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Christmas

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Merry Christmas from The Colley House!

Posted on December 21, 2023

Merry Christmas from the Colleys! We wish you …

  1. Time in the Word. Our lives will all be better, richer, more holy, more hopeful if we can all spend lots of time studying the roadmap to eternal bliss. The bliss starts now in lots of ways for those who choose searching out and doing life His way. Anger, bitterness, regret and loneliness  start now, too, for those who know His will and choose, over and over, to reject it. Open the book in 2024!
  2. The heart of a child. There’s joy in little things for those who are open to changing for Him and who are still wanting to “grow up and be…” Choose to forgive. Choose to forget. Choose to dream. Choose to change in all the right ways. 
  3. Health and energy for your challenges. There are some things over which you have no control. Sometimes life blindsides us. We pray calm and peace for those who are connected to our family in Him this year. But when you have “those days” (and maybe weeks or months), we pray that God will give you an extra measure of strength and patience to bear the load. He is good like that!
  4. Obedience to His gospel. No matter the reason you’ve never been washed in immersion and added to his one church, put that reason away. Make the trip to see me and let’s talk. Let’s make now the time. Some readers have been wanting to make this most important change for a long time. You cannot even know the feeling you will have of freedom and hope and family if you choose this washing and future faithfulness. I can help you find a group of His people who are following His specified New Testament plan in your corner of the world. I can help you from afar to be faithful and to be in heaven one day. It’s really all that matters! Take the plunge–in a literal way–now!
  5. A Matthew 25 mission. “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.” For us, this has been a year of missing a vacation or four, missing outings to the catfish restaurant with friends, postponed husband/wife dates and missing movie nights. When it’s Christmastime at the Colleys and “It’s a Wonderful Life” has not yet happened on our screen, something may be awry. But, for every missed appointment, there’s been someone who is least, who needed us. Do you know what a blessing that is?! Jesus has been right here with us and we have had the most amazing privilege of doing something for Him! Choose to “wash the feet” of the one who girded the towel in that upper room! You will not find joy like that in any other way. And when you just can’t go on serving, drink a cup of caffeinated something and go a little bit more!

If you can unwrap and treasure these five things, clean up that Christmas mess, hug your loved ones tightly and move on with hope to 2024, it will have been a great Christmas. Play with your new edition of that board game, make a cake with your new red mixer, marry that Christian man-of-your-dreams who gave you that new ring for Christmas, do whatever it is you do with that antique wooden mechanism that you can’t even identify, or step out in those new leather riding boots. Play with the little (and big) things you unwrapped. But pray with the big, eternal gifts you are unwrapping and internalizing as this challenging year comes to its close. We pray His peace for you. But remember, peace doesn’t always come in a quiet place with candles and soft music. Jesus said “My peace I leave with you” (along with a promise of persecution and suffering) to 12 men who were being given the biggest commission ever known to mankind (John 14).

Merry Christmas from the Colleys!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Remembering Christmas Past: The Squirrel under the Tree

Posted on December 8, 2023

I was up at 6 a.m. this morning—a  Sunday morning—and I asked my husband if he’d be okay studying for his lesson upstairs while I watched an episode of something (volume up) and ran on the treadmill in the basement. He said “Oh yeah…It won’t bother me. I’m just going to be preaching up here. Go ahead.”  That’s his usual mode on Sunday mornings. He likes to pace and whisper-preach his well-prepared lesson one last time. He never uses notes in the pulpit and that last run-though is vital to his memory. 

But despite the loud volume on my television and the humming treadmill motor, I could hear bumping and knocking, stamping footsteps and things falling in the upstairs part of the house. It did not sound at all like study or the kind of whisper-preaching that my husband does on early Sunday mornings.  If he was preaching up there, it must have  been some more  powerful sermon. Just as I was working up a sweat, Glenn came down the stairs, rounded the corner and with a look of utter agitation on his face, he shouted “Can you  power that down and come help me?…Can you come right now?”

“What’s wrong?…”What’s the matter?” I said as I started shutting off the treadmill and the TV.

