Lana Vaughan

At 7:15 this morning I was informed that deviled eggs were expected at the Independent Study potluck today. I had exactly 2 eggs in the refrigerator and school started at 9.

A quick run to the store and dropping my favorite teen off with the promise I would be back at noon with said eggs freed me up to return to my quiet home and recharge my personal batteries.

I love homeschooling. I will miss it next year when she heads to high school and joins the main stream of her friends and public education. But right now, the two days a month she goes to class are my time to decompress. By nature I lean heavily toward the introvert end of the scale and time to myself is necessary for my heart and the well being of my family. And that brings us back around to the eggs.

As I was putting them in the water I notices a strange behavior taking place. When I put the first eggs in they were all laying on their side taking up the most space they possibly could. It didn’t change the amount of water they displaced but it did impact the surface area on the bottom of the pan. Being a round pan, the eggs quickly formed a natural circle following the outer limit of their new space but as more eggs were added they started standing up on end making room for more new comers until the outer circle was shell to shell. The inner circle followed the same pattern, shell to shell. And when those two circles were completely at capacity I noticed the egg in the very center had room to lay down.

Now when the  water started to move the eggs on the outer and inner rings were  held snuggly by each other’s close proximity but the egg in the middle began to dance a bit. It had some room to move with the water and, yes, even risk being cracked by bumping into the less mobile eggs.

So much to learn…yes, it’s good to make room for others in our lives but not at the cost of loosing our ability to move. I hope I am always willing to get up to make room for others but I also hope I always make sure there is room to move and breathe and dance and risk cracking my shell.

When I was a child I remember laying in the grass looking at the clouds and trying to recognize shapes in the whispyness floating over head. I’m not sure where it entered my mind but the strange lyrics of Joni Mitchell’s tribute to clouds stuck with me much more than I realized.

Yesterday, reading Brian Allain’s book pieces started falling into place and for the first time I have a clearer vision for my site and my direction. I’ve had  a tag line for a couple of years and today I have begun to understand it a little better and am excited about living it out.

Taking dreams out of the clouds and making them reality.

My love language is gifts.

I love giving them.

I love hunting them down and finding just the right something for someone.

I love mailing random little things to friends in the mail.

And I love receiving gifts that show someone sees my heart.

This week I received such a gift.

Ayish Kodesh

This prayer shawl was commissioned for my Jubilee year

and with great love and thought each color and symbol and word

have meaning in to my heart and my journey. 

And as with all great gifts,

most of those meanings are deeply personal.

“I am blessed beyond measure,

loved more deeply than I know,

standing on the Solid Rock

that is Amazing Grace.”

LV Jubilee

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded. (Attributed to Emerson but never confirmed)

With this as my definition of success I can say withou reservation that my life has been a success. Everything that follows is bonus!

I was cleaning my kitchen this morning. Not a quick unload, load the dishwasher cleaning but a move everything and wipe down every surface kind of cleaning. I was zipping right along with my Green Works natural cleaner when I got to my stove. I use a different cleaner for it because of the cooktop surface. I cleared everything on the cooktop into the sink and did a nice job of cleaning, if I do say so myself. I was washing the outside of my tea kettle with nice warm soapy water when I noticed something else in my sink. I had placed it there just moments before. It had come from my stove top and has been on my stove top every day of the 9 years we have lived in this house. I remember placing it there the day we moved in and I unpacked the first box in the kitchen looking for a coffee cup.

This is not a spoon rest from the amazing trip to Hawaii we took just two weeks before moving into the house. It is not even something I chose for the house. It belonged to my mother-in-law. I do not know the story behind it and today I desperately wish I did. I don’t know if it meant something special to her or if it was just one of those silly touristy things people tend to pick up on vacation.

But what I do know is that at some point somebody decided that encapsulating some sand and shells in epoxy resin and selling them to tourist was a good idea. And they did it. Then someone else thought buying them for their shop was a good idea so they did. Then someone paid hard earned money to buy this spoon rest from the shop and haul it home from Hawaii. And after, who knows how many years, at my in-laws home this thing made its way to my home where it came to rest on my stove top.

Locked in the epoxy is a moment, a memory, the smell of the ocean and the feeling of the sun and breeze. It all comes to mind. Maybe not their vacation but our own. It connects us once again. I remember walking hand in hand with their son on the beach and wonder what they talked about when they walked hand in hand on their beach.

The past few weeks some of my dear friends have had the warm sand of happy memories turn to quicksand under their feet. Things and people they thought they could count on have betrayed and abandoned them. Relationships, circumstances and even life itself have ended abruptly. Some saw them coming, others had no idea. But in each and everyone I have seen the same foundation hold. Under the shifting sand has been the Solid Rock. And that Rock is firmer than any epoxy ever was. That Rock has been there everyday. That Rock not only reminds us of yesterday but allows us to stand firm today and step out in faith again tomorrow.

May you find yourself standing on the Rock of Ages.

Today is an artificial deadline. For many it is an annual high water line for stress and fear. For others it comes and goes and they watch the frantic stress with a satisfied smugness knowing they have taken steps to avoid this particular stress.  Their tax returns have been turned in.

I walked the fine line myself this year. Normally I have our taxes filed in January or February. This year the IRS had some processing problems and advised some filers to wait until they resolved their internal issues. That was fine with me. I had some internal issues to resolve myself about filing this year.

Last year I held “Go Deeper Still Women’s Conference” at Mt Hermon. We had 9 sessions, 4 speakers and 9 attendees. While the other speakers were amazing and the women who attended were blessed and blessings, I have considered it personally my “greatest failure” in service for God. I know, nothing overly dramatic about that…

A few months ago I got an email out of the blue from someone who had no idea the agreement my heart had made about GDS. The email said “Tell her she did good. She obeyed ME”. The writer of the email said he had no idea what the message was about but had to send it.

Last week I spent some time on the phone with a precious woman of wisdom and grace. She asked me if there were agreements I knew were re-building the walls around my heart. I told her how I felt I had not been a wise steward of the money Matt got when he was laid off from VMWare in Nov 09 and how a large chuck of his payout in Feb ’10 went to GDS. She reminded me that if he hadn’t gotten laid off we wouldn’t have had the large chuck for GDS. Then she asked me what I knew I needed to do but was procrastinating about. I told her I hadn’t filed the taxes yet. Not that they were late but that I didn’t want to look at all the money I had “wasted” last year. In my heart that was still what I thought.

Last night I had a dream and this is why I am writing this morning (Thursday). In the dream I was standing at the back of the room we held GDS in. The room was empty and the sun shining through the windows was the only light. It was just like the afternoon I stood there and prayed over GDS alone before the speakers and women arrived. I think that was the moment I made the agreement that GDS wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t enough. But in the dream last night I heard Him say, “It was always covered. I called who I called and they came. I trusted you and you obeyed. I paid for it before I gave it to you. Accept this gift, Talitha.”

As you probably know, our tax refund exactly covers the out of pocket expenses of GDS!