If I have the words of men and angels and can argue all my cases and can even do God’s bidding for Him, but I don’t have love (to give), I end up just being a bunch of loud, imposing and worthless communications. And if I have the gift of prophecy and can reveal to everyone what God’s next move is, let everybody know the secrets of the ages, and yet do not love people {{what?!? a prophet without love? is that possible?? // pure sarcasm}}; and while we’re at it – what if I am the latest, greatestspiritual- hoo-ha, laying hands on people and moving mountains, or totally different – what if I am dancing all over injustice and rescuing the exploited and raising money for the poor and saving everything in the world and on the earth that needs saving, but I can’t manage to love…can’t just put it into action {{love.is.a.verb. so sang DC Talk}} towards the person in the room with me, then what? What is the point if I can’t show it, be it, live in it, allow God’s own love through me…to you, then?
I don’t get love, after all this time, still.
1 Corinthians 13. Image taken by Stormie. From her view while lying on the patio swing. On a sweet Sunday afternoon.
God, help me learn to love like this, no hidden agendas, no manipulating, just free of self-focus and selfishness. Teach me to be hope-full, trustful, protecting at all times. Give me opportunity to become patient (but be merciful, too, here, Lord, please) and by the end, can You help me to be, so I will be remembered for being, kind? I so appreciate kindness, I would like to be kind, too. I really would. So I wanna learn to L O V E like this, like 1 Corinthians 13 talks about. It will have to be Your love. Yours. Through me. Let it be.
It is hard not to snicker a little, yet a little research shows that this was a man who once taught the Word well. But he lost something somewhere over the years. Believers weren’t raptured Saturday. Many people are disillusioned. Atheists had parties to mock the whole deal.
I love you – yes, I do! A bushel and peck and a hug around the neck. For almost your entire life, from such a young, young age, you’ve been a songstress, a singer, a psalmist. You were the choreographing, twirling, flowing-fabric, scarf-dancing music track of the family ~ just skipping down the happy hallways of life. Everything got a little more colorful and a little more ebullient when you came along.
Yes, I cropped Stormie (the other half of the trend-setting www.MayDae.com. It Is not her birthday! *smile
You were born to
Heavy-with-flowers lilac bushes, your sister learning to wear “slip-slops” when she came to see you for the first time at the hospital, purple irises lining established streets in Kokomo, a little charcoal gray house and a month with which you’re joined by name. You were more than 5 weeks early and may have arrived because of a crazy carnival ride and took your first post-hospital nap atop an old pulpit in the corner of the fellowship hall while I taught a VBS class. You were like a china doll, I was afraid to make noise. We sewed and created and worked hard to prepare your space, we wanted everything to be just right – and in that tiny pink and lace bassinet, you looked like a miniature.
The rainbow–girl
God heals. He is the Healer. That is the blazing-across-the-skymessage of your life, Steph. And the adversary gets no points in the battle for our baby girl. With God’s blessing-kiss on the love between your dad and me, with your big sister praying to have a little sister all her own – you were sent. But you know the enemy, he always tries to stop a miracle at its birth. You live in the ranks of Moses, Jesus, even, with spiritual war- decrees against their very lives: Stop the miracle before it can begin to change the course of everything…
But God, who is faithful, healed you wholly and fully. Breath. That is what He gave you. Unlike others who never had to struggle for air, you, like Adam, had to have a supernatural miracle of the very Ruach, the breath of God {the actual very Spirit of the Living God} breathed in to you.
And so, though I now see the miraculous in every day and can look back at the faithfulness of the One who created me and all the times He was saving me from myself and certain disaster, you were the very first miracle I ever really knew I needed. And in the quiet, dark night following your birth, when your life hung precariously in a balance I didn’t even comprehend, when they’d taken you to James Whitcomb Riley Hospital in Indianapolis and you were not in my arms – I cried out for your life, and the Faithful One heard me and graciously granted my petition.
And though so much could have gone wrong, there could have been so many problems, later, He, by the driving force of His very breath in you, instilled so much color, so much texture and pattern and creativity and gifting and vivaciousness and animation. His very Spirit filled your lungs and your heart and soul and personality and every rainbow has symbolized you since.
