What wedding planner, for example, could have arranged for a rainbow to arch above the bride and groom at the precise moment the pastor pronounced the two as man and wife? My husband Tom and I shared in the joy and wonder of that very thing this past September. A moment of stunned and united silence before we witnesses in folding chairs stood to cheer the newlyweds’ cheerful exit.

The forecast had warned of the possibility of a stormy afternoon, but the bride had decided to take her chances, bravely choosing a canopy of sky over the less-picturesque pop-up option. A risktaker in white rewarded by rainbow.

In the weeks leading up to the ceremony, I’d had the privilege of preparing, at the couple’s request, a lightly choreographed wedding dance. Our focus had been on their hold and connection with a special desire for a dip at the end (the groom’s idea). The young man learned about the responsibilities of being a leader, in life as well as on the dance floor. And for the young lady, the sometimes more difficult role. A follower has to keep on smiling and believe—with the teacher’s help—her novice dance partner will surely get it right with practice. Or, at least, right enough.

On the day of the wedding, their dance went off with all the sweetness and charm we’d hoped for. The nervous groom, steady. The bride, radiant and graceful. The audience oohing and aahing in all the right places from first step to picture-perfect final-dip end.

And then, only minutes after this triumph, the ceremony’s rainbow-promise benediction failed us all. The grace that held back rain grew thin. Wisps of cotton candy cloud collided and collected, releasing droplets, then drops, then a downward rush that overflowed pretty flower vases and splattered in and over the edges of beautifully stationed dinner plates just waiting to be filled—only not with water.

Those of us who’d brought them popped open umbrellas. The less pessimistically-prepared folks (or perhaps just less attuned to weather possibilities), scattered to sheltered areas to watch the drenching from a distance. My husband, a retired pilot and boy scout who keeps an eye to the sky and dire possibilities, had brought three umbrellas. Two for us and an extra to pass along just in case. The rest huddled under awnings and prayed for the hasty return of quick-drying sunshine, while the umbrellaed guests emptied and overturned place settings, collected napkins, and leaned chairs inward along table edges.

I heard later that this was when the mother-of-the-bride turned her face from the crowd, her sister-in-law whispering sternly, “Keep yourself together.”

At last, having done all we could, we waited and wondered.

How long should we wait?

How long before the food is past being fit to eat?

How long can we be expected to watch and hope under umbrellas and awnings?

 And (this from me) what is my husband up to now?

For Tom had walked over to the DJ for a private conference. He then turned to me, extending a hand beyond the edge of his umbrella, confident his dance-trained wife would rightly respond to the order gentlemanly invitation. So, I tucked into an improvised dance hold for a double-umbrella foxtrot to “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”

I knew he didn’t mean to steal the spotlight, but all eyes should have been on the bride and groom, not on an entertaining old man and his slightly embarrassed old lady. This wasn’t our moment. It was theirs. Still, my romantic husband, oblivious to what was certainly clear to everyone else, danced on. And I, obedient follower, did the same.

But old folks, it seems, can sometimes turn a tide. Halfway through the song the grandmother-of-the-bride stepped out with a troupe of small grandchildren in tow. A circle of rain dancers, bare heads to the dripping sky.

What happened after that, I can only liken to a long-remembered Kodak commercial (or was it Kleenex?), back in the days when TV commercials had the power to beckon tears from laundry-folding housewives (at least that’s how it was in my family of origin).

One rainy-day song turned to two, then three, as wedding guests flowed out from their sheltered places to show old Gene Kelly how it can be done en masse. The bride and groom, now center stage, displaying a skillful umbrella dance that left the bride’s carefully-arranged hair and makeup none the worse for weather.

The dancing outlasted the rain, as did the celebratory dinner food. The clouds ceased their leaking, the non-dancing guests jumped out to assist the wait staff in an improv of banquet patio restoration, and the plan was back on course. A fine meal enjoyed, followed by a proper dance, the cutting of the cake, a final toast in which the happily damp and disheveled revelers lifted their glasses to toast a day that hadn’t gone exactly as any person had planned.

A two-becomes-one union under the arcing promise of a rainbow, a dance through untimely rain, and a hearty banquet at the end to celebrate the journey.

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”  Proverbs 19:21

The post A Rainy Day Wedding and an Old(ish) Man with an Umbrella appeared first on Jody Evans, Author.

Four days after arriving home from vacation, I was distraught. Our 18-year-old cat hadn’t been there to greet us and a thorough search of our property proved fruitless. When the neighbor said he’d heard her usual noontime meow from our front porch just hours before we’d gotten home, we concluded she must have crawled off somewhere to die. In the four days since, we searched again and again. The shadow of cat memory continually called me to look for her outside of our glass front doors, waiting to be fed. But the space was just space, empty of cat. The whole thing felt so sad and uncertain. It’s hard to rightly grieve when you aren’t sure of the ending. The heart wants closure.

