It was family-party-celebration-time for Dave (DP) as soon as we got home Ichthus Festival in Kentucky.
He L-O-V-E-S sushi like crazy! But not everyone in the family has been wooed to the sushi-side. So, we got sushi for the fishy of us and then made a bunch of other sushi-looking stuff (very odd combinations! ~ turkey and cheese wraps, tortilla roll-ups, egg rolls cut, etc) and made everyone eat them with chopsticks, wasabi peas and dipping sauces! Throw in some Asian BBQ pork spare ribs and voila! The weirdest meal we may ever have had. All in Dave’s honor.
Yeah, we are that bourgeois.
His “cake,” instead of his traditonal Rice Krispie Treats with a side of Peachie rings each year (that is DP, for ya!), was a giant chocolate chip cookie along with a super-fresh batch of niece-Elise’s incredible chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. Can you count all 28 crazy candles?
Dave and Tara. See those kind faces? It’s because they really are. Hunter and Gavin and the chopsticks. See those ornery faces? They are that and my heart-fillers, too!
Whew! We have just completed 9 family birthdays in less than 3 months. We have a slight reprieve until late July and then we crank up again for the fall season! But how can I not mark the dates and celebrate these people? I praise God for them! O yes, I do!
I painted white numbers, 1 – 5, on the black breakfast bar stools the kids painted for me for Mother’s Day. I used 5 different fonts and blew them up to about 250 points, but then I decided to make them all about 4″ high and that seemed to actually disappate some of the uniqueness of the variety of fonts, but I still like ’em. I waxed them for protection (Minwax for Furniture – the old-fashioned way women used to do their furniture).
You’d think the grandkids would want to sit on them in the order of their birth, but you’d be wrong. Everyone wants the big numbers now.
All 5 of the little bebes came over Saturday night and filled the house with happy chaos. Averi had to go home at 10 o’clock, but the other four spent the night.
At exactly 6:03 a.m., they jumped on to the bed, surrounding me (maybe “swarming” is more accurate) and started saying “Wake up, Nonna! Wake up!” And, “It’s gonna be a great day! Wake up!” Hunter demonstrated for me how to wipe the sleep from my eyes by twisting my fists over them. They jumped and jumped until I agreed to get up.
We started with cereal as an appetizer, followed by cheesy scrambled eggs as the main dish. Poppa chose the cereal, but my grandbebes all love my eggs.
Somehow we were able to get them all presentable for church (almost had a disaster when Gemma, in her pretty pink polka-dot dress, got into a jar of Vicks…yikes!) and actually arrived on time!
“But from everlasting to everlasting, the LORD’S love is with those who fear Him, and His righteousness with their children’s children…” Psalm 103.17 NIV
Counting my blessings (as well as my breakfast-bar stools)…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Re-surface that blasted breakfast bar!!!
I’ve heard the real me is who I am “in the dark,” who and what I become when I think no one sees.
This morning the opening line of a poem came to me*,one that impacted my thinking way back in the day, probably almost 30 years ago now. You gotta love Google. I typed in what I remembered and there it was. It’s about serving. It’s about the exuberance of our faith being translated into true love, Jesus-love. It’s about letting the enthusiastic God-talk line up with the daily walk. It is about serving like Jesus did. It is who I wanna be when I grow up, even when, especially when, no one else sees…
You know, Lord, how I serve You
With great emotional fervor
In the limelight.
You know how eagerly I speak for You
At women’s groups.
You know how I effervesce when I
Promote a fellowship group.
You know my genuine enthusiasm
With my Bible study group.
But how would I react, I wonder
If You pointed to a basin of water
And asked me to wash the calloused feet
Of a bent and wrinkled old woman
Day after day
Month after month
In a room where nobody saw
And nobody knew.
-unknown
It’s time to live the life…Jeanie
*The remembrance of this piece may have been triggered by Confluence’s block party this past Saturday in the City. Some very busy HF leadership team gave their entire day to doing pedicures for people who could never afford it. They truly washed feet all day long.
Gen. 2.15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend [cultivate] and keep it.
This is what happens to your radishes when you leave them for 4 or 5 days too long during an unusually weird rainy spell. It is the size of a large plum or a beet. Unattended, they try to overthrow the garden. I must tend.
