Lana Vaughan

Today I checked a friend’s Facebook page expecting to ask her if the books I sent had arrived. She lost her library last year in the tornadoes that ripped through Joplin. The past 8 months have been incredibly challenging for her. The lost of her home, the uncertainty and the hope just the past few weeks as things really started to come together. She mentioned in passing how excited she was that someone had given her a couple of books from her favorite series that were lost. I asked her which ones she was still missing and ordered them on Amazon. They were supposed to start being delivered on Monday. Monday was also the day she was going to orientation for her new job after spending the past week moving into her new duplex.

You probably know where this is going. Linda Roberts passed away Monday at her orientation.

Joplin Family Worship Center
Linda M. Roberts (Seevers) was a grief counselor who volunteered many hours at JFWC this past summer to help victims of the May 22 tornado. She surprised us all on Monday when she moved to heaven at her first day of employment during orientation. She had earned an M.Ed. on counseling from Evangel University and an M.Div. from AGTS, both in Springfield. Linda had a vocation to help others from Messenger College students to abused women and children. Affected herself by the tornado she had to move in a FEMA trailor, and was working hard to recover financially. Because of these struggles she had no life insurance. Her daughter and family, Joy and David Parkman, too, was affected by the tornado, losing both jobs from St. Johns Hospital and Home Depot.(both buildings were destroyed) Her son, Tommy lives in Kansas City and made several trips to help restore Joplin this past summer. This whole family are clearly servants of God and are in need of our help to be a good steward of their mother’s body. SO, In Leiu of flowers, the family has set up a memorial fund to cover the cost. The memorial/burial is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, based on their ability to pay the funeral home. JFWC has set up a memorial fund for those who desire to help this family. If you would like to help you can use the paypal on our website. Just mark it Memorial Fund and 100% will go to the cost of the funeral. Thank you, for reading. If you can’t give please offer a prayer up for this precious family. Blessings to all of you! (from Linda’s Facebook page)

Life is far shorter than we think. It’s more fragile and precious than we acknowledge moment to moment. In the past four months many I love have lost someone with no warning. One moment they were here and the next they were gone. I faced the very real possibility myself only weeks ago.

I am so glad I sent Linda the books. I know she didn’t get to enjoy them but she knew they were coming. She knew someone she had never met in person saw her heart and did something about it.

Maybe it’s not books in your life. Maybe it’s something else. And just maybe, like me, you’re supposed to be the one sending them out. Maybe it’s a card or flowers or a phone call. Maybe it’s just a simple post on Facebook.

But what if the thing you are really sending out is hope? and love? and joy? Put a stamp on it. Take the time. Be deliberate.

Send the books.

So the first full week of 2012 is now history. How did you spend your time? Most of my week was spent at the hospital and I am happy to say the results of our time there couldn’t have been better.

Before releasing my husband the nurse had a stack of papers to go over with him and a couple of prescriptions for us to have filled. After listening to him talk non-stop for several minutes I was able to let him know he had misspelled our last name. When the clerk put the information in the computer in ER early Tuesday morning she had made the mistake. I had brought it up to one person’s attention but they said not to worry about it. Knowing how exacting they are at our pharmacy I knew a prescription that was not a match with our insurance card was not going to be filled. So the nurse had to make changes to the paperwork.

At the end of the day, when you look back over how you spent the precious waking hours are you please to put your name on it? Was the work you did your best? Were you the person you wanted to be today? Or do you look back and wonder “who was that?”

Tomorrow is a blank sheet. How will you fill it? Don’t forget you’re putting your name on it. It’s your Monday and the only January 9th you get this year. If you are very lucky you will make it through.

See you tomorrow?

There are some songs that really stick with me. This one posses a question that many hearts ask and for many there is no answer.

When will I see you again?
You left with no goodbye, not a single word was said,
No final kiss to seal any seams,
I had no idea of the state we were in,

I know I have a fickle heart and bitterness,
And a wandering eye, and a heaviness in my head,

But don’t you remember?
Don’t you remember?
The reason you loved me before,
Baby, please remember me once more,

When was the last time you thought of me?
Or have you completely erased me from your memory?
I often think about where I went wrong,
The more I do, the less I know,

But I know I have a fickle heart and bitterness,
And a wandering eye, and a heaviness in my head,

But don’t you remember?
Don’t you remember?
The reason you loved me before,
Baby, please remember me once more,

Gave you the space so you could breathe,
I kept my distance so you would be free,
And hope that you find the missing piece,
To bring you back to me,

Why don’t you remember?
Don’t you remember?
The reason you loved me before,
Baby, please remember me once more,

When will I see you again?