You are Rainbow Bear. Always have been. And it was confirmed by the laying on of hands more than once. There is so much there. May you always know in all things that you were created to declare in the heavenlies that God keeps His promise.
Happy Birthday, Stephanie. I put some words together so you will know how & why I celebrate your birth and your life!
Happy Birthday, sweetie-pie. With love from your momma
Guini and Gemma May have decided my home needs refreshed. I think so, too. It needs so much re-done I don’t even have the energy. But I asked their opinion anyway.
Guini color-formed the whole United States of America!
Let’s start in the kitchen. What color should the walls be?
Guini: Pink! Let’s paint the walls pink! And then get purple curtains.
Me: Purple curtains?
Guini: Yes. It will be pretty.
Gemma May (who has been sipping her hot cocoa and dipping her buttered toast into it): I am going to paint this whole counter yellow.
Guini: That would look good. Then, let’s paint the table green – just like the coffee table! Then it will look all nice.
These are definitely women after my own heart.
A little hot cocoa accident for Gemma meant wrapping up until her clothes were washed and dried. Meanwhile, let’s play some matching games!
Honeyboo just has such encouraging words and prints, happened upon by accident. MayDae and Little Bits belong to my daughters, Stephie and Stormie and Jovan. See? Happy places, all!
When I was a child, I thought Miracle Whip was the way to go. But now that I have become a woman, I know Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise is heaven on a sandwich. Especially a tomato sandwich, with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper. O yeah, baby.
I also saw things, when I was a child {situations, memories, people, past wounds and relationships}, without understanding and the wisdom of years. Some things now, I have to ask God to help me see as redeemed and as He saw it, from His vantage point. Like a grown-up. And because of love.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 1 Corinthians 13.11 NIV
I wasn’t a big tomato fan as a kid, either. See? Maturity does help.
I found a memory I had recorded a few years ago for posterity in a folder of recipes. Thought I’d share it here. And though when I originally wrote it I entitled it “Tupperware and the New Bride,” I think now I will call it
Who on earth would even want to try a recipe called “Shrimp-Macaroni Casserole?” That would have been me, I guess.
My co-workers at Bible College and a few friends threw a “Tupperware” shower for me before dad and I married [note: I was writing this for the kids]. That meant that the Tupperware lady would come and display her wares and everyone would order something for me from her.
I don’t really remember anyone asking me what I wanted. And I don’t really remember wanting anything in particular. My mom had been the queen of re-using bread bags and cottage cheese containers before there was ever even a green-movement. So I had not grown up dreaming of the Tupperware that would grace my kitchen cabinets one day. Not at all.
Luckily, my friends and co-workers knew just what I “had to have,” and excitedly began scouring the catalogs and items on display at the shower. I witnessed great exuberance over matching sets of plastic storage containers, and crispers and pie-rolling mats and lids that “burped” the air out before sealing. Much enthusiasm to be sure.
Everything I got was the late seventies brown or avocado green or harvest gold. But it was nice. The lettuce crisper wasn’t the savior I thought it would be (you do eventually have to make sure you don’t leave it in there for weeks on end) and the huge yellow mixing bowl with lid was soon pitted with hot popcorn kernels.
As a “hostess” gift from the Tupperware lady, I received a Tupperware cookbook.
30th Anniversary Edition, published in 1981 Tupperware’s Homemade is Better cookbook
As a new bride, I decided to try one of the recipes they had.
Now, growing up in the Moslander household, you really pretty much doubled, tripled, or quadrupled every recipe when you made it.
I was already struggling to rein it in for dad, Tara and me, because I couldn’t quit doubling recipes. There was always tons of everything I made (150 homemade meatballs, pounds and pounds of noodles for, in theory, just one spaghetti dinner, etc).
The Moslander auto-double+ Tupperware’s HomeMade is Better cookbook
Now – take my doubling obsession and mix it with a Tupperware cookbook and you’ve got trouble. For what I failed to understand was that the Tupperware people were trying to get you to believe you needed more Tupperware so the recipes in the books were already made to fix and then divide and then store in your handy dandy Tupperware for 3-5 future meals. That would have been a good thing to understand. I did not.
