Got blessings?

Talking to some other women in ministry families the other day, we were brainstorming about how we've been blessed by our church members. Things get hard sometimes in churches, there are power struggles and personality conflicts and just plain trouble too.  Believe me, there have been horror stories shared in this same group of women.  So the focus on the positive was very refreshing.

We are so blessed by our church. Not only do they love us and bless us in practical and generous ways, but they get along, love each other and really have a desire for God to work in our church and community. They are a blessing to work, worship and serve with.

And may God richly bless all of our handy men who bless us with their services...so often! This week it is installing a new water heater. You're a blessing guys!

Finally fall...?

Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona made it's mark on me. Scars from sun burns from childhood/teen years, more freckles than you could count, and eh, a few wrinkles. A few fortunate neighbors on my street growing up had swimming pools. We became their friends as kids.

And when no one had invited you to swim in their pool, we could walk to the community pool. It was about a mile away from our house and in those days (the olden days) we had to cross through some fields to get there. They may not have been technically fields, but they were at least huge yards where you could have horses. To make the trip shorter, my sister would short cut through these places, squeezing under barbed wire and my least favorite, crossing the ditch. It seemed huge to me and I could never make it across in one jump, so I would land in the mud and squish along the rest of the way to the pool in at least one muddy flip flop. We would get beet red and then wait for the big 'peel' to happen, which we found fascinating. It was always a contest to see who could pull off the largest piece of sloughed skin without breaking it. I shudder at the thought of all the skin damage I had as a child. We just didn't know.

Those kind of summers forced kids inside when morning faded (if you weren't swimming), so fall quickly became my favorite season. The weather got lighter, not as heavy....your skin didn't burn as you walked outside and sweaters reappeared in the closet. (I do love sweaters) I loved the rare overcast days and walking to school with a brisk chill in the air. We had huge Mulberry trees in our yard, so there was an abundance of crunchy leaves to rake into piles and take turns jumping into.

The only problem with fall in Phoenix is that it doesn't usually come until mid-November. In fact, up until last week, the weather flirted with going into the triple digits, the air conditioner ran and ran and only the mornings cooled off enough to really say it was cool, and then, not chilly, just cool.

The high today is just tipping into the 80's. It's 81 now and getting cloudy and breezy, so it feels like 70's. I am making soup.

Dare I say it? I think it's fall!

I love cool weather, I love sweaters and soup. I'm thankful today for the relief in the air....literally. But there is also some relief from the traumatic days we spent at the end of last week. Things are not feeling so heavy today. That is something to be grateful for.

When young men stumble and fall...

Thanking God for the Hope we have in Him, even when things don't make sense.

My cell phone beeped yesterday morning, so I picked it up and quickly glanced at it to see who the text message was from. Instantly I threw it back down as tears filled my eyes. "Why did I read that? Why did I read that now?" My sister caught the phone in her lap. We were stopped at a light, and I had to keep driving through the tears and gasps of air.

The only words I saw were "Matthew Broehm killed...." I shouldn't have read that text in those moments. Becky distracted me by making me talk and when I was ready she read the whole thing. Charles had texted me and all of our daughters telling us that a dear friend from our church in Williams had died in Afghanistan that day. He was a Marine and I found out today from the news that he did die during combat.

He was 22.

His family and ours had moved to Williams around the same time and we all became quick friends. They were a homeschooling family with older teens, like us. They had 2 tall, strapping boys, one girl Hannah's age and one younger boy who was smaller, that was Matthew.

Matt was a very sincere kid. He always listened intently to anyone who was teaching or telling him something. It seemed like he was just eating up the information and had a great respect for people and great manners and attitude. This sometimes singles a young man out for ridicule, but no one made fun of Matt unless he was in on it too. I think this was because you could tell he liked you and was genuinely interested in you when you were around him. He was the first one to raise his hand when the youth leader asked if anyone would lead them in prayer too. He became famous for it...whenever the leader asked, we would all just look at Matt. Then he would crinkle his eyes, smiling and begin praying. What a cool kid! As he became older, the girls all crushed on him and flirted with him and made him blush.

I had the privilege of working with our youth for a few years in Sunday School and got to see him starting to really mature as a Christian and start to be a mentor to some of the younger boys....always encouraging them and talking to them, making them feel included and loved.  There was some talk of him going into youth ministry too.

