To be continued...

Hi Wolfies!
Would you believe that I am on the road again? I can't hardly believe it nor do I know how welcoming I am to accept that fact.
But. Alas.
Anyway. Fall has fallen where I am and it is lovely.
I also just had a fabulous dinner of roasted duck. Which was also lovely.
But I don't have Internet access and me typing on my friends iPhone is not an experience I relish.
All that to say, I will be back whenever I get Internet access again.
Happy fall, kids. Jesus sure knows how to paint the town red.
Boy do I love that God of mine.

Golden Calves II {A Journal Entry}

After I wrote that last post about idolatry (Golden Calves) I have been thinking more about the process of idolatry that we Christians have a tendency to fall into.

That being the case, here is a little journal entry of mine that I wrote the other morning.

 

Golden Calves II {A Journal Entry}

The problem with idols is that they tarnish.

Holding something or someone up as an idol, in light of who You are and your grandeur, somewhat disgusts me. I don’t ever want to do that again, Lord. The act of worshipping an idol isn’t what bothers me so much (for we are creatures designed to worship and worship we do), it’s the simplicity, the non-omnipotence, the non-God-ness, the breakable-ness of the object being worshipped that bothers me.

Doesn’t idolatry really show a great deal how terrible judges of character and worth and value WE are? We are so easily duped; we pick the most ridiculous things to worship. Our thinking and vision are so futile and nothing shows this so greatly as idolatry. Because the things we worship aren’t good things; we have better choices.

Ok, so if I terribly choose objects to worship (all of my idols- my choice of them is pitiful), can I not say that that’s why I value other terrible things, too? For isn’t it all really connected? What we worship will be what we value. For example, I value how things LOOK, I value what my bank account looks like, I value fame and notoriety, I fall into the trap of name-dropping as if that can somehow bump up my reputation, I value the opinion others have of me, all the while believing that these things have some semblance of worth. I will assume that these things, too, are valued because we are terrible choosers of worth. Those things are unimportant. But we choose them. So are our gods, but we choose them

I can see me, in some jewelry store, with God behind the counter. And in front of me, for me to choose from, are the crown jewels of England and something He picked up at a discount store. Something that will turn my neck and fingers green within a matter of days. Which one do you think I am going to choose?

Clearly, the Wal-Mart brand.

Why?
Because I am a terrible judge of worth.
We all are.

Idols tarnish—but we choose them.

Why?
Because we are idiots. I am an idiot.

Those things, in and of themselves (apart from how we might redeem them and use them for the Kingdom[money, appearance, fame, etc]), have no meaning for anything!

Let’s put it this way, Wolfies. When it comes to gods, we don’t choose the crown jewels (i.e. God), we choose the Wal-Mart brand. And I don’t care how theologically sound you think you are, we pick the wrong thing to worship. We do.

Therefore, once again, I am convinced that I am a terrible judge of character.

Fortunately, though, there is help and HOPE (because with the real God, the one who doesn’t tarnish, there always is!).

James 1:5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should as God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

*Jesus, your blood is the great Blinder. It makes it possible for God to look at me and not find fault (where, as I have just described in depth, I have many available to find).

What a blessing.

Golden Calves.

Last night I read through a lot of my old blog posts.

Wow.
Do any of you journal? Looking through old journals is like taking a walk through the recesses of your mind. I don’t think I realized how much of my life I have chronicled on this thing and until last night I didn’t realize how much of it I had forgotten. Or pushed aside. Or crowded out. Or what has simply faded.
Therefore, I am quite pleased that I have done this. It’s good to be reminded.

God is faithful; don’t ever forget it.

I have got to tell you, though, a slight panic came over me as I was reading through these things. Half of the time I was like, “Wow, I can’t believe I wrote this. I don’t recall a single thing.” Or I would see a title listed and go, “What in the world is that one?” Reading through a lot of them was literally like reading them for the first time. It had all faded that much.