“Well, we have a small squirrel in the house and I can’t catch him. I’ve tried and tried, but he’s very fast and He keeps going under things and behind things and I need you to help me corner him. I’m in a pickle. I have got to get back to this lesson.” 

“Oh no…Oh dear…okay,” I stammered. “…but I am really not your girl for this job.” See, Glenn wanted me to stand at the end of tables and sofas and beds to try and corner the squirrel when he emerged from hiding places. What I wanted to do was stand on top of those tables and beds and sofas and stay as far from that squirrel as I possibly could get. I soon saw, though, that our squirrel had no qualms whatsoever about running on top of tables, himself, and jumping from stairwells to tabletops to floors and behind armoires and under closed doors. He was the next thing to a flying squirrel and he was all over my house. And he loved stairwells.

The next few minutes proved to be a worthless workout. Out of breath, Glenn kept saying “I’m going to have to let you take care of this because I have to preach in a few minutes.”

“I’m not the right person for this job. I just can’t do this, “ I kept responding.

“Be brave. I need you. The church needs you. Just watch for him to come out and call me.”

About that time, we both thought we heard the little fugitive in a closet—a closet jam packed with 150 glass-bottle Coca-Colas, and a dozen packages of paper-ware for a big Christmas party we’re planning for the congregation at the end of the week. In addition there are a bajillion gift bags in there along with piles of random packing and wrapping materials and bows. There’s a shelf of 32 volumes of the “Great Books” and there’s a library that I use for Digging Deep. There are clothes I’ve hoarded for grandchildren and all of my winter coats. There are extra bed pillows and there’s an electric train. In short there are a million places for a squirrel to hide in that closet and there’s great potential for squirrel havoc in there and I am NOT the girl to go rummaging through that looking for a jumpy squirrel! I would jump out of my skin if I ever actually found him in there! My imagination went quickly to him jumping from the top shelf onto my back as  I’m jostling those boxes and bags on the floor. Or what if I came eyeball to eyeball with him when I looked behind that basket of toys?!  Intellectually, I know he’s small and he wants out of my house as badly as I want him out; but this is no academic exercise. This is Cindy Colley in a closet with a squirrel who’s already proven his gymnastic prowess. I’m not your girl.  

So I shut that closet door. I pushed a very heavy chest against that closet door. I went to another closet and got a big black board that I use to cover the kitchen sink when I need more counter space for serving company and I wedged it up against the door, between the chest and the crack at the bottom of the door. I was thinking about all the donations I was making to this project (after all, who wants to set the dishes for guests on a “squirrel trap”?) But I was not thinking too long and hard  about that. I was thinking “I am NOT your girl, whether you have to preach or not.”

I went to the door of the room and shut it, stuffing a quilt under the crack at the bottom. The door kept popping open under pressure, so I rigged a bungee cord up to another doorknob in the adjoining hall. My house was starting to look like a scene in “Home Alone” and I knew that home…alone was exactly what that squirrel was going to be while we went to worship. Home (my home)…Alone (with my Christmas gifts and party supplies and my precious little library)! I could not bear that thought. I am not your girl. 

“What if he escaped from the closet while I was gone to get the board? What if he is not incarcerated, but instead he’s ‘at large’ again in my house? What if he’s in there parading around my Christmas tree where he was when Glenn first spotted him while pacing and preaching  in the living room? What if he is IN my 13-foot Christmas tree? Will I find a mess of broken ornaments on the floor when I get home from worship? Will I pull back the covers on our bed and find pieces of that tree…or worse? What if we don’t find him today? How far back does the front seat recline in my car and is it going to be a warm night?” I went back and rigged another door with a quilt and bungee cord. Some things are just more important than…say, washing your hair or even showering before leaving for worship. 

As we traveled to worship, Ezra and Colleyanna, (ages five and three, respectively) called for FaceTime. Hearing about that squirrel was the best thing about their morning. “INSIDE your house?!!” they yelled with glee. “Under your Christmas tree?!”…”I wish dat squuyell was at my house! Dat would be esciting!”

