APPRECIATION

My online dictionary defines “appreciation” as a recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people and things; a judgment or opinion, especially a favorable one; an expression of gratitude; a rise in value or price, especially over time. 

Many of you know that this time last year our family was in the throes of wedding planning for The Girl and her fiancée.  Decisions and more decisions go along with planning a wedding.  One of the important ones is the wedding cake.  A day was planned to go “tasting”.  Now let me tell you—wedding cake tasting is a lot of fun. 

 You can eat cake on and on without ANY guilt....

One of the stops on our tasting route was with with a cake baker who lived north of here—out in the rural areas of a neighboring northern county.  She had no big storefront as others did, but worked out of her kitchen set up in a little house in her yard.  

And her skills as she showed us options….I mean really showed us options by doing decorating right there while we sat and watched.  

It doesn’t take a big building in the city to have a successful business.  She’s proof of that and our appreciation for her cake is as well.  Let me tell you….I was impressed.  That cake melted in my mouth.  Delicious.

If you need her business information for your own needs, let me know and I'll supply.

We decided to “trade” with her and made a contract.  She was to make a tiered wedding cake, a small sugar free two tiered wedding cake, and a groom’s cake that looked like the Auburn University stadium.  The stadium cake was designed from an emailed photo.  Uh huh.  One has to be exceptionally talented to make a cake from a photograph, especially with such detail.  She did not disappoint.  Beautiful and delicious.  They looked like this:

The next week I was to return her silver pedestals and I did that early on in the week.  I had to stop on the way a couple of times and wake myself up as the lack of sleep during the wedding planning months had begun to catch up with me and I was feeling a "crash" of my body.  When I arrived she wasn’t home, so I left them where she had instructed.  As I was about to leave, she pulled up in her driveway.

Did I mention that The Cake Baker had been diagnosed with cancer a couple of months before the wedding?  I thought not.  She had begun her chemo and was going wig shopping later on that day.  We stood in her driveway, talked, cried, hugged, and bonded.  The Cake Baker has become The Cake Baker Friend to me.  A friendship was formed that day and I have been blessed beyond measure to know her.  She is an encouraging person who treasures every minute of life, loves the Lord, and recognizes blessings.  She has truly been such an inspiration to me.  Our friendship has grown and I am filled with an attitude of gratitude.

The Cake Baker Friend had a regularly scheduled cancer scan a couple of weeks ago and she reported to me this morning that all had remained clear!  I believe in prayer.  I believe in praying for God’s will.  The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew says to do that.  There are times, though, when my idea of a good answer is not necessarily God’s will.  I try always to give thanks for the good and the bad as the scriptures say “in EVERYTHING give thanks” but that is admittedly hard sometimes.  Whenever the answer comes to pass and is the one I wanted, my cup overflows.  So today, my cup overflows. 

The Cake Baker Friend has a saying at the end of her emails that I’d like to share because I think it is something we all can learn from…it goes like this:

“Thank you Lord for the rough things in life, for they opened my eyes to the good things I wasn’t paying attention to before”. 

And I say, “Amen.”

GRACE

Ah……grace.  I could write and write for days and still not cover grace.  Grace is rightly described by most of us as amazing for sure.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “grace” as “unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification; a virtue coming from God; a special favor.”  I say that grace is God giving us something good when we deserve just the opposite.  There is nothing to be done to earn grace.  It is a gift for sure.

I once heard a preacher explain grace with this acronym:

God’s

Riches

At

Christ’s

Expense

I read a story the other day in a book by Charles Swindoll about Job.  Now that Job was a strong guy, wasn’t he?  He certainly endured more than any one I have ever heard.  I can’t imagine what Job went through and his example should give us encouragement in our lives when the going gets rough.  The story was about a professor who told his class that the final exam would cover all they had studied.  The young man relaying the story told how he studied and studied until he could study no more, still knowing he did not know it all.  On the day of the test, the students filed in to find the test papers lying face down on each desk.   When time came to begin, the professor told them to turn over their papers.  Each student turned over his paper to find the answers all written in correctly and an “A” written at the top of the test paper.  Incredulous, they all looked at the professor.  The professor then told them the creator of the test had taken it for them and they had just experienced “grace”.  