And the panic comes in when I remember where I was with the Lord in those times. And I see where I am now, and not that where I am now is bad at all, but it’s just different.

He is different to me now because I need him to be different to me now. I am no longer in those situations and therefore I require different grace to get me through these weeks as opposed to the grace I needed 10 months ago.

Sometimes, however, the memory of our relationship is what I prefer to the current reality. Maybe the memory was more warm and fuzzy or maybe more powerful or maybe brand new.

I think about the Israelites when they were walking through the wilderness for 40 years. And I see their story and I want to scream at them and yell at them, “You built a golden calf?!?! What were you thinking?!” and I walk away from that passage all in a huff calling them all kinds of mean names.

But then I have to stop myself. Because I am no different. What they did there is what I am tempted to do now.

I heard a pastor talk about the golden calf once in a way that has stuck with me through the years. He says that they weren’t necessarily trying to invent a new God, they had just forgotten what he looked like. So they took what they knew to be the strongest thing in their existence: cattle. The ones who pull stuff or work in fields or fight matadors or whatever baby calves grew up to do in that time period. They were making a representation of that which is the strongest thing they could relate to.  

It’s not as if they were worshipping a calf, they were trying to remember. They remembered that God was strong. That’s how they wanted to picture him (because we all are tempted to put God in a box and make him into an image we can control). Picture him how they remembered him.

But sometimes in my wanderings through life, just like the Israelites in the desert, the vision of God and of what our relationship looked like at one time begins to fade. And then if I ever realize it has faded I start into a panic and I want to give myself a tangible way to remember the way God has been faithful.

Which is the panic I felt last night after reading my old journal entries here.

Which is the panic I felt that made me think I needed to make some kind of golden calf; something to remind me of who He was to me at that point. Because that is the relationship I was tempted to try to live with him in now.

I don’t know, I am probably totally wrong about this, but maybe golden calves are our poor attempts to live in a memory, rather than a truth.

Think about it. The Israelites had seen that God was faithful and they had seen that he was powerful. He turned Egypt into a madhouse for them and he parted crazy waters for them, they knew that. But somewhere along the way the lines began to blur. They lost vision of him and so they tried to make a picture of how they remembered him.

Strong. Powerful.

I can’t want to worship how I remember him, I have to worship him for how he relates to me now. I can’t forget that God took those people through that desert. He wanted them there. God wants us to be present in our relationship with him, not living vicariously through a memory of the way we once were.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, I however am not. Which is how it should be. And he should look different to me now than he did 10 months ago, because we aren’t still in Egypt. He has been faithful and brought me further. He has changed me again. We’re in totally new kinds of territory now.

Worship Jesus for who he is, not for how you remember him. Lines of memories get blurred; we can’t live today in our past relationship with the Lord. Doing that is us worshipping golden calves, it’s worshipping his attributes, not him.

God is not dead as if we need to remember him, in that sense. God is alive as if we need to know him, and know him for his faithfulness NOW, not just for his past faithfulness.

I don’t want an image of him, I want the real deal.

Phone.

Hi, Wolfies! I am so sorry about being so absent! I promise to do better. I don’t know where in the world I have been. Then again, neither do you. Because I haven’t written (and we’re back to the beginning).

I lost my phone yesterday.
Well, I didn’t LOSE my phone. I misplaced my phone.
Kind of.
I knew my phone was in my car.
But for the life of me I couldn’t find out WHERE in my car.

The story goes that I was on my way to help out with youth group at my church,  just moving on down the road when I came to a stop sign. I waited for the cute little cars and the big tractors to go by. I waited for the big little SUVs and the cute big semis. Then I waited for all of the animals to go by two-by-two. Finally a break came and I looked both ways.

