Last night I was waxing melancholy for the flavor that only comes from this coffee. I just found out people sell it on Ebay. I won't have to wait for my next trip to Maui. God is good.
Category Archives: 6 Looking Back // Memories!
GJ Maui
See the first teaser for the movie project Gospel Journey Maui (I got to go along and cook for this crazy, sweet cast)
Redeemed Reactions
From a journal page last year. I scribble random thoughts madly, at times – with bullets and margin sidebars to illuminate my main thoughts. Here it is in one, semi-organized thought:
I want to change my response to past events and circumstances.
- I have no control over the things that happened or were said, but I'd like to REPENT of wrong reactions and re-write my history in godliness and Christ-likeness.
- Events are irreversible – what happened, happened.
- Jesus redeems me – buys me back. He can redeem me from my negative, evil-hearted reactions.
As a GOD-LOVER, I'm inviting You, LORD, to reach into my experiences and give me the chance, through Your redemption, to RESPOND differently. "For those who love God…He causes all things to work together for good…" (Romans 8.28)
Back to the "chosen treasures."
- I choose to fill my heart with gratitude for Your blessings.
- I choose to forget what is behind.
- I am making every effort to PRESS FORWARD to "lay hold of that for which Jesus Christ layed hold of me." (Phil.3.12-16)
- I want to have a heart that is ever praising You (Psalm 84.4)
Pressing ahead…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: I haven't got it figured out, but I don't want to stop reaching forward. Don't look back.
David Cassidy on Oprah!
45-50 year old women – screaming and swooning. We think we STILL love him!!
How I Spent My Summer Vacation – The Moslander Reunion
February 2008. I just found this in my waiting-to-be-finished blog drafts. I always have about 20 things "in progress" and since my parents were just here, it caught my eye. I know I am waaaaaaaaaaay late posting it, but here are a few rememberences of the hottest, most humid week ever at Big Lake State Park in northwest Missouri, but a wonderful time, nonetheless.
We are so grateful that the whole Ross & Norma Moslander family got to attend the reunion this past summer! The attenders were Ross the Boss, Mrs Moss and all the little Landers, the original 5: Jeanie, Joey, Timmy, Tami, and Danny, along with their spouses (also all "original! ha!) and the 15 grandchildren (plus the 3 "new" spouses so far) that we have given to them, AND 4 great-grandchildren! (the 5th was on the way in these pictures)
We laughed and cried and feasted and danced and swam and fished and paddled around on a little boat and ate and remembered and honored and shared and prayed and encouraged and ate some more and antiqued and sang and worshiped and got caught in a most awesome and fierce thunderstorm and played and ate again.
Joe's wife, my beautiful sister-in-law, Robin, made rich coffee and from-scratch cinnamon rolls early one morning for all of us grown women and led us in studying the Word together and praying for each other – the "older" women of the family praying with and encouraging the "younger." One night we all gathered in close to worship and pray together and Dad Moslander preached a little and Dave P. led us all in the most amazing and beautiful harmonies, if I do say so myself, just singing praise to God.
Our "party" night in the special events center to honor our parent's long marriage (50 golden years!) and ministry included lots of photo sharing and video and special music and twirling to romantic music before Aunt Tami brought out the funky stuff and showed us how to really get a groove on, while wearing my mother's rose-patterned wedding dress.
The days went too fast. It was a blessed time. How I adore all of these people.
Whether they are blood or by your choosing, I hope you will surround yourself with family and enjoy them all your days!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Stay in better touch like I promised I would. This is my family. This is my lifeblood.
Aloha!
I am just back from Maui where I got to help my great friend, Carol Ann, cook for the cast and crew who were filming a reality-type series: Gospel Journey – Maui for Dare2Share (www.dare2share.org) under the leadership of Blake Pilgreen with Mediatech (www.mediatech1.com) and with these great people (my Hawaiian-housemates, Rolly and Holly) from Outside the Box Ministries (www.otbm.org) and a wonderful crew of cameramen and sound techs and grips and all those other film-types.