I tried hard to worship. I really did…and that lesson about Mary and Martha zoomed right over to my pew and zeroed right into my “careful and troubled about many things” heart and I repented for the squirrel-induced hindrances over and over.   

Pulling out of the parking lot, Glenn said “Where do you want to go for lunch?” 

“I just want to go home and find that squirrel.” I replied….”In fact, I’d really love to cook lunch for you while you do the dispatch work.” 

“Seriously?…Well, alright then. We’ll go home.” 

And my good husband drove home, got his little 22 pistol, loaded it with rat shot, and made a regular invasion of that closet. In fact, that entire room looks like it was in the direct path of a level five tropical cyclone.  

A few minutes later, Glenn came through the kitchen with a John Wayne kind of swagger and said “Well, we got him.” 

“Great!… Where was he? I didn’t hear the gun.”

“It was pretty easy, actually,” Glenn replied. “I was just about to give up finding him in that closet. I walked through the bathroom with my gun to look for him in the sewing room…” (That was another room I’d bungee-corded off).  

“…And out of the corner of my eye, I spotted him…floating around in the toilet.” 

Ten take-aways from the thirsty squirrel saga:

  1. Biblical, marital submission trumps fear and is a strong catalyst for creativity.  
  2. When you say “I do…for better or worse” at the altar, you never know what you’re really signing up for.    
  3. Some mornings, just living life burns more calories than running on a treadmill  (or even doing a high intensity training workout).
  4. Always keep a few spare bungee cords around the house. They’re good for lots of things.
  5. Worship is hard work. Some days it’s very hard work.
  6. That Mary and Martha lesson is very practical and unrelenting in its varied applications (https://westhuntsville.org/sermons/mary-martha-and-lazarus/).  
  7. Lots of sacrifices will be made when the thirsty have hope of a drink.  
  8. Make your husband a hero even if he never pulls the trigger. It’s all in the chase; the effort and the end result. 
  9. Sometimes you plunge in too deeply for something you want and you find there’s no way back out.
  10. Not every Sunday baptism ends with walking in newness of life.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Merry Christmas!

Posted on December 25, 2021

Merry Christmas from the Colleys! We wish you …

  1. Time in the Word. Our lives will all be better, richer, more holy, more hopeful if we can all spend lots of time studying the roadmap to eternal bliss. The bliss starts now in lots of ways for those who choose searching out and doing life His way. Anger, bitterness, regret and loneliness  start now, too, for those who know His will and choose, over and over, to reject it. Open the book in 2022!
  2. The heart of a child. There’s joy in little things for those who are open to changing for Him and who are still wanting to “grow up and be…” Choose to forgive. Choose to forget. Choose to dream. Choose to change in all the right ways. 
  3. Health and energy for your challenges. There are some things over which you have no control. Sometimes life blindsides us. We pray calm and peace for those who are connected to our family in Him this year. But when you have “those days” (and maybe weeks or months), we pray that God will give you an extra measure of strength and patience to bear the load. He is good like that!
  4. Obedience to His gospel. No matter the reason you’ve never been washed in immersion and added to his one church, put that reason away. Make the trip to see me and let’s talk. Let’s make now the time. Some readers have been wanting to make this most important change for a long time. You cannot even know the feeling you will have of freedom and hope and family if you choose this washing and future faithfulness. I can help you find a group of His people who are following His specified New Testament plan in your corner of the world. I can help you from afar to be faithful and to be in heaven one day. It’s really all that matters! Take the plunge–in a literal way–now!
  5. A Matthew 25 mission. “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.” For us, this has been the year of skipped vacations, missed outings to the catfish restaurant with friends, postponed husband/wife dates and missed movie nights. When it’s Christmastime at the Colleys and “It’s a Wonderful Life” never happened on our screen, something was terribly awry. But, for every missed appointment, there’s been someone who is least, who needed us. Do you know what a blessing that is?! Jesus has been right here with us and we have had the most amazing privilege of doing something for Him! Choose to “wash the feet” of the one who girded the towel in that upper room! You will not find joy like that in any other way. And when you just can’t go on serving, drink a cup of caffeinated something and go a little bit more!

