Kathy Weckwerth

Everyday Encouragement

life's journey

What’s Humility Look Like On You

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Recently, Farmer Dean and I were at a store looking for a new jacket.  Dean was along for his opinion, but as a shopper, I pretty much know what I like and what I don’t like.

The Farmer is kind and gentle.  He’s not boastful and he’s pretty good at being humble.  So when he gives feedback, it doesn’t sting.

I tried on a fabulous jacket that I loved and my sweet husband said, ” Mam, I don’t think it looks good.”  I said, “Huh?  What are you saying to me?”

He answered, “I’m not sure.  Either it’s the color or it’s the cut.  The other one you tried on looked better.  This, well … uh, it’s not so good.”

And then I saw it.  I really saw it.  I went to the large mirror at the back of the store and saw what Dean saw.  It didn’t look so great.  Bunched up in the back, too short in the sleeves and really made me look like I had jumped from upstairs to get into it.  But the funny thing was all along, I thought it felt good … I felt happy so it must look good.

Today, this same scenario makes me think of my everyday life and what God’s been talking to me about.  The older I get, the more experience I have had with the talents, gifts, and jobs I carry out in life.

Lately, wherever I go, people seem to overlook my years of hard work and trying to be humble, I avoid stating (although I really want to), “But I’ve been a Director of Worship & Creative Arts for 35 years, ” or “Wait!  I’ve been a professional musician for 35+ years, wrote 5 books, have had my own bands, sung commercials for 8 years on radio, started my own business, blah … blah … blah.

You see if you’re reading this, you don’t want to be impressed by my resume.  You want to be impressed by my kindness, my gentleness, my Christ-likeness.

But this week (and last) I was pushed by people challenging my knowledge, my skill-set and abilities.  I reached in the back of my mind for my manual of all I’ve done, when suddenly it dawned on me.  The Apostle Paul, one of the most respected apostles in scripture (who taught, preached, healed, wrote 13 New Testament books blah, blah, blah) didn’t start off his letter to the Romans with:

“Let me prove my value.  Here’s all I’ve done.  Doesn’t it look good on me?”

Nope.  He said these words, “This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.”  He could have said, “I, the Apostle Paul …” But instead, he put the truth first.  As a Christ-follower he was an incredible man, but he wore his humility beautifully. Like a perfect fitted suit coat.  First comes the “slave of Christ …” and then he moves on to calling himself an apostle.

The couple of people last week who wanted to boast and brag and let me know that they were sure I didn’t know anything, well, I just gently reminded myself of Paul.  No proving.  No bragging.  No remembering.  No comparison.  And definitely no competition.  Let the others wear their coats and as the Farmer said, not look so good.

You see, I want to wear my jacket of humility right there for everyone to see.  Like Paul.  Like Farmer Dean.  Like Jesus Christ.

What’s humility look like on you?

Can You Live With Silence

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The first thing I do after I open my eyes in the morning is talk to God.  Then, I talk to Farmer Dean.  Then, I turn the music on at my house.

My brother calls it “grocery store music,” but I call it music from the 1940s and 50s.  It’s soothing to my soul.  As a matter of fact, sometimes it takes me back to being a little child, shopping with my mother at the Hy-Vee in Clarinda, Iowa.

Once the grocery store music is playing throughout the house, I talk to people.  The house phone rings. The cell phone rings.  People … people … people.

The doors are opened to let the cool sounds of summer rain into my office, while the dripping drops plop onto the lawn furniture.  A screech of tires go past on the road outside the house, and a familiar honk of a large semi toots “hello” as it passes the little church.

All of these things bring me comfort.  All of these things relate to sound.  I love sound.

As a former Worship Director, I had music playing continuously.  I needed to listen to the latest and greatest so that my congregation could keep up with what was relevant.

Sounds are a constant in this world.

When Dean and I travel, we throw in a CD and listen to a pastor preach.  Or, I read a book out loud to the two of us.

When Dean and I are at home, we have the TV blaring the most recent news, or we have a CD of birds and music floating through the house.