The cast was made up of six 18-22 year olds from different backgrounds, religious affiliations and streams of belief. They lived together in a beach house just 50 yards from the ocean and got to experience all the cool stuff Maui has to offer while engaging in really great conversations with Greg Stier (President of Dare2Share, and Zane Black (an extreme snowboarder and instructor www.timberlinelodge.org). I fell head-over-heels for these kids. They are such beautiful human beings. I will always remember them and the short time we had together and how they let Carol Ann and I fuss over them and nurture them and feed them.
You can see lots of pictures and read other accounts of the project, the trip, the filming and all sorts of other stuff by visiting Rob Kelly's, Carol Ann Kelly's, or Greg Stier's blogs: www.robkelly.typepad.com, http://cakboliv.wordpress.com, http://www.gregstier.org
We figure we put together 3 meals a day for about 8 days for any number of people between 25 & 30 and that is a lot of meals. We also found out that we could put over $1000 worth of groceries in just 2 Costco carts. It was quite the adventure!
The cast called us their personal chefs. The crew called us caterers and said we were better than Hollywood's Kraft Services. But we were really just a couple of moms cooking for the guys and the kids, just like we do for our families – only it was in paradise!!
The ocean, the sun, the swaying palm trees – wish you could've been there!…Jeanie
Pictured, left-to-right: Zane and Greg (the sort of leader/host/facilitators of the week for the cast), Jasser, Carol Ann Kelly (my partner-in-crime), Priscilla, Rachel O., me, Jonathan, and Rachel M. Emma is seated in front of us, the Pacific Ocean is behind us! Carol Ann and me.
The Essential Partridge Family
While in Maui, I found out that my friend Carol Ann (http://cakboliv.wordpress.com/), an extremely hip woman who has over 6000 songs on her I-Pod, has no Partridge Family songs on there. Not one. I was aghast at this discovery, so it got me to thinking.
If you were already super cool in the early 70's, I know you didn't give these bubble-gum pop songs a second look, but if you weren't yet (I was a kid, I tell you- a mere child), maybe you listened to the Partridge Family and can affirm my position that they deserve their place in American music…maybe not much of a place, but a place. And if you have never heard them, fear not, I have compiled a list of my very favorite Partridge Family songs here:
1. I Think I Love You ("I'm sleeping, and right in the middle of a good dream, like, all at once I wake up from something that keeps knocking at my brain…before I go insane I hold my pillow to my head, and spring up from my bed screaming out the words I dread, 'I think I love you!'.") http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7821497694797564220&q=partridge+family&total=693&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
2. I Woke Up in Love this Morning (Apparently a lot of sleep loss tied in to being in love in those days, and hugging and kissing pillows, but a romantic life-long love, not just a one-night stand: "I woke up in love this morning…went to sleep with you on my mind.") http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8269782850909118409&q=partridge+family&total=693&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2
3. It's One of Those Nights (aka "Yes, Love" He'd take her back in a flash, which I LOVE!, he'd even "hunt her down" like he has before! "It's one of those nights when you turn out the lights and you sit in the dark and you say to yourself, 'I miss her…'.") http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1601388937475243543&q=partridge+family+it%27s+one+of+those+nights&total=4&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
4. I Can Feel Your Heartbeat (pretty sexy, I must say – which I totally did not even understand when I was 11. I heard David Cassidy was still making hearts go pitter patter with this song in Vegas nightclubs to the over 40 crowd just a couple of years ago! "I can feel your heartbeat and you didn't even say a word…Oh, I know pretty woman that your love can be heard…You can feel my heartbeat, too, I can see you feeling me…") http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5438043450488501451&q=partridge+family&total=693&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1
Just trying to enlighten you in your search for great music!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: C'mon get happy!
