Christmas is nine days into our past. I’m curious – how many of my readers had oyster stew for Christmas Eve?

For as long as I can remember – so most of my life – I’ve had oyster stew for Christmas Eve. My mom wasn’t overly fond of it, but Dad liked it and I followed suit. I can honestly say that it is my favorite soup/stew to this day. And as an adult I got lucky that both my sons and husband liked it too. No fixing two different soups for Christmas Eve in this family! My boys were probably influenced by a subtle motto (of mine) around our house. Years later, my granddaughter couldn’t have put this same philosophy in any better words while serving us up mud pies. When Grandpa Stan was told we were getting chocolate pies and he told her he liked vanilla, with hands on her hips she adamantly replied, “Eat what you get, and don’t throw a fit!”

One of those Christmas Eves so long ago when I was about the age of my mud-pie making granddaughter, Mom opened up two cans of oysters and poured them in her copper bottom kettle. As she did so, a “ping” ricocheted off the bottom. That was odd; justifying a search among the cloudy juices and greenish gray globs. (I get it why some people don’t like oyster stew.) Mom poked her fork around and low and behold – pulled out a round pebble. Once she rinsed it, it became evident that it was no stone, but a pearl. She called us all together to witness the find. A special little unexpected treasure! I had no idea, at that age, how a pearl got into a can of oysters.

Dad explained. “A little bit of sand gets into the oyster shell and irritates the oyster – like getting a piece of gravel in your shoe. The animal senses the sand and coats it with layers and layers of a material that eventually becomes a pearl.”

That, I have learned is a rather simplistic explanation of pearl formation, but quite adequate for a six-year-old. (I had had plenty of sand and gravel in my shoes, living down a dirt lane.) As I have researched the actual process it’s quite amazing and leaves me in awe once again of God’s creativity. It’s not necessarily a piece of sand that starts it all. It can be a piece of misplaced food, a bacteria, or even a piece of the oyster’s own mantle that breaks off. Whatever is the culprit, the oyster senses the foreign object and begins to coat it with the same two substances that it uses to build its shell – aragonite and conchiolin. Once this irritant has made it’s home in the oyster it will take two – five years for the pearl to reach full size. Natural occurring pearls are rarely harvested as the oceans are vast and pearl formation is sporadic. This led to pearl farms where cultured pearls are produced by farmers surgically placing an irritant – usually a piece of mantle tissue from another oyster – into the chosen oyster.

As I thought about this process, I can certainly identify with those farmed oysters. I have often collected irritants in my life. Worry, fear, the ungrateful boss, the neighbors barking dog, the too small print on labels, the annoying ache, Covid mandates – all come to mind. But, when I’m willing to cover those irritations in layers of prayer, it tames them down and they don’t seem nearly as bothersome. Peace begins to overshadow angst, anxiety, and irritability. We serve a BIG GOD – bigger than any problem we have. Beth Moore says it this way. “We don’t have a need that exceeds His power.” That’s a good one to remember and to act upon.

Until next month, keep on readin’ and I’ll keep on writin’.

This one is just for fun and to reassure you that you are not the only one losing your mind.

Having my wake up shower in the morning is my thing.  It’s a byproduct of forty-five years of needing to get to work early and refreshed.  That meant clocking in anywhere from 6-8 am, depending on the nursing area I was in at the time.  

Now, I’m retired and have traded my scrubs in for leggings and baggy sweatshirts. Ahhh…the comfort!  I’m not one that thinks you have to wear a new outfit everyday, so brightly flowered leggings with a solid colored sweatshirt can do me for three days if I’m fortunate enough not to dribble lunch down the front. When I slip off my clothes at night, I like to lay them on the edge of my garden tub so that I’m ready to jump (a figure of speech, only) in the shower come morning.  All I’ll have to do is grab a pair of fresh undies from my drawer.

 Most mornings go off without a hitch –except this one morning when it didn’t.  I shower, dry off, and proceed to dress, but soon I discover that my panties have done a vanishing act. How can this be?  I’m a creature of habit and I always lay my undies on top of my other clothes since they are the first thing to go on. (As you can see, I’m quite organized so this was quite baffling.) They positively are not where I always put them. I know I’m not crazy; I can remember taking my only white pair out of the drawer.  I shake out each piece of clothing. I check the trash…just in case I might have had a brain freeze. I thrust my hand into the pockets of my robe I wore into the bathroom.  I peer into my brush drawer and then my towel cupboard. I remake my bed, then get down on all fours and peer under it. I take twice as long getting up as I did getting down. I check the clothes hamper, wondering if I tossed them in there by habit. Seriously…David Copperfield couldn’t have done a better job!  If only someone else were in the house, I’d know it was a practical joke, but I’m left with no one to blame.

Well…what the heck. It’s just a pair of underwear. With a deep sigh, I do the only logical thing and grab another pair from the drawer. I clutch them tightly to my chest as if they’re a bird squirming to take flight. Returning to the bathroom, I slip one leg in and then the other.  As I pull them up, they balk at my hips. What’s the deal, now?  Heaven knows I’ve had plenty of time to dry off – running around naked as I had. There should be no lingering damp friction to make them resist.

