So Much More. . .

While on our recent vacation, we walked the "Freedom Trail" in Boston, MA. At one

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point we took advantage of one of the many resting areas located through the city of Boston. We sat on benches and tables across from Paul Revere's house and feasted on goodies from a local pastry shop.

As I looked up and down the street, I could easily see there was so much more to see and do than we could ever squeeze into our three days in this historical city.

There were delightful looking Italian restaurants waiting for us on this street, pastry shops galore, historical sites we had not yet reached, and venues of culture and beauty that we would not begin to venture into.

I wondered how long it would take for us to fully explore this town and exhaust all it had to offer. Would it be weeks, months, years? Could one ever fully know a city that was changing and growing even as you tried to explore its past?

That, I believe, will be our marvelous experience of heaven. The more we try to delve into the glory that is our Lord, the wonder that is our God, the more we will find we do not know, the more we will find there is to know. We will ever be discovering more and more details of glory, more venues of beauty, more avenues of Grace. We will never be able to out-discover His majesty and abundance.

Touched and Lost Touch

We have just completed a whirlwind vacation to Boston and New York City. Our trip featured historical, cultural and entertainment venues.

After visiting friends in Tennessee, we began our trip, unexpectedly, by visiting Stonewall Jackson's home and grave. Once in Boston we attended a baseball game at Fenway Park and watched the Red Sox beat the Toronto Blue Jays. The Blue Jays must have brought their Canadian weather with them because the temperature was in the 40s with a wind chill which felt like 20 degrees.

We walked the Freedom Trail and saw our history come alive. We stood where early citizens debated unfair taxation, and saw the graves of John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. We saw the site of the first American public school. We stood outside the Old North Church.

We attended the Boston Pops Symphony Orchestra with John Williams conducting and listened to music so beautiful it brought tears to our eyes. It was a magical evening in a magical symphony hall.

We traveled to Plymouth, MA and visited Plymouth Rock, where my great, great, great. . .let's just say 13 generations ago, my ancestor Deacon John Doan came to Plymouth Colony. The quaint village and the personal significance made this a favorite among our visits.

We wandered the streets of the North End of Boston, also known as Little Italy. We found the most wonderful Italian grocery and bought bread, cheese and olives. We enjoyed listening to the Italians banter their greetings back and forth.

We visited Walden Pond. The pond was breathtaking in its simplicity and beauty.

In New York we walked through Times Square with its flashing lights and colorful signs. We stood on the top of Rockefeller Center and looked down on a town wearing a mysterious shawl of fog. We marveled from above at the size of Central Park.

We walked to Greenwich Village and participated in a Food Tasting Tour which presented us with different types of food and taught us historical and cultural facts of the area as well. This tour introduced us to a pastry shop with the best pastries I have ever put in my mouth. I am thrilled to know they ship. They will be making my birthday cake!

We took the ferry to Liberty Island to visit Lady Liberty herself. We walked up her pedestal to view the city. We stood in awe of her size, her beauty and her perfect symbolism of freedom, liberty and the American spirit.

We ended our trip by visiting the beautiful and haunting battle ground of Gettysburg.

While in New York, we visited Central Park, which gave us the one truly negative, and one incredibly positive incident during the trip.

I was sitting on a bench in the Park, Glen and the girls were dispersed nearby. An older gentleman came and sat on the bench with me. We didn't speak at first, which seems to be the mode of operation in New York.

Glen came up to me and I showed him on my ipod Touch our exact location in the park. If you are not familiar with an ipod Touch, it is a small electronic device -- a hand-held computer -- about the size of a deck of cards which can do just about anything. This device contains all my appointments, my address book, my music, my Bible, and tools I use throughout the day to help me do the things I need to do.

Showing Glen the map, prompted the gentleman to ask if we needed the map of the park he was using. Glen explained we had it there on the device. This started the conversation between us. Soon his wife walked up and joined us. Jerry, the gentleman, was a retired pastor. He and his wife Elaine, were visiting their grandson in New York. We had a wonderful chat and shared that bond that people have when they know the same Lord.

Toward the end of our conversation, I reached into my purse to pull out one of Glen's cards to give Jerry and Elaine. In doing so, I either put my Touch in my lap, or set it on the bench without thinking. Either way, when we stood up to leave, my thoughts weren't on the Touch, they were on the people who had so just touched my heart.

We separated from each other discussing how we knew we would "see each other again."

It only took a few minutes for me to realize I had lost my Touch, but even in that short amount of time, someone had already picked it up. It was gone and I was distraught. All my information, all my tools were in that device.

As is often the case when we deal with loss, it takes a moment for faith to catch up with grief. If I didn't know that the Lord orchestrates our steps, I would find it ironic that I had just been reading the chapter in A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God entitled, "The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing". Incidentally, I had been reading in on my Touch.