Left, right, left, right again.
I see nothing.
Go.
I go.
And THEN I see something.
So what is a girl to do who now sees a truck coming TOWARDS her, out of nowhere?
She floors her gas pedal.
And just like a good little car should, mine zipped, really fast, out of the way so as not to make said trust slam on his brakes.
Phew.
Disaster averted.

But now we had other issues to deal with.

Where in the world was my phone?
In my huge hurry to get through the intersection all things in the car….shifted, if you will. As in, all of my cd cases went flying, my water bottle tipped over, my purse got flung to the floor and I am pretty sure the Kleenexes were now on the opposite end of the back window.

And somewhere in the shift the phone also shifted.

Now, mind you, I wasn’t looking for my phone when I was driving. Goodness, No. I don’t do that. I HATE talking on the phone when I am in the car, driving or not. I also hate it when other people are on the phone when I am in the car. I like knowing what is going on in people’s lives, but I don’t like hearing about it one-sided.

So I wasn’t looking for my phone when I was driving. I was looking for my phone when I got to the grocery store.

Do you know how disconcerting it is to walk into a grocery store, carrying your purse when it is PHONE-LESS when it is never phone-less?

It’s very disconcerting. And don’t think that I hadn’t looked. I had opened all four doors, looked under my seats, because that is where all of my cd cases now were, lifted up my atlas, looked down in between the seats.

You know what it is like, why am I telling you this? You all know what it’s like to lose the remote.
In a house that just had an earthquake and everything had just experienced movement it will never know again.

Maybe not.

Anyway.

Here is how the rest of my night looked:

In and out of grocery store. Look again. Nothing.

To youth group, look in car, nothing.

See somebody I know, contemplate interrupting them and saying, “I’m sorry. Can you call my phone, I can’t find it.” Decide to move on and not ask them.
See somebody I know, contemplate saying to them, “Can I run outside, and have you call me in one minute?” Decide not to.
Be semi-distracted throughout youth group with the knowledge that my purse on the coat rack is still phone-less.
Be very disconcerted.

At the end of youth group I finally said to someone, “Ok, I have to go. I have to find my phone.”

I must have looked like quite the scene. Or my feet must have because that is all anybody could probably see sticking out the open door of my car as I was sprawled out looking.

Then I saw my beacon of light: another friend I knew.
“HEY!!! Could you call my phone?! It is lost beyond repair.”

Seven times.

She called me seven times.

And in my frantic search, this thought occurred to me, “It’s almost like you are looking for a treasure you found hidden in a field.”

Hmmm.

Have you ever thought about what you are searching for?

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:44)

I think about the things I search for, primarily my search for the Lord, or rather my seeking him, since I have already been found by him. And I wonder if I look for him the way I looked for my phone? I mean, it was on my mind ALL night. I told you twice it DISCONCERTED me. And I started thinking, “Shouldn’t I be disconcerted if I walk into a grocery store without thinking about Jesus? Same way I was so upset that I walked in without my phone?”

I would like to think that I have a close walk with Jesus. I would like to think I DO find him in the grocery store a lot (for there is almost no more joy I get than from buying food), but I guess I was upset that my lost phone bothered me more than a distance from the Lord would.
And shouldn’t it?

So I guess my question for you today is the same question I have for myself:

Do I see my relationship with the Lord as if it is a treasure hidden in a field? Or my phone lost in my car? Like I am willing to get people involved in helping me find it when it is “lost beyond repair”? Or even if I can’t seem to find it after things in my life have shifted? Am I willing to search?

I found my phone, to finish the story.

Thanks to my good friend helping me search.
It was in the console.
Apparently I had put it there.
It wasn’t lost in a shift.
It was exactly where I had put it.
And there is another thought, I guess: Are you willing to believe that your relationship with the Lord is exactly where you put it?
You can’t expect to have open communication with God when you put him in a box.

Quiet Please.

Most people don’t like watching golf. They equate it to watching paint dry.