So one day, I wanted to find a new and really special recipe for our little family. In the cookbook, I found something, a casserole utilizing ingredients I loved: macaroni, Corn Chex and cooked shrimp. I could imagine a wondrous and delightful meal. I decided to double it, naturally, because if it were really good, we’d want leftovers, and I could just tell we would.
Well – may I just say I could have catered a party for 50 with that much of the cereal, macaroni and shrimp conglomeration? I don’t know if we had a loaves and fishes miracle happening or what? But the more we ate that stuff, the more there was left in our small fridge. Dad ate it, graciously. He, who prefers Rice Chex, can take or leave anything with “macaroni” in the title and doesn’t like shrimp unless it is generously breaded and deep fried beyond the recognition that is was once a living sea-creature – he ate it. And he ate it the next day. Maybe the next even…?
I discerned immediately – that if I was going to be cooking like that – I did not have enough Tupperware. I think we may have actually used every storage bowl and a few old bread bags to boot. Of course, I actually loved it and ate it for breakfast and lunch, too. After a couple of days, dad asked me, “Do you think it’s still safe to eat this? I mean it is seafood and I don’t know how long it will be good.” He was gentle and very honoring. Sadly, I watched him scrape it into the trash.
“Next time,” I thought, “I’ll only make one recipe.” There has never been a next time.
written 9.22.07
PS – Just in case you’re curious, I decided to look up the old recipe. And OOPS. It was supposed to be Rice Chex. I guess I used Corn Chex because I love them and was trying to sway Dave. That may have made all the difference. Haha. Or not.
Shrimp-Macaroni Casserole
2 7 1/4 oz. packages of macaroni and cheese dinner mixes
1 1/2 c milk
3 10 3/4 oz. cans of condensed cream of chicken soup
1 16 oz. package frozen cooked shelled shrimp
1 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups Rice Chex, crushed
Prepare macaroni and cheese according to package directions, except substitute the 1 1/2 cups of milk for the total amounts called for. Stir in the shrimp and soup, Worcestershire sauce and pepper.
To bake immediately, turn one-third of the mixture into a one-quart casserole. Bake uncovered, in 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. Stir. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup crushed Rice Chex. Bake 10 minutes more.
To freeze and bake later, divide remaining two-thirds of the mixture between the Seal-n-Serve Set. Apply seals, label and freeze. Immerse sealed container in warm water for about 3-5 minutes, just till mixture is thawed enough to remove from container. Invert into a one-quart casserole. Cover and bake in a 400-degree oven for 40 minutes; stir to spread mixture evenly in casserole. Bake, covered, for 30 minutes. Uncover and stir. Sprinkle 1/2 cup crushed Rice Chex atop casserole. Bake 10 minutes more.
Makes 3 casseroles, 4 servings each.
This recipe exhausts me just reading it. Thank goodness the common folk could start to afford microwaves in the 80s.
So, um…I actually might try this again, for fun, and I think now, after all these years, I would definitely double it again, but probably quadruple the shrimp. And the Corn Chex? Stays! Dave won’t eat it anyway.
“I live with nostalgic regrets about everything.” Sarah Ferguson to Dr. Phil about her self-image after the sting operation last year that brought her to her lowest low after years of making mistakes and messes of her life for the upcoming docu-series on OWN.
Should it define her – that one horrid moment, or even the series of them that brought her there? Did she do the best she could have with the resources she had at the time? Or what if she did the worst she could have, knowingly and rebelliously? Is there no redemption? Ever?
As moms, we often let the times we act like we wish we wouldn’t, define us.
I get a bit melancholy. I tend toward “nostalgic regret.” I guess I am thinking about what defines me these days, in my early 50s, getting older and trying not to let the enemy of my soul make the regrets bigger than God’s faithfulness has been; nor bigger than the times I have lived under His wing, in His plan, doing what He chose for me to do beforehand. God has been good to me, so good.