Happy Birthday (yesterday), Dave (we sometimes refer to him as DP since he has the same name as my husband…well, actually lots of people do, sooo maybe that wasn’t the reason. I do know it goes like this: DP + TP = HP Figure it out!)!
I do not take lightly the “coincidence” of Dave’s birth happening (though I wouldn’t meet him until 21 years later) on one of the happiest days of my life. Without a doubt, the day my husband asked me to be his wife and across the country and Dave was being born into the Powers family was one of significance. I tell Tara that she and I were both getting our Prince Charmings on the same day. We just didn’t know.
Fast forward to 2002. It was May. I went to a Worship Together conference with Mike Pilavachi, Tim Hughes, Chris Tomlin (?), Rita Springer and others. The worship was awesome. I’d had a long day at work and the night was so refreshing. Afterwards as I purchased some music books and CDs, I was talking to Rocky. The room was jam-packed with people. It was loud. I leaned in to tell Rocky how bowled over I was by Rita when suddenly, this guy manning the tables says something like, “Wasn’t she awesome?” It was kind of like in the movies. You’re being jostled by hundreds of people, the noise level was so high you can barely hear yourself think and then some guy talks to you and it is as if there is no noise. I could hear him perfectly, even across the merch table, and I heard nothing else. Think Twilight Zone music here. It was Dave.
Rocky already knew Dave and loved him. He introduced us. Is it OK to admit that I immediately hoped he would meet, fall madly in love with, and marry my daughter, Tara? Because that is what I was thinking! If you have ever met Dave you know this, but the guy is a connector. You don’t just meet Dave, you enter relationship with him. When he asks, “How are you?,” he is really asking you to tell him the details because he actually cares about how you are doing. Later in the summer he started hanging around us and we fell head over heels in love with him! I couldn’t believe that I could like another person my kids’ ages like I liked him. He just jumped into our lives and pried open our jaded, closed up hearts. Dave was the start of lots of good things in our family’s life, and we’d had a crap-load of not good stuff. So we regard him very highly!
It was months before DP and Tara met, but the cool thing? He didn’t even know she was part of our family when it happened. So, I did not corral him in…he fell in! *smile…
Dave, I love you for being such an honoring and loving son. I applaud you for hanging in there with us. I praise God for placing you in our path. I hope in the end it will be true that we will have been as much of a blessing to you as you have been to us. We are honored to walk through this life as family with you. Your parents did so well in raising you. And you have done so well in receiving the guidance and direction of the Lord in your life.
There is so much I love about you. Can I tell you a few things?
Twenty-eight things I love about DP on the occasion of his 28th Birthday
Well, Thank-You, Jesus (!) for how much this boy loves my daughter! You turned the light on in her, Dave. You bring out good things, but even more of a blessing is just that you recognize, respect and pull out the residing goodness and gifting in her. Thank-you for the way you treat Tara, both publicly and privately. Thank-you for helping save her. Whew! I am so blessed that my daughter married so well.
You are a great father to Hunter. A true daddy…
You have one of the greatest voices I have ever heard! I love to hear you sing and by the way, I am not hearing nearly enough of that these days with your travel schedule…so let’s get that CD done!
The way you travel and go and do ministry with no financial requirement, but just to be a blessing. Your trust in the Father for provision is exemplary. Your laid-back travel habits also such a good-example for my choleric, perfectionistic tendencies!
Your worship. Your ministry to the Lord felt so immediately comfortable and familiar to me when you came along. It is so easy to enter in to the Presence the minute you begin to sing.
The way you can cast vision. I could listen to you tell the miraculous stories of God’s provision and move all day long (and nearly have at times…*smile). You are a Holy Spirit-gifted communicator, for sure. When I read about the Old Testament guys who were able to get the entire nation of Israel to follow God through hard times, I truly believe you could do that with God’s people now, and I mean an entire nation. It could happen…
I love that you let me work with you. It has changed my life. These are my best days.
You’re a good brother. The baby of your family, you had to step up to being a big brother when you married in to this one and you have done it well. You are watchful and protective, loving and honest, prayerful and supportive.
You’re a good son. You are so honoring to your parents. You can be sure you’ll live long on the earth and it will go well with you. It already is!
Your humor. It is twisted. But you make me laugh.
Your work ethic – very good. Just be careful here. You have nothing to prove. You work hard, so remember to “Sabbath hard”, too!
Your generosity – it’s amazing. I realize what a tightwad I am every time I am around you.
