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There are lots of dog stories in our family history.
Rushie was first, an overachieving poodle that won a blue ribbon in obedience class. Then Autumn, our “perfect” golden retriever. After that, we fostered Mitch, the tick infested mutt who made a dog parent look bad with his ferocious walking manners but kid friendly disposition. Then we fostered Isabelle, the sad looking basset hound with floppy ears. Next was Goldie, the not so kid friendly puppy we surrendered after Starla was born. And the girls all tease me about a multitude of strays that I’ve “rescued” presuming they were estranged from their owners only to find out they were neighbor dogs wandering beyond their borders. But on this day, we pay tribute to Gracie, the Golden we adopted for Lily and the sweet companionship between a girl and her dog and the family who lived and loved into this beautiful story.

We said goodbye to her today.
And frankly, goodbyes stink.
This morning I stepped over Gracie, laying near the back door, on my way outside to water the plants. Tonight, she’s out in the yard, not quite three feet under, with Starla’s hand picked daisy marking her grave. And the wound in our hearts is as fresh as the unpacked dirt lying on top of her.
Our family rhythms are disrupted. I didn’t hear the sound of dog food plinking against the metal bowl at dinner time or Lily saying, “Come on Gracie, Go Outside,” followed by the back door opening and closing again just before bedtime. When we played out in the yard tonight, she wasn’t sniffing around or laying in the shade of one our mature trees. And when I peeked in at Lily breathing methodically in her sleep, Gracie’s pillow in the corner of the room lay empty.
Never again will we she beg for our popcorn.
Or snore when she sleeps.
We won’t catch a whiff of her awful breath when she pants anxiously either.
And Brian and I will now take our late night walks unaccompanied.

Her quirky disposition was endearing.
A watchdog she wasn’t since she never met a human she didn’t adore.
And her table manners defied southern charm.
But her longsuffering when manhandled and her playful participation in the girls’ childish adventures, delighted them.
And her quintessential listening skills, riveted attention and physical presence comforted us all.
She was companion to Lily during the dark night of the soul.
And she was confidante to Brian and I over thousands of miles of walks. She heard all our secrets and was privy to our most private prayers.

So grief and gratitude intermingle in a puddle of tears.
Thank you Gracie for gifting our family with your presence.
Thank you God. All good gifts come from You.

Counting the gifts in every season, even winter.
Grateful for:
Snow buddies with carrot noses.
Hand me down boots.
Thrift store snowpants.
Catching flakes on our tongues.

Winter walks on the beach.

Then, surprise!  Several warm, sunny, melting February days.
Go figure.
Planting spring bulbs in pots alongside my trusty assistant. A foretaste of the next season to anticipate with all of its fresh mercies and new opportunities.

Thank you, God.

Love and Lent. They’re like two unlikely but perfectly synchronized dance partners. Lent leads and love follows.
An annual forty day season of fasting and repentance, Lent points us to Easter Sunday on the path straight through Good Friday. And Good Friday is the ultimate illustration of love.

We’ve just celebrated Valentine’s Day, the quintessential annual festival of romantic love. While everybody hopes to live at least a few really great Valentine’s stories, the original story behind the holiday paints a far broader stroke of love than we typically observe. History, mixed with a smattering of legend, tells us about a priest named Valentinius who defied the Roman emperor’s ban on marriages and officiated for young couples. Eventually, he was thrown in prison where he befriended his jailer and then the jailer’s blind daughter whom he tutored and mentored from his cell until he was martyred. The origins of Valentine’s Day point to sacrifice, humility and courage in the face of risk. Valentinius embraced those challenges because he had an example to follow. And it was Jesus.

This is what the Bible tells us about Jesus.
He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream.
But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people. He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone.
But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave. (Isaiah 53:3-9)

And that is what Lent is all about. Taking the time to pause long and look closely at Jesus. Not sterilizing or photo editing the mental picture but rather, gazing at the cross in all its grisly, appalling horror. And in his pool of blood seeing the words written indelibly, “I Love You”.
The more I examine the cross from that vantage point, the more clearly love comes into focus.
And when the cross is inscribed on my heart, it gives clarity to my identity and we all love forward from our identity.
Jesus says to me, “Love each other just as I have loved you.” (John 13:34 and 15:12)
So, I survey his example and pay it forward to others.
Easier to describe and harder to live because Jesus blueprint for love
-Necessitates sacrifice.
-Entails risk.
-And requires humility.

