Passing the health quiz

“Live longer and better,” promised the title of a recent article in my newspaper. I’m already crusading in our home against sugar and white flour (as much as possible!). Wondering what more I could do, I read on and discovered:

To improve memory, I should go on walks, which are better for mental alertness than even crossword puzzles and ginkgo biloba supplements. (Where did I put my walking shoes?)

To decrease risks for diabetes and heart disease, I need to cut back on extended television watching. I’m not much for television, but as someone whose livelihood involves another sedentary device (computer), I took note. Better than excessive screen time: take a walk.

A middle-age history of bad habits (smoking, avoiding exercise, other unhealthy behaviors) doesn’t doom you. The article said even walking a few times a week can help such people stay healthier when they reach old age, than those who didn’t.

Opening the blinds helps you feel younger. I’m okay here. I keep our home bright during the day. I love looking out at the sky and plant life, and the sunlight helps keep SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) away. Even more sunlight: take a walk.

Physical activity and social connections lengthen life span. The experts say 5.4 years more. Another reason to take a walk!

Not all of the suggestion involved physical activity (take a walk!). Another was:

Volunteering improves your health, because it helps you find a higher purpose in life and fights against depression. For the past 15 months I’ve been sewing baby blankets for the local hospital to give its impoverished maternity patients. Just finished #200. Yep, a high purpose (to uphold the sanctity of life and bring glory to God). I serve people in other ways, too. Nice to know that being others-centered (which is commanded in scripture anyway--Gal. 5:13) has health benefits.

Experts also say it helps to have a walking companion. My husband and I take walks together at our town’s riverside trail. We thrill together to see wildlife (deer, beavers, ducks, eagles, red-winged blackbirds, geese, herons, cranes, even a skunk--which hastens our healthy walk!). But even when I walk alone, I have Someone along. God and I have some good talks as I walk. It’s something like David wrote, “Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee” (Psalm 143:8b KJV).

I’ll keep this short. It’s time for my walk!

Tired of winter

Snow is predicted as I write, but I don’t expect to see much. All around, spring is whispering its approach. Near my home, some daffodils have already pushed stems out of the thawing ground. This time of year, I’m drawn back to the poetry in Song of Songs (Solomon): "See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come" (2:11-12). Yes, I know this is supposed to be a love song between a king and his beloved. But it’s also a celebration of God’s lavish love for me. He, too, says, “Arise, come, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me” (v. 13).

God programmed into flowers the cycle of living and dying, seen so clearly in those that rise from bulbs. When I clip off the daffodils’ spent stems in late spring, I think of their pungent, brilliant yellow blooms. I’m also confident they’ll return the next spring.

If only such confidence fortressed my prayers for those in a persistent spiritual “winter.” Every day as I open my prayer notebook, my fingers pass over the names of many in this nation and overseas, who are missing out on God’s best for their lives. Some have no relationship with the God who created them. Others acknowledge God, but are stuck in life, like a February that stays gray, flowers that never push through soil, dirty snow piles that never melt. For them, I sometimes let the words of Ephesians 2:10 become my prayer: “Father, I know You care for them more than they’ll ever know. Remind them that they are Your workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which You prepared in advance for them to do. Help them rise out of ‘stuckness’ to the challenges and joys of serving You.”

Winter is part of nature, and of life. Because we live in a fallen world, we’ll all experience the chill of hardship and sorrow. But we also live in the light of Easter, the history-shattering reality of a Christ who didn’t stay dead and buried, but came back to life. God has “rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13-14).

Go back and re-read that verse. It thrills me. It’s part of Paul’s phenomenal prayer for the Colossian church, and includes petitions that their lives would bear fruit in loving service for God. Or, to borrow an old saying, that they’ll bloom for Him where they are planted.

I’m ready for spring. Let the thawing continue!

