Whoooosh!

Whoooosh??? Yep, that's the atmospheric disturbance that was heard and felt coming out of the town of Yarrow today at about 1:02p.m. It was the sound of me exhaling a huge and turbulent ssssssigh of reliefffffffffffffffff when my passport finally was delivered to me by the nice Fedex man! I'm pretty sure I saw a faint circular glowing just above his head, and some feathery protrusions about shoulder height..... I wonder if he knew he'd been commissioned by my own Heavenly Father for this particular day???? I should've told him, I know, but I was caught up in the moment! I guess this has been the 'pre-adventure' adventure! Off to Italy we go on Sunday. Thank You Lord for answering so many prayers of many friends for this little blue book called a passport!

Update.....

Well, here it is Wednesday....I'm supposed to be leaving on Sunday.....No passport yet.....Hmmm. Wonder what this is all about..... A test? Must be a test. I feel like I personally know the lady who made the recorded message that begins each sesh of waiting for the next available operator. And of course my call will be answered in the order in which it was received.... They're smart too. They don't put you on hold with 'elevator' music--the 'phone' just keeps ringing so you have hope that at some point someone will answer. And they do, after about 25 to 30 minutes. I think I read on the State Department website that they'd processed over 80,000 passports in the last few months. I wonder why they're so slow anyway!! Ha. Oh well, I keep waiting and asking God if He wants me to keep bugging Him or just be still and wait. "Knock and the door will be opened".... Am I knocking on the right door?
What's the reason??? Must be a reason!!!

Help!

Okay, I give up!! I'm supposed to be going on a missions trip to Italy in 10 days. In order to go there, I need a passport. Well, actually, I had a passport. But they told me that if it would expire within 6 weeks of my trip, I had to get it renewed. That also meant surrendering my old passport. So our trip is July 1 thru 16. My passport would've expired on July 29th. That means a renewal. EXCEPT that with all the passport hoopla (It's a U.S. passport and I live in Canada), what used to take 6 weeks now can take anywhere up to 14 weeks. Actually, when I sent mine off--April 4th--they said 8 to 10 weeks. Well, that still would've been okay. But with everybody thinking the same thing, the passport agencies are absolutely DELUGED with applications and renewals. The annoyng thing is that my passport WAS good till July 29th and I could've gone with it and come back home and started the process after the trip. Except, they (whoever 'they' are) were worried I might try to stay too long in whatever country I was going to and then my passport wouldn't get me home. So now 'they' aren't worried anymore about me staying too long---I'M worried about getting there in the first place!!!!!! I've been to the State Department website over and over.....home page has a new meaning...The toll free number they give only works in the States. The good people at the City Hall in Sumas, WA have invited me to have a chair and use their phone. (I'll be on the phone waiting a long time says the nice lady there.) I've emailed the State Department and they said in essence, "Keep trying!" I did some tele-exploration and found the regular long distance number of the State Department and they gave me the 'direct line' to the Passport Task Force! That sounded encouraging! So I waited for the appointed time to phone that number--it was important to phone at the appropriate time. And I waited through about, oh I'd guess 35 "Thank you for your patience. Please stay on the line and wait for the first available agent to help you." I didn't mind that. Hope makes the waiting quite bearable. Finally the nice lady answers my call. I give her all my information so she knows I am who I say I am. Yes. She politely listens to my plight. Like I need my passport in hand by June 29th as there is no mail in Canada on Saturday. That's one week from tomorrow! "Well, Mrs. T I will send a fax with your information and situation." .............. That's it?? After all the checking and emailing and phoning and waiting and phoning again, etc. etc. and so forth? Her soft, smooth southern drawl didn't really give much comfort. But yep, that was it!
SOOOOO, that gets me to where I should've been all along. Whose trip is this anyway? I sure can't make anything happen. I guess I've been counting on the good ole US of A to come through for me. But there are probably THOUSANDS of other people like me. And there are only a limited number of passport agents out there. And judging from my wait on the phone there are many people like me who are within days of their departure date too. Funny, I haven't been concerned about it at all until the last week or so. I figured I'd have my passport when they said. So what's with this last minute panic attack anyway? Perhaps its a wakeup call that this is GOD's trip. Just a reminder that He's planning it.
So what now? Do I feverishly pray and phone prayer warriors to pray with me? Do I sit back and relax and just wait. What should my posture be in these next few days? For sure one of openness to what God wants to teach me. Not one of taking His care for granted. But probably one of rest. One of examining my attitude towards going and serving. And rest. And prayer. Talking to Him about it all.
So, being new to this whole blogging thing, I'm not sure if it's appropriate to 'vent' on a blog, but as you can see, I just did. So if it's not cool to do that, you won't read it anyway, right? In the meantime, it has done ME some good. Ha! I need to print this off--especially the previous paragraph--and read it over again when I start to fret.
In the meantime, if you read this and want to send up a prayer for my passport and me, that'd be okay too. Thanks for "listening".
And I'll let y'all know when it comes......