I, however, disagree.
One cold and dreary winter’s day when I was a kid I started watching golf. And I have had it on my “list of good things to do a Sunday afternoon” ever since. I think the part that got me hooked the most was that wherever the golf tournament is located it always happens to be green, which is something that could not be said about where I grew up. Trust me, winter was only ever white where I lived, or this really drab brown. So watching golf on the tv probably gave me a breather from winter, and I can surmise that is the real reason why I like to watch golf.
All that to say, on my “List of things to do during my life” was a little entry that said, “Go to a professional golf tournament.”

Wolfies, consider it done.

When I was out in the Northwest this summer, I went to a golf tournament.

Houses are always lovely on golf courses.

Me and my brotha!

Not too shabby a view??!!

Now that is what I call an 18th hole!

Turns out, golf tournaments are like a whole culture unto themselves. I don’t really know how to explain it, but all of the people kind of looked alike, we all dressed alike, none of us talked above a hushed tone, everybody wants to be “following the leader.” Whenever masses of people are all doing the same thing that concerns me a bit.

But, alas.

One thing I hadn’t ever thought about is that there are people standing around with these signs all over the place.

The first thing I thought was that I wanted to go up to said person and say, “Alright, just give it to me straight, what do I have to do to get that sign of yours?”
But that wouldn’t be Golf Tournament Appropriate, now would it? Not a hushed tone at all. Unfortunately then I procured no sign.

But standing next to these sign people was more often than not a person doing this:

And I thought, “I have seen something like that before.”

 Needless to say that for the rest of the tournament my mind was not on the leader’s golf game.

 Why do people raise their hands in church?

Why do people go to church?

Better question: why do I raise my hands in church or go to church?

Are we supposed to raise our hands?
What does it all really mean?

Those were the thoughts I was thinking for the rest of the day.

Church has been on my mind a lot lately. I think I will write about it at another time, but I feel that Christians in general have lost a sacredness to their thoughts about what they do on Sunday mornings. It really seems to have become routine, rather than the thoughtful WORSHIP of an Almighty God (the ONLY Almighty God, might I add).

Anyway.

And then it dawned on me. While I don’t know specifically what raising your hands in church should mean, and more importantly what it has been watered down to mean to most people today,  I think the golf world has got it figured out—maybe even more than the church does.

It should mean, and I will even go so far as to say that simply BEING in church should mean, “Quiet Please.”

I’m not talking about people not talking in church. I am not talking about people not bringing coffee into church. I am not talking about worship songs being only without drums and microphones. I am not talking about getting rid of modern worship music. I am not talking about pastor’s not telling jokes during sermons (for aren’t these a handful of things that church bodies really get LOUD about?).

No.
I am talking about you, yourself.
Me, myself.
Telling ourselves to “Be quiet, please.”

 To assume that we all go to church without preconceived ideas of who God is, is completely ludicrous. All of us carry in baggage every week, notions about how the world works, and crazy hope for how we want the future to go.

But what if, rather than having a flippant attitude, a chip on the shoulder, or a mind set, we walked into church and said to ourselves, to our preconceived ideas, to our controllings, to our situation manipulations, “Quiet Please. God can do what he wants.”

The one passage in scripture that comes crashing into mind is in Revelation 8 when we read the phrase “and there was silence in Heaven for about half an hour.”

Wait a second! Hold the phone!

Silence in HEAVEN?

The place where for all eternity angels and saints proclaim “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was, and is, and is to come”????
Yep. That’s the place.
And it was silent.
Why?
Because Jesus had just done something to carry out his plan. And heaven knew that was something worth being silent for.

I guess it goes without saying, but maybe a quietness of heart, where I put all of ME aside, and say, “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come,” is the only time it’s appropriate for me to be in church. And especially for us to be raising our hands in church, just like those golf tournament people.

Now I am not advocating one way to worship more than another. I am not arrogant enough to think that demonstrative worship is the only way, and I am not naïve enough to think that all people are wired to be very open with what is going on inside of them. But I am saying that all people, regardless of whether you are a “hand raiser” or not should think about how they enter times of worship.

