Memories make for fascinating conversation.  You likely have some great ones.

Maybe you have some sad, unspoken, even regrettable

ones.

It’s ok

I do too

Have good ones and sad, unspoken, even regrettable

ones.  They all get mixed up together.  Good and not so good.  God can take all of the mixed up good and bad and do remarkable, even miraculous things with it.

It’s Sunday evening.  Not late really, but

dark.

I made us, him and me, just two of us

muffins and fruit salad.  Not just any muffins.  This is a recipe from the past.

Thirty two years ago just about right now, we, the two of us, were new together.  Far from home.  That was before my heart adjusted to this place.  Before I could think of calling this new land HOME.  It was just beginning to turn cold and we lived in a dark place, in our hearts and in a little basement that was dark most of the time and he was learning how to do what he does so well and I was

well, I was learning to be grown and joy filled and God was showing me what it meant to Bloom Where I was Planted.  I wanted Him to plant me back, where He had transPlanted me From.  He said

No.

He took years to patiently show me, where He chose was better.  Oh I have stomped my feet and that is certain.   Back then, at the beginning of the learning to be a wife and then a mother, I decided to attempt some traditions,

Some “we always” for us.

I look back now and wonder at the miracle of trying and succeeding and failing and trying again and some ideas didn’t work and others stuck.

One of those ideas was for a Sunday evening refreshment, informal lunch.

You see, where I came from,

not geographically but historically,  my upbringing, my original family, we did things in a different way.

Well, maybe not different from how you did it but different from how it’s done now.  Our family, the preacher’s family, went to Sunday School and then worship service and then we came home to our Sunday meal.  For a few years we lived in that little community surrounded by farmer’s fields.  We walked to church and walked home and my brother was sort of shy.  He was a middle schooler then and he would walk home first.  When we finally got back to that little house because some of us have not changed much and even then we liked to stay until there was nobody else to talk to, until everybody else had gone home to their own Sunday meal,

he, that brother, had the potatoes boiling on the stove.   The roast beef or roast chicken that our mother had put into the oven before we walked to church that morning, would be ready to pull out of the oven.  We ate, we cleaned up, we rested, one of us wrote letters to her loved ones living a whole country away.  We had a light snack and then went back to church for evening service.  Sometimes there was a Fellowship time after but if not, we would come home and eat toast and drink tea and go to bed.

That was Sunday.  It was good.  It was simple.  It was quiet.  It was love.

We don’t do it that way anymore but back 32 years ago,  at our beginning, we still had our meal at lunch time.  Sometimes we went to Swiss Chalet, when we could afford it and sometimes we would come home to the roast I had managed to get into the oven early.  In the evening we had a snack.  Something light.  It was sometimes muffins, sometimes biscuits(scones but in the 80’s they were more often called biscuits)sometimes grilled cheese and most often with fruit salad.  As we welcomed little ones and they joined in our tradition of a big lunch and small dinner, we continued.  One of my husband’s very favorites and one he asked for regularly over the years, was this one I am sharing with you tonight.  They didn’t really have a name.  They were just The Good muffins.

I am calling them Muffin Scones and I made them tonight along with a fruit salad.  They are still a hit and I was told that if I made them again, they would be well received.  I wonder if my little ones would still like them.  I think I will check one of these days when they come back,

come home.

The senses were created for us, by Him,

God,

for our pleasure.

So kind of Him.  Really.

Memories are brought back from the archives of the past, to here and now

when I smell, or taste, or see, or hear.

When it happens I am thankful.  Even the ones that cause one more crack in my heart, I know they have been

pebbles, boulders maybe, on the journey God chose for me.

As I often do, I am listening now to

music.

Right this minute I am hearing Steven Curtis Chapman sing about loss and heartbreak and he is wondering as he sings, about God and His choices.

He says We don’t understand God’s higher ways

And I agree but wonder if the hardships from my past and within my memory are God’s higher ways or my foolish ones.

Whichever

He is so good to redeem my foolishness and make it into something  beautiful.

Steven is also saying that Without this hope in Jesus there’s no way we could survive.

I know people who say those words through tears gliding down their faces.  Those who have

lost

children or jobs or husbands or friends.

Just this week I said to someone that the thing about sad and hard is that mine might look not so bad to you and yours might look not so bad to me.  We all know though,

that it is.

Whatever causes hurt or sad or weary or broken or desperate

hearts

knocks us over.  Can appear disastrous.

As much as we wish,

we cannot heal each other’s hearts.  I told this friend that it’s okay though.

God made and holds and heals and embraces

hearts

Traditions are good as long as we hold them in open hands.  It’s okay to do it differently.  Things change and even so, to try something from

Back then

can bring back good memories and good memories are a gift.  Dig deep.  Are you sad?  Are you full of Joy?  God has done great things.

God says that we don’t understand Him.  That’s because He is God.  We don’t need to know everything.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.

For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”