reporting in

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Mark Twain

“If you are suffering from a bad man’s injustice,
forgive him—lest there be two bad men.”
St. Augustine

(a healing view in NC/ Julie Cook / 2022)

I know there are a great number of questions regarding the sudden and now
lengthy absence of this blogger.

Some of you know the answers, some of you do not.

However for the sake of all involved…for this particular day,
I’ll simply stick with Mark Twain…
I am not dead.

I will say however that it has often felt like a thousand deaths over these
past many months.

In a nutshell life, my life, has turned upside down and
I will simply leave it at that.

What I would like for us all to remember however is that being turned upside down
is truly not an uncommon occurrence in the fabric of our humanness.
Most all of us, at some point or other, will experience a life that
often flips and flops.

Yet what we all need to remember is that the flipping and flopping isn’t the true nor
real story found in the turmoil…
The actual true grit of the matter is found in how we manage
through all the flipping and flopping.

I’ll just say that my family’s dynamics have changed.
No details are necessary…just the knowledge of flux and change is sufficient.

There has been both sorrow and anger.
Upheaval and tumult.
Pain and suffering.
Frustration and maybe…just maybe I can feel a bit of resolve.

So within all of the flipping and flopping, I have moved to a new state.
I am mending as I pick up my scattered pieces.

When one is attempting to put one’s life back together…routine becomes important.
And so I look forward to resuming my time spent here…a once cherished routine.
I want to be here with you—my blogging family and friends.

So with all that being said, it’s time we get reacquainted.
Please know I have missed you all.

“My God, you know infinitely better than I how little I love you.
I would not love you at all except for your grace.
It is your grace that has opened the eyes of my mind and enabled them to see your glory.
It is your grace that has touched my heart and brought upon it the influence of what is so wonderfully beautiful and fair…
O my God, whatever is nearer to me than you, things of this earth,
and things more naturally pleasing to me,
will be sure to interrupt the sight of you, unless your grace interferes.
Keep my eyes, my ears, my heart from any such miserable tyranny.
Break my bonds—raise my heart. Keep my whole being fixed on you.
Let me never lose sight of you; and, while I gaze on you,
let my love of you grow more and more everyday.”
St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, p. 44-45

“The kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom…”

“The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned
upside down by the work of Jesus Christ”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

(Lady Banks roses / Julie Cook / 2021)

“[Saint] Paul understood that the suffering he was going through somehow allowed him
to share in Christ’s suffering for the world…
In his own life, there was a time when he asked the Lord three times to remove a
particular suffering from him (see 2 Corinthians 12:8).
The response he received from the Lord was not “Oh, my oversight.
That’s right, I took care of all that suffering.
You don’t have to do anything.”
No, God’s response was, “[Paul], my grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9)…
It is completely opposite of the way the world thinks…
What looked like the worst thing that ever happened on earth—Christ hanging on a cross,
bleeding to death—became the source of salvation for the entire world.
The point of weakness became the point of strength;
it was transformed into the power over death and Hell.
We have to get it through our heads that the kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom
according to the world’s perspective.
Weakness confounds the wise.
The poor and obscure confound the rich and famous…
Whatever you are going through right now, remember that God has a plan for you.
He wants to be united to you so closely that it resembles a spousal relationship…
your suffering is not inconsequential; it is extremely valuable in the economy of God.”
Jeff Cavins, When You Suffer
An Excerpt From
When You Suffer

The only truth to cling to, not our current reality

“How great you are, Sovereign LORD!
There is no one like you, and there is no God but you,
as we have heard with our own ears.
2 Samuel 7:22 NIV

(my current reality in what was once a kitchen / Julie Cook / 2020)

My current reality is obviously upside down.

Despite my angst and trepidation, let alone this world of mine being turned up on its head…
the one that I do know is that all of this mess is temporary.

And just like that…we all know that this Nation of ours is also obviously turned upside down.

And as to whether this mess in our Nation is temporary or rather a marker of an ending,
is yet to be seen…yet in the end, the one thing we do know is that all of this will mess
will eventually pass away…

Meaning this too is only temporary…but the thing is…we just don’t know how long it will last…
But that really doesn’t matter.

None of this mess really matters–

Because in the end, there is only One thing that truly matters…
Only One thing that truly matters and actually remains–as a constant.

Whew!

Thank goodness.

In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded.
But you remain the same,
and your years will never end.
Psalm 102:25-27

topsy turvy while sleeping at the office

When life is uncertain and the world seems topsy-turvy, consider Jesus’s words:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
Tim Challies

(The Mayor walking and working / Julie Cook / 2019)

So here I am in Woobooville, complete with the Mayor, working out of the Atlanta office this week.

It seems that one of The Mayor’s main assistants has Jury Duty while the other
main assistant, who lest we forget is pregnant with the Mayor’s soon to be new sheriff in town…
a new sheriff who is expected to arrive at the end of April,
is feeling quite puny and under the weather…

Enter the chief aide…
Moi.
Chief assistant and caregiver.

