Plum Blossom Princess

The Ridiculously Wasteful God

I am one of those frugal people that had to personally encounter the God who scared me.  It took a crazy house situation to pry open my clenched fists.  After all, we were the wise money managers.  We bought a house for an five year time period without notion that the house would steal more than it gave.  Ben's residency was over and we were relocating over a thousand miles away.  It was time to sell our "investment".  

Initially optimistic we had contracts coming in every other month.  We felt like the house would sell, but what we did not anticipate was that in a heavily foreclosed market with a surplus of cheap, nice homes each potential buyer chose to walk away.  On contract five, the house mysteriously flooded from the second floor bathroom all the way down to the basement.  Buyer five saw it as an opportunity to choose personal finishes and waited out a portion of the seven extended months of renovation.  Then after choosing bathroom tiles and paint colors, number five also walked.  By the time we sold the completely renovated house to contract number six, we paid fifty percent of the purchase price of the home to actually unload it.   I scolded God and told him he should have been less wasteful.  That three year experience led to anger and distrust of God.  Where was He when I prayed earnestly to him?  Why did He not answer?  Why did the one who controlled the casting of lots not allow the first or second contract to roll in our favor?

My emotions were in such disorder at the time that I couldn't watch any of the shows I previously enjoyed like House Hunters or Designed to Sell without my stomach lurching and feeling nauseous with fear.  It truly was paralyzing.  Only years later can I really talk about the whole incident with some emotional distance.   Why do I share this now?

Reason 1: Those three years were essential to break down my expectations that God is not "wasteful."  If you are a human, let me tell you, God is ridiculously wasteful. He loves wastefully.  He gives himself wastefully.  Jesus died in his prime for an unresponsive and ungrateful me.  

Reason 2: In a roundabout way, a house not selling in Michigan led us to adopt a boy in Bengbu, China.  If we hadn't lost so much money trying to be good stewards, we would have never willingly taken on the excessive financial expense of adoption.  We were freed to a new standard of wastefulness.  Yes, you can sponsor hundreds of children for the cost of adopting one.  However, the very God who allowed his body to be anointed with a year's wages that could have been dispersed to the poor is strangely wasteful.

Reason 3: Without that huge scar of anger, betrayal and disappointment, we wouldn't have stepped into a different church situation.  We were searching for substance and answers.  In only ways God can do, he took all the pain of those wasteful years and ignited them with a deep-seated trust of Him.  It is no surprise to me that the church God used mightily in our lives was also overcome with the wasteful love of our Saviour.   That precious church sent out year-end thank you letters, individually addressed, to a ten-year-old and a seven-year-old with twenty-three cents and fifteen cents less in their respective piggy banks.  When the postage of the envelopes cost more than the gifts that is God-like waste.  

Reason 4: God's a Spender, but he never goes into debt.  He has the resources to out-spend you.  You can trust that through unexplained and senseless waste in your life,  He loves you more deeply than your despondency and fears.  His plans for you are abundant and full of life.  

I could have referred to Jesus' gift as costly, but somehow costly seems too calculated, too humanly sensible.  Waste gets our knees knocking, because our resources are limited and finite, but wastefulness means nothing to God who owns the universe and the galaxies beyond.   I was healed from viewing God as a tightwad by experiencing the most wasteful gift of all, Christ's lavish love for me.     

 

 "A new command I give you:  Love one another.   As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." 
John 13:34, 35

My Snow Angels

 

Chuffy Doesn't Understand

The Glory of Snow

 

 

Snoccer, the Next Big Thing

Man versus Dog

Fierce competition

A snoccer breakaway with man in the lead

 

A snoccer kick on goal

Halftime

The conditions were perfect for sliding

Chuffy loved the bone hat

The Children of the Wardrobe

 

In Season Reads

This is a miraculous nonfiction story full of human energy and effort and God's goodness.  A Lost Boy of Sudan becomes a refugee and runner.  God's preserving hand was so evident in his life, and he speaks without bitterness of his difficult childhood.  As a teen boy he came to the U.S. with little to no formal education and graduated from high school in a language he did not speak. Sweet humor and secrets to running fast lay in "zebra meat."