Maybe because he was smaller than his brother or maybe just because it caught his interest, he started taking Tae Kwon Do. Then he realized this was his thing and worked his way up to black belt and soon was teaching the class to other kids in town. He was a hard worker. He liked really hard core Christian screamo music, full of passion and conviction.  At some point in those years he went from being called Matthew to Matt.

I remember being surprised (but not at the same time) that he was enrolling in the military. The Marines....wow.  *shudder*  No one doubted that he could do it, but at the same time we dreaded that kind of lifestyle for such a nice kid. His first visit home, he was the picture of a Marine in uniform seeing him at church for the first time....so confident and looked taller too. His parents and siblings were so proud of him.

We moved away and out of touch with many of his family, besides Facebook updates. It was on Facebook where we learned he had become engaged and married a beautiful young lady, his Marine comrades stood with him, all handsome in the wedding pictures.  Then we heard of him shipping out to Afghanistan just a short time later.

And now killed. A wonderful young man. I will remember Matt very well. I can see his cute, blushing smile and his hand going up to volunteer to pray. I can see him talking seriously to our youth pastor at the time or to my husband or his father. He was always watching the men of the church, always learning from them.....he was always in the process of  becoming someone...of having a meaningful life.

I am not questioning God about how He allows things to happen even though it's hard to understand. Death comes to the just and the unjust. Some are young and seem to have so much left to give and some are ready, having lived a long and fruitful life. We will never make sense of it with our mortal eyes. But we accept and we trust God and we will always remember the humble, mature and honorable way that Matt lived and died.

To the Broehm family: I love you all and am just heartsick for you having to give up your Matt so soon.

May the God of hope fill you
with all joy and peace as you trust in him, 

so that you may overflow with hope
by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

~Romans 15:13

Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;

 but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.
~Isaiah 40:30-31

Of heart attacks and days gone wild

I missed two days on writing about thankfulness, but I'm sure you'll understand when you're done reading here today.

On Thursday I was waiting until the end of the day  to write my blog post in case something really interesting to be thankful for came my way. Well, let me just say before I begin that what I am thankful for is my family. (just in case this is not obvious by the end)

Thursday afternoon I was just thinking about what to put out for dinner. My husband and I both had large lunches and were not going to eat. And then, the phone rang.... and things got kicked into high gear and my day suddenly had a different plan and reason.

It was my sister Becky. She was frantic sounding as I listened to her voice while Charles was talking to her on his cell phone. He asked her several pointed, serious, urgent sounding questions, then hung up.

"Larry has had a heart attack at the cabin. He's going to be air lifted to Phoenix and we need to go meet him at the hospital."

This is the moment in the caricature my life was becoming that adrenaline squirts out of my head in little drops like a cartoon while I turn into a Tasmanian devil whirling around the house stuffing things I may need in my purse. Socks, travel sized lotion, make up, ipod, some meds, Mentholatum....just the necessities.  I knew I would be spending the night in the hospital with my sister so my practical head made use of the time we had until the second phone call telling us which hospital to go to.

I made calls to family and we jumped in the car. We were walking in to the ER while the helicopter was landing. And we got to see Larry a few minutes later. He was sitting up talking and explaining and answering questions. The doctor looked at the EKG and said, "Yes, you are having a heart attack, let's get you into an angiogram ASAP." Time to visit a moment, pray and they whisked him away.

My sister had to drive down from the mountains to Phoenix all by herself and it had turned dark, so we prayed for her and she arrived about an hour later. It's an hour and a half drive, so you can imagine how she was driving and she was only pulled over by the police once. But she turned into hysterics with the officer and he waved her on, no ticket.

I can't remember how long it was until the doctor came out giving us a good report. Only one blockage and it was repaired with one stint. Simple, quick and as non-invasive as can be.

What happened to Larry is really pretty common. He had been doing some hard work, cutting wood by chainsaw that afternoon, then got tired and felt like the chain saw was extra heavy. So he came in, took a shower and sat down to put socks on. The discomfort in his chest was worrying him, but he didn't think about it seriously until he sat down and began sweating profusely. His clothing was soaked and Becky told him she was calling 911. She was surprised that he didn't argue and by that, she knew it was the right decision. Twenty minutes later, back in the woods in their cabin, he was being loaded into an ambulance, being given a field EKG and was told that yes, it was a heart attack. They just drove to the main dirt road and met a helicopter, where he was quickly flown away and to the hospital.  It took 30 minutes to arrive at the hospital and he was still alert and talking, but still having the heart attack. His main artery was completely blocked and he was sitting up, talking to us.

