Where is He Intersecting Your Lines With Others?

He's here again -- the Japanese Grandpa. I don't know him but I see him regularly at my library coffee shop.

A black jacket hood pulled low covers half his face and hides his distinguished silver and charcoal hair today, but I can still see his thin grey mustache and beard. A narrow cheekbone rests on his right shoulder and his chest rises and falls in deep peaceful sleep. He has been curled up in a black leather arm chair beside a tall tropical banana tree since I arrived two hours ago. His six plastic grocery bags are lined neatly on the two corralled chairs beside him, and I find myself drawn to him.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Gullevek, Creative Commons cc license

He intrigues me. I am curious about this dignified elderly man since I saw him deftly eating a breadstick with chopsticks at a round metal patio table last fall. Every few weeks I see him and we seem to share a similar Monday schedule.

This is the second time I've seen him napping, though, and his restful vulnerability stirs respect, honor, and a slight protective feeling in me for him. Last time he had suddenly awoke, looked at his watch, and stood up. Trying several combinations of bags, he had adjusted their contents and transferred weight from one hand to another until he was satisfied.

A young businessman and I had watched him that day on the edge of our chairs, both wanting to jump in with offers to help. I had hesitated, not sure if help would seem dishonoring. In the lull, the young entrepreneur had stepped in.

"Excuse me, can I help you carry those somewhere?" he asked.

The Japanese Grandpa had been surprised, raising his eyebrows to hear it again, clarified. After the second time, he had shook his head politely, graciously refusing aid. Grasping three bags in each hand, he stood, stowing a kindle-like device in a folded-up pocket in the fleece shirt under his jacket.  Weaving sideways through crowded coffee tables, he had descended out of sight down the stairs.

Was he a shop owner awaiting the bus? Was this a grocery run? Was he homeless? I wondered.

I watch him sleeping here again now, and the questions cycle in my mind. I pray silent blessings on him and wonder about starting a conversation.

God knows my Japanese Grandpa's name even if I don't yet, and he knows how many silver charcoal hairs are under his hood. My Creator is crazy about his gentleman and a sudden glimpse of God's love for this man chokes me.

Who are the people weaving their storylines through yours? God knows their plots and he loves them fiercely. I'm reminding myself to slow down, to see them, and to step into their stories as possible, even if it's just silent prayer vigils for the strangers I pass on the street or see across the room from me. Where is God intersecting stories near you?


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A Mission that Will Self-Destruct in Ten, Nine, Eight...

My daughter and her friend spread watercolor pigments, paint brushes, drawing pencils, and textured feathery paper across our dining room table.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Mike Wallis, Creative Commons cc license

"Mom, can you click on the Nutcracker Pandora station?" she asks, just a few bars into a Vivaldi song. Tchaikovsky must feel more inspirational to her tonight. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies wafts through the room, and conversation caves into reflective brushstrokes.

I open my computer screen and turn to words, my preferred mode of art. And these words have been running through my head all week since seeing them buried in an ancient Old Testament Bible book.

In that history, God has pulled a prophet (these men and women who have been chosen to speak God's messages) into a heart-wrenching assignment. The mission, if he chooses to accept it, is to experience God's heart on a gut-level intimacy. 

Hosea took the mission and stepped knowingly into the pain, but I cannot imagine that lessened the agony. His mission? Marry an unfaithful woman, knowing that she'll keep running away from you. Woo her again and again. Don't give up on her, even when she chooses other men, and falls into a life of prostitution.

Throughout the years, Hosea pursues her, speaking tenderly to her, and welcoming her home. "Stop this other life. Leave these men." 

Eventually, his wife, Gomer, has become enslaved. Bringing money, Hosea pays the price to free her from the debt and lovingly brings her home.

Stringing words together in fluent poetry, God delivers the punchline: This is how humans treat me. This is how my creation responds to me. But, more importantly, this is how I feel about them.  "Therefore I will now allure her. I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her," a deep-voiced God says about his people, his world. 

Turning to Hosea, God explains. My people should return to me. My love for them is unending. His cue, and the phrase that has been running through my mind all week, is this:

               "Take words and return,"

I find that powerful.