I read this book when I walk on my treadmill.  I am striving to lose twenty more pounds for my health’s sake.  It’s a challenge and I thought if I had a book to read it would help the time to pass quicker.  Plus I figured if I chose a religious book, it might aid in my effort.  I need all the help I can get. On the morning of the day I read that story, I was to meet a friend of mine from elementary school for lunch.  We reconnected in the past few weeks and planned a lunch together.  It was a wonderful time, just catching up.  After we had ordered our Chick-Fil-A meal, we began to talk about what we remembered about elementary school.  Now let me insert here that my memory is really nothing to brag about these days.  I told The Friend something that another friend had told me just last week.  The Other Friend was to have a meal with her best friend from elementary school who would pass through her city on occasion.  The Other Friend told me that she enjoyed the time with her friend so much because her friend remembered so many good stories from their elementary school days.  The Other Friend was like me—had a faulty memory about some things—but said that she enjoyed the stories so much as they were new to her.   Funny, huh? 

Anyways, back to my story.  As we were sitting there after ordering, we were remembering our 8^th grade year when the girls were in one class and the boys in another.  The girls had the principal’s wife as a teacher.  Everyone called her Miss Alice.  She seemed fairly up in years even then as she was also my mother’s teacher, if I remember correctly.  We have already established, though, that I don’t always remember correctly.  So The Friend was saying that she struggled with fractions and percentages so much that she was expecting to make her very first “C” in Math that year.  Well, I was finding that hard to believe as I knew she was always REALLY smart…I did remember that for sure.  She was telling me that the day came when we got report cards.  She peeked at hers and saw an “A” in Math.  She was in disbelief and was certain Miss Alice had made a mistake.  The Friend says she went up to the desk and said, “Excuse me, Miss Alice.  I think you made a mistake on my report card.”  Miss Alice questioned her as to why she thought such.   (I don’t think Miss Alice ever made mistakes…after all, she WAS the principal’s wife.) The Friend told her that she was pretty sure she had a “C” in math.  The Friend said Miss Alice just smiled and said, “For the past couple of weeks, you have worked hard and really improved in your math.  I thought you deserved an “A”.” 

So here we are sitting at Chick-Fil-A and I hear that story.  Immediately I said to The Friend, “That’s a wonderful example of grace!”  Well I said it excitedly as I had just read the story earlier that day about grace and now here was the Lord sending me another example!  I told The Friend the story.  It was one of those God-moments for sure.  I just love it when that happens.  I am certain God was trying to remind me of His wonderful grace.   It just gives me chills when the Lord is that open and easy to understand.  Or maybe He’s always that open and easy to understand.  Maybe I’m the one who is closed and difficult.  Maybe?  I would think that is the case.

I will close with the lyrics to “Amazing Grace/My Chains are Gone”.  Unending Love. Amazing Grace.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now I'm found

Was blind, but now I see

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

And grace my fears relieved

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed

My chains are gone, I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy rains

Unending love, amazing grace

  

The Lord has promised good to me

His word my hope secures

He will my shield and portion be

As long as life endures

My chains are gone, I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy rains

Unending love, amazing grace

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow

The sun forbear to shine

But God who called me here below

Will be forever mine, will be forever mine

You are forever mine.

And I say, “Amen.”

A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY

Well, it's ll:59 a.m. as I write....officially 32 years ago on this date at this time, my beautiful little girl appeared in this big world. Little did I know how much that would change the lives of The Husband and me.  Geez....I still get a bit teary just thinking about it.

I'll not give you any long, long explanation of all the ways The Girl has blessed our lives to this point.  There would not be enough room to write it all.  I will just say that our home has been blessed beyond measure with her presence.  God's big plan included no siblings for her so I think He made her extra, extra special....not your typical only child.    I'm sure I'm not the only one who would think this as she has touched so many lives in her 32 years.

