Remember? DC Talk told us so.
Love is a verb. It covers so much.
Forgiveness is an action. It cannot happen by accident.
Restoration is the re-building of all that was shattered.
Restitution is the itemized invoice for the re-construction.
Because love is a verb. And it costs something.
But love is worth whatever that cost is….
Dave & Tara came up with an explanation for things going in a really different route than they had planned for and it is that they were Kai-boshed.
ki·bosh /ki-bäSH/
Noun Put an end to; dispose of decisively.
Which is hilarious because it is about baby Kai having shown up 5 weeks and 6 days early and how it turned life completely upside down and sort of overrode all the well-laid plans any of us had. Christmas was barely packed away when the little fella was dropped into our very happy, waiting arms.
So all of those projects we began the new year with – Dave and Tara were about to head to Florida: Kai-boshed. Tara was going to help me remodel the grandbebe playroom: Kai-boshed. The list goes on.
Tara called this photo Business Casual. One of her friends called him the CEO of Adorable, which is very true. That baby is calling the shots!
Isn’t he just getting chubby? Love it!
The list could go on, but suffice it to say, we love you, Ryan Faaland. We can scarcely recall a life before you, so well-fitted you have become to us. You were a dream, a longing in Dessa’s heart and I am pretty sure you fulfilled her wish list except that you were even more wildly handsome and athletic than she was expecting and I love that that fact sort of upset her {very ordered} fruit basket. God sees even the deep-secret lists we make, Dessa. :)
So, while God created you for her, He knew you’d be getting us all and He fashioned you to be a man we’d all fall for. So – here is the short list, twenty-nine reasons I am glad you were born, or 29 things I love about you and there is one for each of your years so far…
29. Because *poof! Two years ago this very week you appeared in Tredessa’s world and all sorts of lights in her turned on high, energy-sucking, power-zapping, beaming-brightly radiance and it was good to see something besides work and ministry get her blood rushing. :)
28. And then *boom! Eight months later you bravely married her and became one of us officially. That takes courage, my boy. And you are brave.
27. And you are brave-hearted. You are really living a life of your own courageous choices. People might have seen the oldest of 4 blond-headed brothers bounding down the Florida beaches, boyishly tormenting his brothers, or jumping to hit an overhead sign and thought, “Oh boy, there goes trouble.” But they’d have been so wrong, so-so-so wrong. They might have missed the lion-hearted young man who’d answer the call of his Father, etched into his being before he was born. And they might not have understood all it would mean to answer that call, to pursue that depth of righteousness. You are brave-hearted.
26. You are humble. I like that when you feel you aren’t an obvious choice to be entrusted with a “position” or God-type-appointment, you humbly receive it, thankful for the opportunity to serve in the Kingdom, and do it with your whole heart.
So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. 1 Peter 5.6 NLT
25. You are whole-hearted and I think everyone knows how much I value this trait in life. Being wholehearted is so well portrayed through the life of Hezekiah who so threw himself into obedience and pleasing the Lord, God was pleased to grant him great success
Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time. He remained faithful to the Lord in everything, and he carefully obeyed all the commands the Lord had given Moses. So the Lord was with him, and Hezekiah was successful in everything he did. 2 Kings 18.5-7a NLT
24. I love that you love Tredessa. You have no idea what proof this is of your emotional and intellectual intelligence. She is a world-changing tiger and we knew the man who had the confidence to marry her was going to be strong in spirit, ferocious in heart and the smartest man alive. So, there you go!
23. I love that you unsettle Tredessa a little, too. Because that girl can handle anything to the moon and back and really should become our first woman president, for goodness’s sake, but you have a way of de-fusing her in just small, sweet ways that keeps her on her toes and she loves the mystery of that. No matter what she tells you! Keep it up, Ryan!
Last year’s birthday “card” for Ryan…holds true!
22. So glad you were born because of my first-ever memory of you. I was in the front of a hotel meeting room speaking at a press conference. It was nerve-wracking, but this whole line-up of you twenty-something guys had come in to pray us through it. And even though now I know many of the other guys, you were the one who stood out to me, because the sun was shining through the window and hitting your blond head in halo-like radiance and you stood there are muscly- and strong with your arms folded decidedly across your chest and I could have sworn the leader of the angel-armies had swooped in with his troops and it brought such peace and I knew I was safe.
21. And I love that your first memory of me wasn’t even at that press conference (I suppose because you were praying), but a few months later at Heaven Fest where you claim I almost ran over over you with a golf cart, but that I smiled and was so apologetic. And you thought I was nice. Or crazed. One of those, which was it?
20. And I am glad that you finally let me know that I wasn’t even the one driving, but that I was still apologetic and concerned. Thanks for knowing I wasn’t trying to kill you or take my rights on the road. I really appreciate that.