Have you told your spirit, thoughts, preconceived ideas, “Quiet Please”?

Are you accepting the truth that God is the Holy one in your relationship, that he is the Almighty one, who really does know what he is doing?

Will you believe that he was, he is, and he will be?

Are you resting in the fact that no good thing does God withhold  from them whose walk is blameless (and because that is true you CAN rest)? {Psalm 84:11}

 Will you let this mindset flow into your everyday life and not just your Sunday morning life, for isn’t worship more than just something we do on the weekends?

How can you live your life with a little more “Quiet Please”?

God is good. We know this. Let’s offer a quiet heart as a testament to that.

Ms. Hazel. Part II. {Sabotage}

Last week I told you about Ms. Hazel. The spy woman. Who lived down the road. And we had no idea. I guess that means she was a pretty good spy.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be spy? I have. On numerous occasions. Like last week. And three days ago. And last night.

Anyway.
When my family was home last week we revisited one of our favorite movies from our childhood:
Home Alone 2. Lost in New York.
What a classic.
“Hello, this is Peter Macalaster, the father…” (If any of you have seen it, you know what I am talking about!).

The story goes that Kevin is a boy of ten years old who gets split up from his parents at the airport. He goes to New York, they go to Miami. While there he runs about, enjoying himself at the expense of his father’s credit card and doing all the things a ten year old boy left alone in NYC would want to do.

What he doesn’t want to do, however, is run into the bad guys that he had to fight off in Home Alone 1.
But, like all good movies of the early 90’s go, sure enough, Harry and Marv spot him in New York and are out to get their revenge on the little boy who hilariously sabotaged them the previous year. All that follows is little Kevin, again, successfully outwitting the bad guys and thwarting all of their plans for the harm they wanted to inflict on the little buddy, in a clean, comedic fashion you don’t see much of these days.

So what in the world, you might ask yourself, does this have to do with Ms. Hazel?

And my answer?
Nothing! They are just both stories from my childhood that I wanted to tell you about.
Ha.
That’s not actually true.
Sure, I never watched Home Alone 2 with Ms. Hazel, but what with all of this talk about spies and people sabotaging bad guys it has got me thinking.

When was the last time you thought about sabotage?

Are you like the majority of my friends who would answer “Never” to that question, or are you like the handful of friends who would admit that at times they have been completely preoccupied with thoughts about it?
I will let you guess which category I fall into.

Well, the other day I WAS thinking about sabotage and spy-ness (thanks to thoughts about Ms. Hazel and Home Alone 2) and I got to thinking, “Why don’t I practice a little more sabotage in my life?”

Now before you get all huffy let me explain.
I don’t mean sabotage in the sense of tricking out buildings, setting booby traps, starting rumors, etc. I am talking about spiritual sabotage.

When I was in college I picked up a book for pleasure reading about this group of English spies during WWII. They were totally off-record, nobody knows what happened to them, all they know is that during the war their sole goal was sabotage of the Germans.

They would change rail road tracks so that trains loaded with supplies going to Berlin ended up in Rome, they would throw guns into rivers, the girls would figure out how to date German military generals so that they would hear all kinds of secret plans, etc etc. Those types of things. Anything they could do to thwart plans, change the course of a project, or be a force of resistance not originally anticipated by the enemy, they would. Small things. Big things. Whatever would be a fly in the ointment—a sabotage, if you will.
This book got the thoughts forming in my head and I have been mulling them these how many years.

Why is it that when people becomes Christians a lot of times they tend to lose their backbone? I understand the whole, “Live at peace with all people when it is in your power to do so,” but what about the verse where Jesus says, “Be shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves?”

How in the world are we to be shrewd, and yet retain a level of purity, not muddy our souls up?

Let me propose that the answer is spiritual sabotage.

