Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Cinderella Mom

If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…

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This is 40

I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…

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Beauty on the Backroads {or Why I Changed the Name of my Blog}

I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…

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Life In Progress

A place for everything and everything in its place. Our motto these days is more like “no place for anything and nothing in its place.”

Thanks to Christmas, the addition of a new baby and traveling, our house is far from orderly. We still have suitcases (empty) in the bedroom, mounds of laundry that seem to multiply overnight, toys in every room of the house and piles of papers and other miscellaneous objects that seem to have no home.

This bugs me. I like order. I enjoy putting things where they go. I want to be able to walk through the house without worrying about tripping over a stray toy or cup.

I’m thinking that’s not going to happen until Phil and I are empty-nesters. Realistically, it’s probably possible sooner than that, but when I look around the house, I wonder if it’s always going to be like this. When we lived in our first apartment, our stuff was packed into it in an out-of-control, embarrassing sort of way. Then, our daughter was born and the disorder was more like chaos. When we moved to the house we now live in, we couldn’t believe all the room we had. We’ve learned, though, that when you upgrade, you find a way to fill the space you have. Add to that the birth of our son and we’re back to feeling a little like sardines.

Maybe that means we have too much stuff. Thanks to ample storage space in the attic, we have a few boxes of things we haven’t used since we’ve been married. They’re mostly decorative things, I think, like picture frames and wall hangings, although there’s also a box of music boxes I’ve collected since I was a girl that haven’t seen the light of day in close to 10 years. I’ve never been much of a decorator, but I want to be able to display these things and create a homey atmosphere. Right now, the atmosphere is modern toddler, at best; messy family, at worst. I fear that our kids will be 16 before we’re able to show off their baby pictures or that Phil and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary before I get around to putting up our wedding pictures.

We’re definitely a work in progress when it comes to our home, and I know this happens to most families with young children. It’s just hard for me to accept because I’m not a work-in-progress type of girl. I like to finish what I start. This was the hardest time management lesson to learn as a reporter. Most of the time, I had to have three or four stories “in progress” while I waited for phone calls to be returned or interviews to be scheduled. If I had waited until one story was finished before I started the next one, I would never have made deadline and probably would have been quickly out of a job.

Most of the time my life feels like a work in progress, too. Some days, I wish I was a lot closer to complete than I am. I’m often reminded of how much work is left to do, especially when I say something I don’t really mean, become overwhelmed by the little things, or ignore a need when I could help meet it.

I’m grateful for other work-in-progress people in my life, who even if they’re a little closer to complete than I am, remind me that nobody’s perfect and nobody will be this side of Heaven. I’m drawn to those kind of people, who easily admit their faults and acknowledge they don’t have it all together.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved Philippians 1:6: “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Someday I’ll be complete. Until then, I can rest in the truth that every day is bringing me a little closer to that end.

Connected

It’s been too long. Those of you who know our family well or follow us on Facebook know that on December 2 we were blessed with a son, Corban Ranard, who weighed in at 9 lbs. 10 oz. and was 21 inches long. After the weeks and months of anxiety and waiting, he arrived just a few hours after his due date, via C-section, which was a fearful prospect before it happened but actually turned out to be not so bad. The last month has been full of family visits, holiday celebrations and adjusting to life as a family of four.

Even though we live 700 miles from family and most of our friends, we were truly blessed to have our parents present before and after Corban’s birth to help with household chores and even to give Phil and me a week without a toddler before we traveled home for the holidays. I don’t know how we would have done it without them. We delayed reality for a while, but it was a great help to have so much support during my recovery.

I’ve had lots of time to think, even if I don’t have lots of time to publish those thoughts. One thought I wanted to share came to me while I watched my dad try to fix our strands of Christmas lights as we decorated our tree. Of the two strands, only half of one worked, which would have made for a dimly lit tree. While Phil was out running errands, and picking up two new boxes of lights, my dad set out on a search for the lights that were causing the problem. After a diligent search of both strands, he found the problem on one strand and fixed it so that all the lights worked. The nonworking half of the second strand was beyond repair, so he cut it off and wrapped the exposed wire on the working strand.

The second strand reminds me of the church or what the Bible calls the body of Christ. The purpose of a strand of lights is to shine, as is the purpose of the body. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus tells his disciples. And like the strand of lights, we’re all connected. So, if one member experiences a problem, it affects the rest. Yet, I wonder, how many of us are like the half strand that was working, happily shining our lights, not knowing that the rest of the strand was dark, affecting the overall brightness of our light?

“For the body is not one member, but many. … And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.” — 1 Corinthians 12:14, 26-27

The body of Christ, His church, is only as bright as the weakest member. I can’t effectively show the light of Jesus if other members of the church are struggling to even light in the first place. I’m praying for open eyes to see the unlit lights around me and for wisdom to help them shine again.