He has been good! His smile warms my life. In spite of my own self-sabotage at times, He has entrusted things to me, things that, had I been the distributor, I’d never have given. I wonder why. Other people do too, I am sure. And yet, He planned a life for me too good for words.
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2.10 NLT
The refrain of my life: He is faithful. He is so faithful. Has been in all things past, and is, right now.
Praise the LORD, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit [this is GOOD NEWS, Sarah Ferguson!]
and crowns you with love and compassion, [You can still be royalty-you can still have it all]
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD works righteousness
and justice for all the oppressed.
The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the LORD’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.
Praise the LORD, my soul.
Psalm 103.1-6,8-18, 22b NIV
Why live in regret when the story of God’s faithfulness isn’t over yet?
Come Mother’s Day, you realize how may women you actually came from, what they brought to your life, how they are all part of the river that flows through your heart.
Ressie Belle Anderson Moslander Baker
This is the grandma whose personality I may most likely have. Choleric and able, a little bossy and pretty strong. She is the one I lived near and saw most often in my early years. She is my dad’s mom, a hard-working farm girl from the mid-west whose first husband was killed in a car crash leaving her with 2 baby girls and 6 months pregnant with her son, my dad.
She was not a “gooey-warm” grandmother, necessarily, but maybe a little ornery. She was sensible and busy, opinionated and strong and protective when Grandpa’s teasing went a little far. She lived down the street and I could go see her anytime. And she was always working hard, the house getting an entire “spring cleaning,” every single week of the year (that part of her, no, I did not get).
She gave me gifts, which I thoroughly now suspect were her love language. Not often, not even regularly on gift-type occasions, but when she gifted, they impacted me. A large clear jar with yellow flowers on it, filled with Minuet in E toilette water. A red plaid-skirted outfit, double-knit with matching red tights. A set of used Cherry Ames Nurse books and Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, a book I love to this day.
She also bequeathed to me, because I loved music and sang along to anything I could get my hands on for my little blue record player, a large selection of 78s and 45s from Disney and old radio shows. “Here is something I thought you might like,” she’d say, handing me a brown paper bag. And she was always right.
She gardened for food and potted plants for joy. She had a cactus collection I could never resist touching, yet always regretted, and several cages with brightly colored parakeets as pets, but also as business. She raised and sold hundreds from her basement, as it happens.
She was strong-willed and smart, very entrepreneurial (if they needed money, she would figure out how to make it happen and it was done) and the glue that kept the family together. Her house was the center of my extended family universe. And when she died at at the age of 57, when I was just 11, I was at her house, on her giant round ottoman, in her tangerine-colored living room (she loved bold color, too) and time stood a little still and things were never the same. Carefree childhood, life as we’d always known it, a little less so.
Berniece Quick Hallet
She is my mom’s mom. She was gentle and tender and misunderstood and lived quietly with a broken heart. From the stories I have heard, most from her, even in childhood she was a misfit of sorts. Very young, she married my mom’s dad and they had 2 daughters together before the marriage broke up. And she never quite rebounded. Court proceedings and custody battles led her in to a second marriage merely to provide a stable home environment for her daughters. Her second husband loved her fiercely and treated her daughters well and fathered her next child, another daughter, but she never really gave her heart again, it seems.
“Nervous breakdowns” and “mental illness” were used to describe her at times. She attempted suicide on more than one occasion, my poor mama finding her once on the kitchen floor as she came in from high school. My earliest memories of my Grandma Hallet were when my mom dressed me up and we drove to see her at a state mental hospital, a green and rolling-hilled compound that seemed lovely to me. My mom wore a leopard print dress. I was three and very excited to be visiting her, no comprehension at all of why she was there, so far away from home.
But with me, towards me, she was a kind, loving woman, cheering me on and encouraging my efforts. On our birthdays, or anytime she could muster up money, she would give us $1.11. Yes. Exactly $1.11. Why? Because the dollar was our spending money, but to teach us tithing, she’d throw in the dime so we could have the whole dollar. But then you havd to pay tithes on the dime, right? Thus the extra penny. One-dollar and eleven-cents.