Your patience with difficult people (including, but not limited to your mother-in-law…and btw-thanks for never calling me that, but always calling me “mom”) is, well, a good thing.
Your ability to receive mentoring and advice from people further along in their life and faith will serve you well all your days.
But not just your ability to receive – the fact that you actively seek counsel and look for people to pour into you – and then you actually heed their words – this is wisdom. You are walking in wisdom.
Your commitment to seeing the call of God in people, really seeing them – oh, what a blessing. Do you know?
Your commitment to hearing the voice of God. Thank-you for the days you sanctify to go up the mountain and seek Him. We all benefit from the radiance on your face.
You live to forgive. Thanks for refusing to harbor offense.
You are a door opener. Lots of people are walking in their sweet spot because you took the time to open the door for them (DP, the Apostle).
Your strength-inner, physical and especially spiritual. You are a strong man.
I love that you and Tara got to talk to Martin Smith (Delirious) at Ichthus! He gave you good advice, kiddo! You are so cool!
Your prayer. You know how to pray. I am thankful to benefit from that.
I love that you, who has the ear of important people and have been given meetings with great men, stay so humble. Humility is the protection around your heart. I keep seeing you press in to go low and watching the Lord place you in cool places. You are a humble man.
O my goodness! You can play the guitar, kid. Yowzers!
You have such an adventurous spirit. Are you as fear-free as you seem? May it ever, ever, ever be so.
Your zeal for Chipotle burritos and sushi convert everybody. I especially am glad to go to Chipotle with you as I always get a burrito twice the normal size when I am with the Chipotle-Ambassador himself! Good times!!
I love, love, love getting to know you, work with you, be in the same family with you, do ministry with you, and just in general be around you. I feel so lucky, so blessed!
And Dave? I love your heart. No matter what, I will always believe in your heart. And trust it.
I love you, kiddo. I celebrate the day God placed you on this earth and all your days!…mom
pictured: TOP ROW~DP with his little counterpart, Hunter; SECOND ROW~DP with dad and Tris at bowling a few weeks ago, DP making a strike; THIRD ROW~DP and Tara at Ichthus last week; FOURTH ROW~DP front and center on the bottom row at the recent HF leadership meeting (Dave is the founder and president of Worship and the Word Movement, the ministry tnhat puts HF on)…do you see me? I am the oldest one in the picture!!…
I have read through the Bible in a year, but not that many times, frankly. For 3 years in a row I read the OT through once and the NT through twice. I enjoyed getting more New Testament during that plan. But I have also taken a lot longer and though I don’t get the mark on my scoreboard, I really enjoy the Word. Time in the Word is time with the Word…
Some people keep track of how many times they have read the entire Bible through in a year like they are gathering up Super Bowl rings or something. My preference would be to relish the Word, study deep and meander through it. And sometimes I just don’t read it often enough. Let’s be honest.
But here I am – attempting this marathon read-through. I started a couple of days late and totally lost control while I was in Kentucky. I am in Numbers. I should be reading the end of Joshua.
Will she make it? Will she know Him more by the end?
Lord, I don’t just want to do this to say I have done it, but I want to hear You and know more of You and learn to be like You. May Your Word do a work in my heart this summer. Help me to hide Your Word in my heart, to meditate on Your precepts and laws. Your Word is eternal and established and is my delight. This summer as I feast on this living Word, I will also obey it, Lord. Teach me, change me…
We were in Wilmore, Kentucky for the Ichthus Festival on Saturday, on Dessa’s birthday, gathering information and learning from people who have managed to keep a festival going for 40 years now. I got to watch watch Tredessa in action interviewing people much older and I was so impressed at her ease and ability to draw the most important information from them. She is soft-spoken and gentle, easy to talk to (and talk, they did), but she has the ability to harness millions of bits of data, opinion, strategy (both good and bad, both successful and disastrous) and infuse it into a leadership team of nearly 100 people who will make Heaven Fest all God has ordained it to be.
I stood back and watched. I listened. I thought, “Wow! She is good.”
Then I remembered. She’s my girl. She’s my beautiful baby. She’s my little Dessy-Pooh-Pie. She is 26. And I know her to be a caring person, a life-giving, true friend/sister/daughter to her family and influential auntie to the grand-bebes, a true comrade-of-the-heart to those who take the time to know her, and a young woman wholly devoted to the Lord.