Have any rifted relationships? With people? With God? Take words with you and return. Say sorry. God promises: I will heal you and love you freely.

Besides... his love has been chasing you already. Through the streets, through your stories, and through your storms, he has been following, saying, I will lead her and speak tenderly. I will allure her with a never-stopping, never-giving-up love. 

Take words and return.

My daughter and her friend have picked up the brushes, turned off the music, and left the room. God's art, however, swirls and eddies on in vibrant color.

What is it For You?

Mondays are my favorite days.

Photo Credit: Marie Coleman, Creative Commons cc license

Dropping Morgan off at an academy, I pull away from the curb and head to a nearby public library. Two stories of a book lover's dream are encased in floor-to-ceiling glass windows. World-origin coffee beans bulge in burlap bags on the floor beside the coffee shop's entrance, and just entering the whirring room makes me inhale and smile.

With a medium-sized Burundi dark roast coffee and my bag of notebooks, pens, and notes, I get to study for hours. These last few weeks, in between writing sessions, I have been flipping through Old Testament and New Testament Bible pages, combing through commentaries, and pulling out related resources. I have eight speaking/teaching sessions coming up, and preparing for them, teaching them, and praying for those events fill me with joyful delight. Digging deep into God's word and looking to illustrate His truths in relevant, exciting, and applicable ways fills me with excitement, and I discover that I'm the one who is learning these truths anew each time. Our Artist God's words are like that, coiling up active and vibrant at every mention.

Packing up my journal, Bible, notes, and papers partway through the morning, I pause to pick up Morgan on her study hall. We return to the library, find a quiet table and study again, lapsing into silence as we both scrape pen against lined paper. An hour later, she is back in class, and I'm alone again on a rickety table, turning pages, grabbing my pen, and asking God for wisdom as I sink deep into study.

I don't know about you, but I'm sure you have things that make you come alive. What passions, dreams, or life-goals simmer beneath your day-to-day life? God sculpted and made you unique, placing skills, talents, and his giftings inside you. You were made on purpose, and the world needs you. When and where can you slip away to hone those? What stirs inside you?

And worship needn't always look like piano, drums, and vocalists -- although I love those times too. Worship can look like pen-smudged hands whipping fast across a page, grinning maniacally at God's goodness; or a horticulturist's muddy knees as she lifts weary eyes up to her Artist God in thanks; and a daddy's third trip into a plaintive toddler's bedroom, fifteen minutes past bedtime. Worship looks like a caregiver's gentle patience; your work on repeated loads of laundry; your scrambling to fix a nutritious supper at five-thirty pm; or sleepy prayers in the dark of night. Worship can be daring to write out that story God has been whispering to you to write; and worship can be taking your turn in infant nursery on an early Daylight Saving's Sunday.

Take a deep breath. Ask God to confirm what's bubbling up inside you even now, and then step out. I promise it'll bring a rush of joy.

Hi! As my Speaking Bureau and I plan this next 2016-2017 year of speaking and teaching engagements, please let me know if I can save a date for you and your church, MOPS group, women's event, retreat, conference, or camp. I love getting to know women, and would love to rekindle a flame in your walk with God, in your marriage and family, and in your sphere of influence. Check availability by emailing douganemail@gmail.com, or peek through my speaking topics and testimonials here.
 

What's Sidling Up Behind You?

The worry's been creeping in again.

Hunched over a library computer today in between carpool trips, I scrolled website pages, scribbled notes, and slipped into anxiety. I don't know about you but for me it can masquerade as proactiveness or "being prepared," yet the truth is more subtle. It's about control.

Photo Credit: Flickr user, DeSales University, Creative Commons cc license

Earlier, in between lunch and carpooling teens, I scrounged up my green corduroy shoes and headed out to the backyard. Above-high temperatures of sixty degrees in a Minnesota spring has left an entire state giddy. Crouching beside cedar mulch flowerbeds, I brushed brown soil off spiky green and white variegated crocus plants, their growth a gift in slow motion. Giant purple crocus blossoms will be next. Three chunky daffodil or tulip plants poked nubby green heads from behind an oregano plant, and my fingertips brushed them excitedly.