If you can unwrap and treasure these five things, clean up that Christmas mess, hug your loved ones tightly and move on with hope to 2022, it will have been a great Christmas. Play with your new drone, make a cake with your new red mixer, marry that Christian man-of-your-dreams who gave you that new ring for Christmas, do whatever it is you do with that antique wooden mechanism that you can’t even identify, or step out in those new leather riding boots. Play with the little (and big) things you unwrapped. But pray with the big, eternal gifts you are unwrapping and internalizing as this challenging year comes to its close. We pray His peace for you. But remember, peace doesn’t always come in a quiet place with candles and soft music. Jesus said “My peace I leave with you” (along with a promise of persecution and suffering) to 12 men who were being given the biggest commission ever known to mankind (John 14).

Merry Christmas from the Colleys!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

ELVES!

Posted on December 6, 2021

It was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. I woke up pretty early on Saturday morning, and ELVES (full-sized elves!) were already outside my kitchen window and they had twinkly lights and wreaths and a giant Santa snow-globe, already in full motion beside my driveway. How do elves know these things?!…I mean that I had extra little people frequently visiting this fall…with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads and a mammy that’s got cobwebs dancing in hers. Those elves knew that I had more visiting kids and chaos and less serenity and sanity than ever in my lifetime! And so there they were…James and Darren and Mandie and Hunter and the North Pole remote team, too…Molly and Jennifer and Brad and Jessica. (And maybe there were more. I mean who can accurately assess something so magical as the North Pole’s outreach mission?!)

To say that’s the sweetest thing in my holiday season (maybe, my life) is accurate. There they were out there with their coffee and cocoa (shaken, not stirred) hunting ladders and even hunting a key. (They thought we were not home….Now, what if they had walked in and there we were…in all our pajama glory!?)

And so I was having a party last night. I ran to Walmart after morning worship to curbside pick-up for stuff I really needed for that party. That order was delayed indefinitely. So I cancelled the order and went inside to shop in a chaotic flurry of wall to wall people. Glenn was with me and he cannot find squat in there…. “They don’t have this.” Then I’d go find whatever it was on the very aisle in which he’d been searching.  (I should be a little more charitable. I just realized the Papa shopper could be reading. I love you soooo much, but you ain’t a shoppa’ papa.) We checked out and Papa pulled the SUV to the front and center of the Walmart entrance and I opened that hatch to glass-bottled cream sodas falling from the vehicle…crashing, rolling, splashing out onto that parking lot. It was loud and drew lots of attention. A worker came by and said a naughty word and continued on his way. We began picking up sticky glass and making trash can treks. I had cream soda suede boots and Glenn had little shards of glass in his fingers. 

Obviously, the afternoon did NOT hold enough hours to clean up all the messes I needed to remedy. I left that worship service last night as fast as I could when the last “amen” was said and raced home to cook my nuggets, pour my eggnog, pack more ice on the cokes and make the cider. I rushed in the kitchen door and started (I mean a big time jump!) to find PEOPLE in there just humming right along…there was my sister, Celine, taking the nuggets out of the oven. The aroma of the cider was already filling the house. The cokes were covered. Scotty, her husband, said “We can’t find the eggnog”….Where’s the trash bin?”…”Which door should I use to refill this cooler?”…”Where’s the extra ice?” And all of this, after he’d preached all day and filled all kinds of needs for many  other people through the day. 

Words fail. Matthew 25 people I’m writing about will respond “When?…”When did we see you thirsty and give you a drink?…When did we see you hungry and feed you? …”When?”  It’s a million different days and ways and gifts and words and prayers and covert twinkly lights and snow globes and nuggets and cups of cider. It’s the indisputable fact that God’s people are the best people in the world! We had visitors at the party who are just getting to know a taste of what the Huntsville family of God is like. Those visitors don’t know it yet, but they are in for the most important decision of their lives as they start looking at faithful, involved commitment to this family and kingdom. I am so, so, so thankful for God’s people in my life right now and I pray for the chance to get to “pay forward” some of this weekend’s goodness. 

