"What Do You See?" (a song)

If you had looked into our living room in the summer of 1992, you would have seen stuff all over, barrels and suitcases....all the detritus of our three years in Dallas, migrating into all the nooks and crannies until it could be organized and either packed or gotten rid of. We had finally received the green light to return  to Ecuador!  We didn't have 100% of the financial support required by the mission, but they made an exception in our case because we own our own home and property outright (no loans or mortgages), and therefore wouldn't have to pay several hundred dollars in rent every month.  (We wouldn't have to pay for language school, either!) We only had 65% of the quota, but we had both grown up here and figured we could handle it. No luxuries, maybe, but we wouldn't starve!
                                                                                                                                

Dan had asked to stay in Dallas to finish high school with his friends...and keep playing football!  He was a real asset to the small Christian school's team, so when he changed his mind and decided to do 12th grade here in Quito after all, his coach hit the ceiling! Germán and Debbie and I traveled in early August, then Dan came down a little later.  We were home at last!
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Some years ago, I got to wondering once how God must feel when what He sees in our hearts isn't all that commendable (or is just plain awful!).  Amazingly, He doesn't throw a fit and tell us to clean up our act...or else!  (Remember your mom telling you to clean your room?!) Rather, He is ready, willing, and able to step in right beside us and set to work cleaning up, as soon as we let Him.  How He loves us! I wrote Him this song...

                                                                   
                                                                  What Do You See?

                     

What do You feel as You walk through my heart,
seeing dust on the windowpanes, making it dark;
hearing silence in halls made for echoing praise;
wondering if anyone cares if You go or You stay?

What do You see, looking into my heart?
I think some of the doorways were locked from the start.
And there must be some rooms I know nothing about...
but I must have your help to start sorting things out.

                  My Child, as I walk through your life,
                  I'll clean the dust from the windows to let in my Light;
                  I'll oil each rusty hinge so the doorways swing free;
                  make the rooms all ring out with hosannas for Me.
                                   

What do I see as I walk through your soul?
I see my Blood on the doorpost, my Name on the wall; 
and a banqueting table laid with Heaven's best fare,
where together we'll dine... and Eternity share! 
                                                                 -Becky Rhon
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When we let the Son's light shine into and through our hearts, it isn't only of enormous benefit to ourselves.  God can use his light to illuminate the way of those around us who can't see which road to take.
                                                     

 May you feel God's presence in a special way this week and enjoy the warmth of his Love and his Light. See you next time!

                                                                                                                       

"Song Design", a poem...a reminder...a challenge

I wrote this poem in 1990, during our three years in Dallas -  longing for the day that we could come back home to Ecuador.  After you read it through we can chat a little bit about its implications.


                                               Song Design
                                    
       I tried to write a song for You,
       to make men clap and cry, "Encore!"                             
       but the hand-picked notes I carefully drew          
       didn't dance on the staff like they had before.

I tried to make the lyrics shout,
to make men want to listen more;
but the well-thought phrases I carved out
didn't glow in the dark like they had before.

                       
                      I said, "It's done", and looked it through;
                      only then did I wonder where You'd been.
                      When I tried to make this song for You,
                      had I written it backwards - just me, again?
   
                                      I looked up to your patient face   
                                      and all my tunes slid off the lines.                  

                                      Then your love set brave new words in place
                                      and your Heart poured its music out into mine.           

           Your Heart poured its music out into mine;
            now, that's how a song should be designed!

                                                             - Becky Rhon

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Although I did write more songs, this poem means a  lot more than that.  Every one of us has "songs" to write -  all the projects and plans and ministries and jobs and dreams and duties with which our lives are involved.  But sometimes we do them "backwards", don't we?  We start out with OUR criteria and then (usually when things aren't working out!) we remember to put God into the equation.

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." (Col. 3:23)  "So...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (I Cor. 10:31)  This doesn't only refer to our projects, jobs, dreams, etc.  "Whatever" means just that.  Decisions and relationships and how we treat others, for example.  How do we make sure we're on the right track? God's Word gives us more than sufficient guidelines...but we have to read it!  (Osmosis won't work here!)