How many of you know someone who isn’t a Believer in Jesus?
(All of you better have raised your hand.)
Ok, do you believe that if that person gave their life to the Lord that God would have a plan for their life, a purpose of some kind?
(I hope all of you raised your hand again.)
Well, have you thought about the fact that the devil has a plan for that person, too? Just like how the Nazi’s those English spies were sabotaging had plans. They had plans for the continent of Europe, Asia, the world.

As Believers in Jesus, the ones no longer under the plans of the devil, why don’t we be like the English and practice a little more sabotage on the devil?

Why are we not making more of a stink about all of the spiritual territory (i.e. the souls of people) that he is claiming? Why are we taking the decreasing of the church just lying down?
What about all of that shrewdness we are called to? We have been given the Spirit of the Living God to indwell us. That’s power, kids. The devil’s schemes are not too much for us now.
You know, the devil has plans for people, but the devil doesn’t know the future. So why don’t we try to catch him off guard?

All of those non-Christians we know, the ones whose eyes are still veiled, I wonder when was the last time we strategically prayed for them, sent a flaming arrow in their direction to burn off that veil. Sometimes I wonder what could happen if I took this stuff more seriously. The devil wasn’t planning on my prayer being directed towards that person, I guarantee it, and all of the sudden there is resistance against him, against his plans. It’s we Believers making efforts to derail the train, does that make sense? If that person was a train, trust me, the enemy wants them in “Berlin.” What in the world can we do to get them to “Rome”?

I have talked before about the hardcore music scene. I have a couple ties to that industry, so this isn’t totally coming out of left field, but I was at a concert earlier this summer and I was watching a band that is straight up evil. I know, nobody ever wants to call someone evil, but if you put together their lyrics with their lifestyle with their beliefs about stuff, all you can see is the bony fingers of Satan, strangling the life out of them.

And as I was watching them I thought, “What could maybe happen if I started praying for them?” Surely the devil would have NEVER expected that wrench to be thrown into his plans, and I can’t help but think that it HAS to make waves. It has to throw one of his guns into the river.

Will something happen in their lives to show proof that my prayers weren’t in vain? Who knows. Better question: WHO CARES? Saving people is not my business. Getting in the devil’s way is my business. I don’t know whether my prayers will lead to them answering the call of Jesus, but I do know this: if I ever was “in line” with them at the judgment seat of Christ, I will be able to look them in the eye and say, “I’m sorry you never let the truth of the gospel soften your heart, but I fought my hardest for you. You were not lost without a battle.”

Now I am a realist and I know that at that point, aka after they have died, they will probably not have cared that I prayed for them, but somehow I think God will.
Because what if the opposite was true? What if at the Judgment Seat I was in line with those guys, guys who I had ties to and KNEW were in the hand of Satan, but I had never done anything to sabotage the plans the devil had for them? What if Jesus looks at me on that day and says, “Their end would have been different if you had prayed for them.”

I have no desire to get into a spiritual discussion right now on predestination and free will and whether any of the above concept is possible or right and all that jazz, and I know I don’t have anything theological to back up what I am saying, but all I want you to do is think about the people in your life who don’t yet know Jesus. Or even the people you only have ties to, or complete strangers, or whoever in the world God puts on your heart or in your eyesight…think about those people and ask yourself, “Am I doing anything to thwart the devil’s plans for their life?”

Be honest with yourself:
Are there prayers that you need to pray for those people?
Are there conversations you need to have with those people?
Things said and prayers prayed that the devil never saw coming?

Are we going to thwart his plans, sabotage, if you will, his plans, or are we going to just live in a false peace with them that comes only from our lack of interference with the course of their eternity?

“Snatch them out of the fire…” Jude says (verse 23).
Listen, Wolfies. There are a lot of people on a Satan-driven train going to “Berlin” right now. Don’t take this knowledge with a hands-off approach.
Do something to try to derail it.