Sliding long metal pruning sheers from their plastic sheath, I sliced and crunched out last year's dead branches, making room for spring's new growth. Beneath a cascade of rumpled crisp leaves, I spied them: small round purple and olive-colored oregano leaves unfurled in the warm sun. Crushing the herb in my fingers, I raised my hand to smell the heady fragrance.

Several hours later, back from the carpooled class trip and the library research, I'm feeling out of sorts, grumpy, and unsettled. Do emotions hit you that way too? Sidling up from the rear, they are faceless and vague. I'm often unaware of their effect until I sense it in my shoulders or recognize it finally in the quiet tumult inside me.

Relaxing my shoulders, rounding them up and back in circles, I capture my thoughts too, which have been spiraling unnoticed inside. Images flash in my mind of the nubby new life sticking out of the ground. Growing taller each day, the sight of them brings bubbly joy to me because I know the beauty they pack. Brilliant purples, magentas, crimsons, creams, yellows, and oranges are folded just out of reach within clumpy green budding plants or hidden still under ground. I know they are coming, though.

Life surges. Beauty awaits. New growth hovers, and you have to linger to see them fully.

And these truths about our Artist God's ability and character crackle away last year's brush from within me too. Hope and peace sink in, and I repeat the truths of who he is. Remembering that changes take time, I'm eager to see what he's growing in me. And what he's growing in you.


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Of Parties, Time Capsules, and Choosing Your Trajectory

The party was tonight. It was the Dougan Leap Year Doughnut Party.

Peering into the doughnut case this afternoon, we nabbed two glazed ones, two white frosted sprinkled ones, and one filled with raspberry jelly. On the way home, Morgan and I laughed and talked, with me purposefully reigning in my own expectations.

Photo: Christine Rondeau, Creative Commons, cc license

Upstairs around the dining room table, the five of us clambered into chairs. Two plastic cases of strawberries and blueberries sprawled open invitingly, and the five doughnuts gleamed beneath a translucent panel in the cardboard box.

Cracking jokes and tossing berries into our mouths, we stopped to pray, and then we began. Two slim paper envelopes held our attention, and I slid my finger under the seals, drawing out multiple sheets of paper.

"Morgan, here's yours from 2008. John, yours."

"Look at how small our writing was then!"

"I only wrote three lines!" another exclaimed. "Here's a drawing I did," she pointed, laughing.

"Who wants to read theirs first?" I asked.

One by one, we took turns reading our handwriting from eight years ago. In childish print, we heard echos of their younger voices pour off the page.

"Here are your 2012 letters," I said, handing across folded handwritten sheets of paper. "For Morgan only" one of them read in green ink pen. They reached out eagerly, unfolding longer notes written from themselves just four years earlier, and silence dropped in the dining room. Daniel shuffled uneasily.

"Where's mine?" he asked.

"You were only three years old then, but here is a photo of you from then," I replied, unwrapping the accompanying photos, creased from four years in an envelope.

I confess I've been looking forward to this day for years and months! Unwrapping paper, we got to unwrap our lives from eight and four years ago. In time capsule format, we peeked back into who we were four years ago, seeing how we've changed and how we've stayed the same. 

Taking turns, my kids read their letters aloud, their younger selves asking their older selves questions about what life is like now, casting imaginative questions from the past. "Do you have your own car? Are you living in your own house?" a twelve year old John asked his twenty year old self, and we laughed at what a third year college student's life really looks like.

And then my favorite part began: a reflective silence fell as everybody grabbed pens and sheets of paper. Writing from 2016, they talked to their 2020 self, presenting life from this angle and wondering about life four years in the future.

Scribbling messy black words across blue lined paper, I wrote my own letter, summing up the last four years, and speculating about the next four. And it couldn't fail to hit me. My choices now affect who I am then, and my mood turned more introspective as I continued to write. 

Who are you now? Who do you want to be in 2020? And those answers start your trajectories... 


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When You Really Want to Read Past the Christian Jargon

"It would be okay if I got a shot today," he announced this morning, hopping on one leg and peering at me with his head cocked sideways.

Above Photo: David K, Creative Commons cc license

"Oh! Well, good job. I don't think you'll need a shot today, though. It's just a dentist check up," I assured him.