I wiped the tears of disappointment from my eyes and in doing so dislodged my last contact. It fell down into the dirt of Central Park and remains there to this day. I knew that even though I had lost a thing, I had gained so much more. The encouragement, the love, the bond of Christ that had been shared with Jerry and Elaine were worth so much more to me than a thing. I came to realize that if I could do it all over again, and enter Central Park in a way that would allow me to avoid Jerry and Elaine, and to exit with my Touch still in my purse, that would not be my choice. I would do it just the same way.

For years we had a sign on our wall that said, "God and people are eternal. Everything else is just stuff." I often wonder when I read quotes if the people who say those things live up to them. Now it is my choice, and I choose to. I am the author of that quote.

I can choose to because I prefer the touch from the children of God we met, to the electronic Touch made by man. I know that one day I will enter the Kingdom of Heaven and at some point a gentleman with a sweet grin and a twinkle in his eye will walk up to me and say, "I told you I'd see you again!"

Our New "Friend" -- Daphne

I love driving on the interstate. It is almost like a game. A car passes you, then miles later, you end up passing the same car. You follow a truck and finally pass it, then when you least expect it, that truck passes you by.

I love watching the ebb and flow of the traffic on the road and watching how all the cars and trucks fit together in a puzzle of rapid motion, all seeming to go where they want, if not when they want, without much incident or mayhem.

We have a new "friend" along on our trip this time though that has dramatically changed how we relate to travel. One of the girls I work with loaned us her GPS for our recent trip (Bless you Tammye!) and we prompted nick-named the speaker with the British accent, "Daphne".

Daphne tells us before it is time to turn, what turn we will be making, which direction we will turn and how many yards it will be before we do so. Her screen display tells us much more than that. If we don't follow Daphne's instructions and either by our own stubborn will, or our own stupidity, choose to make a wrong turn, Daphne takes that in stride. She doesn't yell, or get mad. She simply calculates a new route and tells us what is the best way for us to travel based on that new plan. Occasionally that means she tells us to "Turn around as soon as you can."

Glen made the statement that it took the stress out of traveling because we knew Daphne wasn't going to let us get lost. "She'll tell us where to go!" It is so true, and it is true of the Lord as well.

He leads us in our lives and "orders" our steps. We can follow His leading, or as with Daphne, we can stubbornly make our own choices and our own mistakes. When we do, He will work even those mistakes somehow into our good. Not that He plans our sins or determines our sins, but as a dear young Christian once said, "He just takes advantage of them."

If we follow His plan and direction in our lives, we will reach the destination safely and securely in the time frame planned. If we make the wrong choices, our lives will be spent wasting time circling and retracing valuable steps. It is up to us.

As for me, I think I'll listen to the Lord. Oh, and Daphne, too.

Ripping out the Quilt

I have begun working on a new quilt.

The first quilt of this type I made was inspired by a quilt I saw in The Bombay Company. It was simply rows of straight, narrow strips of different fabrics quilted with straight black stitches. It was gorgeous beyond its simplicity. The quilt was made of all different types of fabric, some satin, some velvet; of many different rich colors. I fell in love with it immediately. Until, that is, I looked at the price tag.

"$200?", I'm quite sure I said this aloud in the store. "I can make this quilt myself for $20!" I told Glen. Then I set out immediately to do so. The result was a beautiful quilt that still drapes our bed to this day. Instead of batting, I quilted a lightweight blanket inside, so the weight and warmth it provides in the winter is very comforting.

The next adventure of quilts of this nature turned into a "two at once" special. I began making a pretty yellow and white one for a good friend's new house. She had moved hundreds of miles away and I wanted her to have something bright and cheerful to remind her of the friends who so loved her at home. At the same time our son was deployed to Iraq and I started one to represent his team and to present to him upon his arrival home.

Since that flurry of quilting activity, I haven't worked on a quilt. For five years, my quilting frame has been still. Once I purchased fabrics and even began cutting it into strips, but then life intruded and I put it all away.

Last night I was sewing the different colored strips together. From my vantage point above the sewing machine, it looked as if everything was going according to plan. It wasn't until I ironed the quilt top that I realized the big mistake that had been made. While I was sewing one of the strips, the underside of the material had gotten caught up with what I was sewing. This caused a large piece of the quilt sewn to itself where it shouldn't have been.

Immediately I thought of the verse, "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Proverbs 16:25). I thought my strips were sewing correctly, but instead I had made a big mistake that I had rip out and resew.

Looking back on my life, how many times have I seen a path that I thought was "right" and it really was the way of death. We should be so careful to seek the will of the Lord in our lives and to seek the wise counsel of other Christians the Lord has placed in our lives. We will then save ourselves much time and sorrow from "ripping out" the mistakes and resewing the pieces.


"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil." Proverbs 3:5-7