So to The Girl, I say happy happy birthday and to the Lord above I say many, many thanks for blessing us so much.  We are so very undeserving of such joy.

Amen.

HEARTS OR FLOWERS?

February 14.  Valentine's Day.

For most of my younger life, I looked forward Valentine's Day as a day to send my friends cards with hearts on them.  Ah, the joy of a classroom filled with children, brown paper lunch bags decorated with hearts or doily hearts and filled with so many little envelopes with valentines inside, and the Valentine party in the afternoon.  Ah, the cupcakes, the red punch....do children still have those pleasures these days?  I remember I would look at my valentines over and over and over for days afterwards.

Fast forward to February 14, 1981, a Saturday night.  The Husband and I were "celebrating" the special day here at home with Italian food and a game.  I, two weeks away from my little one's due date, sat in one chair, he in the other with a table between....maybe it was Scrabble we played.  I wasn't feeling so perky that day.  Rightly so as the next day at noon, The Baby Girl arrived in the world.  After that, our celebrations kind of got prioritized a bit differently.

Here we are 32 years later, wishing each other greetings of the day as The Husband left for work this morning.  By mutual agreement, that will be enough celebration.  We've passed that hearts and flowers stage.  If you are still there, congratulations!  I'm happy for you.  It's all about what makes one happy.

As I began the turnaround to where the day was less important, I read a commentary in the local newspaper.  This was probably 20 years ago or so.  It was written by a wise woman named Judy Elliott and titled "More than Hearts and Flowers".  I want to quote her a bit in this article because, yes, I still have the copy and amazingly enough, I know where it is.  Here's some of her wise words that spoke to me:

"The 14th of February fell a week to the day after I married.  I rushed home from my teaching job, threw a clean cloth on a card table, tied red streamers on my new husband's chair and popped up an 8 x 10 Valentine by his plate.  Then I waited for him to burst through the door, a bouquet of red roses in his arms.  I threw together a heart-shaped chocolate cake from a mix and squirted red icing on the top.  Newly-wed dessert with high expectations.

Finally, my groom showed up, a little late, but worth the wait I told myself.  He took one look at the table and blanched white.  He had forgotten it was Valentine's Day.  No card.  No flowers. No candy.  I was crushed.  He tried making polite conversation but I wasn't having any part of it.  I dished up his dinner like it was prison food, plopped down in my folding chair and answered his "What's wrong?" question with all the maturity of a 22 year old bride.  "Nothing,"  I sniffled.  "Absolutely nothing."  I pouted for three days, played the martyr and made both of us miserable..........

.....Seven years went by before, walking a sick baby in the night, I realized it was Cupid's day and I had forgotten to get him a valentine.  It was his chance to whine, but he didn't.   By then we were way past a candlelight dinner...I was scrubbing Gerber's oatmeal off the kitchen floor and he was taking his turn folding diapers.  If he had brought flowers home, I would have had a sinking spell, knowing we needed the money to pay the pediatrician.......

....The same fella who forgot to remember me with a card on our first Valentine's Day together turned out to be a man who saw me through my mother's final illness and never left my side at her funeral.  He rocked babies with earaches and drove carpools to Brownie meetings.  All told, he probably spent four years of his life sitting on bleachers, watching swim meets and tennis matches.  And when I had an operation, he stretched out on the uncomfortable chair by my bed and stayed at the hospital.

He'll never surprise me with a diamond ring in a box of Cracker Jacks...and he's yet to mention I can no longer fit into a size 8 dress.  I'm a slow learner, but I finally realized it takes more than chocolate, valentines or roses to take care of the heart."

I think Judy Elliott said it well and described my feelings totally.  I am truly blessed to have a jewel of a valentine like that in The Husband and I recognize that blessing.

And more importantly, I am blessed to have the love of all loves of a heavenly Father daily and forever.

Amen.