But whatever I’m doing, wherever I am, I have to have sound.

That is … until last week.

Last week I was with my granddaughter, Cordelia.  Cordie and I decided to play with Play dough at the big old farm table.  I quick jumped up after I got everything set out and said to her, “I forgot, I’ll quick put the Little Mermaid CD in.”

And then it happened.  A three year old looked up from her masterpiece of a play dough snowman and said, “We don’t need sound, Nan.  We just need quiet.”

Huh?  What?  No sound.  I don’t think I can do it.

She looked directly at me and said, “Please, Nan, sit down.  Let’s just play in the quiet.”

And we did.

You know what happened?  I was at Peace.  I felt Patience.  I was Listening.  I was fully Attentive.  I was Engaged. I was Resting.

A three year old taught me a lesson I needed to  re-learn.  That sometimes the quiet is what works best.  Sometimes in quiet we can get more done, we can rest our weary minds and souls, we can embrace something that is so necessary in today’s world.

Quiet.  It does the body/mind/soul … good.

Try it today.

What’s in Your Closet

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In television comedies, like I Love Lucy, an actor opens a surreptitiously bulging door to a storage area and is buried in an avalanche of junk. Something similar happened one day when all three of my daughters visited my home. My youngest, Jenessa, tried to open the basement closet door.

A small pow-wow between the girls produced determined attitudes. They announced it was time to clean out the big-crowded basement closet and they would help. The basement closet is everyone’s typical basement closet. It’s the place where everyone’s junk gets tossed. Three daughters, a mom and dad, all pitch whatever they don’t want to think about, into this big walk-in closet.

The shelves go from floor to ceiling and they are peppered with big plastic bins. You know the kind of stuff that’s in those bins … the things that you just don’t have a clue where to put them. They are the things you want to store, because you can’t make yourself get rid of them. You tuck them away, close the lid and walk away.

But middle daughter Chandra headed down the stairs and said, “I’m facing the bins. I’m facing the clothes and boots I don’t want, the old CDs, the stacks of books. I’m facing it all.”

Just like that she pulled out one of her bins without realizing that our old Monopoly game that’s taped together (it’s a throwback to 1975 and escaped the bin storage), money torn and pieces missing, was quickly scattered across the floor.

There we were, all four of us scrunched into this closet looking for pieces of the game.  There was some money; there was the thimble, a couple of green houses, a red hotel, and a Go Directly to Jail card. We started trying to put them all back in the box.

Jenessa said, “Mom, pieces of this game have been missing forever. We should really dump it all out and see what’s in it and go from there.”

And suddenly it dawned on me! That’s what we need to do today. We need to take a good long look at what’s in our hearts. We need to dump everything out and look at our motivations, our intentions, and our actions. We need to figure out where the words and feelings are coming from, why they’re in there, what it looks like, and if we have just taped up the box and shoved it on the shelf with pieces that are missing, torn or broken. We need to dump it all out today and take a look to see what we’ve got.

King David is referring to God when he says, “Create in me a pure heart, oh God.” In order to dump out his own words and look at them, he’s going to replace what’s in there with the good stuff of God … right back into the box of his mind and heart … seal it up with some strong God-tape… and go from there.

We stuff life in, we keep things we don’t need to and harbor resentment that tatters and frays the edges of our heart and then we stuff it all in and put it back on the shelf of the closet of life. But that stuff, those pieces, will eventually come out. Often, if we’re not totally aware of what we’ve stored in the heart’s bin, it will come out sideways resulting in sin.

It’s time to dump everything out. It’s time to go through the pieces and see what belongs and what you need to clean out. Let’s start with a spring cleaning of the heart and soul. Let’s open the doors, breathe in the fresh air, and feel renewed.

Proverbs 4:23, “Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that’s where life starts.”

 

Six Soul Cleaning Steps

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clean-1445150Soul Cleaning is a much-needed attempt to clear out your heart and mind and get you in a better place to walk away refreshed and restored.