   I glance downward to check things out. “Oh, my gosh – you’ve got to be kidding!” There, rests my white pair of panties around my hips, right where they are supposed to be. I can’t believe it…heaven help me… I’ve just slipped over the line from forgetfulness to dementia; I know it.

 When I tell the story to a trusted friend I swear her to secrecy. Know what she says? “Oh, you’ll tell everyone – you won’t be able to keep that story to yourself.”  I hate it when she’s right.

I love the old boogie-woogie and swing type music of the 30’s and 40’s. Obviously, I’m not the only one. In 1932 just 10 million records had been sold in the US. But with the birth of swing music, by 1939 that number had jumped to 50 million. It was a music that was purely for entertainment and targeted those people under the tremendous pressure spurred by the Great Depression. I’m guessing that involved most everyone – some worse than others.

When I saw a female group called “America’s Sweethearts” announcing a concert locally this month, I itched to go. The quartet promised to take us back to the Andrew Sisters and the era of beautiful harmonies. The ad said tickets could be purchased at the door but it didn’t say how much they were. I had to find out. An immediate call to the chamber office provided me with a number to call to obtain the answer I sought.

“The price is $40.00 but you are buying tickets for the entire concert season,” the nice man on the other end of the line said. He explained that there were four concerts left; two had passed. Not a bad price for concerts if you liked the line up. But I had no idea if I would so I told him I probably would not do that. Then he remembered I had a Wyoming phone number. “I don’t know where you are in Wyoming, but if you are more than 75 miles, you can buy individual tickets at the door for $10.00.”

“Nice!” I thought. This was more inline with my budget. Only one problem. I no longer lived in Wyoming. I was less than 15 miles to the concert location.

Anyone that knows me, knows I love a bargain and in my thought processes, this fell into that category. Ten dollars for a great concert – that’s hard to beat. Oh my, this made it extremely difficult and very tempting. My mind kept flashing back to the ad picture in the paper – the girls in their bright red dresses with short white gloves and big smiles. I stuck one foot into the beckoning circle of desire before I regained my balance and managed to say, “I just don’t feel right about that since I now live close.”

Living as a person of faith, isn’t always convenient or easy…but it is right. It matters what God thinks. (Galations 1:10) Maybe no one else would have known any different, but I would and God would. And what if the ticket seller, or the person in front of me or behind me knew I lived close and here I was playing the game of letting my cell number from years past get me in for a reduced price. What kind of a Christian witness would I be? Definitely not the kind that asks WWJD ( what would Jesus do).

This matter of the ticket may not seem like a big deal in the scheme of things, but if we don’t do what’s honest in small matters, we’re not likely to do what’s honest in the big ones. The time to decide how we will handle these situations isn’t when we are about to step off into the quicksand of temptation but long before they occur. Max Lucado ( Christian author and pastor) puts it this way: Decide now what you will do then. I’ve never regretted my decisions to step away from temptation, but I have fallen flat when waltzing with it.

This was a great reminder to me just how easy it is to compromise on our convictions. In the heat of the moment I was just about to justify a less than desirable choice. I may have seen a great concert but God would not have been applauding.

I know the Great Depression was one of the hardest times in American history. But let’s face it – these last couple of years haven’t been any walk in the park for us either. I’m thinking a little jitterbug might help us all.

Until next month – keep on readin’ and I’ll keep on writin’.

Halloween lurks just around the corner. When I was a kid, Halloween in our house came and went without much ado. We lived in the country and my folks weren’t into driving us around to collect candy that we didn’t need and use gas that we did need. Mom would made popcorn balls in case some other parents felt differently. But, most years we made it through another Halloween without trick or tr-eaters and a pan full of popcorn balls. Yes!

But, there was one Halloween that was different. It was announced at the end of the Sunday service in our little Methodist Church in McLean, NE that the children would be gathering and trick-or-treating for UNICEF. I didn’t know what that all meant but if I got to go trick-or-treating, I didn’t care about the details. Mom must have thought it was a big deal, too. She made me the only Halloween costume I can remember. She may have been motivated by the added announcement that there would be prizes for the best costumes. She rummaged through her scrap pile of material and found some burlap; died it coal black and made me a long dress. She crafted a tall pointed hat with a wide brim out of cardboard and covered it with black construction paper. She molded a nose out of clay complete with a wart and presto! I was the happiest little witch in Pierce County and the proud recipient of first place in the costume contest. We won’t mention that there were only six kids in the competition.

Our small group of witches and goblins knocked on every door in that small village. When the porch lights came on we would yell, “trick or treat for UNICEF.” Most folks dropped coins into our buckets and often gave each of us a piece of candy as well. I wasn’t quite sure what UNICEF was all about back then, but I have since learned that this stood for The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. It was created on December 11, 1946 to provide emergency food and healthcare to children and mothers in countries that had been devastated by World War II. Since that time it has developed into assisting children and women in all developing countries and is now known as just the United Nations Children’s Fund, although it has retained the UNICEF acronym.

