The Telephone

"I need to call home,"  I thought.  I rustled up a dime, put on my slippers and started down the four flights of stairs to the pay phone in the basement rec room of my dorm.

I waited in the TV room for my turn on the phone.  The smell of burnt popcorn floated through the air and the sounds of  a run-away ping pong ball and a vending machine dispensing stale bagels were the background noises I heard while I passed the time.   Soon the phone was available.  I slid into the booth, inserted my dime in the change slot and dialed zero. 

"Operator," I said,  "I'd like to make a collect call."

"What number please?"

"201-475-41...,"  I replied. 

The phone began to ring on the other end of the line and after a brief pause I heard my mother say hello.  "Oh good," I thought, "they're home."

"Do you accept the charges?"  The answer was yes. 



Last night I was laying in bed listening to music and my cell phone rang.   "Mom, my car won't start." 

"Call AAA and then call me back," I advised.

While I waited for news of the outcome of the service call, I texted my daughter a few times.

About forty minutes later the phone rang again.  "They got the car going.  It was the battery."

"Oh good."

After we hung up we texted back and forth a few more times with some additional thoughts.  I'm sure I had more phone interactions with my daughter in one hour than I had had with my parents in an entire year when I was in college.  Times have changed (boy, do I sound old)!



As I was settling back in, I began to think about how  there have been times when I have approached my heavenly Father in a "collect call" fashion -- calling infrequently and only when I had a problem.  Lately I interact with God much more in a "cell phone" way.  I am in consistent communication with Him, sharing the good news as well as the troubling news.  I tell Him when I am pleased to be His child and when I am frustrated with Him.  I thank Him for his goodness and ask Him for help with concerns.  I have lively conversation with Him. 

Yes, times have changed.

The Puppy

"If that puppy goes past our house one more time, I'm going out to get it," I told Jim.  We were newlyweds living in an inner city neighborhood where we ran a youth center.  Jim was wary as he had never had a dog before but this little black and brown puppy with a tail longer than her body got to our hearts and sure enough the next time she circled around our block, I went out and rescued her.

We set about to making a list of all the things we would need to make our new adoptee comfortable--food, bowls, a collar, a leash, oh yes, and a bandanna neckerchief.  This puppy also needed a name--Christy.

Christy was a bundle of enthusiasm and wonder.  She checked out our modest apartment.  With each new discovery she would wag her tail.  When Christy got excited, she would start wiggling at the top of her body and eventually, the vibrations would make it down through her tail.  She brought us such pleasure.   Pet ownership was going to be fun!

We woke up the next morning to our new puppy being violently sick.  Every way that her body could get rid of food and water it did.  It was awful.  This little street dog's past had caught up with her and we were afraid we were going to loose her.  And now what?  Our hearts were invested in this tiny black fur creature and we were totally smitten with her.  So several trips to the vet for intravenous fluid treatments followed.  And with lots of love and care, Christy survived what the vet called Parvo virus (usually a fatal condition).

After the first few bad days, our puppy was a joy.  She learned to shake hands.  She learned to say, "please."  She loved to ride in the car and we took her everywhere.  She even won over the heart of Jim's Mom who assured us when we adopted Christy that she would never have a "grand dog!"  (We knew all that changed when we found Mom letting the dog stand on the couch to look out of the window to watch the sanitation truck down on the street.)

Christy was once a street dog and she survived by eating garbage.  She had to protect herself and find shelter.  But as time went by, we noticed that in the presence of love that our puppy began to trust and feel secure.  She was shedding her street ways and her coping mechanisms to fend for herself.  She was allowing us to care for her and be her protector and provider.  She willingly received our affection.

Every once in a while though, the puppy's old ways would surface.  She would steal food and hide it all over the house.   One time, we found brownies under pillows, in the couch, and in our shoes.  She was saving "just in case."  At other times, Christy would sit looking out if the windows of our upstairs apartment.  If she spotted someone she perceived to be a threat, she would fly down our steps, push through her doggy door,  run into our fenced yard and bark her head off to scare the "threat" away.

How many times have I been like our puppy?  Even though I have been living under the pure love of a good Heavenly Father, I return to my own poverty stricken coping mechanisms, too afraid to trust in the richness of God's love and provision.  I momentarily step out of my new identity as God's daughter, His heir.  I risk missing out on His perfect blessings, opting for staying in my imperfect comfort zone instead.
 In the New Testament book of Galatians it says:

You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.   Galatians 4:4-7 (The Message)

The Outlier

"You know there's a name for you," my doctor said. "You're an outlier."

The puzzled look on my face resulted in Dr. C. pulling a pen out of his blue starched shirt pocket.  He grabbed a lab report, flipped it over and started drawing pictures. A bell curve and a grid appeared on the paper. "You see, most kidney patients fall somewhere on this curve or grid. We can expect certain symptoms to be present. We count on specific drugs to work effectively in a typical patient. We look for common progressions and responses among the majority of our patients. But we can depend on none of these things in you. Therefore you lie outside the curve or the grid. You are an outlier."

Well you can only imagine the laughing and teasing and needling this has opened up for a certain man that lives in my house. It's the new favorite catch phrase to explain everything unexplainable in our home--"well, you're just an outlier (must be said with the tiniest bit of sarcasm and a smile)."

Lately I've been thinking about God's process of healing. I so desperately wish I could understand exactly what God is up to.   I wish I could just do ten steps and be physically healed. But as I survey the scriptures, I quickly have to conclude that God is the God of the one-of-a-kind. He loves the unique. He values the distinct. God and His ways cannot be franchised. My journey will not look exactly like anyone else's journey. God's purposes and plans for me will not mimic any of His other children's plans and purposes.

There was only one Abraham and Sarah having a baby in their nineties and hundreds. There was only one parting of the Red Sea. There was one falling of the walls of Jericho. There was only one Jonah being swallowed by a fish and surviving. There was only Savior rising from the dead to overcome evil. Outliers--all of them.

While I find the mystery and lack of control that comes with being a God-follower very uncomfortable and disconcerting at times, I also take courage in that God is the God of the unexpected and the impossible. He can and does do the unpredictable.   He is the lover of outliers!