Churches I Have Loved

Maybe you played that little game with your fingers, 

"this is the church, this is the steeple..."

The big finale comes when you turn your hand over and wiggle your fingers to see "all the people"!

My wiggling fingers made it look more like a battle ground than a group of people
who love each other.

I was a child when I learned what the church is.

And I learned it in a small country church. 

Family members I never knew built this church long before I was born.

On their land.

From their trees. 

When I was younger, we only went there for family reunions

but a heritage of faith was passed down from them to me. 

I'm not sure what it was about that place.

Maybe it was the picture of Jesus that hung inside the building.

Maybe it was the old hymns we sang there. 

“There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood, no lovelier spot in the dale,
no place is so dear to my childhood...” 

Whatever it was, it was in that place that I learned to love being there.

Being in the church.

It would be years later before learned that I needed Jesus in my life,

And God was good to me far beyond my understanding,
when He allowed me  to be part of a wonderful church in Jacksonville Florida. 

My first baby steps as a new believer were taken there under the guidance of some sweet older Christians.

I learned to study my Bible and share my faith with others. 

With the help of  these people, 

a wonderful foundation of the core beliefs of Christianity were planted in my heart.

  

After Bud and I were married we moved away from Jacksonville, but it was a priority for us that in each place we lived we found a church to be our own

The people we met in those churches shared themselves with our family.

Older women taught me by their example how to love my family and God.

Special friendships were made that have lasted through the years, 

and even through the moves.

One move however stands out in my memory. 

For the first time in my life, I moved farther than five hours away from my family. 

We packed up our small belongings and even smaller child, and moved overseas to England.

 

England was home for our family for six years.

Living there in that place was where I grew the most.

Because in that place I was the loneliest. 

Even though we made great friends there who are still friends today,

living so far from what was familiar made it harder.

I missed my family and I missed the life I knew.

Phone calls home were scarce. 

 Letters seemed to take forever.  

And my husband spent two of every six weeks working away from home in Europe!  

Even our car was a problem, 

always acting as if it was waiting for the mood to hit it in order to run.

Our church there was mostly made up of young families who were also far from home, like ours. 

So, we reached out to other new families in the church.

We looked for ways to help make things easier on them.

And reading my Bible became a huge priority. 

I read to find out if the things I'd been taught were actually in the Bible or if I was basing my beliefs on someone else's.

I struggled hard while I was there, but when I left, I had a stronger assurance of the things I believed. 

England is a country with an amazing Christian heritage!
From cathedrals to small independent chapels, God's name has been lifted high.

We took lots of small trips in the area where we lived; places that would have been familiar stomping grounds for John Newton, William Cowper, John Bunyan and the Wesleys.
Our own church met in an old chapel where it was very likely Spurgeon may have preached.
The towns where Tolkien and Lewis met and had their heart to heart talks about Christianity.

Surprisingly it is a small church that really stands out in my memory.

And one woman.

For a period of about ten years, this church had one woman.

Almost 70 years old.

Faithful every week. 

She went by herself and opened up the chapel .

Turned on the heater.

And waited on the Lord.

Alone.

For almost ten years!

Just in case we ever feel like it is too much trouble to get up and go to church.

When our time in England was over, we were able to return to Warner Robins, Georgia.  

We had lived there before and were eager to be able to get back to the same church;

 a church where we knew we would be taught God's Word 

and loved on by people who were already like friends.

Those seven years were sweet years for our family! 

I hope you have learned the same thing for yourself.

The church is a rare group of people, and you would do well to find one where you can get involved.
  Be a friend.
And be loved on too.
By people who understand that we are all in this together.

You know...

The Church may not be made up of perfect people.

In fact, let's just go ahead and say it isn't.

It is made up of flawed people like me, who just happen to love a perfect God.

A God who forgives us and loves us all.

And in the good times or the hard times,

through the years, I have seen it again and again.  

God has used the church to bring us closer to Him.

That church where the woman went by herself week after week to open it up?

I don’t know if anyone ever joined her there.  

I just can't imagine that after awhile, her reason for going was to influence anyone else.

But she did.

She influenced me.

One day, I hope to meet her and hear from her  

what glory she knew during those times she went to worship her God.

In the church.

Alone.

Until then, I will thank God that I am able to be part of that group of people

 pictured by a tangle of fingers.

Because this?

This is the church.

And I need it.

______________________

What about you? 

 Have your found your place in His body yet?  

Are you active in loving and being loved by a group of believers? 

Are you growing in your faith?  

Have you been blessed by the lives of others in teaching you and guiding you

 by their words and examples?

To what extent do you consider church a necessity?

Would you continue to go and open up a building if you were the only one there?

How long?

Know this.  

Your life?  