Then, we learned a cat matching her description had been found. A cat in bad shape was turned in to our local Animal Rescue Friends (ARF) where she then incurred $500 of veterinary expenses.

This should have been good news except for two things.

1. We wouldn’t have agreed to spend that kind of money on our old girl who was clearly near the end of her days.
2. The rescuers were reportedly pretty steamed at the terrible people (us!) who had let their cat get into such bad condition.

So, on this fourth day home from vacation, I had about an hour before I needed to go to the office and see if the skinny gray and white kitty with the matted fur was indeed our Trouble.

Even as I write this, I want to defend myself. To explain to you that we knew she had kidney failure (a common malady as a cat’s end draws near). She had stopped grooming herself (another sign). And a couple of months before our trip, she had stopped eating. In April, we had her on home hospice to keep her comfortable. We even had a final resting place prepared for her under a shady tree in the back yard.

And then she rallied.

I mean, she still looked terrible, but by the time we left on vacation, she was back to eating, drinking, purring, and climbing the ramp to her cat condo and, according to the friends who covered her twice-a-day feedings, she’d remained in that acceptable elderly-cat condition for the duration of our trip.

The people at ARF didn’t know this, of course. Even if they had, they frowned upon any kind of outdoor cat situation and her long matted fur would be inexcusable in their eyes. Maybe everyone’s eyes. I was heavy with the anticipation of being found wanting as a pet owner. A crushing heaviness that dug into memories I carry of falling short as a mom, a friend, a wife, and a person.

To fill the waiting time, I opened to Day 42 of the lighthearted devotional book I was going through.

God Saves the CRUSHED in Spirit

key word crushed (adj): compressed or squeezed forcefully; feeling overwhelmingly disappointed.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted; He saves those crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

The devotional story that followed covered a situation far more severe than my prideful fear of judgment and provided a perspective shift I needed. Plus, Psalm 34 had served as a lifeline to me during a much more difficult season of my life. Just seeing the reference reminds me of God’s steadfast love that never ceases.

I still couldn’t imagine a pleasant ending to this cat story, but I asked a few friends to pray and, bringing my mom along (she knew the woman we were going to meet with and might be able to smooth the waters),  my husband and I headed off to see if the “neglected” animal was indeed ours.

The next morning, I opened my lighthearted devotion book, feeling far more lighthearted than I’d been the day before. My cat, Trouble, rested peacefully on the front porch as I reflected on how sweetly the whole thing had worked out. After a rough start, we were treated with kindness and compassion. They’d even assured us the vet bill was covered, explaining that’s one of the purposes for the donations they receive at ARF.

I was about to read Day 43 in the devotion book when I realized I’d accidentally skipped a day, so I turned back to Day 41, the one I’d missed.

God Gives Us COMFORT

Key word: comfort (noun): strengthening aid, a feeling of ease from grief or trouble

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. 2 Corinthians 1:3

I don’t understand how these devotions landed on just the right days for me to read them during my cat story, but this kind of thing has happened to me many times over the years and always feels like a breath of God’s kind and comforting presence. The timing on this one even included my mistakenly reading them out of order.

And I had to laugh when I read the key word’s definition out loud. Do you see it? If you draw it out, it reads, A feeling of ease from grief-f-f-or trouble.

A feeling of ease from grief for Trouble. Could it have been any more perfect?

***

How about you? Is the timely comfort of God something you’ve experienced? A perfectly-timed Bible reading, devotional, or song, perhaps? Maybe even a well-placed billboard or bumper sticker?

I’d really like to know how you’ve seen God’s small kindnesses in your times of suffering. I believe sharing such things can be an encouragement to others. Please use the comments below to shine that light : )

(And if that’s too public for you, I understand. You can opt to just share it with me–an audience of one). Email me at jody@jodyevans.com.

The post A Cat Tale of Trouble and Comfort appeared first on Jody Evans, Author.

Hope. Another word in my bundle of words.

There was a time I did not like hope at all. Nope. No hope for me. I was not a fan.

Maybe it was a character flaw. Or maybe, as Proverbs 13:12 would attest, it was the natural result of a long, weary road of unfulfilled longing.

“Hope deferred makes a heart sick.”

I agree with Emily Dickinson’s first stanza, that hope is the thing with feathers that sings and sings. It sings that the first sign of cancer, or addiction, or an inconstant heart in one we love, will be the last. It sings this song even when there’s a second sign. A third. A fourth. It’s just–and I know this sounds terrible–I eventually come to wish that little bird would hush up and go away.

In my experience, those feathers grow scratchy and the song becomes strident somewhere around the eighth or ninth year of hope-songs. When one time-to-give-up sign shows up after another, with ever bigger and bolder letters of NOPE? Well, it seems to me those concrete signs make a fool of ethereal hope.

There comes a time on the longest roads when the only comfort you find is in the idea of settling into the expected, however much you would never choose the thing you’ve come to expect. There comes a moment when hope’s relentless song of maybe this time remission or sobriety will last, or this time the job will come through or maybe he really means he’s sorry this time makes a person long for a hopeless, featherless bird to just come singing,

This is the way it will always be, so get used to it.