We can start in our homes. Wives, let's make our husbands glad they married us!  Husbands, make your wives feel precious and loved! The family is much too important to God for us to just "wing it". He tells us how to  do things His way because that's the only way guaranteed to work (and work "for the glory of God"), and to give us peace...and because He loves us so much that He refuses to leave us clueless!

Let's allow God to pour His Music out into our hearts and lives...so that it bathes us in its richness and flows out to touch those around us. 
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   God bless you!!  Meet me here next week.


   

1. "MY Aunt Becky!" 2. Names (of cars...and men)

As usual, I had stopped at the daycare center where my two little nephews spent part of the day, to pick them up and take them back to our house to have the rest of the afternoon with us.  "Agie" (Adrian) was somewhere around 18 or 20 months, I think - maybe a little more - and I was holding him in my arms while the workers got his things together so that we could leave.  There were several other little children there who hadn't been picked up yet, and they edged closer and closer until they had formed a semi-circle around us. They stood stock still, just staring up at us solemnly.

Agie began to be visibly uncomfortable with the situation. He stared at each one in turn, and was obviously trying to digest what he thought were the implications of their attention.  Then he suddenly tightened his grip on me, glared down at the group of kids and warned them, "MY Aunt Becky!"  (In other words, don't get any ideas; she's MINE...and I'm not sharing!)

During the three years we were in Dallas, from 1989 to 1992, we babysat Agie and his older brother "Tito" (Patrick) part-time, so they wouldn't be spending the whole workday in the daycare center.  They were very smart little guys, and left their marks on our hearts.  Agie was a demonstrative child, easily giving hugs, and his favorite snack was "gwapes and waisins".  Tito accepted hugs but was much more interested in whatever he was curious about at the time.  He was a precocious talker, and I think maybe one of the worst disciplines for him when he acted up was to be put into "time out", where he had to stay in one spot...and be quiet!  (They are both adults now, and called Patrick and Adrian, but to me, inside, they'll always be Tito and Agie!)

Many other activities filled our hours and days and weeks: school, church, etc.  Dan and Debbie were in a small Christian school, and had their sports and band events, rehearsals and practices. (Dan played football and basketball; Debbie played the flute.) We couldn't do much in the way of deputation, it being necessarily confined to whenever the kids had a vacation from school.  

In all this, our trusty "steeds" were just that - trusty.  The car we had bought for $1 in Miami was a large, older-model maroon four-door, and I named it The Wombat (which is a very dense animal).  Sometimes we called it the "BMW", but that just meant "big, maroon wombat"!  We needed another car, since I was the one who shuttled the kids to and from school, and did most of the other errands while Germán was at work.  Our second car was small, blue, with two-doors, and I named it The Blueberry.  When we bought Dan a car some time later (he would be in the U.S. while we were in Ecuador), I named it The Roadrunner.  It was a cynical name because it had trouble working up speed!  It sure took its time - would never have worked for a drag race!

These weren't the first of our cars I had named. In Australia we had a little old one named "Pancho López".  When we returned to Ecuador, one of our first cars was an ancient van with a rounded front, just about the shape of a bumble bee...so I named it La Bunga (bumble bee in Spanish).  Then in Shell we had an even more ancient car (it was REALLy old), so it got named Methuselah.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has named cars!  Some of you reading this probably have.  It's fun, isn't it?!!  (You know, I wonder if God ever has nicknames for us...!?)

God gives an overwhelming importance to names. He himself presents various ones of His own, and each one tells us something about Him. (Sort of like...if you didn't know anything about me, but heard someone call me "Aunt Becky", you'd know that I had at least one nephew or niece. Of course, with God it's on a fantastically larger scale.)  God changed several people's names in Bible history when they were going to have a change of direction: Abram became Abraham; Sarai became Sarah; Jacob was given the name Israel, and Jesus called Simon by his new name - Peter. But the most important thing that can happen to our name is for it to be written in God's Book of Life.  And that can only happen when we become His children and He our Father, and Jesus our Savior and big Brother.  Is your name written in the Book of Life?