Tre was a gift to us.
Tredessa was born on a beautiful day in Kokomo, Indiana. The timing of her arrival was planned only by God and how good He was to give us this amazing daughter. She was born exactly 1 year and 3 weeks after her sister, Stephanie, making her the 3rd girl in a row. I remember getting into the car to go to the hospital and the smell of lilacs (it seems it would have been late for that, but I recall it, nonetheless). I remember a hot sun and a cool breeze, the shrubs all fluttering lightly and knowing I’d soon have another baby. Somehow the day seemed blessed. Somehow it seemed the birds were singing in celebration and God had particularly delighted in creating a wondrous day.
I took her home in a yellow outfit and sunbonnet and few days later, symbolizing the dazzling brightness and joy of her arrival. And the summer of Tredessa (1983) was a blessed one. It was daddy and mommy and our three adorable little girls, Tara, Stephanie and Tredessa and life was just so, so, so good: lots of hair and barrettes and blow-up swimming pools and bbq–ing and church life and friends and Martha Miniature dresses and hot and humid Indiana. She was sweet and easy. I recall sweet and easy days of love.
26 wishes for Tredessa on the occasion of her 26th birthday
Tredessa, I love you and bless and wish so many good things for you. Can I tell you a few?
I wish for all of your days to have the sense of blessing on them in your life that the day of your birth and all the days I have known you since have had.
I wish for God to show you the next step…just the one, so you’ll know without a doubt you are dwelling directly in the place He has prepared.
I am wishing thousands of hugs and kisses for you from the children you’ll have someday (with the most amazing man you’ll marry someday), the fruit of all the seeds of love you have planted in your nieces and nephews.
As a matter of fact, I pray your siblings will be as great at loving and watching over your kids as you have been with theirs. You have an unusual and very intentional connection to all those little boogers.
I pray that one day you will hear the reports and know the impact you made on the Venezuelan orphans in spite of the government overtake. Those kids will grow up. They will look for their (spiritual) Mama Tredessa.
I pray that you will cause thousands of people to know God’s love and understand His work in their lives they way you do. The way you go after God makes people hungry to know Him that way.
I wish for your joy to be full, full, full.
I am praying peace for you in these days of transition.
All your dreams can come true, it can happen for you, if you’re young at heart…and it doesn’t hurt that you are, in fact, actually young!
I hope you wear lots of dresses this year because you are so cute in them.
Like Elinor Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility, you are practical, circumspect and discreet. You are tremendously sensible and use your head in every situation, but there is that deeply emotional side. There is that part of you that sometimes scares you and very few people know it exists. I pray a whole bunch of people will take the initiative to find that side and drag your vulnerability out of you. *smile…be brave…
I wish you “rest for your soul.” Because that is what Jesus wants for you, too. (Remember telling me that??)
I am wishing with all my might you will hear the secrets of the Lord as you fear Him and give Him your reverent awe.
Do you know you garner trust from people young and old? May it always be so.
I hope you’ll always know how you bless me. A few years ago, after you’d had a consultation with some one who thought they were dealing with a novice, as she searched for ways to express what a “surprise” you’d been, how efficient and advanced for your years you were, she said to me, “Well, Tredessa is an extraordinary young woman. She told me she is gifted just like you.” And, wow, I was taken aback and swelled with pride. I was honored that you’d tell some one something like that. Honey? You’re waaaaaay more amazing!
I pray for the Lord to be your strong tower. You have a strength, an inner resolve, but babycake, you will never be so strong you don’t have to lean on Jesus! I know you know that, but this is a reminder.
I am praying for clear guidance and direction from the One who said He’d lead you and guide you. He will.
I hope you’ll let the doors that must close, close. And look back with gratefulness and humility.
Be brave as you walk through new doors.
Fall in love, if you have time.
Flirt a lot first. Come on-you can do it.
I wish for you to accept the fact that you are a spiritual brickhouse! Seriously! Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power and don’t worry about it! Never apologize for that!
I wish a great summer for you.
I am praying Heaven Fest will bless you back!
I wish thousands more songs for you. Sing your soul out, TreTre. Play your funky music! (Have mercy on me, sometimes, though).
And baby? Live with abandon! Really, really live with abandon! It’s your time! It is!