Love necessitates sacrifice. Last week over coffee, my friend Ruthie described it best. “Love means you’ve got to hang on the cross and carry it too.” Something in my spirit recoils at the thought. The cost feels prohibitive and unreasonable until I consider Jesus who gave up his rights and privileges, deferred the use of his power deliberately and wittingly assumed the burden of sin that he didn’t deserve. He took it all on his tired shoulders and carried it up the hill of Golgotha then nailed himself to the tree. Citizen Way describes it like this:
I used to think that love should never have to bleed.
I used to think that life was all about the dream.
But love is a mess.
And life is a death.
And you can’t escape the cost.
Yea, love is a mess, [that’s] the story of the cross.
I enter His story when I don’t fight for my rights or to be right but rather entrust what is right to my faithful God and let him choose the price.

Love entails risk. We’ve all been burned by relationships. And after some singes and maybe even first or second-degree wounds, we are tempted to self-protect from vulnerability, to resist kindness, generosity and sincere affection. Lent reminds us we’re not just victims. We’re agents too. God took a third degree burn, a mortal wound from me. Lent faces me squarely toward the mirror to see how I have injured and to inspect the harm inflicted by my actions and attitudes. And when I view it, through that lens, Lent provides a correction and gives clarity to my perspective. I accept that love is a messy business and we’re all prone to accidents. And I pick myself back up and step out into the light of the fire because love is worth the hurt.

Love requires humility. It resists self-serving ambitions and ego stroking intentions. Jesus displayed a supreme example of servility in word and deed. There’s an expression that goes, “Leave a place better than you found it.” In relationships, love adapts that cliché and says, “Leave a person better than you found them.” And so I reflect on the long list of people God has caused my life to intersect with and I remind myself to do what I can so that the other person will have trended upward because of their connection with me. And I accept the limitations of my efforts because they make choices too. I focus on giving them a taste of Jesus and pray it will whet their appetite for more. Then I leave the rest up to God.

We’re all hardwired for relationships by design. Everybody longs for love. Everyone wants to be chosen. The good news is that we’ve already been chosen.
Chosen by the One
Who won’t leave,
Won’t change his mind,
Won’t be selfish
Or proud
Or unkind.
The One who will be faithful,
Who will be true,
Who will protect,
And persevere
And be kind.

And so I anticipate, first, the dirge of Good Friday followed by the wild, jubilant Easter morning holy dance of love. And Lent will lead the way.

I don’t know which disgruntles me more this morning, the denial of my appeal to the Illinois Tollway for the $120 fine I was assessed or Donald Trump’s primary victory in New Hampshire last night. How a narcissist of that magnitude could win any primary embarrasses me as an American and both leave a nasty aftertaste in my mouth.
Politics rarely energizes me anymore so I don’t usually talk about it, but anybody who has as much money as Trump and can’t find a better hairdresser, well, that’s upsetting even to a politically unengaged person.

It’s really just in the past decade that I’ve become intentionally politically aloof. Mellow. Back in the day, political activism invigorated me too.

Society always confronts life and death issues in every era. I was born into the war against communism. On the ground, it was fought in Vietnam but ultimately the enemy was Russia. Peace loving hippies protested between love-ins and doping up on marijuana in Volkswagen vans. And school kids hid under desks in fear of atomic bombs in duck and cover drills.
After that war, life and death took center stage on a societal platform and the spotlight beamed on the issue of abortion. Our country splintered culturally over the question of whether or not a baby growing inside a mother’s womb has personhood and even if it does, whose rights trump. (No pun intended.) It was at that moment in history I was a twenty-something– zealous for justice, somewhat naive and slightly arrogant. I used to picket in front of an abortion clinic on a monthly rotation. I loved both women and babies and I didn’t’ want either of them to die so every month I took my handmade sign which read, “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart” and stood in front of the local Planned Parenthood. I’ll never know how God chose to use picket signs to contribute to His plan for protecting the lives of the unborn, but in hindsight, I sense my efforts were far less helpful than I perceived at the time. It seems to me a lot like the current trend where twenty-somethings like groups on Facebook or wear a T-shirt to communicate support of a cause they believe in. It feels proactive but I’m not sure it accomplishes much.

When I became a thirty-something and had a couple of babies of my own, I channeled my passion for the life of the unborn into the work of a local pregnancy center, volunteering on a weekly basis, administering pregnancy tests, counseling young girls unprepared for motherhood, and distributing clothes, diapers and formula to young mommies in need and at risk. As a result, I grappled more thoughtfully with the complexity of the issue by engaging in the real life stories of people who were in the middle of the mess. And I realized that answers to the biggest human questions are rarely as politically tidy as I’d like to make them. Ultimately, I believe, that the answer to all of the negative consequences of living in a society amongst fallen, sinful people is not government but Jesus. Who would have guessed that the universal Sunday School answer really does apply?