It’s fun to think about elves, but it’s real and powerful to think about the greatest of these…the love of the people of God in times of discouragement.

God is so amazing through His people!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Take it to the Porch!

Posted on December 16, 2019

I had a bunch of people over for supper Friday night….I mean a bunch. Sometimes people refer to this night as “Christmas at the Colleys”, but it’s more like “Christmas FOR the Colleys” because it’s a whole lot of fun and merriment and we are the ones who get a huge blessing from being around our family in Him. Some of today’s most faithful servants for Him were in our house last Friday night. Children brought me little bags of homemade goodness, candles, or ornaments, there was lots of food and laughter and there was even football in the yard. 

But sometimes on this week, we’re a little preoccupied with prep (or even clean-up) and I’m distracted. It was the week I wore my sweater to worship inside out (big tag hanging from my hip and no-one told me till the very end. (…Though I was sitting on the second row. Of course, I was. You have to parade when your tag is dangling.) It was the week Glenn got home from the drive-through with my sandwich…only there was no sandwich for me in that bag. This party prep included old-fashioned glass bottles of Coca-Cola rolling out the back of my SUV onto my driveway and breaking explosively…on three different days. It included the squirrel that went berserk inside our house (https://thecolleyhouse.org/and-prior-to-the-lesson-this-morning). And yesterday, we went to take communion to the nursing home sisters…only we forgot to bring along the communion. 

On the very last day—the day of the party— I was unquestionably out of room. I was out of room in the freezer, the refrigerator, and the countertops. Even more urgently, though, the food that was on the countertop had to find a home in refrigerator temperatures or it would perish. That’s why we call certain foods perishable. Thankfully God had provided a place of refrigerator temperatures; a place where the food could be saved. That place was, of course, the great outdoors. My screened in porch became the food-saving place that day. 

I know it’s a simple analogy, but work with me here. I started carrying food from the counter toward the porch. Just before I got to the porch, I passed a big, long, empty farm table. There was plenty of room there for all the pies and casseroles. My countertop would be free if I set them all on the table. I would not have to go out in the cold. I would save a few steps. My dining room would not get cold. I would not have to lug it all back in later. So many reasons to just move the food from counter to tabletop. But there was one BIG reason why I could not stop short of the porch. The porch was the place where the conditions were perfect for the preservation of the food. It was the place where food would not perish. Further, once I got the food just outside the place of perishing and just inside the place of salvation, I had to close the door. I had to keep the warmth that was in my house from heating up the porch. I had to keep that food in a place that was separate from the place from which it had come. Mixing the two temperatures would have cause the food to perish; to be unclean. I’m sure, to this point, I’ve not shared any light-bulb concept with you. 

But there’s a spiritual lesson here. Has not God provided a place where souls can be saved? Has He given us a place where we can be separated from the uncleanness that makes us perish? Is it okay to stop short of the entrance to that place, although there may be an alternative that seems good for many reasons. If I have moved toward that “porch door,” but not yet walked through it, am I in the place where the conditions are right for salvation or am I still in the place of perishing?  Am I in the place of the saving element? Succinctly, if I’ve not passed through the door, am I saved? 

I want to add, without commentary, the words of the Holy Spirit about that place…a place where the conditions are right for soul preservation. We understand that the porch door is very important when I’m in my dining room with perishables. How much more important is the door when the perishable is my soul? 

He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who believes not will perish…Mark 16: 16.

Baptism does also now save us…1 Peter 3:21.

Arise and be baptized, washing away your sins…Acts 22:16

Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized, were baptized into his death…Romans 6:3

As many of you as have been baptized, have put on Christ…Galatians 3:27

Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins…Acts 2:38.

Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses…Colossians 2:12, 13

Some have said to me “But, Cindy Colley, you overemphasize baptism.”  

When you read the words in italics above, can you honestly think that anyone could over-emphasize the importance of baptism? Is it possible to attach too much significance to the place of preservation…of souls? 

“But what about all the other things we have have to do? They’re important, too.”