If it IS...wonderful!!  If it's not...hadn't you better do something about it?

Have a great week!  Join me next time.

Mis-medicated...sue Caduceus!

Of course, Caduceus himself was innocent.  No need to sue him. It was the doctors who were to blame. It's just that every time I see a caduceus,  I think of this...

Do you remember when I told about my collapse, when we lived in Shell?  (You can refresh your memory starting at this post:  http://therhonsjourney.blogspot.com/2013/08/if-i-keep-on-like-this-ill-break.html (Sorry if the link doesn't work! Never tried it before. I even followed the putting-in-a-link for Dummies, but must have missed something. And I don't speak HTML!)

I had seen an endocrinologist in Quito, and he had done tests, which showed that my cortisol level was really low...not a good thing.  So he put me on dexamethasone, which I continued to take until we went to the States for the three years it took us to raise our support.

In Dallas, I found an endocrinologist. Do you know what he told me? After going over my files, he said that there were a couple of varieties of my kind of hormonal imbalance (adrenal insufficiency), and that I had the one that was more serious - I would have to take the corticoids all my life, since they were what kept me alive! He told me to get a medical bracelet, the kind with the "caduceus".  (I'm glad it actually has a name, and isn't called "that symbol thingy with a pole with wings at the top and snakes winding around it".)

I had one etched with my particular diagnosis. I thought I would have to wear it for the rest of my life. I never took it off.  Then, as I was having more severe leg pain than before, the doctor switched my medication to predisone...which did help with the pain, BUT...Oh, my goodness... I started wondering if I would be this ugly forever! Those of you who have been on it know what I mean - the red, puffy face, weight gain, etc.  I got to the point where I didn't even want to look at pictures taken of me before all this, because the contrast was so great; all it did was depress me more! I was grateful to God for the medical attention, but my "inside" didn't find it easy to accept my "outside"!  I was only in my mid-to-late 30's.  Did I have another 50 years ahead of me looking like that?                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

You have seen the recent pictures of me that I posted a couple of months back...and I don't have a red, puffy face, do I?  ( See Two Pictures; a Poem for the New Year; and a continuing story...). (Ditto about the link.) WELL...Caduceus and I broke up! Many years later, thanks to his persistence, my father managed to get me an appointment at the Mayo Clinic (not an easy thing to do), during one of our furloughs. We went to the one in Arizona.  There they did bunches of diagnostic tests over several days - and it was covered completely by our health insurance!

The verdict:  my endocrinologist had messed up the last 15 or more years of my life!  (Actually, the doctor who presented me with the final evaluation used the word "ruined".)  They didn't find any reason to continue with the prednisone.  They also found I had arthritis and a dysfunctional sacroiliac...and a few other things.  I DID have hormonal imbalances, but corticoids wasn't the way to go. So I began to wean myself off of them, and eventually the time came when I could actually bear looking at myself in the mirror again!
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As you can see, we've "been through the wringer" with our various "infirmities", and we continue to battle health issues as we grow older.  ("Older", NOT "old" - we decided a while ago that we weren't going to be "old" for another 25 years or so!)


We really like what St. Paul said:  "Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." (2 Cor. 4:16)  Maybe it should say, "Do not lose heart!", because as humans, we sometimes do, but with all the blessings that God gives and IS, it needn't remain that way.  SO CHEER UP!
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So many people are "mis-medicated" spiritually.  They are mis-directed or try on their own to find the solution to their spiritual infirmities...always searching, but never finding the cure. In their struggles, they may have looked everywhere...except the one place that has it all. They don't know where to look, or if they do, don't want to face it.  God is the Great Diagnostician, knows exactly what's wrong with each of us, and has given us, his imperfect creatures, a Book that has the ONLY cure.  All the remedies needed for it are at our disposal!  With them we can also say , "yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day".  Can YOU say that?

Have a wonderful week, and meet me here next time!