You have more of an influence than you realize. 

On Creating a Thing of Beauty

Two Modern East Midland Lace Bobbins

A lace bobbin is a tool for making lace.  

And lace, as I'm sure you know, is probably the most beautiful fabric ever made by hand.

At least in my opinion.

It may be called Pillow lace or Bobbin lace, the name you use depends on who taught you and where it was that you were taught. 

Bobbin lace was made all over Europe centuries ago,
and each country or region developed their own style of bobbins.  

Lace made in those various regions was different too,
and the style of the bobbin told you a lot about the type of lace made with it. 

from left to right: Switzerland, Germany, 
Portugal, Spain and Italy

For instance, hold a heavy bobbin in your hand, and you can know the threads used would have been very thick, or the weight of the bobbin would have broken the thread.  

And if it is a tiny delicate bobbin?  Delicate lace with tiny threads, because the bobbin could not have held much of the thick thread wrapped around it.

In England, where I learned to make lace, three different styles of bobbins were used..

from left to right: South Bucks, Honiton,
East Midlands

If you were looking for old bobbins there, you might find an old Honiton bobbin with it's small smooth shape that ends in a point.  The smoothness and the point are important details in making this type of lace.  

Queen Victoria loved Honiton lace, and used it on her wedding dress and also on the christening gown that was used for 62 royal christenings, before being retired.  

You might be able to find a small South Bucks bobbin,
or you might want to look for an East Midlands lace bobbin.  

These were used on similar types of lace even though their appearance is very different.

My favorite are the East Midlands bobbins.

East Midlands lace bobbins are small treasures.

For some reason we do not know
(because none of the bobbin makers wrote it down for us),
the bobbin makers in the East Midlands decided to use their artistry on the bobbins they made,

They decorated them and also added a ring of beads to the end of the bobbin.

The result was that these bobbins became small miniature works of art in their own right.  

But one bobbin can not be used to make lace by itself.

Bobbins work in pairs.

Lots of pairs.

Today, some lacemakers mix the short South Bucks lace bobbin with East Midland lace bobbins to make lace like Bucks point lace.

Bucks Point lace is a very delicate net lace with a design that is outlined by a thicker thread.
They use the South Bucks bobbins to hold the threads used to outline the design in the lace.
This shorter bobbin without the ring of beads stands out in the mix of East Midland bobbins so that it is easier to keep them separate.

The outline thread is what makes the flowers and leaves stand out in the net background.

The different bobbins work well together to create the beautiful end result of lace.

While the purpose of making the lace may be similar for both kinds of bobbins,

there is a more specific purpose known only to the one who directs it's use.

For example, a bobbin might hold the thread that is either outlining the design
or it may be the thread used for filling in the design.

Different looks, different use, but the same purpose.
Beautiful lace.

I have seen a picture of a Belgian lacemaker with over 1000 bobbins on her pillow.
All of her bobbins were the same.
And all of her bobbins were necessary.
Each bobbin had its place and its purpose.

Each lace bobbin unique, because each lace bobbin has a unique purpose.

Kind of like us.

A Christian's purpose is to glorify God.

We are each created for that purpose,

We may look the same, but we are not.

Our gifts may look the same. They are not.


The way God uses your teaching gift to bring about His purpose can be very different than the way He uses another person's teaching gift.

Yet we all work together to bring glory to our Maker,

How He intends to use you is known only to Him.

We can't allow the use of another to distract us from our purpose.


It takes all of us..

Whatever our purpose may be, we need to remember that the finished product will only happen when we all work together.

You might have a pillow full of beautiful East Midland's bobbins,
with a few pair of the South Bucks shorter bobbins.

Don't undervalue or overvalue your place.

The most exquisitely beautiful East Midlands Bobbin cannot make lace by itself!

We are not so unique that we do not need each other to finish the work.

Let's allow God to use us and our gifts that He has given us to complete the work He has for us.

One day, we may be able to look back and behold a thing of exquisite beauty!

A small sample of East Midland bobbins
with a piece of very old handmade Bucks Point Lace.

**********************************

I Cor. 12:18 (the Message)

As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where He wanted it.

And It Was Beautiful - My Review of the Book

 I just love her.

Even though we’ve never met, 

I felt from the beginning that we would have been great friends.

Maybe because she was the kind of person who made everyone her friend.

Or maybe it was the way my heart connected with hers as she talked about her hopes.

Her fight for more time.

Her desire to see her good as a result of His nearness,

To find His grace meeting her every need,

And to know His sovereignty in her suffering.

I was looking for an example; 

from someone who understood the struggles we all face in this life.

Someone who knew their own weakness

and what it meant to depend on Jesus for the strength to make it each day.

Someone who could put this struggle into words.