In scripture, we will often read the cries of a distressed heart from King David.  After David has been in sin, he cries out to God and says … time for a soul cleaning … Psalm 26:2, “Test me, Lord, and try me, examine my heart and mind.”  He’s planning on blowing the cobwebs off of his dusty soul.

Here are some steps to spiritually take this spring, to clean out those closets and cobwebs of your heart and soul.

  1. Find a quiet, restful place and begin to think and journal about the weeks or month.
  1. Ask the Holy Spirit to convict you and show you where you have unresolved issues and sin.
  1. Spend some time contemplating how you got to that place of sin and determine how you can avoid revisiting this same issue again.
  1. Confess your sin before God and mentally imagine a big huge Mr. Clean eraser removing everything you’re confessing.
  1. Walk away with a renewed sense of freedom and restoration from sin.
  1. Commit to God that you will begin the steps to daily confess and keep your heart, mind, and spirit forgiven by God’s grace and your mind will remain de-cluttered.

daisy-in-the-sun-1397229[callout]When you make time for self reflection and confession, you will continually keep your heart and mind free, de-cluttered, and ready to live your best life![/callout]

Keeping the Faith

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As I drove away, I found my heart hurting, my mind whirling, and felt the urge to cry.  Not the crying that one feels when you lost someone or something you know, but the crying that comes from feeling the pain of losing something you never knew.  I pulled out of the sleepy little town not too far away and drove down the country roads towards home, but the story really begins with my alarm.

The only thing that could possibly make me want to set my alarm for 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning was a sale … and even more alluring was that it was a sale at a church.

But this sale was different.  This was a “final” sale that was listed at the top of the want ads.  Formerly known as a busy church in the 1940’s, 1960’s and beyond, the church had been sitting empty of worship for the past eight years because it’s congregants joined with a neighboring church.   It meant the end of another era.  I knew it meant another little building was closing its doors to the Life of Church, and its windows and walls would never be the same. It was a final inventory sale and I wanted to take inventory of what was happening.

In today’s society, more and more people are walking away.  They’re not just walking away from attending church, but they’re walking away from their faith.  Recently reported on the ten o’clock news, people age 18-33 were surveyed and said that although they grew up in a “Christian” home, they don’t consider themselves Christians.  What’s happening to us?

Here’s a thought … we’re so busy running our children, grandchildren, and ourselves to get to everything we think is important, that we have put Christ at the bottom of the list.  In a society where our grandparents and parents lived to go to church, made the church their social life, and made God someone who was in school, in church, in the grocery store, and on the radio/tv, we have pleasantly and complacently shrugged our shoulders, been bullied and said, “Oh, okay … whatever.”  Whatever is the word of the day.  Look it up in our dictionary and see all of our faces listed in the description.

But let me get back to the church building itself.  Sweet, hardwood floors, lovely beams on the ceiling, plush carpets, lovely kitchen, offices, and basement were all desperately crying out to my soul as I looked around at the sale items.  Yes, I found things like oak chairs for $3.00 and a fabulous milk can for $6.00, but nothing comforted the deep sadness that overcame me when the sweet owners said someone was moving in to make it their home.

Where were the congregants?  Why was their church home now a literal home?  They died off?  They no longer attend?  No pastor would come out to the middle of nowhere to preach?

The doors are closing because society is shifting.  God is being tagged at a sale and offered up to the needy buyer who wants to shuffle Him to their garage and bring Him out when needed.

[callout]No longer can we find God in our schools, in our conversations, and in our busy weeks as He once was, but He is tucked away neatly in the boxes that say, “Heirlooms.”[/callout]

As I drove away, I wept.  Not for myself, but for every single soul that lined those pews in 1940.  I cried for every single life that was changed, for every prayer spoken and every song sung.  And although I’ll be grateful for the kind owners who kept it immaculate over the past few years, and for the young man who will make it his home, I will remain concerned and confused as to the direction we now take in today’s world.  After all, what will happen to other little churches  next week and the week after that and the week after that?