19. The fact that you are pretty ornery actually does make me thankful for you and glad you were born. As long as you are being ornery with some one else. Not me!
18. After almost every family dinner, you just head into the kitchen and make us all coffee. You are a prince among men.
17. Right away, you loved my grandbebes. You became their uncle. You look for ways to know them and relate to them and speak into their lives. You treat them respectfully and with care. PLUS they just think you are so much fun!
16. I am glad you were born because you make us healthier. Your fresh-fruit love has changed every family dinner since you came along. I never want you to miss Florida so much you’ll leave here, so I promise to keep the pineapple coming. And the strawberries. And the kiwi and mangoes and oranges. And whatever else it takes.
15. You not only speak well of everyone, you actually think well of them, too. And that is a rare gift and I am thankful to be on the receiving end of that, mother-in-law or not.
14. You are such a good big brother in the fam, now, too. Especially with Stormie and the shepherd. Your watchful care and protectiveness about Stormie’s life (even to taking care of her giant dog so she can have one) is so sweet. You (like Tristan and DP before you) have set such a high bar on the quality of man who dares enter her life, that this momma’s heart is satisfied it will go well with her. You have added to this family in love and in care.
13. My love affair with salt notwithstanding, you like my cooking. I like that you like my cooking and always let me know.
12. I like that you want me to teach you certain dishes or things I do in the kitchen. How flattering! :)
11. I praise God for your life because it is full of life and hope and promise and you dream dreams that you want to fulfill because you want to bring Him glory and I am excited I will get to see these things happen.
10. You are so in tune to spiritual things and discernment and righteousness. I love that you never try to generate that but you don’t dismiss it, either. You can read things that are right on or “off” in the spiritual realm. So wise.
9. And you call it like you see it. I have never seen harshness nor judgementalness in you about it, but you are bold to say what you see, no pretense. You’re direct.
8. I love seeing you laugh with everything you have and your eyes squinting up when you throw your head back in complete joy. You’re such a joyful person.
7. You are such a worshiper. I love how you love musical worship and just flat-out worship your life out before the Lord.
6. I love that when I find some amazing worship, soaking-in-the-Presence music and want to share it with you, it turns out you already know it and had told me about it. You are amassing quite a collection.
5. I peeked into your workout room and saw prayer books beside the weights (even though you also have a prayer room!). You’re a Nehemiah – a man of prayer and a man of action.
4. You honor us. I know when I walk into a room and see you, I have an ally. And please always remember, you do, too.
3. In your young-heart-in-the-Lord, you are such an example of the believer, for the believers. You just love Jesus completely and all the way.
2. I am thankful for your life because you have seen the worst of mine and you have pressed in anyway.
1. I know you pray for me. And I know you have prayed for me when no one saw or knew the depth of the need for it. And I know you jumped in headlong and called out my name to the Father when if you had not…?…and He heard you and He is answering.
Thank-you, Ryan for being not only a son-in-law, but family-in Christ and one in heart. Thank-you for being family-in-Rhoades, too, however messy that is sometimes and for protecting and championing the unity of this big, crazy group of us. You were born to be one of us and there a million reasons I am glad for that. But these are the 29 I share on the occasion of your 29th birthday.
I don’t know if they still do this in school or not, but they should. And in case they don’t, I have decided I am going to do it the next time all the grandbebes are here together. This is an experience I consider to be essential to life.
Mrs. Devin, the tiny, blond woman who taught our 1st grade class in her sleek sheaths and slingback shoes (I found her fashion very Jackie-O, even though Jackie had not added the “O” yet, at that time) gathered our class in a big circle.
We were Iowa kids, yes, but we didn’t live on farms. We were “city kids” in Iowa, and despite the infamous Iowa State Fair butter sculptures – we lived in Des Moines and used Imperial Margarine, of course! :) I hadn’t really had real butter, that I recall, except at my cousin’s house in Missouri a time or two. Other than that, our typical mid-American diet, even there in Iowa, was about using margarine, or oleo, as it was commonly called then.
But Mrs. Devin was about to change my world forever as she gathered us around her chair that day. She was going to teach us about rich, sweet butter. And how it came from cream, which came from cow’s milk. Now being the daughter of a milkman (Anderson-Erikson Dairy), you’d think perhaps I’d have thought of this. But I hadn’t.
We watched, wide-eyed, as Mrs. Devin poured the thick cream into a mason jar, added a dash of salt and tightened the lid. Then we passed that jar around and we each got to shake it a certain number of times. I am not sure what that number was, 20? 25? Then we’d pass it to the next person, all of us chanting the count, watching the jar to see if butter would magically appear.
And suddenly, at some point, after we’d each had 2 or 3 turns at shaking it up, it was ready. It happened. It actually became butter and this is when the splendor and love of butter descended into my very soul like an Apollo spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. Yes – with that much 1960s force!
