"What a Difference a Day Makes"

A week ago, we were looking forward to celebrating our 20th anniversary the next day. Cards and other forms of well wishes came. We knew since the event [anniversary of] fell midweek, we'd have to postpone a real celebration. And we each had enough scheduled for that day as it was, between work and ministry. And we usually visit friends on Wednesday evening. A bonus for me was lunch with friends--Ella, Gerda, and Lynn, who was visiting from Texas. We had a good time getting caught up.
I arrived home about 3:30 p.m.--much later than usual, but. The phone rang. Garry was coming home early, to tackle a task he might need my help with. Please don't lay down and fall asleep, just in case. So I stayed up, just in case.
Not long after he had done what he could, the phone rang. It was his mother, calling because. It was a delightful conversation, leaving enough time to get ready for our usual. But the usual had to be called off.
I had begun to feel so poorly, if I was going to go anywhere, it would be our local URGENT CARE facility.

Thinking About Certain of Our Wedding Anniversaries
When we got married, I moved into the upstairs apartment where Garry had lived for 9 years already in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. It was a comfortable, older (pre-World War I) place, though somewhat eccentric, having been, it seemed, at one time the top floor of the brick and stucco house. But enough of that.
We were employed and active in our church community and settled in with the expectation--unspoken--of making that our home indefinitely.
However, the day before our fourth wedding anniversary, Garry came in and told me that I had better sit down. So I did, on the 7-foot-long couch, draped with a sky-blue, synthetic blend throw cover, a couch which had belonged to one of my husband's former roommates.
What news could warrant this command?
His employer was going to do away with his department by the end of the year--perhaps sooner. It turned out to be sooner--another story.
The day before our fifth anniversary, having come to the end of our independent resources--not having a full-time job between us at that point--we moved out of that cozy two-flat (with its quiet neighborhood and tree-lined streets) and in with friends.
We have celebrated our sixth to present anniversaries as residents of the state of California--also a site not included in my plans of youth, but God knows best.
Between our fifth and sixth anniversaries, Garry was hired to work for Grace to You as a publications editor.
Between our tenth and eleventh anniversaries, we became homeowners--something we'd hardly imagined before--at our present address in Santa Clarita, California.
Now we are on the verge of our twentieth anniversary which, Lord willing, we'll celebrate Wednesday, March 25, 2009.
Why do I say, "Lord willing"? That's also another story, related to James 4.
Garry and Elizabeth Knussman
Tuesday, March 24, 2009

A Prayer Inspired by Nehemiah 3
Last week our Bible study leader challenged us to write at least one prayer a week while we are working our way through Nehemiah. This brief prayer is what I came up with while studying Nehemiah 3. It will help me see genealogies differently too, and every other place where there is a list of people in Scripture.
God makes the willing able
His will to perform
His glory to display
Lord, make me so this day
You see, God didn't have lists of people included in the Bible just to fill the pages as some of us might do. Everything is significant. As we read in 2 Timothy, All Scripture is profitable. Some times the profitability is more obvious and some times it takes more effort. Take the time, make the effort, as those in Nehemiah did.

Love and Pride
This is a combination; I think it works.
Four Facets of Love
Love bears all things
Blessed be the LORD who daily bears us up; God is our salvation. Our God is a God of salvation; and to God, the LORD, belongs escape from death [Psalm 68:19-20]
...believes all things...
He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him [John 3:36]
...hopes all things...
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful [Hebrews 10:23] ... and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us [Romans 5:5]
...endures all things
...looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God [Hebrews 12:2]
And then there is pride
Pride is nothing to take pride in, secretly or openly.
Pride is a cancer, deadly, duplicating life while eventually taking life.
Pride is the first thing we are encouraged to develop, under various guises, such as self-confidence, self-assurance, and self-esteem.
Sometimes pride wears the mask of humility. It is never honest, however, being of the same father as lies are.
Pride is the opposite of love.
Pride keeps track of wrongs suffered.
Pride looks out for its own interests, first, last, and in between.
Pride does not forgive.
Pride is not patient, unless patience as a virtue feeds its ego.
Pride is not kind, unless kindness will serve another end.
Pride does not bear all but rebukes all, sometimes openly, sometimes silently.
Pride does not believe all, except whatever strengthens pride.
Pride does not hope all, for pride will not wait for what is invisible.
Pride does not endure all, for that is more than pride can stand.
Pride does not what love does, and does what love does not.

