Shoe Shopping

My friend Karen and I went shoe shopping yesterday. We visited seven shoe vendors in two and a half hours. If we'd been making a reservation for the trip and they had asked, "Business or pleasure?", we would have answered, "Business." Our shoe shopping venture held not a trace of the frivolous. We were on a mission for a particular type of shoe - Zumba shoes. Zumba is a sort of Latin dancing aerobic exercise in which the participant does a lot of jumping, twisting, squatting, toe tapping, gyrating, twirling and pivoting. The shoes we already owned were fine for the jumping, squatting, toe tapping and gyrating, but the tread on the bottoms was making it hard to do the twisting, twirling and pivoting. We needed shoes with a smooth rubber sole and a circular slipperier rubber "pivot" point near the toe of the shoe.

Now, here's the thing. One of us wears a 6.5 shoe, and the other one wears an 11. One person's foot is like a ski, and the other's looks more like a piece of knobby pie (broad at the toe and narrow at the heel). Yet we were determined to find "the" shoe that would satisfy both our needs, both of our tastes, and our completely different feet.

First of all, I'd like to complain (can you imagine that?!). The Zumba teacher, who is 22 and built like Barbie, showed Karen her shoes, which she claimed to have bought at Academy Sports. Another woman in the class showed me her shoes (different from the teacher's) which she claimed to have bought at Rack Room Shoes. Well, Karen and I immediately headed for Academy, the teacher's choice. After all, our goal is to look like her when we've Zumba -ed for several months! Academy had a large array of dance/cheerleader/training shoes, none of which looked anything like our teacher's. Nevertheless, we tried on several pairs. I should say I tried on several pairs since evidently there are only two women in the world who wear an 11 so the shoe stores don't carry them. Academy had one pair in an 11. It was black with pink stitching. Karen tried it on and liked it okay. So I found it in my size and tried it on. For some reason (I know it couldn't possibly be my short, fat feet with appropriately fat ankles above them), the tongue of the shoe dug into the front of my ankle, making it quite uncomfortable. The tongue of Karen's shoe, on the other hand, was half way down the top of her foot!

Feeling betrayed in some way, we left there and headed straight for Rack Room Shoes. Rather than hunting on our own, I decided to ask someone where the Zumba shoes were located. I noticed a tall blond in tennis shoes talking to a customer about some shoes. I waited patiently, probably twenty seconds or so, until she seemed to finish the conversation. Then I walked up to her and boldly said, "We were told we could get shoes for Zumba here. Where would they be?" The woman proceeded to tell us that the store had a pitiable number of athletic shoes for women, and led us to a display that contained maybe four shoes. We dutifully looked at them. Then Karen said, " There are some women's athletic shoes over there" and she pointed back where we'd come from. The salesperson walked with us to that area and replied, "Well, yes, this row is women's, but then the next row starts the men's. They just don't have many for women." Did you notice the "they" in that sentence? She wasn't even a sales person - I had asked a fellow customer to help us! Actually, Rack Room ended up having quite a few women's athletic shoes, but not the ones we were looking for. By this time I was feeling very disappointed.

We hit five other stores and never found either of the shoes the women had recommended. So we ended up with no shoes (yet!). But, I got a spiritual lesson out of it.

Sometimes we share a spiritual lesson with people and expect them to get the same excitement or inspiration or conviction from it that we experienced. I'm very guilty of this. The truth is, though, that people have different spiritual sizes and shapes and needs. We all have to have the main things (like soles, shoelaces, "pivot" points) - that Jesus is God's Son; He came to earth to live the life of a human being and then to die on the cross for our sins; He arose from the grave; He's coming again some day. But some of the other things (like the tongue on the shoe or the width of the heel) have to take in consideration the person's individaul walk with God. He knows what we need just when we need it, and He is faithful to speak to me in my way and you in yours. He's got all the sizes. He's got all the shapes. He's got all the "shoes" we need for this twisting, twirling, pivoting, jumping, squatting, toe tapping, gyrating life.
Praise Him!

Constipation

My two-year-old grandson has trouble with constipation. It's a vicious thing. You see, when it's hard, it hurts to go, so he holds it in. Then it hurts more. Just the other night he was in so much pain that he ran around the sofa screaming for almost an hour. My daughter had tried everything (she thought) and nothing was working, so she sat on that same sofa and cried for him. I won't go into any more detail because the subject is gross enough, but Shawn, my daughter's husband, got home from work about that time and in his calm way took over the situation. After about thirty more minutes, my sweet little grandson finally let go and got relief. Less than five minutes later, he peacefully fell asleep in his daddy's arms.

There's a spiritual lesson in this. I know - go figure.

We all have trouble with sin. It's a vicious thing. When it's been there awhile, we don't want to let it go. We may even rationalize that it won't hurt us that much to hold onto it. But it is toxic and it grows and it gets harder and harder to let it go. The pain that sin will cause is excruciating. Not only to us but to those who love us.