And so since the house that houses Woobooville has but three small circa 1950 bedrooms—that being
the main assistant’s bedroom, The Mayor’s bedroom and then the guest bedroom
(aka the chief aide’s bedroom)— the anticipation of the new sheriff’s arrival has
now turned things upside down and the entire house topsy turvy.

The guest bedroom has been emptied of what makes a guest bedroom a bedroom…
all of which has now been replaced by brand new baby boy furniture… continuing its transformation…
Thus, there is no longer a guest bedroom that has a big people bed.

Sooooo…what was the formal living room has now been turned into a complete Woobooville office…
Meaning, it is the holding place for all things Mayorial.
The Woobooville office, the walking zebra, the fox stroller, Pepa the Pig scooter and my new
bed…aka sleeper sofa along with all the old “stuff” that came out of the New Sheriff’s new nursery.

(I now sleep in the office)

The den has also been gutted of the old worn out broken furniture as it awaits a few new pieces…

So needless to say, we are upside down in Woobooville…but rest assured, the Mayor has not missed
a beat of her responsibilities…

(the Mayor hard at work in Woobooville / Julie Cook / 2019

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him
who works all things according to the counsel of his will,
Ephesians 1:11

best laid plans right?

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
‘To a Mouse’
Robert Burns

The Cross!
There, and there only though the deist rave,
and the atheist, if Earth bears so base a slave;
There and there only,
is the power to save.
William Cowper

(Wood mouse image by Andrew Everhale)

The best laid plans of mice and men…..

Ok…. so first Lent seems to have come and almost gone…
Mainly because we had a baby come Feb 17th with what started as a panic but
eventually turned thankfully to joy…

Next it was nearly 3 weeks there, then they all came here.
Then back there…
There is still very little sleeping when it’s dark…

Lent…hummm…

We managed to get a sweet little Easter dress, a little monogrammed sweater, an Easter
basket that is good to go…

Then the first of this week there was a trip to the Urgent Care for mom–

I was there to watch the baby while my son and daughter-n-law dealt with what was
thought to be food poisoning.

I’ve been around long enough to know I usually know more than Urgent Care…
what older mom, and now grandmother, doesn’t trump Urgent Care?!
My diagnosis….not any ol run of the mill food poisoning.

So I’ve brought the baby back home with me while the young parents spent a day in the ER
as my daughter-n-law got morphine, and an IV and multiple tests run…
then it was home with prescriptions and time left to wait on labs…

So as this has been anything but a typical Lent for this family…
as Easter weekend, complete with a brand new first Easter dress and a first visit to
mom’s small family church is all very much up in the air…
and with this little world of ours being somewhat upside down…

Today is still Good Friday.

We are still entering the holiest week of the Christian Faith.

Saturday will still be Holy Saturday…

And Sunday will still be Easter…

So despite all that life and this world throws our way…those best-laid plans of both
mice and men, moms and grandmothers…
Jesus still vanquished Death!

Alleluia!!!

To a Mouse
BY ROBERT BURNS
On Turning up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss ’t!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

Unraveling? Hold on!

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.
George S. Patton

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.
Our God, Our Help In Ages Past
Isaac Watts

(spicetail swallowtail butterfly hanging on in a rain shower / Julie Cook / 2016)

We’re all just holding on aren’t we…
seemingly by that proverbial thread.

We look all around us at the escalating global madness…
and we are mystified, even stupefied…
and growing more and more terrified by the day.

We find ourselves hunkering down, covering our heads, expecting the worst…
Or maybe we simply jam our fingers in our ears, dashing about chattering so loudly hoping
to drown out this frightening reality.

“We are living in a stressful age that New York Times columnist
Roger Cohen calls a “time of unraveling…Cohen imagines a future conversation
about the grim situations of the present and writes…
“It was a time of unraveling…a time of beheadings…a time of aggression…a time of breakup…
a time of weakness…a time of hatred…a time of fever…a time of disorientation” in which the “fabric of society frayed.”
(God and Churchill / Jonathan Sandys & Wallace Henley)

Our political conventions are bordering on the edge of the surreal..
mirroring that of a traveling side show or a two bit circus.

The candidates vie for our votes…
Yet they prefer busing themselves by trading the ugly tit for tat verbiage of hate,
lies and insults.
As the average citizen is left wondering…where have real leaders gone….

Our world is ailing with unrest….and withers under evil’s oppression.

Today, in a quiet suburb of the French city of Rouen, an 85 year old priest, Father Jaques Hamel, was viciously and savagely murdered during the midst of morning Mass.
He was attacked by two young masked men.

The young assailants took four nuns and parishioners hostage using them as human shields.
These attackers forced Fr Hamel to kneel before the altar as they shouted a tirade in Arabic followed with Allahu Akbar, all before slitting Fr Hamel’s throat in front of terrified parishioners…
all the while filming the entire apalling spectacle.

They were later killed by police.

ISIS has claimed responsibility.

Germans continues reeling while trying to make sense out of the latest terror attacks that have rocked their nation. The stories continue making back to back to back headlines.

First an ax wielding young man attacks passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, Germany…

Next a gunman kills 9 at a shopping mall in Munich.