Ms. Hazel

My family was all together over the weekend. We had a great little time! And we had company, of course! And we ate SO MUCH!

I don’t plan on eating until Thanksgiving now.

Ha.

That's a lie.

Anyway, one night our mom was reading something to us and it sparked one of those “Do-you-remember-when-” sessions.

One memory in particular got all of us talking.
Let’s just call this memory “Ms. Hazel.”

When I was a kid my dad always wanted me and my brothers to have experiences that maybe other kids wouldn’t have. He was a big proponent of meeting all kinds of interesting people. “No one is a stranger to our dad,” we kids would say.

I remember one person in particular that caught my whole family a little off guard. She was a neighbor from a few miles away. Now remember, we grew up in a super rural area, so neighbors from 6 miles away were really only like 8 houses down the road.

Anyway. She was a neighbor and I don’t have the foggiest idea how my dad met her or invited her over. What I do remember is this woman, probably in her upper 70’s, walking into my house. Brown skirt on with a cardigan, white hair in a coiffed bun, long neutral colored coat.

She had come for dinner.

And she was…..weird.
I know, it’s not very nice to say, but she was. We had had some pretty interesting characters in our house, but none were like her.

She was always talking about how she had worked for the government and had spent time in Russian and Africa and everywhere else and government cars would just show up at her door in the middle of the night (yes, at the farm down the road) and take her to Washington D.C. and she said she had seen all of these documents; that she still had all of these documents. She told us that microwaves were going to kill all of us, that certain politicians were going to turn out to be bad, and she referred to herself in third person.

“Ms. Hazel went here and she did this.” “No, Ms. Hazel doesn’t like that, thank you.” Etc. Etc.
That was dinner. And we all kind of stared at each other after she left and were like, “What in the world was Ms. Hazel?” We were confounded to say the least.

Over the course of the next few months I think my parents tried to reach out to her a few times again, for even though she lived down the road, she didn’t have electricity, she didn’t have running water, her house looked almost like it was abandoned, she didn’t have a car. She always wanted my dad to drink a bottle of wine with her. She would wear a stocking cap with long coats in the summer, collecting sticks in her yard for her wood burning stove.

It was rumored that she had a reindeer in her barn.
How odd.
After a while I think my dad gave up. I think he thought she was a nut-job.
So time went on and Ms. Hazel faded from our memories.

A handful of years later we heard that she had passed away.

And then the plot thickened. It must have been the farmer who owned the property she lived on or her family or somebody was going through the house to see if anything was salvageable.

And do you know what he found?

Artifacts from Russia and Africa and Everywhere Else.
Documents. Legal documents. All of the ones she had told us about.
She had passports and travel tickets. Trench Coats.

Do you want to know the nuttiest thing?
Everything Ms. Hazel had told us was true.
She actually HAD been a spy, just like she told us. Cars had picked her up in the middle of the night.

To make the story even less believable, a few years ago my parents were hours away from our house in an Asian restaurant and they started talking to the people at the table next to them. When my parents said where they lived the guy goes, “Oh yeah, I had an aunt who lived up there. Did you ever know a Ms. Hazel?”

Shocked my parents were, but glad that they could say yes.
“We heard she was a spy, huh?”
The nephew replied, “Oh yeah, she totally was. She would bring us back trinkets as a kid from all over the world. She would be gone a lot and then just randomly show up. We never really knew where she was....”

A spy, living down the road from me. If only I had known that then. What in the world must it be like to be a spy?!!? To be a spy, don’t you have to believe that there must be a whole lot of stuff going on under the surface? All kinds of hidden things. Plot and plans. That no normal people want to think about, talk about, or confront.

Except those that do. And believing that leaves you really no option other than to do something about all of those hidden things.

No wonder she was weird. In her case, truth really is stranger than fiction.

Ok, that’s what I have for you right now. Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this.

And I will. Later.

Happy Tuesday.