By the time I was 7 or 8, she didn’t live alone again, but stayed with my Aunt Helen’s family and would visit us for extended times. She lived from a brown paper bag between houses. And she slept in a bed with my sister and me and always prayed with us for the whole family. She smiled really big and crinkled her eyes. Sometimes when I see pictures of myself laughing unabashedly, I think I see her there. She loved to clean the house and put away dinner and claimed to adore doing dishes (I did not get this from her at all). Or at least she said she did. Sometimes now I think she was just trying to pay her way, trying to prove she had value. This, I probably did get from her – the need to prove my value, earn my way all of the time.
And I hate that she didn’t know she did have such value in our lives. And that she saw herself as an embarrassment and as weak, and so did others because of her tender heart. She never wanted to be a bother. I have always been opposed to the thought of being less-able-to-handle-thingslike her, or forgetful like she was, and sometimes I have looked at broken heartedness in others as a fault, as if you can avoid it in a life where you love deeply. And I think of 1 Corinthians 12 and now understand how she should have been handled:
And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, 24 while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. 25 This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other.
Grandma died that week between Christmas and New Years when so many lonely people do. She was alone, at her state care facility. Only 68. Now I know she wasn’t weak, not unable, but just unjaded, un-harshened as a true-heart response. Her heart was still flesh. And it was still pure white as her hair had become. And I think that if my grandkids at all remember me with any gentle kindness, praying for them, cheering them on and gently, but always, in their corner, than I shall be glad to have been compared to her.
This is my Grandma Allison. While my Grandpa was exuberant and boisterous in his love and affection, while he would loudly proclaim his enthusiasm and love for us and make such a big deal of our presence, Grandma was this classic beauty. She was serene and graceful, even-tempered and kind. I always found her fascinatingly beautiful. I can remember so far back as to include gloves and hats and leopard-print high heels, a size 5 for her tiny feet.
She spoke to me. I wasn’t just a kid in the room to her. I was a person to talk to with graciousness and kindness.
The last time I got to spend time with her, I sat at a piano and played and songs as she picked them. I was surprised to learn how much she loved music and how she played and sang herself, though not for us. She picked her favorite just before we had to leave. And she held the music open while I did her favorite, Amy Grant’s, “El Shaddai.”
To the outcast on her knees,
You were the God who really sees,
And by Your might,
You set Your children free.
She loved that, for reasons I don’t really know, as far as my Grandma was concerned. But I love it because knowing He sees me is setting me free. I love that we shared that worship that day.
We will praise and lift You high, El Shaddai
Looking forward to singing and worshipping with her again soon.
Laveta Davis
I guess she wasn’t my “real” grandma as grandmas go, but she was to me and her impact on my family and me is undeniable.
She was my mom’s pastor’s wife, the one who nurtured my mom in her baby-Christian days. My mom, raised in an unchurched home, had made a decision to follow Jesus as a young teen and this godly woman saw something in her and poured in to my mom, and discipled her and walked the Christian walk with her.
When my mom was carrying me, LaVeta Davis asked, “Can your baby call me Grandma?” And I always did. All the kids did. And she brought me “grown-up” books about sewing and flower arranging. And she brought us paper for creating and card-making supplies and all things creative. We always knew after she visited, that there would be fun things to make.
She gave us, when I was very young, a set of old 1940s Pictorial Encyclopedias. I doubt she knew how much I would love those things. For when I was 5, my dad ridded our home of the television set in favor of more time for prayer and study. And as a little girl, for entertainment, I read the encyclopedia. For hours I would sit at the base of the shelves in the formal dining room reading and learning and discovering, all in black and white. I couldn’t wish better times on my grandbebes if I tried.
These are some of my most unforgettable, most influential women.
Yes. I come from strong, loving, godly women. They taught me to be resourceful, tender, strong, sassy, opinionated, gentle, creative, gracious, intelligent, passionate, long suffering, loving, discerning, well-doing, forgiving, hard-working, giving and so much more. If I haven’t turned out right, it is not the fault of these women. They were amazing all.