Thirdly, another young man, yesterday, injures 15 outside of a bar, as he proceeds to blow himself up…

The leading newspaper in Turkey ran a front page story yesterday claiming that President Erdogan is now blaming the United States for last week’s failed coup as word circulates that he was actually to blame for orchestrating the whole debacle…which has now given way for his sweeping crackdowns within a country balancing between a tenuous democracy and a Muslim dictatorship.

All of this world drama, as the UK continues to figure out what their voting to leave the EU will actually mean…

Our world has been turned upside down…with Truth, Morality, and The Sacred each becoming a resulting victim.

Indeed the world is unraveling at an alarming rate…
So many of these headlines are simply overwhelming, leaving us all with a sense of loss,
worry and dread…

Fear gleefully now marches far and wide around our globe…as we look to placate our troubles…

However…

We mustn’t lose our hope…
No matter how daunting such the task.

For we may just actually find our comfort and our peace
hidden in the smallest of beings…

Imagine the humble butterfly…

A delicate creature if ever there was one.
Its wings thiner then tissue paper, covered in a dazzling array of fine and colorful powder.
No match for rain nor tempest storm….
And yet they somehow manage to survive.

At the first sign of a change in the weather…
As clouds thicken and skies darken as the winds begin to shift…
the butterfly knows to seek shelter…

For even a single raindrop can kill a butterfly.

Even the resulting dip in temperatures, following in the the storm’s aftermath,
is life threatening because butterflies need the heat of the sun in order to feed, mate and thrive.

Butterflies instinctively know the importance of seeking shelter and holding on during a storm.
It’s a matter of living and dying.

Perhaps…
just maybe…
Its time we each look to the One who offers us our shelter from the storm…
To the One who offers us life in the face of all that is dying….
For He is indeed our shelter from the storm….

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging
Psalm 46:1-3

upside down

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
Lewis Carrol

(Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia / Julie Cook / 2016)

Some told lies while others told truth…
And sorting out the difference was pretty cut and dry

Yet that was long ago…and all of that was then…

Everything now has been turned wrong-side up and upside down…

With right becoming wrong and wrong becoming right
All that once mattered has turned woefully out of step.

“It’s ok” they say and “its now all alright”
“Everything goes” so there’s no turning back.

For God was sovereign, this much we knew
But the lies began raging, replacing Him with you

While buying-in has now become the thing to do….

If you’ve lost your voice and your tongue seems stuck,
hurry quick and speak on up…to this world turned upside down…

For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people.
Romans 16:18

Just when you thought you had it all figured out…

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”
Augustine of Hippo

“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends”
Joseph Campbell

(Tyreaware minions, Kilcolgan, County Galway, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

Just when you thought you had your life all figured out…
Knowing who you were, where you were going and what you wanted out of life…
WHHHHAAAAMMMAM
Upside the head it hits you.
It’s like out of no where…the inevitable curve ball comes flying your way, skewing all that nice neat order you had worked so hard setting up.

You were cruising along, having jumped through all the necessary good life hoops…
You’d gotten everything, those proverbial stars of yours, aligned and you were set…
Good to go.
Life was good…
You were happy…
Your little corner of the world was rocking along quite nicely.
You weren’t really worried about anything…
You had The education, The job, The car, The clothes, The spouse, The kids, The friends, The house, The pets, The vacations …

You even had your “religious” time all neatly organized and in a pretty little box set up on the self–you’d take it down, dusting it off, those days you weren’t playing golf, or having to watch the kids, or when you had to take the family to church because of Easter…

Yep…
Yessiree, life seemed golden.

But one day, a day like any other day, there was a tilt in the axis.
Neatness and perfection shifted.
Trouble was brewing and you…well you were like a deer in headlights.
Standing there with that kind of dumb “what just happened here” look all over your face.

It caught you by surprise.
It rocked your whole world…
Everything you thought you knew and believed…
Well it was now standing upside down.
All because of what you thought you knew and believed wasn’t really the real deal.

Either you had read the words, listened to the words, were told the words, witnessed the words…oh it doesn’t really matter how, because the words, the thought, the idea, the notion…it all hit you…like a ton of bricks…and now that is all that matters.

“We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put the urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit.” (A.W.Tozer)

The words now reverberate in your entire being.

…He first put the urge within us…”

It’s like an alarm clock just went off inside your head.
The urge, the gnawing yearning, put there at your very conception, finally pushed its way forward and you finally took notice.

It’s about time…

And today, everything is now different.
Neat no longer cuts it.
Conviction has come calling my friend,
And you, thankfully, will never be the same.

That thin veil that once hung over your tidy little world, gently covering the real work at hand, has been lifted and for the first time in your lifetime…you can actually see…clearly, thankfully, beautifully see…
and finally you truly know what exactly it is that you are to be about…

For God has come calling my friend…and joyfully, life, your life, and the lives of those you touch, will never be the same…

“Out of the heavens He let you hear His voice to discipline you; and on earth He let you see His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire.
Deuteronomy 4:36