Mrs Devin opened a sleeve of saltines, the really good saltines. And she spread some of our very fresh, barely yellow butter on the little squares. She placed three on a napkin for each of us and we began tasting the fruit of our labors and oh.my.great.goodness! It was so delicious. It was amazing. It was beyond wonderful. I was hooked.
I went home raving about it to my mom, who told me, having bought into mad-men marketing, that margarine was way healthier and had less calories and wasn’t as “rich” (the term being used in a rich-is-bad-for-you way) and all that other ridiculous nonsense the mad-trans-fatty-hydrogenated-evil-people were pushing back then to get people to buy plasticized-toast-spread. I wanted butter, real butter. I had touched the divine! To no avail.
Though my mom wasn’t about to buy me cream for butter-making, I wasn’t dissuaded. I even tried making it with milk. I shook and shook and shook a jar of milk to no avail. *sniff
But the taste of that savory treat on a beautiful 1st grade afternoon in Des Moines, Iowa has lingered on my tastebuds, lo, these many (many) years…never forgotten.
I don’t really believe in margarine at all now. I certainly don’t believe in oleo. But I believe in butter. I love butter. I love that Julia loved it and Paula Deen, too, though she seems to be tempering herself now. But I love it. I simply do. And it is my mission to share it with my little band of bebes, so they will love it, too.
This dancing nana not only reminds us to listen to great, old songs, but how to respond appropriately. I love her.
Dance to life. Life is worth it! – me
I have GOT to learn to dance.
There is this driven, heavy snow naturally Christmas-flocking the trees and bushes and tapping on our window panes. Which would be ever-so-perfect if Christmas weren’t, oh, you know – 291 days away. *ahem
This was out my window and out my door about an hour ago:
Our Amelie-Belle-is-turning-three celebration has been postponed and almost any organization or business that can has cancelled everything. Back to the 50s on Monday. Until then, snowed in. :)
Kirk Franklin’s trademark cool is stamped into the production of this very vulnerable and open admission of sorrow and pain for, yes, even a believer and Christ-follower. It is the kind of openness we don’t really allow each other, but have to admit we have indulged in privately before God. Sometimes we are just “all churched out.” Or “good-works-ed out,” or “all ministry-ed out,” or whatever else we have given ourselves to that, in spite of maybe being a really good cause, or even something that was originally being done “for the Lord,” for His glory – became an idol or something that by its very girth and volume in our lives just separated us from our First lLove.
Then comes the song in the night, the song of sorrow. It is a melody stripped of impressive words or simple, singable congregational hooks. But it is the wrenching, the language of pain, real, authentic and not easily revealed.
This is one of those songs, in, actually, a beautiful melody, deep and soulful. When there is nothing left in you to even bring to the King, yet you know His Presence is the only place left safe to dwell – well, you want to go there. Stumbling, wounded, crippled from battle, tired from the fight, you summon all courage to get where you need to be…
Tamela communicates it well. You feel the fatigue, the “why?,” the “what now?” in the beginning of the song. Resolve begins to build {is that hope, I feel?} Finally, that last surge of strength for all that really ever mattered anyway ~ we know where to go, where to be – we just have to get to the King. Alone at the throne, gazing on His glory!
Wow!
As I lay me down,
Heaven hear me now.
I’m lost without a cause
After giving it my all.
Winter storms have come
And darkened my sun.
After all that I’ve been through
Who on earth can I turn to?
I look to you. I look to you.
After all my strength is gone,
In you I can be strong
I look to you. I look to you.
And when melodies are gone,
In you I hear a song.
I look to you.
This song is the title track from Whitney’s final studio album released in 2009, and it has become my favorite Whitney Houston song ever.
It is a heart’s cry, a prayer, an understanding of all that has been lost, a revelation of all that remains and a resignation that when all our hope or melodies are gone, we can run back to the waiting One who will meet us on the road with arms open wide.
Reminds me of a quote I first heard 30 some years ago: When we come to the place where Christ is all we have, then we know, He is all we need.
About to lose my breathe,
There’s no more fighting left,
Sinking to rise no more,
Searching for that open door.
And every road that I’ve taken
Lead to my regret.
And I don’t know if I’m going to make it.
Nothing to do but lift my head
God is probably saying, “Finally!” :)
NOTE TO SELF: Don’t be afraid to sing in the night. Psalm 77
You shouldn’t ever have to worry about falling in to a sinkhole while you sleep. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/02/17158691-still-no-sign-of-fla-man-swallowed-by-sinkhole?lite
Praying for his family and friends and all the neighbors who live nearby, who must surely be shaken by this thing.
I have not even purchased my kale seeds yet, people.