Daniel shrugged and resumed playing, "But I could," he said. His fears had dissolved since last week.

Lemon juice and coconut mix with garlic, fresh ginger, and onion to hang fragrant in the air now from tonight's Vietnamese Lemon Soup, and the onions still prick my eyes. Bath splashes and seven year old boy noises emanate from the bathroom, and my seventeen year old is downstairs typing away on high school homework papers. Last week was a different story.

"I don't want a shot!" he had begged, and it made sense. None of us really like getting shots. I held his hand, tried to talk him through it, and his big sister had chimed in. "Want me to go first, Daniel? It goes by really fast!"

Swinging his hand as we stepped over grey and white snowbanks and crusty plates of ice, I had tried to squeeze comfort through my skin to his.

"Can I pray with you, bud?" He had nodded and I prayed, talking aloud across the parking lot. Although peace slipped in then and he had calmed, anxiety still flared up throughout the visit, especially when the nurse brought in a silver tray of vaccines.

Two minutes after we had persuaded him to climb up on the brown leather seat, where he had squeezed my hand and tried to negotiate a release, he suddenly stopped, confused.

"It's done," the nurse said, and we exchanged conspiratorial winks.

"OH! Already? That wasn't too bad. Morgan, that wasn't too bad. It was fast!" He slipped off the high bench and rubbed his fingers over the round green camouflage sticker.

And the picture seeps into me now... I have been reading Galatians chapter five and six this week, wondering what it looks like to "live in the Spirit,"wanting to see practically how that's done. I really wanted to get past the Christian jargon to the details of what this revolutionary new way of living can look like. Sometimes I get tripped up. A later line in the chapter caught my attention, though, and gave me an image I've been mulling over all week.

"...Let us get in step with the Spirit." Get in step with. An image flashes in my mind of my husband walking hand in hand with me. Inevitably there is a moment when he skip-steps a pace or two to get his legs into rhythm with mine, until we're walking, lefts together, rights together, in steady cadence.

"Let us get in step with the Spirit" and I picture my seven year old's fears, my hand in his, and our striding into peril together, the words on my mouth speaking comfort, truth, strength, and direction for him.

And I can look back and see God at work in my life, striding along, guiding me over obstacles and perils, breathing his truths that bring comfort, strength, direction, and relationship with him. 


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What Your Tell Says About You (and Me)

A dear one in my life stutters when she's nervous and I get it. I look her deep in the eyes, still all my outward movement, and patiently wait. I want my steady focus to assure her I'm listening, because I completely understand.

Photo: LeBrvn, Creative Commons, cc license

When I was younger, my words poured out stumbling and halting in other ways. Spilling sentences in breathless, breakneck speeds, I raced through my thoughts, gasping air in gulps. Slamming words and phrases into each other, I peered anxiously at my listeners, dumping my words and watching their nonverbal signs.

"Jeni, slow down. Take a breath," my parents would say. "Enunciate."

And I didn't figure it out until decades later, learning to speak in measured rates and digging underneath the surface for the why. In middle school insecurity, I was afraid my listener would leave. Rushing my impressions and opinions, I tumbled words in junior high hallways, in church youth group rooms, and on yellow school buses.

Talking fast was my give-away tell, but you probably have one too. I see teens who stand with hunched shoulders beside shorter friends, worried they'll stand out or look different; and I see how others preface their thoughts with humor -- only their eyes giving them away.

Coming off two weeks of speaking engagements, truths from Bible lessons and marriage sessions ring loudest in my own ears, and they make me smile. From the God who leans into biblical King Solomon's dark bedroom on a quiet night two weeks after a public prayer, I read his intimate words: "I heard your prayer, Solomon..."

Whether Valentine's day falls for you in an aftermath of red-hearts and chocolates, or with heart-aches and hungers, I read God's words engraved immortal. I hear you. I see you. When your voice is turned towards me, when you cry out for me, I will hear you and turn to you. Your words do not fall to the ground unheeded. They do not clatter and crash.

Take a breath, dear one. Stand tall, dear friend. Say what's on your heart, my friend, and let it match your eyes. He's listening. 


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