Meet Billie

About 2 weeks ago, I volunteered with a few of my co-workers at the local senior center serving lunch.  I do this every few months and every time I go I met a new friend.   

Please welcome Billie into our story.  Billie just turned 95.  She will be the first one to tell you that she doesn’t have all those funny diseases that take away from your “noggin”. 

 Billie is homeless.  She lives with her 3 cats, 2 shopping carts, and an old teddy bear that she carries around and slumbers under a bypass of our local 94 FWY. 

In the picture above, she’s showing me her new prized possession her new earring.  Not two, just the one.

  I got absorbed and fixed into Billie’s stories, my one hour of service became 3; until our coffees grew cold and she needed to get her place under the bypass before someone else did. 

We talked about our faiths this day and we got on the subject of uncertainty as Billie called it. Here’s her words paraphrase. 

 “Sweet sugar my secret to this faith? uncertainty” 

Totally couldn’t be, I stated, because uncertainty is a bad thing that eats away at truth. But Billie disagreed.

“Sweet sugar. Back in the 90’s when I lived with my son,  I fought my uncertainty, My son was dying of Lymphoma.  I lived with him and he was not only my son but also my security.  I didn’t think I could live on.  UNCERTAINITY thoughts came and I denied them and pushed them back into my brain as far enough that I wouldn’t think of them much. But they always came their way back ya know.”

“Was God really there and if He really cared and if Jesus really rose and if there was a heaven and if it all means anything anyway. Those stupid and crappy uncertainties.”

“ Because I had a choice with no recourse but to confront those uncertainties, I did just that. And more, I beat them. I took the thoughts one by one and studied them. I sought the truth hard with this little old torn bible. And then I found it. And by finding that, I found God all over again.” 

“I may be homeless sweetsugar, but I love Jesus man”

“Uncertainty isn’t an enemy sweet sugar and it certainly wasn’t anything to fear. It was instead an opportunity for me to take a short trip through my crap to find a greater light.” 

“God is the only reason I  still have a good noggin, and can sleep comfortably in my spot and talk to wonderful people like you sweet sugar” 

I thought. After I got in my car and got on the 94 fwy just how I was blown away by Billie. She loved Jesus and prayed and knew scripture, too. What’d did she have that I didn’t?

She had total faith in the uncertainty.

Do Over’s

boy on the border

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have recently noticed that most of my heart-to-heart conversations with others have been about how to avoid waiting. One friend shared with me how she hasn’t shopped at Ralph’s because the lines are too long and she has to wait. Another friend who lives in another part of San Diego told me that if I come to visit to take a swap in routes due to construction for it took her 45 minutes to go seven miles.

My teenagers talk to me about how they can’t wait to grow up so they can do whatever they want and not get into trouble. Yeah right! I too remember not wanting to wait until graduation from high school so I could move out. After I graduated, I went into the Navy and that was all about hurry up and waits and waits and wait.

Now that I’ve been married for close to 20 years, either I’ve had to wait for my husband to come home from work at the church or he has to wait for me to get ready if we’re going somewhere together. In the recent days my husband and I talked about the days of empty nest days that lay ahead in about eight years and we can’t wait! Or can we? We’ll have to wait won’t we?

Why don’t we have patience? I’ve have had many Christian friends tell me not to pray for patience or we’ll be faced with more trials to develop the patience. I tend to think that trials and tests come anyway, so I might as well pray for patience in the trial.

Quite frankly, I’m getting to the point in my walk with the Lord, I’m asking more quickly in a trial what I need to learn from it for I’ve been through a few (actually more than a few) that I’ve had to do over. And I really don’t want anymore do over’s!

It’s Time

Saturday night's show

There is the story that Erma Bombeck tells about a little boy at church with his mother. He was a good little boy, quiet & well behaved. He didn’t cause any problems. But every once in a while he would stand up in the pew, turn around, look at the people behind him & smile at them. His smile was infectious, & soon everybody behind him was starting to smile back at him, too. It was all going fine until the mother realized what the little boy was doing. When she did, she grabbed him by his ear & twisted it a bit, told him to sit down & remember that he was in church. Then he started sniffling & crying, & she turned to him & said, “That’s better.”

It’s kind of sad, isn’t it, that some have the impression that when we come to church that it is all gloom & doom, & that there is nothing here to really bring joy into our lives?

 The word preached from the stage has the power to change our lives just like the smile in the boy, but it doesn’t always need to come from the stage; it’s in the handshakes, and in the life groups, and or in the small group after church praying for someone’s need.

I want to understand each day that God’s house needs to be a place where it is alive, safe, whole, and life changing, just like this Word says it should be.

It’s time to step up and expect God’s Word and God’s place:

To change us, change me,  

Our situations, my situations,

Our lives, my life.

… Her hands were so soft

Elijah

 

“I wonder if she knew it was my first time too?” 

 “… her hands were so soft mom and she shook as I prayed”

(talking about an elderly woman sitting behind him at church)

 “It was freakin crazy!”

 Those were the quotes that came out of my son’s deep and articulate voice as he made me my lunch this afternoon. 

 Looking through our breakfast bar into our living room smiling, my son’s presence was  incredibly different.

 God had filled Him today.

In the Midst Of Change

 

In the midst of a process of change in our lives there are often heart issues that need resolution before we can begin to address the behaviors. In other circumstances, there is not only a heart issue but also a situation where a change in your thinking needs to take place. Often times, I have found that this is the hardest step of all. It is the part of the process that trips up great people and keeps them going around and around the mountain of their walk. I have revisited the same situations and patterns repeatedly because I didn’t rely on God to change my thinking. 

I am passionate about learning from great leaders; I feel like they have opened a door and let us see inside their hearts and minds. There is so much power in the way that we think. I have watched in amazement as my own plans and dreams and desires fall underfoot when exposed to the harsh realities of my own insecurities and fears. The scripture “as a man thinks in his heart, so he is” is so true! I have had so many life changing ideas, strategies and plans that in the light of day fade to impossibility because I allow my thoughts to derail me.

When change is on the horizon of my life, I am trying to learn a better way. I have found it helpful to think ahead and beginning to try to anticipate how I will react in my spirit and mind.
Often as I watch an athlete take the field, or when I see an actor accept a major award, I begin to try and imagine what that feels like to achieve a major dream.

I know that there must be something different in the way that they think, because otherwise greatness would not be theirs. I have begun to implement this idea into my own major life changes. 

Ultimately God sees us through and leads us and guides us, however, I think that it greatly increases our chances for success if we try to anticipate the challenges we will face, and then be a woman of prayer around those moments.