A Recovering Perfectionist
Some people think of themselves as perfectionists. Nothing is ever good enough. By the grace of God, I am a recovering perfectionist. I no longer strive to meet my expectations but His, knowing He will do the final perfecting and according to His standards. I am a much more relaxed person than I once was.
A Recovering Perfectionist
"Yesterday I did enough"
Latest entry in the journal of
A Recovering Perfectionist.
It wasn't forced
This Time.
Some how some break of light and breath
Cracked daily fear and death, recognizing chaos
As subservient to order, border
Of sanity, hoarder
Limiting by bounding
No longer enemy
Challenge, rather
To greater depth and specificity,
And joy that
"Yesterday I did enough."

In the doorway
Over-commitment was the basis for this poem. I had to learn my limits the hard way--the only way I ever really learn.
In the doorway
Have You five minutes, God?
Frankly, I have no more than that myself
What with this commitment and that.
I don't know how I get myself into these binds.
Sometimes, late at night
(Or, early in the morning,
Depending on how you look at it)
I wonder why I'm so driven
To be all places,
To do all things.
I go and go, yet am still in the same place,
Seeing the same faces and walls,
Hearing the same voices and philosophies,
But, I guess that's life--
Or, is it?
I thought maybe You--
But I have to run,
I'm late now.

Rock to Powder
There was a time when I could not seem to say "no" to anything I was asked to undertake. Granted, each request was good, even ministry oriented. Nevertheless, I was a victim of my inability to say "no" or "not now." Perhaps you are struggling with this even now.
Rock to Powder
I feel as if the
ocean is closing in, breakers
above my helpless head
smashing
the rock to pebbles, pebbles
to sand, sand
for time's relentless hourglass.
Raise me, Lord, above
the press of minutes before
and minutes after,
which pressing grind the
rock to powder, the spirit
to sand.

From my Archives
I discovered this while looking for something else. Written 16 April 2006, still pertinent in my opinion.
This Day
This day was planned
Before the planets were formed
Before the foundations of time were laid
Within the Godhead salvation's plans were made
Names and dates and all events delineated
Before any temporal things were created
This day was planned
This day was planned
And all events preceding
And all events succeeding
From time before time to that time unfolded
For God has so molded
All in that day
Around that day
From that day
Certainty in play
Sureness of sovereignty
Sweetness of humility
Incarnate Deity
Gave up His life
To ransom me
Received back His life
To secure me
Received back His glory
To receive that which is His due
Due from you and due from me
Due through eternity
From this day which was planned
Before the planet was manned

From my archives

I wrote this in the late 1970s--1977 or 1978--and it shows something of my growth in God's grace between 1967 and then.

From Fear to Grace
I have discovered a new fear: fear of being in His will. Fear? Because of the ramifications, implications, painful joys, joyful agonies, and anticipation of the One who is love, and of love: eternal yet intersecting and making clear the here and now, every here and every now.
I must expand by and in grace lest I burst with realized joy of the immense certainty and comfortability of God is Love.
"That I may know HIM"
At times I want to burst, for I am so small and He is so great. His love is His glory.
I am destroyed (pride ego) and defined (in His image, in His Spirit, in His body, in His bride) by the LORD Himself--known. Love: never past tense--all is simultaneous to Him--praise His Name!
How He loves to hold a child, to teach it to walk and to be honest, to trust not blindly (blind faith is slavery and we have not been called slaves but friends) but with the Spirit enlightened and enlarged intelligence.
For me, faith is not a leap in the dark, emotional and irrational. It is at first in the responsive affirmation of the Lordship of Christ a leap from the dark. It is thereafter exercised in thoughtful, studied, deliberate, prayerful response to the Holy Spirit, searching the Scriptures.

From my archives

I wrote the following on 4 March 1992, remembering a significant occasion in 1967.

25 Years

A silver anniversary of learning

How tarnished and fragile and vacant,

In lieu of empty, E. was ... and

Didn't know she was until

4 March 1967

When the world as she was sure it was

Crashed

Brought down by a quiet telling

Fait accompli

Brought down

A paper mache life--no, more substance than that, but

No basement--bricks perhaps but on sand ... and

Razed so even the sand showed no marking of

E's residence there.

E's no longer at that addresses. Her home is

Smaller and in a tellingly obscure neighborhood

Compared to halcyon sand dunes

Carved instead into rock

Baring that for base

Using the carved stones

For walls, the roof still

Open to the elements

Habitable enough

And growingly grateful as

The Creator of the world is recreating E., and

E.'s world, reality, rock, solidly His.

A prayer, on dealing with the g.e.m.
Lord,
Let me be jealous
Only for Your name,
Solely for Your glory,
Rejoice
With those who rejoice
As You
Always did,
Always do,
Lord,
Help me be,
Lord,
Help me do.

[written 26 February 2009]