The doctor said it would have been a much different outcome if they had hesitated on calling or if the paramedics hadn't been so on the ball as to order a helicopter or if my sister hadn't made him eat an aspirin and the paramedics hadn't given him nitroglycerin when they arrived.

It was about 12 hours later when my sister and I were sitting in his ICU room figuring out his Myers-Briggs personality temperament and reading it to him off of the internet. We were all laughing at how accurate the description was and appreciating what a great guy he is....and that he was still with us. This is how two ESFP's handle an ISTJ who is in day one of recovery from a heart attack.

Thank you to all who prayed for Larry and sent encouraging emails or messages. He's going to be just fine.

Thank you, November 3!

I'm so thankful, I'm giddy in fact, that the elections are OVER!

It's not about who won or who didn't win, it's that they aren't calling me 10 times per evening and hurling accusations and slander all over my evening television.

Aaah, now this is better.

Rewards of a life well lived

For the past 5 weeks, Tuesday has been the day that I take my mom to our morning ladies' Bible study at church. We go  and meet with about a dozen other ladies who range in age from late 30's to 80's. It is a group of seasoned Christian women with lots of wisdom, knowledge and good sense.....and we all get along like old friends every week. I am thankful for those ladies.

They spur me on (and although spurs sometimes pinch, they work). These women have been through almost all life's ups and downs. You name the blessing or tragedy and it's there in that room each week. And they are lovely, wonderful women. Life has not embittered them, but blessed them, even with all of it's trials. I know that when they speak, there is a lifetime of hard-gained wisdom motivating their words and thoughts. Very cool when you think about it.

Today my mom and I went out to lunch and as we sat there trying to decide what to order, a man in the booth behind my mom said something about the elections today. He said something so hateful and spiteful against Christians that I lost my appetite. It was also just plain untrue. I could tell he did not actually know many true Believers and was speaking out of some pain or maybe just propaganda from some group he listens to. 

It made me heartsick and shocked that someone would think that about me.

So I am thankful for that group of ladies. I can see Christ in them and the rich, wonderful rewards of living life for the I AM, the One who is. The world is changing almost daily and we must lift Him up and let our Light shine....

....because if people see Jesus in you, in us, they will be drawn to Him......and they may reject Him. But let it be based on Jesus and not on us.

A month of thankfulness

It's November. I was celebrating this earlier today, kind of like this:  I love November because people take the graveyard decorations out of their front yards and put up reminders of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love November because supposedly it will turn cooler....some day this month it will actually cool down semi-permanently until spring. I love November because we gather our family close and have a banquet and remember God's blessings. I love November because for two whole months people talk about being thankful and then about Christmas....CHRISTmas. I love that.

An invitation came today for me (thanks Vicki) to join a Month of Thankfulness so I did. And even though I am not good at making promises to post every day on here, I will 'try' to post almost every day about something I am thankful for.

It has been a long, hot fall here in Phoenix, but we've seen God do some really great things in this season. Things that make tears squirt right out of your eyes before they even well up or anything. It happened to me on Sunday.  Just like cartoon people, sprinkler eyes. The kind of things that just make you raise your hand to the Lord with squirting eyes and praise Him. (then try to find an antique tissue in the bottom of your purse to mop up)

I'm so thankful for God's work, for His hand in our lives.

I see it!

Secret gifts

Cute, eh?

I love my sweet black and white Bible bag. But what they represent is even more sweet.

I have some secret friends that these bags represent. Their identities have been hidden to protect their secret-ness. ;)

Last spring I got a written invitation from a friend of mine who is a pastor's wife in our same area. She and another pw were starting a small group with other pastors' wives in our area of town. One of them made these cute bags to make us feel welcome and honored. I was intrigued and excited, and more than a little bit nervous. There is  an online group of pastors' wives that I've been a part of for support and friendship for years now and it has become an invaluable group of very close knit friends. I've met some of them, others I do not even know what they look like, just their name,  because they choose to be anonymous. We share our lives in a way that we can't do publicly. Our husbands' ministries are very public. And though I feel like I can be myself in any of the churches we've been in, a lot of pastors' wives feel under special scrutiny and judgment.  So we talk about our feelings, about our weaknesses, our children, our husbands,  we say things that we would never dare to say in public, but we can be ourselves there with each other and know that it will never go beyond that group. We also pray for each other with empathy and care that I have rarely felt in human friendship.