Yes they are. It was important to clear my counter. It was important to lug each pie and casserole through the dining room. It was important to grab the knob and swing the door open. I could not get to the place of preservation without doing all those things. But unless I got the food into the place of preservation, the contaminants would have compromised the food and (I can tell you for sure) we would not have eaten that food on Friday night. I did some pretty daft things through the week, but that was one thing I was going to make sure I did right. (And, by the way, if it had been hot outside on Friday, I’d have found a neighbor with freezer space. You just don’t take chances with food preservation!)

In life, we will get distracted. We will do some pretty daft things when under the gun. But we’d better get this one thing right. Being on the spiritual porch is being “in Christ.” That’s where spiritual preservation is (Ephesians 1: 3, 7), and the door to the spiritual porch—to being in Christ—is baptism (Romans 6:3,4). 

I’d sure love to help you get to the porch. God’s given every one of us the porch door. And there’s a family of wonderful people waiting for you on the porch!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

And Prior to the Lesson this Morning…

Posted on December 9, 2019

I was up at 6 a.m. this morning—a  Sunday morning—and I asked my husband if he’d be okay studying for his lesson upstairs while I watched an episode of something (volume up) and ran on the treadmill in the basement. He said “Oh yeah…It won’t bother me. I’m just going to be preaching up here. Go ahead.”  That’s his usual mode on Sunday mornings. He likes to pace and whisper-preach his well-prepared lesson one last time. He never uses notes in the pulpit and that last run-though is vital to his memory. 

But despite the loud volume on my television and the humming treadmill motor, I could hear bumping and knocking, stamping footsteps and things falling in the upstairs part of the house. It did not sound at all like study or the kind of whisper-preaching that my husband does on early Sunday mornings.  If he was preaching up there, it must have  been some more  powerful sermon. Just as I was working up a sweat, Glenn came down the stairs, rounded the corner and with a look of utter agitation on his face, he shouted “Can you  power that down and come help me?…Can you come right now?”

“What’s wrong?…”What’s the matter?” I said as I started shutting off the treadmill and the TV.

“Well, we have a small squirrel in the house and I can’t catch him. I’ve tried and tried, but he’s very fast and He keeps going under things and behind things and I need you to help me corner him. I’m in a pickle. I have got to get back to this lesson.” 

“Oh no…Oh dear…okay,” I stammered. “…but I am really not your girl for this job.” See, Glenn wanted me to stand at the end of tables and sofas and beds to try and corner the squirrel when he emerged from hiding places. What I wanted to do was stand on top of those tables and beds and sofas and stay as far from that squirrel as I possibly could get. I soon saw, though, that our squirrel had no qualms whatsoever about running on top of tables, himself, and jumping from stairwells to tabletops to floors and behind armoires and under closed doors. He was the next thing to a flying squirrel and he was all over my house. And he loved stairwells.

The next few minutes proved to be a worthless workout. Out of breath, Glenn kept saying “I’m going to have to let you take care of this because I have to preach in a few minutes.”

“I’m not the right person for this job. I just can’t do this, “ I kept responding.

“Be brave. I need you. The church needs you. Just watch for him to come out and call me.”

About that time, we both thought we heard the little fugitive in a closet—a closet jam packed with 150 glass-bottle Coca-Colas, and a dozen packages of paper-ware for a big Christmas party we’re planning for the congregation at the end of the week. In addition there are a bajillion gift bags in there along with piles of random packing and wrapping materials and bows. There’s a shelf of 32 volumes of the “Great Books” and there’s a library that I use for Digging Deep. There are clothes I’ve hoarded for grandchildren and all of my winter coats. There are extra bed pillows and there’s an electric train. In short there are a million places for a squirrel to hide in that closet and there’s great potential for squirrel havoc in there and I am NOT the girl to go rummaging through that looking for a jumpy squirrel! I would jump out of my skin if I ever actually found him in there! My imagination went quickly to him jumping from the top shelf onto my back as  I’m jostling those boxes and bags on the floor. Or what if I came eyeball to eyeball with him when I looked behind that basket of toys?!  Intellectually, I know he’s small and he wants out of my house as badly as I want him out; but this is no academic exercise. This is Cindy Colley in a closet with a squirrel who’s already proven his gymnastic prowess. I’m not your girl.  