The Bad Bed Fairy

My children grew up with the expectation that you made your bed in the morning. If school mornings got too hurried, the “Bed Fairy” stepped in and made their beds—but that was to be the exception. Behind that rule was the expectation that learning to manage their rooms would eventually help them manage their lives. Ditto for other chores, like helping with dishes and taking out the garbage.
I grew up the same way. I never questioned the discipline, but knew I felt better about life when my room was clean. Not until I went to college and was assigned to dorm rooms with messy women did I realize some simply didn’t care. One roommate had a habit of leaving just-washed sheets in a heap on her bed while she went off and socialized for the evening while I studied. She usually returned well past bedtime. Not wanting to be awakened by her “bed-making duty,” I quietly made up her bed. Over and over.

One night, however, I was a bad bed fairy. I made her bed, all right, but “short-sheeted” it, pulling the top sheet up halfway so she couldn’t push her feet to the bottom. When she came back to the room (late, of course) and discovered my trickery, we had a good laugh. And I did show good will by re-doing her bed—the right way.

I never gave much thought to the division between “makers” and “messies” until reading an article recently that quoted published “life coaches.” Their conclusion: making your bed every morning (as 60% of the population does) has some amazing life benefits:

*A boost in happiness, including helping dispel gloom if you come home from school or work after a not-so-good day.

*A sense of organization for the rest of the day, helping you feel more motivated and even more productive. That’s because it’s a tiny task you can complete with visible results, energizing you to do another, and another, and…

*The establishment of a “keystone habit” that helps encourage good habits in other parts of one’s life. Among them: stronger skills at sticking to a budget.

I didn’t make this up! This is all straight from the keyboards of “life coaches” who get paid to tell people how to live better. Making your bed—who would have known?

Now, don’t throw your pillows at me. I won’t charge a penny for this friendly advice. I will quote another wise person: “Listen to advice and receive instruction, that you may be wise in your latter days” (Proverbs 19:20).

Suitcases

One thing that endears Corrie ten Boom’s writings to me is her use of simple, memorable props. One comes from a story of speaking to war-weary Japanese soon after World War 2. Faced with a language barrier, she decided to use an object lesson: her suitcase. She asked them if their hearts felt like a heavy suitcase. They surely did. Then she pulled onto a table the heavy suitcase she’d taken all over the world. She told them her heart felt just as heavy the previous week. Then the Lord gave her a verse: “Cast all your cares upon Him, for he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:7).

Opening the suitcase, she began taking out its contents. Something represented her very tired co-workers. Another, her concerns about the next trip to a town where she knew nobody. Another item was her heavy heart for friends who were in a car wreck. Still another: a boy who refused to believe in Christ. Then she named the burdens of her own sins, including pride and self-seeking.

Finally, the suitcase empty, she declared “Amen,” closed it and walked out of the room swinging it. Her audience got the message: Cast all your care upon Him. Empty your “trouble suitcase.”

Recently my husband and I visited a friend who has an incurable, wasting disease. She is emptying her life’s suitcase and talks of going to Heaven soon. Her husband is also emptying a suitcase: that dream of growing very old together. On the way home, as I reflected on their life together, I thought of many burdens they’ve shared. They lost a baby. They went through a long season of care-giving. An adult child has struggled. There are other burdens that won’t go away during this lifetime. But God can carry them.

Many of us have a lot of stuff in our “trouble suitcases.” We may claim to “give it to God,” but we really haven’t. Even Corrie struggled in that area, as revealed in the second part of her story.

Years later in Europe she was approached by a Japanese gentleman who remembered her speech about the “trouble suitcase.” Unfortunately, he didn’t remember the “emptying,” but instead how after the meeting she reloaded that heavy suitcase and dragged it away, as tired and burdened as when she came in.

That afternoon in the privacy of her room, Corrie thought about whether she practiced what she preached. She realized how in her morning prayer time, she might unpack the “trouble suitcase.” But throughout the day, she often took back the very things she had entrusted to her Heavenly Father.

A few hours after visiting the dying friend, I called on someone else who often precedes a conversation with, “I’m so worried about….” Repeatedly I remind this person to trust God instead of worrying. But the admonition inevitably boomerangs to me, causing me to ask, “How heavy is my own trouble suitcase? What can God carry lots better than I can?”

We know the answer: everything.

Paraphrasing a well-known credit card ad: what’s in your suitcase?