Some Partridge Family quotes:
Laurie: All you guys think we're interested in is being cheerleaders or homecoming queens. And then, if we're real lucky, we can all grow up to be Playboy Bunnies.
Danny: I've been a kid and I've been an adult. And believe me, adultery isn't what it's cracked up to be.
An exchange between their manager, Reuben Kincaid, and Danny (played by Danny Bonaduce, who was already very irreverent and wry at the age of 10) – Reuben: Tell me, did your mother ever tell you not to play in traffic? Danny: Of course. Reuben: Too bad.
Keith: They'd leave *me* for Mick Jagger???!?
Reflecting the Glory
Growing up in the 60's and 70's, Christmas trees were much different than they are now. These days everyone has their very own designer-collection-themed-one-of-a-kind-specially-lit-custom-skirted tree…or two. But in the 60's and 70's there were only a couple of ways to go: a real tree, which was like 88.920173% of the population, or a you-can-really-tell-it's-a-fake tree. Ornaments were simpler – mostly shiny, round balls with a few special pieces here and there. Garland? Silver or gold, run in either a straight, but descending line or fancily looped.
We had the big C7 lights on our trees in the 60's that morphed into the tiny twinkle lights of the 70s, but since they were so small and we weren't used to that then, they had these multi-prismed, plastic cuffs that fit onto them to reflect more light.
But the one thing that was so prevalent back then – on nearly every single tree in some quanitity, something that you don't see much, for it has been out of vogue for so long now – was tinsel. Placing tinsel on the tree was the final, crowning glory – that last touch that suddenly made all the pieces a congruent work of art. My neighbor's family blanketed theirs with so much tinsel that you could barely make out the colored lights or decorations. There were friends who would place one strand of tinsel per branch-creating a tree that spoke of scarcity to me – did those people give out presents with the same reservation?
But my mom was the perfect tinsl-er. She could stand back and look and know exactly the amount of tinsel that was needed and where and would lovingly distribute it about. And suddenly, we would all step back and look and the tree had all of the tiny streamers of glittering silver tinsel it needed. It did not need even one more strand. It did not need less. It was perfect.
But tinsel became so passe. In the late 80's I moved to designer colored tinsel for my trees, which was long, and sleek and came in purple or mauve or country blue, perhaps white. But by the 90's, really, people, it was so out! There was no way I would use that stuff!
But then, I got nostalgic.
So – we have THE tree in the living room. It is well-coordinated and I do believe: lovely, and tells, through the materials I have carefully chosen, my faith story, my celebration of Christ, my decorative taste for Christmas.
But the tree in the family room, full of odds and ends from so many Christmases past, packed with school-made ornaments and artwork from my 5 children, laced with a paperchain and candy canes and C7s burning alongside tiny twinkle-lights in white, yes, but colors, too! – That tree is my Christmas past (lots of "Baby's first Christmas" found here!) and my Christmas present (now I have grandchildren adding to the ornamentation) and it is what I cherish most as I look ahead. It is heavily-laden. Stormie asked, "Where are the branches?"
It's true, as I finished I noticed that all of the stuff was was obscuring some of the light. But I knew just what to do. I grabbed a handful of wadded, fine, silver tinsel and began placing little tufts of it here and there. I actually got teary-eyed at the memory of it, but also at the revelation I received, for everywhere I tucked some in, that branch, that little area, suddenly became sparkly and well-lit, as the tinsel reflected the lights on the tree.
"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect God's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord…" 2 Cor. 3.18 NIV
I am Christmas tinsel. Some may welcome what I bring, others eschew it, but wherever I go, no matter how much darkness was there, I am a reflector and that darkness is a little less powerful.
No kidding-that is really what I got as I hung tinsel!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am happy to reflect HIS glory in the heavily-shadowed places I encounter each day. Unveil, soak up the glory.