Kara did that.

Through phrases like "grace shows up" and "hard is grace too".

Through her prayers that even in sickness, she would be kind.

Kara knew her own inadequacies.  She just expected Jesus to meet her there in them.

Which brings us to this book.

I still remember how I felt the day her blog crashed.

How glad I was that they were able to get it up and running again.

There was just one problem.  The blog posts from earlier?  

They had disappeared.

Before the crash, I wrote down some titles of posts

so that I could go back to read them at another time.

But they were gone.

Thankfully, for us, Kara, being Kara,

was always thinking about others.

She knew we would still want these words,

so she actually arranged for that to happen.

This book is a part of that arrangement.

"And it was Beautiful".

The book chronicles her story through her words from the early days of cancer up to the day she stepped into Heaven.

From the first chapter about her grace dress that she wore three days in a row - to the end where she shares a letter that she wrote "to my readers upon my death"

...the one that took my breath away when it showed up on her blog.

I was caught by surprise.  But I shouldn't have been.

That was Kara.

"And It Was Beautiful" is an easy read.  

You almost feel as if she is sitting with you in your house -

sharing her thoughts with you personally.

Before I realized it, I was halfway through the book.

At that point I was hesitant to read any further because I didn't want it to end.

And because I knew that it would.

In this book, Kara shares honestly about her hopes and fears.

She not only admits her own weakness and brokenness,

but points the reader to the one who made her strong;

who made her whole.

The same One who gives us the strength and the wholeness that we need when we are faced with our own hard situations.

While shared in the context of a story with cancer, it most certainly is not exclusive to cancer, but applies to anyone who has lived in the "desperate hours of faith".

She says,

"So I'm living a life I didn't expect;

 living in the unexpected tension of an unknown future.  

We all are aren't we?  

In our many different ways, 

we're all living in the desperation of life that hasn't turned out like we'd planned.  

My unexpected turn is cancer. 

For others it's singleness, unemployment, a disappointing marriage,

broken friendships, and the list unfortunately goes on and on."

What's your story? Your hard?

I am so thankful she wrote down these words.

But I am most thankful that she took Jesus at His.

As she writes out her day to day fears and joys, 

we can see the beauty of His faithfulness in her story.

There is a chapter where she shared about finishing her first radiation treatments.

She invited family and friends to join her in celebrating the end of that treatment.

And she rang a bell.

There was a poem on the plaque that held the bell.

"Ring the bell

Three times well

the toll to clearly say

the treatments done

the course is run

and I am on my way"

Her treatments are done...and her course has been run.

But she is not on her way anymore.

She has arrived!

And she IS finished.

________

"And you can bet I rang the snot out of that bell...three times well!"

_________

 I received a free e-book copy of "And It Was Beautiful" from LitFuse Publicity in exchange for a fair and honest review of the book.

***********

 I ordered my own paperback copy of the book when it first became available ...

in August of 2015!

It arrived last week.

I am sending it to someone I love.

TNBC and March 3 and What I Should Be Aware Of

Every cancer is different.

Every cancer patient is different.

Every cancer patient's treatment is different.

In Ecclesiastes 3:7, we are told that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.



Today is March 3, and it is the day set aside as a day to become more aware of a subtype of breast cancer known as TNBC.  Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

This day is a time to speak.

For instance, what do we really know about breast cancer?

Until it affects you or someone you love, you may not know as much as you think.

One of the things I found out that surprised me, was that there are different subtypes of breast cancer.

When it was decided that my cancer was most likely breast cancer, I was told that we were treating it as if it was Triple Negative Breast Cancer, and my education on the subject took off running.

To help you understand, sometimes on a cancer cell you will find something called a hormone receptor.  And if the receptors match up to the hormone, then the receptor receives a message from the hormone.

That message is to grow.

So the cancer cell grows.

There are three of these that we know of in Breast Cancer.  Estrogen receptors, Progesterone receptors or HER2 receptors.  If the cancer cells do not have any of the three receptors, then it considered Triple Negative.

It might sound like a good thing to have a cancer without any receptors, but for some reason, these types of cancer cells are very aggressive, and sometimes just do not respond to treatment like you would think they should.  They also tend to come back more often.

So it is treated much more aggressively.

While hormone positive cancers have treatments that can be used to stop the interaction between the hormones and the receptors, Triple Negative Cancers do not have this option.

So it can be scary when you have this kind of diagnosis.

TNBC has received a lot of attention lately.  The more attention it gets, the more research is directed in that area, and the more research, the more likely they will come up with treatments that will work for this aggressive form of breast cancer.

So today, on 3/3, take a moment to learn something new and share it with others.

And please be sure that you are up to date with your own screening for breast cancer.

Please.