So, you made it through yesterday and have arrived at today without the countdown, the confetti poppers or the champagne. Yesterday is history. But was it memorable?

Kicking off my year of questions yesterday I was greatly encouraged and blessed by the response. With permission I am sharing one of them as today’s guest blog. I’d like to introduce my sister, Linda Humbert. She is the mother of 3 and a proud grandmother. She has served her country in the Army and now serves the artistic community as a major supply resource.  Until yesterday I had no idea she saw me the way she describes. It was an unexpected blessing and her question was really good. I hope it gives you as much to think about as it did me.

I’d love to hear your answers to….

I have a question for you. It’s a little long in the explaining, but worth it.

Who is in your arsenal? And what weapon are you in others weapons cabinets?

At Kevin’s funeral Ron compared Kevin’s battle with alcohol to David and Goliath. How through the power of God he won the battle against a larger and stronger foe. After the funeral I went up to the woman he used to be with before me. She is the one who saw him through getting sober. She never really understood how the new woman in his life could be okay with their strong friendship. I think she finally understood when I put my arms around her and told her that if the booze was his Goliath, then she was the slingshot. And I told her that I love her for helping Kevin be the man I fell in love with.

During our lives God has given us His armour, but He has also blessed us with an outstanding arsenal!!! One of my favorite weapons is the woman who is asking questions this year… my big sister! When life hits me with an atom bomb she’s been my bomb shelter. When life throws stones she is the baseball bat that hit them out of the park. When the rains come down, she has been the umbrella keeping my head dry, even when I’m up to my neck in the flood….

There are other weapons in my arsenal… some that I’ve had to let go, because the weight of them drug me down more than their firepower was worth… that doesn’t mean they didn’t do the best they could, just that they weren’t designed for my particular battles, but I hope I’ve been an effective weapon in their weapons locker.

So…. my question is: Who is in your arsenal? And what weapon are you in others weapons cabinets?

While it’s true every year and every day that we don’t know what lies ahead the year we are all facing seems to be dragging some pretty heavy luggage this time. And with that luggage come a lot of questions.

About 25 years ago I was introduced to a woman who changed the direction of my journey and not only said questioning was good, she built an entire ministry based on questions.  Learning Inductive Study was a major foundation for exploring what I believed because it was what I was taught and what I believed because it was Truth. As you can imagine there were some huge discrepancies.

This past week a wise woman asked a question. She had gotten the blogging prompt from WordPress about focusing on writing about one thing for the next year. Wise Woman asked what the bloggers she was addressing would choose to write about if they narrowed it down to one focus. Without much, if any, hesitation I knew my theme would be questions.

So for the next 366 I will be asking questions. Some you may want to answer and others you may want to ponder and keep the answer to yourself. The goal isn’t to necessarily find “THE ANSWER” but to learn to ask better questions.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.

You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

  Naguib Mahfouz

So each day I will pose a new question. I would love to hear your answers and see what the questions are prompting not only in your thoughts but in your actions. I will be adding a special page to list all of the questions in case you miss some or want to go back over them.

Starting off with a big one…

Have you prepared for tomorrow today?

I’m taking some online courses to finish my college degree. The actual material isn’t very difficult but the “discussion” questions are frustrating. I understand the purpose of questions in this situation is to verify the student has read and even possibly comprehends the information presented but the art of questions seems to be a lost, if ever acknowledged, art.

Conversational questions that begin with “Do you want…” can be answered with “Yes” or “No”. Simple and straightforward. But if you add one more word to those same three little words it becomes an open-ended question “What do you want…” that can lead to discussion and further information.

Nothing shuts down the flow of communication faster that a closed question unless it’s a vague question. “Do you not know…” Huh? When a simple “Do you know…” leaves the respondent able to formulate a fitting reply rather than decipher what the actual question is.