Zany, fast-paced mystery.  A precocious twelve year old girl is the sleuth in 1950s England.

 

This book is a dichotomy of a winsome Iran before the revolution and a sickening spiraling of a nation in turmoil. The writer's father was executed by the new regime and she saw her safe little world warp into an unrecognizable future.  I found the book subtlety addresses many social issues through the survival of her mother in a patriarchal society which does not honor women.  She reveals her privileged upbringing and the escape from the reign of terror.  It was a sensitive account of how things might have been and her personal confessions.   The book takes it title from this beautiful poem below.

 

After reading that, tell me is not God's goodness to his Creation written on each man's conscience?

Makes me think of the True Son.

 

This is the eyes wide-open version of the Iranian revolution.  It is a horrific story, but somehow written with beauty and dignity.  I found it fascinating, painful and a plucker of the heart strings.

 

The odds are crazy.  The outcome miraculous, but what after 20 something years you discovered that you have a famous twin on the other side of the world?  Two Korean adoptees find out that though they were single birth babies born to different women (according to their birth certificates), adopted by different couples, grew up on different continents, speak different languages...in fact they were identical twins separated at birth.  Makes this mom wonder just slightly, does my Teddy have a twin?

 

The Progression of Loss

Attending Sunday school, I had just heard three parables on the lost sheep, lost coin and lost son...  How little did I expect that the next week I would lose three things myself, especially a son.  

My sheep was in the guise of a stray cocker spaniel that won my heart by greeting me with wet kisses and wagging his tail like mad when he saw me.  He had sweet sorrowful eyes and he was a gifted with soulful silence.  We nurtured him back from the grave as his ribs were all showing, his hair matted and he was shivering as if his very emotional stability was at risk.   A week after taking care of him, we found his owner 15 miles away which meant we lost him, but he was restored to his original sheepfold.

 Chummy

A day after Chummy, the dog, left, we lost our cat, I.Q.   He was Emily's dream cat and a sweet beast, even though we discovered he wasn't as brilliant as his name.  After a year with us, his disappearance of one day was highly unusual.   Unfortunately the one day stretched into a week and then many weeks.  Our neighbors felt bobcats or coyotes had taken him.   The girls were particularly devestated as they valued him highly as if he was only one of ten cats in the world.   Last night, Ben came home with another cat during the super bowl.  The girls were joyous!  I think Ben scored the winning touchdown. 

I.Q.

Losing the animals was indeed sad, but when in Vermont we lost Fritz, loss was unspeakable.   It happened at the end of a single digit day in the ski slopes. Fritz did not return with his ski partner who had last seen him several hours before.  The lifts were closed for the day to get everyone off the mountain before dark.   It was dusk and bitter cold.   Ben's cell phone rang and then died because the battery was zapped by the polar cold.   He borrowed someone's charger and listened to a new message that ski patrol had Fritz.   He was found!   The strange part he was found two miles away and about a five minute car drive from where he started.   Fritz said he was so cold he felt like he was going to throw up.   God preserved our precious son and brought him back to us by the kindness of strangers.

The God of the universe showed his love to me by his hand-selecting the Bible lesson for the Sunday prior to these events.  God spoke of loss, but also restoration.  He showed that even one of a hundred mattered to him.   Just as he carried the sheep on his shoulders with tenderness, I believe Jesus gave back someone their lost dog.  The parables do not stop there.   The one of ten coins mattered to God as well.  He gave a celebration when the coin was found, or in our case another cat came home.   With the final parable, Jesus showed that the two of two mattered to him.  He restored the lost son and sought out the embittered son.  May you take from our stories that what is lost is an opportunity for a God-sized restoration.