This is why the small group with real live, in person ladies was a little bit intimidating to me. Would it ever be the same as what I have with my semi-anonymous group of friends? I was willing to find out, so I went. At first it was like any group of women who are almost strangers. Awkward! It was 'on your best manners' and polite. We shared prayer requests that were not too personal, not too dangerous.....testing the waters I think. But God only let us be aloof for so long, He has been guiding us to a deeper level and I am finding some really dear friends, kindred spirits. Even with our differences and wide range of personalities, He is bringing us together.

It's a gift. I say that a lot on here, but I have to give credit where it is due! I want to chronicle in some way the good things only God brings into my life to show His love and care. His fingerprints are all over this group, because we've grown to need human comfort and understanding even more lately.

One of the ladies wanted to do some kind of get away, spend some more time together, so I asked my sister and we went up to her cabin together in late June for a retreat. You cannot get away from getting to know each other better than on a weekend trip to the mountains. Riding up with each other, sharing beds, cooking for each other, eating together, walking, hanging out on the porch in a peaceful setting started to form a bond, letting down our safe boundaries so that we could really share and pray together.

When we got back there was a greater trust level and openness among us. This was a good thing because heck started breaking through in some of our lives and we needed a place to be real, to cry and be totally accepted, not judged or scrutinized.....and prayed for. We have really started to bring each other to the Throne and have already seen God working, bringing peace in the middle of what seemed like chaos, at least inside our heads and hearts.

In August my daughter Beth was at a denominational conference. She was hanging around while helping at the conference and one of my pw friends came up to her, read her name tag and told her, "I know your mother! You are Bethany!" Then it dawned on Beth that this was one of my small group friends and out of her mouth came, "Oh! You are one of my mom's secret friends!" She said this because she didn't know the ladies I was going to meet with several times a month. But I would come home sometimes and if she asked me where I'd been, I would tell her I had been with my friends.

"You have friends? Who?"

"Oh, you don't know them."

So, they aren't really a secret,  just unknown to my kids.

When my friend heard her say secret friends, she thought that was delightful and we are known as secret friends now to each other.

I feel like I've been needing to take a deep breath of cool, fresh air and it finally happened. I've got some people who understand ministry life and how so much of it is confidential or makes you feel so vulnerable, how you can't share the pain you have sometimes or that you shoulder burdens for your husband alone.

I don't know why I was surprised. God gives good gifts..... and from the beginning, even though it was company manners at first, I knew it was something God brought into my life because I had longed for it. Each time we meet together, I see these cute Bible bags lined up together or stashed on a table or chair and am thankful for our group.

So....to my online sisters and my secret Bible bag sisters, thank you for being in my life, for sharing yours with me and for taking the risk to join together on this path.

You are a breath of fresh air, a gift from God, my bag ladies, my secret sister chicks, my own prayer warriors and friends.

Kettle corn

 A friend posted this on facebook and I tried it tonight. It is so easy and yummy!



Mix together 1/2 cup popcorn kernels and 3 Tablespoons of white sugar*.

Put 3 Tablespoons oil in a large saucepan, heat oil until it smokes (I used medium heat on my electric stove, my regular temperature for popping corn).

Add popcorn and stir until it is all coated with oil. Put the lid on the pan and pop, keep shaking the pot. I thought the sugar would scorch, but it didn't. Just keep the corns moving as it pops.

*Another recipe on the internet said that if you use brown sugar, it tastes like carmel corn. Bethany suggested we should add some cinnamon next time.

When it stops popping turn the popcorn into a bowl and salt as desired.

The sugar coats the popcorn and makes it super crunchy. It's really good! Great snack for a movie night.

Thank you Angie!

The van

I think I promised a story here. My apologies for being tardy about it.

This is a story about a van.


The first pastorate that Charles had was doing church planting in New Jersey. One of the churches in that area was Bridgeview Baptist Church, which sat in the middle of an old neighborhood in a tiny borough called Delair in the township of Pennsauken. This church had a parsonage right beside it and since their bi-vocational pastor owned his own home, they wanted the new church planters to live there for as long as they needed it. We did....for ten wonderful years. When our church planting time was over, the church next door to us was just losing their pastor because of a job transfer in his company, so they called  Charles to be pastor at Bridgeview.  I could go on and on about life in New Jersey, it was a place that was different in all ways from the places we had grown up and lived. Some day (not tomorrow) I'll do that little thing.

