting group about sock sizes and they'd asked the supervisor to come and settle it.

"But she wouldn't. She wouldn't step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?"

Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice. "Because of the fleas! That's what she said, 'That place is crawling with fleas!'"

My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie's bored head, remembering her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.

Bestie died in Ravensbruck on December 16, 1944. In January 1945, Corrie was released, due to a clerical error--all women her age were supposed to be sent to the gas chambers. Instead, Corrie was released, nursed back to health, and returned to her home in Haarlem. Five of the six Jews the ten Booms hid survived the war. 

When I first ran into that Betsie story, I thought the same way Corrie did: Is Betsie for real? Seriously, she must be living on a plane higher than the rest of us, because, like Corrie, there is no way I'd be able to give thanks for fleas. 

But that worked out--the fleas were what Ann Voskamp calls "ugly beautiful"--those things that we see as ugly, but really, are gifts, are beautiful things, in God's vision. We just can't see it. 

Maybe we need the macro view? 

The lower part of my right arm is mostly covered with a big skin graft scar. It's not hideous, but it's not gorgeous, either; but it looks  a lot better now than it did 11 years ago (this weekend, actually) when I originally had surgery. The skin was taken from the top of my right thigh, so there's two scars, roughly a inch wide and five inches or so long, there, too. 

Why did I need a skin graft at all? Because an IV that was dispensing calcium during my transplant infiltrated, and gave me  a third degree burn on my right arm. For awhile, the surgeon thought he might have to amputate. Fortunately, I was blissed out on drugs and wasn't privy to all those discussions. 

So if it's a choice between pretty and still having an arm, I'm going with the later--especially since I'm right handed!

That's probably the most graphic example of the macro view. 

After I read Ann's 1000 Gifts about 1000 times (really, I dip into it almost constantly), I think I've started to get it. Waking up late? Traffic jam? Not getting cast in the show? It's all OK. God has a plan. I don't know it (And some days that drives me crazy), but God wants me to give thanks all the time. There is always something to be grateful for. 

Even, as Betsie tells us, the fleas. 

What's your passion?

“The biggest thing for me is the passion that I’ve always had for hockey. I remember growing up, no matter what I did in life, my parents always told me to try to do my best at it and be my best. I can say going through different things that that passion is the most important part. It’s not skills or talent or any of that stuff.
”

— Sidney Crosby

What are you passionate about? 

Is that a strange question? 

I don't think it should be. I think it should be something we ask people all the time. Instead of "what do you do", it should be, "What are you passionate about?" 

What we do doesn't really tell us a lot about a person. "I'm a manager at Widget Co." "I'm a speechwriter." "I'm a teacher." Sure, it can help us find some common ground. But when people used to ask me what I did, I told them, and they thought it was the coolest thing in the world. In truth, after doing it for about five years, it wasn't nearly so cool to me anymore. I worked to live, I didn't live to work--but I knew people who did, in my workplace. 

My passions have always been writing, music, theater, reading, cooking, hockey....I could keep going. I have a lot of passions. :) Some of them are dependent on other people, like theater. If I don't get cast in a show, then obviously I won't be doing a show. But that doesn't stop my love of it. 

Being good at something isn't the same thing as being passionate about it. You can be good at something and hate it. You can love something and be rubbish at it. (Like people who love music, but are tone-deaf) I love hockey, but let me tell you, I'd never be able to actually play it. I recognize my limitations. 

A great thing is when passion and work coincide. Now, for artists, it might never happen. It's hard to make a living from art. Everyone knows that. Some people are very lucky, and they succeed in that area, but not all of us do. But I think a mark of passion is doing it for free. I've done theater where I'm paid for my work. I've done more theater where I do it without any pay. And really, the enjoyment I get out of both is about the same. Sure, I like and Appreciate the money I get from doing paid shows. But it's not a requirement for me. If I hate the show, I'm going to hate it whether or not I'm making money from it. I put in the same amount of preparation and approach it the same way, money or no. When I'm drawing, I know I'm not going to get any money for it. I'm doing it because it's fun. 

It isn't always fun. There are times when the words aren't coming, when the scene's not jelling, when the lines on the paper look absolutely terrible. And that happens in anything. Sports teams lose. Plays flop. Books are panned in the New York Times. But people keep playing, acting, writing. 

“We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
”

— Henry James

God made each of us for a unique reason. No other person can bring to the world what each of us can bring to it. Part of that is our passion. What do we love? What skills and talents has God given us to bring His beauty and truth to the world? Because that's part of what good art does, incidentally. It makes us think about the world and our place in it, and our relationships. 

If artists don't make much money off of their love, then those who love God "for a living" really don't. Nuns are often told that their lives are "wasted" in service to God. "What, you want to pray all day? What is that about?" But they love God and His people so much that they're going to give their entire lives to the service of them. 

God loved us so much he sent his only son to die for us. That's passion. That's love. 

A passion can really be anything. Crossword puzzles, Tudor history, football, politics, knitting, housekeeping, cooking, math, mystery novels, fishing, quilting, travel, oil painting, fossils--whatever. What do you love to do? Our lives need passion. We weren't designed to just do utilitarian things. We need passion in our lives. 

Find your passion, and dedicate work to it. It takes hard work to be good at something. Passion ensures that the work is enjoyable, even when it's really not. If you've seen the movie Miracle, you know about the scene where the players are skating back and forth across the ice in endless drills as Herb Brooks barks, "again!" That was not fun. But that's what's needed, to be really good at what you do. Hard work serves the desire. If you hate playing the piano, it doesn't matter how great you might be at it. You might be blessed with long fingers and great technique. But that's not any good if you hate it. 

Find a passion, and work at it. Enjoy it. They make life a lot more fun, and they serve the special gifts that God has given only you to have and perfect. 

What's your passion? What makes you excited to get up in the morning?