Written questions present their own set of challenges in that you can’t actually hear the tone or see the expression that goes with the words. Leading questions that are clear enough to direct the respondent to the desired answer may be so full of the answer itself or so incredibly obvious that it leaves the respondent nothing to add or with a sense of futility. The flip side of that coin are the questions that are so broad the respondent has no clue what the questionnaire is trying to ascertain.

At the same time I am taking the online classes I am over seeing the independent study program my teenage daughter is taking through the local school district. This morning I was going over the written responses to the assigned reading passages for her Language Arts assignments. The answers were well thought out but incredibly short. After reading the questions I was impressed she was able to write as much as she did.

I am also teaching a study through Genesis right now. This is my fifth time teaching through this material and each time the emphasis has been different. This time the thing that is really jumping off the pages for me personally are the questions God asks. He asks some very open-ended questions.

“Where are you?”

“Who told you you were naked?”

“Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

“What is this you have done?”

“Why are you angry?”

“Why has your countenance fallen?”

“Where is your brother?”

“Where have you come from?”

“Where are you going?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

Later Jesus shows the same inquiring facet of God’s character with some very open-ended questions.

“Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

“Which is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Get up and walk?”

“What do you want?”

“Who do you say I am?”

We’re heading into a new year and a big question is “what are you going to do with it”? Before you start searching for answers. I would encourage you to really take a long hard look at the questions you are asking.

What is the first question that came to mind?

What is the question you have been carrying around in search of an answer for the longest?

What one question would you most like to have a solid answer for?

Find better answers…Ask better questions…

So last night I went to print out the words for the first night of Hanukkah and was so low on black ink that the words didn’t show up. Moving the menorah to my office and reading the words off my computer screen was a nice private moment  of prayer and quiet.

Imagine my “surprise” this afternoon when I opened my desk drawer to find an index card to write the words on for tonight and found not one but two ink cartridges!  Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor. I can almost hear Him chuckling and see the big smile on His face.

There is an illusion that communication is easier now than ever. I don’t buy it. Sure we have more ways and faster ways of communicating but as any blogger or marketer will tell you “Content is king!” And I think the king is dead.

A hundred years ago if I wanted to tell you something I would track you down and tell you to your face. The faster version was to tell the neighborhood gossip who would do that for me but for the most part communication was personal. Then the ease and speed of the telegraph made it possible for messages to be delivered long distances. The original twitter, most were kept short and the details left out allowed for vast amounts of imagination and fear to fill in those missing points.

The telephone simplified things, didn’t it? Instead of tracking you down I could just ring you up and without having to look in your eyes I could let you know what I was thinking or tell you what I thought you wanted to hear. It was so much easier not to have to look at you when I told you I was “too sick” to come to work or that I’d love to be there but just couldn’t make it.

The answering machine made communication even more remote. “I’m too busy to talk to you so leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I’m good and ready if at all…BEEP!” We didn’t have to talk anymore. Phone tag became acceptable.

Even the art of putting pen to paper has been over run and impersonalized. One look at my penmanship addressing Christmas cards made me realize just how lazy I’ve become. Words I write often flowed smoothly but the names and addresses I write once a year were halting and in one case so illegible the post office returned it undeliverable.

Now email and voice mail have been reduced to texting, mostly done on “smart phones”. How smart are they really? Built in auto spell has been responsible for many humorous messages sent when the sender was in too much of a hurry to actually read what the phone predicted the message was going to be.

Skype and Facebook and all the lesser social connections don’t come close to replacing the personal interaction of face to face over coffee or lunch or a clothes line. Anybody remember the look of the backyards on a summer day when not only your towels but your underwear was  dancing in the warm breeze along with the rest of the neighbors?

“Status” is so easy to hide behind. In some ways I think it’s the ultimate poser shield. It may say “Available” or “On line” but the truth is so often “Multi-tasking” or “Distracted”.

As the pressure and emotion packed into this week every year begins to build I wonder if above all the noise, among all the ways to communicate, with all the possibilities if we haven’t lost something. I know I have. There is a song (isn’t there always?) that has been on my playlist a lot lately.

If you are reading this, I would love to hear from you. I would love to have coffee and hear your story. I would love to hear your voice on the phone at the very least. And if you honor me with a real letter I will answer with my own pen to paper.

Tell me ’bout the good old days.