Repentance in two parts

"Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?" Ezekiel 18:23 
"Because he considers all the offenses he has committed and turns away from them, he will surely live; he will not die." Ezekiel 18:28
These verses spoke to me this morning, and particularly the last one. I circled the word "considers" in my Bible because I felt that it was a key part of the scripture. God asks us to think about our actions, as well as turn away from them. Turning over a new leaf is great, but unless you understand why and consider why the old ways were sinful, I think you are probably not safely established in your new habits.
It seems like losing weight to me. I can go on a diet, change my ways for a little while, and eat healthy foods. But if I don't realize what my old habits were doing to me, then I won't understand why they led to me gaining weight. If I don't understand why some foods are fattening and others healthful, then I probably will slip right back into my old eating patterns.
But even if I do understand all that (and I do!), if I don't completely turn away from the old ways, then I will eventually backslide (I do that, too!). That's the repentance part. God teaches us that there are two parts to repentance: being truly remorseful for what you have done, and then making a permanent change in behavior. And, I cannot be truly remorseful if I have not fully considered what I have done. Prayer and meditation can bring me to a place of deep consideration, a thoughtful time where I can visit and review my thoughts and actions. Journaling and blogging do, as well.
God doesn't want us to be lost, he doesn't get any pleasure out of our death to sin. He wants us with him and he wants us to turn from our wicked ways. He just wants us to fully understand what we're doing, and why, when we do it.

The Good Towels

This was written in August of 2005. Since then, it has been published in a couple of fine publications. My mother passed away on September 20, 2006. But I continue to live the lesson of The Good Towels. I hope you enjoy it and learn something, too.

A few days after my mother was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer, I found myself inside the hallway linen closet just outside her bedroom door. Although both she and my father had invited me to sleep in her bed while I was there and my mom was hospitalized, I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in her bed.  My father, who is paralyzed, has his own room across the house from hers and they have slept apart for these last 15 years or so. I chose the “guest” bed instead, which really, until quite recently, had been where my 90-year-old grandmother had called home. But now Nana was in a nursing home recovering from a broken shoulder and, while she wasn’t yet aware of it, it was going to be her new home. Even before my mother’s crisis she had realized she could no longer care for her mother, who was suffering from both Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. After 7 years, the road had become too rough even for my mother.

Ironic then, in a horrible sort of way, that within three weeks of my grandmother going to the nursing home that my mother should be diagnosed with cancer. Stage IV. Inoperable. Radiation and chemo ahead and no guarantees. No one talking about time frames and I’m not sure why not, but it’s left unsaid.

So I am staring at the neatly stacked purple towels. My mother has been very precise with them. They are all folded exactly alike, facing the same way, stacked by size and color. And there, to the left and tucked to the side away from the everyday purple towels are the “special” towels. Among them are the towels I bought for her at Christmas, a beautiful soft fluffy white towel embroidered with deep purple irises. Purple is her favorite color. I fell in love with the towels over the internet and knew that she must have them. 

Maybe if I had bought her three sets, or ten, she would have used them as everyday towels. But she had just the one set and there they were, set aside, for who-knows-what. I stood and stared and thought: “we should use the good towels.”

I vaguely remember reading an article by Erma Bombeck as she came to the end of her life. She wrote about using the good china, about burning candles and eating dinner at the dining room table and doing all the stuff we usually reserve for company, but doing it with those who are closest to us.

We should use the good towels. We should dry off with the fringed beauties that hang nearly dusty on our not-to-be-touched guest towel racks. When they get dirty we should wash them, and use them again and again until we tire of them, and then we should buy new “guest towels” and use them some more.

We should not wait until we have cancer or some other life-limiting disease before we eat at the dining room table, use the good china or haul out the silver. Who better than our own spouses and children to spoil with those things?

A couple of years ago I remember setting a beautiful table in the dining room for a Sunday dinner with my husband and our children. Together we have five children and they make a marvelous mixed family that is a blessing to us both. As I lit candles, poured wine and water into crystal glasses, and put out the linen napkins, my middle stepdaughter clapped with delight. “I love it when you have a centerpiece and candles,” she said. “It makes me feel so special.” I resolved right then to try to make all my children feel just that special as often as I can. 

The love we have for our own family is way beyond what we feel for friends and neighbors. And yet, we often reserve the good towels and the china and the silver for the people we hardly know. Our best manners are generally reserved for strangers while we often forget to say “I’m sorry” or “Excuse me” in our own homes.

Civility shouldn’t be reserved for those we know least, and the good towels should be shared with the ones we love best. And standing there in the doorway of my mother’s linen closet, I knew that the way I live my life would change forever. So I pulled out the lovely fluffy white towels and draped them across the towel bar in her tiled bathroom. I admired them and worried about spoiling them…even though I had already decided that was foolish.

I wanted my mother to come home to beauty and caring and the lovely home she had created for so many years. And I wanted her to use the good towels.

P.S. Those towels are still in my mother's closet and I try to take them out and hang them when I visit with my Dad!

Will Write For Jesus: The Charity of Christ

Will Write For Jesus: The Charity of Christ

The Charity of Christ

For many years, I worked for the Daughters of Charity at a hospital. There, I became familiar with their creed: "The charity of Christ crucified urges us." That motto, if you will, has come to me often in the past few weeks. Christ does indeed urge me, I feel the insistent tug on my heart to follow him where he is leading me. I don't know where that is, and that causes some anxiety. The Lord has promised me a big change in my life and I have had plenty of those in the last few months! Christ Jesus has a heart for charity. Not in the way we think of it, though - he didn't hand out money to "charitable" organizations. Jesus didn't serve others via check writing. He got down and dirty - quite literally - washing the feet of others, eating with sinners, loving the unlovely. The ultimate charitable act, Christ crucified, is beyond my ability to understand. This morning I was in prayer and feeling bad about some of the things that had happened to me. But then I remembered that in no way, at no time, will I ever suffer as Christ did. No one has flogged me, beat me, stabbed me or crucified me. My Lord and Savior went through all of this willingly, as an act of charity, to save me. And you. And everyone who believes.