Dig Deep

It's 'story time' again....and from the archives of my 'cleaning lady' memories....
There's this nice little lady I clean for. Last summer, we noticed quite a number of moths hanging around the house. They were annoying little beasts. Fluttering here and there just where you didn't want to see them. Often I found myself in fruitless chase of one of those pesky flying critters. Always just out of reach of my clapping hands or even the end of the vacuum hose, they were hard to catch or kill. Pretty soon we all just got used to them being around. We'd still chase them and seldom get them. Aha! But we could smack them when they landed on the wall. Mind you that left a dusty little black spot that then had to be wiped off. Oh well, at least that was one down, eh?
Now you need to understand that my little lady is a pack-rat. Maybe a nicer way to say it is that she finds lasting value in just about everything! That plus the fact that she really only wants me to be there 2 hours and to just do the vacuuming and dusting and bathrooms and floors, makes getting things really clean quite a challenge. Plus, my little lady loves to tell me various and sundry news and events and history that require my full attention and keep me from the job at hand. Me, being too polite to give her less than my undivided attention--although mentally I'm saying "Aaaargh, I gotta get done here"--I just let her tell me all she finds important at the time. All that to say that I just do the routine stuff she wants done, all the while wishing that I could really dig deeper and get at some of the hidden away dirt and clutter. But I let her make the call.
Now, back to the moth thing..... So here we a year later and--can you believe?--the moths are still bugging us! (pardon the pun) Oh, we don't see them flying around so much. In fact, I rarely see them myself. No, I just see the black spots on the wall. They are really everywhere. Little reminders of a grungy nest of something old and dirty somewhere in the house. If only I had the permission to do a thorough cleaning search through all the piles of clutter to find that nest! I could put a stop to all those nasty little black spots on the wall. But no, I am relegated to going through the house each week, cleaning spots off the wall. Spots that remind me that the nest is there somewhere. And that to get rid of the spots for good, I need to dig deep and clean out the nest!
Now. This makes me wonder what spots are on the walls of my life. And what nest do I need to clean out to stop the spots from reappearing. And am I willing to take the time and effort to clear away the clutter and mess to rid myself of something in my life that keeps cropping up like those black spots on the wall?
May I not limit my spiritual "Mr. Clean" to just spot-cleaning me. May I allow Him to cleanse and freshen me from the inside out!
Sounds like a song I once heard.....

by Gammi B

I Get the Point!!!!

I had the most amazing experience today!~~Well, okay so it wasn't that amazing. I was doing some gardening and I had to get a tool from the garage. (This is really random....) There, what to my wondering eyes should appear!--(I've heard that somewhere before....)--but my old pencil sharpener! Now, this old friend has been sort of in hibernation since we moved. Many times already I have so wished for my old friend. Can it really be that I have survived for a year and a half without a nicely sharpened pencil in the house?? Anyway, there it was, nicely attached to the 2X4 framing the garage door! And FIRMLY attached so as not to wobble when grinding away on some stubble of an old, once useless pencil. So what if I have to walk all the way down the driveway to the garage to use it!
"Dull pencils of the house! Rebirth is imminent!!"
I guess if you always have a pencil sharpener at your beck and call, you don't really realize what a lovely thing a newly sharpened pencil is. Try going without sharpening your pencil for a couple of weeks even, and see for yourself!
Thank you dear husband for resurrecting my trusty old Boston pencil sharpener!
(I was gonna make up some dumb pun...but, you get the point.... :o) Right? You're really sharp!!)

Growing up...the short long journey....

I held a tiny little girl today....two weeks old. So sweet and so amazing! An itsy-bitsy sprout of humanity. Of life. Yet, so incredibly bursting with potential for greatness! When I had my own babies, I guess I thought about their potential, but the focus was definitely on the moment. These tiny precious little persons who needed me so much. Love, food and shelter....
Well, now my babies are young adults! It truly has been a short long journey. 'Where HAS the time gone?' Had I seen the path we were headed down I'm sure I might have tried to take some detours. Perhaps we'd all be stronger. Or weaker. I don't know. But I do know that I am amazed at God's goodness in producing in those three little lives, three strong, wonderful individuals who love and care for people around them. I am thankful for God's gift of an amazing husband and father to my 'babies'. I am also grateful for the family of God who has contributed to their growing process--watering, weeding, cultivating and feeding.
So from the first time I held a baby of my own in my arms til now has actually been almost 27 years! Unbelieveable! Who knew it would be such a fast 27 years? 25 for the next? and 21 for the next? 27, 25, and 21 years...you might think "that's a long time!!" It is ya know. But......."Time flies when you're having fun!!!"
Thank you God for a wonderful family!!!