Pictured: the family room tree, topped with my own childhood angel-hair angel from 1964
The Purest Praise
When I was about 10 our family moved across the state where my dad was starting a new church. We left behind aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and the only neighborhood and house and school I'd ever known.
Sitting alone in the backyard on a tire swing hanging from an old tree, realizing that I didn't know anyone and couldn't "run up the street to grandma's house" I experienced lonliness, a deep aloneness, for the first time. Yet, just as quickly, something else. As the leaves of the tree rustled in the mild breeze, God showed up and put a melody in my heart. It was there and then that we started singing our secret songs together. I cannot explain that. But He came to me and put a song in my heart. We'd had encounters before. I'd been a singing church girl, but this was just us and no matter what song I have ever since sung, no matter the venue or the event, none, I am certain, have been as true and pure as when I was a child – singing for Him and Him alone in our secret place.
That memory just hit me again powerfully when I visited Dan and Marianna's blog site where she shared a Jason Upton song from Youtube. Jason tells the story of how he and his 3 year old son wrote a song together for Jesus and what he learned from it. It is powerful. Check it out here (all parents of small children – GO! everyone else, too): http://thewakefields.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/jesus-would-you-come-play-with-me/
"God, brilliant Lord, Yours is a household name. Nursing infants gurgle choruses about You; toddlers shout the songs that drown out enemy talk and silence atheist babble." Ps. 8.1-2
Praise Him…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Get childlike. Get close and listen to my little grandbabies – where the purest praise is these days.
The Chosen Treasure of My Heart
Memories can play tricks on you, especially childhood memories when you were too young to put words to the emotions of an event or your surroundings. The more you think about it now, the more articulate you become about the emotion you felt – good or bad. But your facts were so limited. You might not know the whole story.
I once heard some one say that our past is like a pair of glasses we are looking through at our present. The things we have experienced color how we see our world, often giving us a less-than-accurate view. That makes the memories in our hearts, the things we choose to see as our history, our personal truth, powerful deciders for our present and our futures.
A few months ago, I realized that I, a very visual person, was able to remember not only situations and circumstances and words that had pierced me in my life, but I could remember what the room I was in looked like, or what a person was wearing during painful past memories. I began to wonder why hurtful words or circumstances from 2 months or 20 years ago could still affect me so strongly – actually gaining strength over time to become such defining moments in my life. I wondered if I could just choose to remember the other stuff, the blessings, the faithfulness of God. Why, I wondered, was there so much negative clutter in my mind and memory bank and yet I struggled to remember the goodness of the Lord, shown to me over and over. In reading through old journals and letters, I would come across the most amazing stories of God's provision or kind words of love from people which I had all but forgotten. I would get so excited reading about all the ways I have been blessed, but had so nonchalantly let slip from my memory.
I wondered how could I forget blessing so easily and remember offense just as easily? I do believe the enemy of our souls (the soul being our mind, will, and emotion) is out to distract and defeat us. And if that is true, I was beginning to realize – he was winning his fight against my heart in too many ways.
I picked up a notebook and wrote at the top of the page: The Chosen Treasure of My Heart. It would be a place I'd write the good remembrances of my life. And because I also want to esteem and honor my parents, I even titled a page for each of them: The Chosen Treasures, My Memories of My Dad and The Chosen Treasures: My Memories of My Mom.
Just like that – I am re-calling my true history by remembering and being grateful for the abundance of blessing I have lived in. I don't do it well or right every second, but I have just decided – I have very little "RAM space" left. I don't have the room in my brain to remember every little thing. That being the case, I am CHOOSING what I want to remember! My "past-glasses" prescription is changing.
My heart? Reserved for treasure alone! This is what I choose.
It is kind of what God did. He chooses to forget our sin. It is at the bottom of the sea of forgetfulness!
Blessings…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: "Finally…whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things…and the peace of God will be with you." Phil 4.8, 9 NKJV
And remember – He forgets…
I have written about my quest for the chosen treasure before here and here.