To be honest, my life at this age was short-sighted. Although we were by no means well to do by American standards, we did have vegetables on our table, (thanks to Mom’s big garden) and meat in the freezer (thanks to our own butchered livestock.) It was difficult for me to picture children that didn’t have regular meals because there wasn’t food to make one. I couldn’t imagine that my friends and I could trick-or-treat for candy that evening, yet kids our age in other countries didn’t have supper that night and maybe not the night before, either. I could remember how hungry I would get when Mom was just an hour late putting supper on the table. How thankful these children must be for another supper and not having to go to bed hungry. I felt good about being a part of helping someone that didn’t have the things I had. I wondered if these kids’ circumstances might make them look at life differently.

It brings to mind the James Cain (American author and journalist) quote: If we think only of the desires for two potatoes, one potato will never be enough. But if we consider the possibility of having no potatoes, then one seems like a feast. I hoped that my little contribution in the bottom of my bucket would help someone enjoy a feast.

As I ponder all these things today, it seems to me that the more we have the more we want, and those that are most grateful are those that have little. Maybe it’s God’s way of putting peace into the hearts of the less fortunate. But, are they really less fortunate if they have found the elusive secret of being satisfied with less?

Many of us are stuck in the grind of thinking we need more and more to reach a level of contentedness. But, would we not be more satisfied if we wished for less and were grateful for more?

Until next month, keep on readin’ and I’ll keep on writin’.

I wanted her so badly, I could almost imagine she was right beside me. Every girl in my second grade class except me had one – or so it seemed. Most of them had gotten their Chatty Cathy’s for Christmas and now it was almost the middle of July; my birthday just around the corner. I had dropped hints nearly every day since first laying my eyes on the doll.

“Mom, you should have been there. All the girls brought their Chatty Cathy’s to school – she’s awesome! You just pull the ring and she says, ‘I love you’ or ‘Please take me with you.’ And she says a lot of other things too – eleven in all.” Then I turned to Dad. “She’s really cute, Dad. She has the cutest blue dress with a white eyelet over-blouse and blue shoes and EVERYTHING,” I exclaimed. I never wasted an opportunity to let my folks know my life depended on this doll.

The twenty inch blue eyed blonde doll had been born in 1959 and she had made a grand entrance into my Osmond, Nebraska classroom in the early 60’s. The pull string mechanism that connected to a simple phonograph record inside the doll, made her the first successful talking doll. The girls that had one under their Christmas tree, became the envy of all of us that did not.

My eyes bulged when I saw Mom carrying the long narrow box – just the right size for Chatty Cathy – to the dining room table where the other birthday presents sat. It was wrapped in bright colored paper with a bow on top. My wish had come true! Tonight, I would be snuggled down in bed with Chatty Cathy! I fidgeted through the cake and homemade ice-cream until it was finally time to unwrap gifts.

I couldn’t wait to get to Chatty Cathy, but I also wanted to leave the best for last. I opened the gifts from my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and my siblings. Finally, my brother slid the long narrow gift in front of me. I gently removed the bow and handed it back to Mom where it would be recycled for the next birthday. Then I ripped, digging my little fingers beneath the staples at the end of the sturdy cardboard box. My family looked on; waiting to see my reaction to the biggest and grandest present. I yanked, the staples loosened, and a musty smell escaped from the box. What? This wasn’t at all what Chatty Cathy would smell like. I wasn’t sure if it was the smell or the disappointment that was making me queasy. I stared into the dark box; seeing nothing that resembled a doll. I pulled out a lump of heavy folded green canvas, some cold metal poles, and several stakes. I looked closer at the outside of the box. Staring back at me was a picture of a pup tent. A pup tent! I refused to believe it. I tried to hide my distress and my tears. My heart was crushed.

To this day, I do not know why my parents chose to ignore my pleas for a Chatty Cathy and give me a pup tent instead. Maybe it’s because they knew I was not a dolly kind of girl. (My favorite gift up to this point had been a big green and yellow 18 wheeler.) They may have known the novelty would wear off quickly and a pup tent was more practical.

I am grateful, now, that my parents did not give me everything I asked for when it came to birthdays and Christmases (the only times we received gifts.) That disheartening incident helped me to realize I can live without a lot of things and it’s not the end of the world. Denying oneself tends to build character – where as satisfying our every whim is counterproductive. Did you know that 90% of storage facilities in the world are located in the United States – where people pay money to store things they never or rarely use? (statista.com) I’m not saying we can’t purchase things we want once in awhile, but we should be aware of our motives. Many compulsive buyers are trying to fulfill a need they feel deep inside, but Jeremiah 2:13 tells us they are barking down a dry well. For my people have done two evil things: They have forsaken me, the fountain of Life-giving Water; and they have built for themselves broken cisterns that can’t hold water!

If you want happiness at its best – it’s not a better job, a bigger house, glamorous clothes, a fancy car, or any number of things that’s going to bring more than a temporary high. Only God in your heart can fill that void. No matter how much you have, if you don’t have Him, you’ll only bring forth dust from the well.

I’m guessing my folks knew that.

Until next month – keep on readin’ and I’ll keep on writin’.