Getting used to it may not be an attractive option, but at least it seems possible, and maybe even smart. It can feel smarter to opt for stable roots of pessimism over wind-tossed wings of hope. For pessimism is rarely disappointed. And if by some miracle your pessimistic predictions are proven wrong, there’s not much sting in that kind of disappointment, is there? It’s a win-win!

So, that’s the smart, hope-weary tactic I chose. I boarded up my windows against that feathered beast and blasted a Just the Way It Is song at a volume with which no birdsong could compete. And I really hoped it would work.

Only, it didn’t.

Hope is a persevering sort of bird, relentlessly pecking tiny holes in every I-won’t-care wall you manage to erect. However much you reinforce your walls against that little bird, enticing little hopeful signs find the cracks and push their way in. And there you are, set-up once again. Vulnerable to the threat of new disappointments. (Or is that just me?)

I’m mostly friends with hope again. Along the way in my double-decade story, I came to see my problem wasn’t with hope, but with the object of it. I’ve since learned that building hope on the uncertain ground of sobriety or remission or a person’s constant faithful love can never provide the kind of security I long for. Because cancer can always come back. A streak of sobriety can end in a moment, an untimely frost (both literal and figurative) can strip away the full-blossomed promise of spring harvest.

What we want is a sure hope. A hope that stands strong and true whichever way health or human love may go.

I realize this is starting to sound like a commercial –

Is your old worn-out hope letting you down? We’ve got you covered!

Try new and improved Hope with the can’t-fail formula!

Guaranteed to hold up under fire, flood, draught, hurricane, earthquake, and even tornado.

You probably already know the secret ingredient to this kind of hope. I bet you’ve sung this hopebird’s song in a Sunday chorus or two. If you’ve dipped into scripture at all, you’ve surely read of it there.

“But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion says my soul. Therefore I will hope in Him.” Lamentations 3:21-24

The steadfast love of the Lord. Sounds like something you want to stitch onto a pillowcase, right? At least at first reading. But this is smack dab in the middle of Lamentations, a book famous for its misery. Take a look at what comes just three verses before –

“I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.”

Which might be okay if Jeremiah’s Therefore I will hope in Him wasn’t sandwiched between that verse and this one —

“You have wrapped Yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through.”

And then comes this —

“You came near when I called on You; You said, ‘Do not fear!'”

Do you see what I mean about hope being relentless?

The whole book of Lamentations is a sort of tennis match between hope and despair. And twenty-six centuries later the world is still lobbing that ball back and forth from one side to the other. Only it’s not a tennis match, it’s war. A war where rejoicing pairs with suffering, and glory with tribulation for a surprising kind of peace song.

“Since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access to this grace in which we stand in HOPE of the glory of God. And not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, and not only that but we glory in our tribulation, knowing that suffering and tribulation produce perseverance and endurance, and perseverance and endurance produce character, and character HOPE. Now HOPE does not disappoint, for the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who gave it to us.” (from Romans 5:1-5)

It may feel safer, at times, to tune out all hope than to trust in a hope that doesn’t seem to mind letting us suffer. But if we say yes to that hope, we say yes to something stronger than suffering, for this hope springs from the mysterious love of God that has been poured into our hearts.

This next passage is a favorite of mine and a strong theme in my first novel (95% finished now). The word hope isn’t here, but I think you’ll see how it relates.

“Though the fig tree may not blossom,

Nor fruit be on the vines;

Though the labor of the olive may fail,

And the fields yield no food;

Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,

And there be no herd in the stalls –

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. (Habakkuk 3:17-18 NKJV)

So there you have it, a hope that isn’t dependent on fragile blossoms, fruit, or flocks. A call to join that little bird in singing hope songs like this –

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness

On Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

So, sing on little bird. (Who knew the thing with feathers would turn out to be a Rock star?)

“‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul. ‘Therefore, I will hope in Him.'”

Though it is true that hope deferred makes a heart sick, there is more to the story as there is more to the proverb.

“Hope deferred makes a heart sick,

But a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

How about you? Do you ever feel like life would be more comfortable if you could just stop hoping? Do you find hope revives even when you don’t particularly want it to? What keeps you singing hope songs when everything is hard and heavy? What hope Scriptures do you go to when hope is hard?

The post When Hope is Hard appeared first on Jody Evans, Author.

Please come back for your regularly scheduled post on the second Tuesday in September.

Note: When these things happen, I can usually still manage a messy, unpolished email message to my subscribers. If you like your stories polished and somewhat organized, I suggest you keep hanging out here for that. But if you’re a person who likes to slip off your shoes and take a seat in the messy family room, you are welcome to join us there by subscribing to my email list. You’ll get a free story, too. Just click the “free story” button at the top of this page, and fill in the form that pops up. Welcome to the family!

The post An Understandable Delay appeared first on Jody Evans, Author.