When I saw this picture below on my friend Sara's blog, I jumped up and down in my heart. (I was sitting or I may have jumped in my legs too) I showed it to all of my kids and to Charles. I posted it on Facebook wondering which of my friends would remember it.  The picture was not of our van. It was taken by Sara just a few days before she posted it....in Oregon. I guess someone could have bought the van in NJ and brought it back to life and driven it to Oregon, but that is doubtful.

The other thing that struck me like a lightning bolt was that it looked like the front of our dear home in New Jersey! We had a sidewalk like the one in the picture, we had huge maple trees in the yard, and we had no driveway, so our van was always parked in front, just like in this picture. Wow, it brought back memories.

Our first child, Hannah, was only 2 months old when we moved to that house. And I was pregnant with our last child, Maggie, when we left. We lived there 10 years and raised our first three daughters there through their preschool years and beyond.

We found the van at a used car lot one day. It was roomie. You could stand up, hunched over, and walk around in it, handy with preschoolers, car seats and camping trips. It had a huge wagon area behind the back seat where we could stow everything we needed for camping trips.  And it was cool.

I grew up in the 60's and 70's and had always wanted to own a VW van.  I used to day dream about taking one cross country and seeing places and doing things. I just never pictured it with 3 little kids and a dog, which in reality is a lot different than my vision, but it was still fun. We did this several times in that van. Once to Colorado to meet up with family for a camping trip and once to Tennessee to meet up with family for another vacation. That trip was murder to come home from. There was a heat wave on the east coast and our air conditioning did not work much of the time in that van. So I bought a spray bottle and would spray our little kids til they dripped, and the dog too, and we drove with the windows down, like we were basting little roasts in a convection oven. We also took that van to Vermont many times on camping trips. We had a campground there that we loved, at Quechee Gorge. That was where we made a lot of memories and built strong bonds with our children.

We also drove that van across Pennsylvania each summer to a children's camp by Erie, PA. Every year Charles would be invited to do the music and teach classes at this camp for northwest Pennsylvania and the whole family would come along.  We had our own little cabin to stay in and it was a great experience. I was the camp nurse once but I didn't do it again because I can't stand cleaning up wounds and blood.

It was a traveling sort of van. It evoked a spirit of adventure and exploration. We loved living in New Jersey partly because it was full of things to see. We took the van to Cape May, NJ many times, to Lancaster County, PA, to Baltimore, to Virginia, Chesapeake Bay, the shore (as they say in NJ), even New York City once to see another church planter friend in Queens.

Something that is kind of a secret we found out is that when you drive a VW van, you are automatically in a club. I started noticing right off the bat when we got the van, that people who drove other VW vans wave at you....and give you the peace sign with their fingers or nod their heads at you as you pass by. I told a teenaged friend about this and she thought I was exaggerating until she rode with me in it a few times. Sometimes when we traveled, another VW in the opposite traffic lanes would shout out the window and honk their horns at us. I loved it!  Super cool. What days those were.

The secret club is also the reason I killed our van one day. I was on the way home from picking up Bethany at kindergarten, when someone pointed at me while passing and yelling something out the window. Strange, they were not in a VW at all....maybe they usually drive one and had forgotten they were not in their club van for identification. Then someone behind me began honking.....NOT a VW van either. Wondering if they were impatient, I pulled over to let them pass. I am just slightly not intuitive sometimes.  Then a police car pulled up beside me and asked me if I knew there was smoke coming out of my van.

Yikes.

I drove into a parking lot and parked. There was gray smoke pouring out of the back of the van. Hours later Charles had to have it towed to a shop where it was discovered that I had been driving without oil and the head gasket (I still don't know what that is) had cracked (which is a very bad thing for any gasket).

Sad day.

I mourned for my van, but there was no fixing it. The one part cost as much as the van had cost in the first place. ($2500) So we had to say goodbye to our lovely van. We were booted from the club, which was also a hard blow. We bought a used Honda Civic, 2 door....no offense but there was no love for that car at ALL. A 2 door, low to the ground car, as pretty as it was, was really hard on a family of five with one child still in a car seat.

So seeing that picture, Sara, was like seeing a very old friend, like a box of memories in front of those cool fall maple trees....

....like a gift from God, a sweet connection to those wonderful days.

Thanks Sara for posting that picture!