When the demands of my family and a cross-country move reset my schedule, my participation in the cause of “Life” transitioned too. I focused on becoming a well informed voter and electing government representatives committed to promoting Life and all of it’s related legislation. Those years, I listened to conservative political talk radio. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but the kids were little and in part, I was so lonely for adult conversation, it filled a void. In retrospect, it reminds me of afternoon TV soap operas. The storyline is cyclical–never really goes anywhere- and you come away from it feeling dirty, depressed and agitated because the stuff you’ve been ingesting isn’t good, pure, true, honorable, lovely or of good report. (Phil. 4:8). At least that’s what it was like for me.
The constant complaining on talk radio also gets on my nerves. For example, when gas prices are high, people moan about the effect on the economy. When they plummet, they complain that opposing politicians are conspiring to sabotage energy independence. They might be right but malcontents aren’t attractive.
Note to self. It takes one to know one.
So, I’ll pass on talk radio and keep my sermon podcasts, thank you. And if you’re my family or friend, you’ll be glad because I’m a nicer person that way.

You don’t typically find me engaging in elongated political banter anymore either. In my experience, it rarely unites people relationally or politically. Sparks fly when people dig their heels in and fight for their cause. I’m reminded of the restaurant hostess in the movie “Mom’s Night Out” who tells the agitated mother that her anger is doing something ugly to her face.
It’s easy to be rude, arrogant and disrespectful in the name of your position but Jesus delights when we practice being quick to listen and slow to speak. (James 1:19) I consider the most important relational quality any person can emulate is teachability. There’s a whole lot of things I’ll flex on but arrogance is not one of them. Passion is good. Arrogance is poison—politically and personally. I tell my girls, don’t even think about bringing a guy home to me and expect my blessing if he’s not teachable. That is an invitation for lifelong misery that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, my country and most importantly the girls I love best. I tell them to look for a man who is humble, learning to admit his mistakes and repair the damages caused by them. That’s the kind of spouse, citizen and candidate I admire.

Thankfully, there are usually still a few candidates that exemplify admirable character in faith, family, profession, citizenship and personal integrity. For those folks, navigating the jungle of the political machine has got to be dizzying. God bless them.

Before I hit forty, 9/11 created a whole new focal point for Americans thinking about life and death issues. International terrorist extremism led to our direct involvement in wars in the Middle East, (Yes. I know that’s a position statement.) and increased security protocols at home. More recently, masses of refugees seeking asylum from violence and persecution command the public eye.

These days, I’m not picketing or volunteering at a center and I’m not imbibing the chatter on the airwaves either. Instead, I put my best foot forward, intentionally stepping out of my comfort zone and into the lives that God causes my path to intersect with. Whether it be unwed or at risk moms, international students or refugees that have settled into my community, I can contribute to life and influence for good one relationship at a time. And I’m wondering if that just might be a more effective way to eradicate the evils of the world than T-shirts, picketing, demonstrations, petitions or Facebook.

So it’s that time again–another political cycle leading up to a presidential election. It makes me think of a Magic Show with con artists promising all sorts of amazing tricks. Candidates claim they will fix national, international and societal problems in less time than it takes to kick a bad habit, fix a broken marriage or reconcile a fissure between friends.
How gullible are we?
Honestly, political campaigns resemble a parent who tells their kid there’s a Santa Claus or a tooth fairy. It might be fun to pretend for a while but someday they’ll grow up and realize it was all an illusion.

Our family submitted applications for absentee ballots in the upcoming primary. Daughter number two missed voting privileges by three months. My husband and I don’t always vote the same even though we share many core values and convictions. He’s far more informed than I and if I can’t summon the will to research a candidate, I can trust him to educate me.

My voting strategy is ever evolving, but during my forty-something decade, I’ve voted my conscience in the primary and for the lesser of two evils in the general election. That may change this time. If it increases the chance of the guy with the bad hair being the Republican candidate, I will have to go with plan B.

Life is a journey, politically, spiritually and physically. Society works best when all ages and stages bring their energy, ideas and wisdom to the table with a gracious attitude and a spirit of cooperation. I think that posture promotes the common good.

Here’s what I believe. In the end, the bottom line is that the only really good king is Jesus. And I’m waiting for him to set up his throne where the lion lays down with the lamb. In the meantime, I remind myself that this world is not my home. I’m just passing through and that energizes me to
Support What Is Good.
Complain Less.
Pray More.
Love Well.

That’s my political manifesto.