Happy Birthday a smidgen late, my beloved daughter…mom
pictured: TOP ROW~Tre with the man she “found” on her birthday at Ichthus…on the Techno stage; SECOND ROW~The “Dessa’s ladies” collage from her b-day celebration; THIRD ROW~Tre with Tara and Hunter and me at Ichthus this past week; FOURTH ROW~Tredessa with her sometimes archnemesis/sometimes best buddy, Luke; Tre with niece Averi-the-little-lady.
We were all surprised and happy because, to put it mildly-she is a bit of an over-worker-super-achiever at times. But she is choosing to let God do a new thing in her life and it is good.
IKEA virgin no more.
So- a week in Minnesota with good, lifelong friends (The Bierers – people we adore!!) included lounging by the pool and shopping (she has heretofore been a somewhat militant non-shopper) at The Mall of America. She is no longer an IKEA virgin! Quite the vacation for Tre-Tre!
Tredessa comes back in spite of a tornado.
7 days later it was time to come home. Her plane was due to land at DIA at the exact same time a tornado was barreling through. They put them in a holding pattern for so long their fuel got low. They ended up landing at Colorado Springs to re-fuel and wait in line to be able to get back to DIA.
She finally got back – just in the nick-of-time for a family dinner to celebrate her life (as she will be out of town again on her actual birthday this weekend).
We got together. There were hugs and kisses and flowers and presents. There was laughter and a few tears of love. There were 5 energetic grandkids (who played dress-up all night) and grilled chicken. We ate corn on the cob and strawberry cheesecake. Edward was invited to be adored. A hot competitve Twilight game was played way into the night. It was the fam and a few friends.
Stef and Wrex, who had been out of town, rushed back to “crash the party” for Tredessa. They wore orange so well. That is one of the reasons we love them so. We did a mini-birthday-celebration for Wrex, too.
Tredessa in Transition
Besides her birthday, Tredessa is in transition in her life right now. There are lots of things changing and things she just doesn’t know some details of her future right now. But I hope she knows, at the very least, how much we all cherish her (especially becuase of that awesome poem I wrote for her)!
PLEASE NOTE: I actually started this post January the 29th. I was so excited about doing orange stuff in the middle of winter. Some of the zeal has dissipated – obvious by how long it has taken me to post this, but I am still very fond of tangerine and clementine and hot peach and orange crush and all things brilliantly hued in various forms of red with yellow. I am just late saying so…Nonetheless…
I went on an orange kick.
“Orange is the happiest color.” Frank Sinatra
I have talked about orange before because I really, really like it (here and here).
Right after the Christmas of 2007,I decided the living room/sanctuary was too neutral and that pumpkin and eggplant would jazz it up nicely until I could go on an all-new-furniture extravaganza…which has yet to occur, btw. I bought fabric to recover the couch pillows and then flew off to Maui to cook for a film crew with Carol Ann.
During our winter snow this past Monday (and my sweet day of rest and Sabbath), orange fever hit me. Dave called to see what I was up to and when I told him I was painting things orange he said, “I am coming home to a Dr Seuss house” but he was not one bit fearful. The next day when he saw that I had painted a chair, 2 candle-holders, a tree branch from last fall’s pruning (which I kept because I knew I could use it someday somewhere) and 3 wooden religious icons orange, he said he was afraid if he didn’t hide the brushes he’d come home to an orange refrigerator and stove. It is addictive.
A year later, said fabric remains as it was – unused. And maybe I won’t use it. I’ll have to check to be sure, but I think the orange was more dull – like pumpkin pie filling before it is baked but it has lots of cinnamon. And I am not really feeling the eggplant this year (leftover Tuscan~ishdays?), but would love to pair brilliant crayon orange with bright “tealish”-robin’s-egg-blue, although that is probably too big a jump for me right now.
Here is how some of it turned out/before and after:
I tried several different fabrics for the chair cover. I kind of know what I want, but haven’t come across it yet. So recently, I just took a scrap of painter’s canvas and painted some simple flower shapes on it for now (I used an old pillow sham of Stormie’s as the inspiration). I wanted a lot of “white space” and a pretty modern perspective.
I am not sure exactly what I will do with everything or how I will bring the whole room together. But I know I had fun with the orange paint and that I am not afraid of the process or awaiting the a-ha moment. It will happen.
I love that you and Tara got to talk to Martin Smith (Delirious) at Ichthus! He gave you good advice, kiddo! You are so cool!