So I shut that closet door. I pushed a very heavy chest against that closet door. I went to another closet and got a big black board that I use to cover the kitchen sink when I need more counter space for serving company and I wedged it up against the door, between the chest and the crack at the bottom of the door. I was thinking about all the donations I was making to this project (after all, who wants to set the dishes for guests on a “squirrel trap”?) But I was not thinking too long and hard  about that. I was thinking “I am NOT your girl, whether you have to preach or not.”

I went to the door of the room and shut it, stuffing a quilt under the crack at the bottom. The door kept popping open under pressure, so I rigged a bungee cord up to another doorknob in the adjoining hall. My house was starting to look like a scene in “Home Alone” and I knew that home…alone was exactly what that squirrel was going to be while we went to worship. Home (my home)…Alone (with my Christmas gifts and party supplies and my precious little library)! I could not bear that thought. I am not your girl. 

“What if he escaped from the closet while I was gone to get the board? What if he is not incarcerated, but instead he’s ‘at large’ again in my house? What if he’s in there parading around my Christmas tree where he was when Glenn first spotted him while pacing and preaching  in the living room? What if he is IN my 13-foot Christmas tree? Will I find a mess of broken ornaments on the floor when I get home from worship? Will I pull back the covers on our bed and find pieces of that tree…or worse? What if we don’t find him today? How far back does the front seat recline in my car and is it going to be a warm night?” I went back and rigged another door with a quilt and bungee cord. Some things are just more important than…say, washing your hair or even showering before leaving for worship. 

As we traveled to worship, Ezra and Colleyanna, (ages five and three, respectively) called for FaceTime. Hearing about that squirrel was the best thing about their morning. “INSIDE your house?!!” they yelled with glee. “Under your Christmas tree?!”…”I wish dat squuyell was at my house! Dat would be esciting!”

I tried hard to worship. I really did…and that lesson about Mary and Martha zoomed right over to my pew and zeroed right into my “careful and troubled about many things” heart and I repented for the squirrel-induced hindrances over and over.   

Pulling out of the parking lot, Glenn said “Where do you want to go for lunch?” 

“I just want to go home and find that squirrel.” I replied….”In fact, I’d really love to cook lunch for you while you do the dispatch work.” 

“Seriously?…Well, alright then. We’ll go home.” 

And my good husband drove home, got his little 22 pistol, loaded it with rat shot, and made a regular invasion of that closet. In fact, that entire room looks like it was in the direct path of a level five tropical cyclone.  

A few minutes later, Glenn came through the kitchen with a John Wayne kind of swagger and said “Well, we got him.” 

“Great!… Where was he? I didn’t hear the gun.”

“It was pretty easy, actually,” Glenn replied. “I was just about to give up finding him in that closet. I walked through the bathroom with my gun to look for him in the sewing room…” (That was another room I’d bungee-corded off).  

“…And out of the corner of my eye, I spotted him…floating around in the toilet.” 

Ten take-aways from the thirsty squirrel saga:

  1. Biblical, marital submission trumps fear and is a strong catalyst for creativity.  
  2. When you say “I do…for better or worse” at the altar, you never know what you’re really signing up for.    
  3. Some mornings, just living life burns more calories than running on a treadmill  (or even doing a high intensity training workout).
  4. Always keep a few spare bungee cords around the house. They’re good for lots of things.
  5. Worship is hard work. Some days it’s very hard work.
  6. That Mary and Martha lesson is very practical and unrelenting in its varied applications (https://westhuntsville.org/sermons/mary-martha-and-lazarus/).  
  7. Lots of sacrifices will be made when the thirsty have hope of a drink.  
  8. Make your husband a hero even if he never pulls the trigger. It’s all in the chase; the effort and the end result. 
  9. Sometimes you plunge in too deeply for something you want and you find there’s no way back out.
  10. Not every Sunday baptism ends with walking in newness of life.