Thanks be to God, our heavenly Father! He came and took over the situation. He sent relief through His Son, Jesus Christ. If we will let our sin go, He will clean us up. We will feel such peace. We will be able to rest in the arms of the Almighty. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened [with sin], and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11:28-29).

Whunh?

This morning I was trying to write the word "wierd," and I wrote it that way and it looked strange so I asked a friend how to spell it. Then I changed it to "weird". That brought up a conversation with another friend about the rule "i before e except after c, or when sounding like ay as in neighbor and weigh." We agreed that it's weird that "weird" isn't spelled "wierd" because the rule says it should be. So I ask you, Is any other language in the world more inconsistent than English?

Like, I was wondering, why are people who blog called bloggers, people who jog called joggers, people who rob called robbers, people who mug called muggers, people who bat called batters and people who knit called knitters, YET
people who brag are called braggarts and people who nag are called nags?

Pronounce the following words out loud:
rough, tough, cough, though, bough
touch, ouch
cut, hut, shut, put
out, loud, soup, coup
knight, night, knee, nee
neigh, weigh, sleigh, neither
bare, care, pare, are
mere, sere, here, there, were
our, flour, sour, tour, your, pour
receive, believe, sieve
marine, saline, lupine, sanguine (you might have to look up the last two!)

Unfortunately, I could go on forever. Fortunately, I won't.

Sometimes I just have to look at our language and say, "Whunh?" Thankfully, our Savior is not like this. Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."

Detour

I can't believe this is happening again. (Big sigh) Well, I'm not going to do what I did the last time, that's for sure.

The last time had been right after our honeymoon in 1977. We had just picked up our gifts from my parents' house and were set to drive to Beaufort, SC. Three circumstances spelled doom for that day, but little did we know. First, I had never driven from Richmond to Beaufort. I didn't know the way. Second, I was driving David's car and he was driving mine because my hatchback was filled to the top with gifts and I couldn't see over or around them to drive it. Thirdly, I had never heard of overdrive, which David's new Volvo had.

I was following David, but we weren't even out of Richmond when we got separated and I went the wrong way. I was driving over the overpass when I saw my little bright blue Ford (with David at the wheel) heading straight down 95. I super-panicked and stepped on the gas. My plan was to turn around as soon as I could and go so fast that either I would catch up to David or be stopped by the police and they could radio ahead and stop David, too. Though I drove over 80 miles an hour for an hour, neither happened. I finally stopped at a roadside store, went in, and called my mom. She had probably just sat down with a cup of coffee, dusted her hands off and thought, There! Last chick out of the nest for good. It's Independence Day!

Unmotherly-like, she said, "I really don't know what you should do, Joy," and I was feeling ever so poorly when David suddenly walked in. I rushed into his arms, only to find that he was sort of standoffish. "It's a wonder I saw my car parked out there, Joy - you parked behind a van! Why were you driving so fast? I've been trying to catch up with you for almost an hour!" He bombarded me with harsher words than I had ever heard from his kind mouth, and I wondered if the man I was married to was the man I thought I had married. But my cries and explanations calmed him down, and we got back on the road.

I wish I could tell you everything went fine after that, but remember the overdrive thing? I had not put the car in overdrive while driving over 80, and long before we reached Beaufort, the Volvo's engine started smoking. We finally made it to Beaufort, but that car was never the same again.

Now back to June 20th of this year. My husband David and I were delivering furniture from my recently deceased dad's apartment to two of our children's homes. We had dropped off some things at Shelley's the night before, and the plan was simple: We would drive from her house in Apex, NC, to Pelham, AL, Heather's home. I would drive my car, leading the way for David, who would drive the U-Haul truck. I had made this journey by car many times, so I confidently started down the road, keeping a close watch in my rearview mirror.

About thirty minutes into our trip, my cellphone rang. It was Shelley with the bad news that David had left his suitcase at her house. So I pulled over to the side of the road and broke the baspel to David (gospel means "good news", so shouldn't baspel be an apt synonym for "bad news"?). We discussed whether he should go with me, burning up unnecessary amounts of fuel, wait there for me, in the middle of nowhere, either scorching or running the air conditioner (burning up unnecessary fuel) or just go on and I might eventually catch up with him. We chose plan C even though David does not own a cellphone (yes, it's true).

I called Shelley quickly and asked her about the number of the road where we were supposed to turn. I wanted to be sure we had it right. So, with my explanation that he would come to a turnoff for Highway 421 and that he should go either west or south on it, whichever the choice was, we parted.

I made the trip back to Shelley's in record time, picked up the wayward suitcase, and just as quickly got back to where I had left David. I drove on, feeling very happy because I wouldn't have to drive as slowly as I had to with the weighed-down U-Haul following me. When I came to the turnoff for 421, I obeyed myself and went south. After about thirty minutes, I began to feel that maybe I was on the wrong road. Though I was in the middle of nowhere and surrounded only by trees, grass and rolling hills, nothing seemed familiar. These particular tree/grass/hill scenes somehow looked strange. That's just silly, I told myself, and kept driving. Any minute now you'll come to the interstate. Well, any minute came and went and still no interstate, but I stubbornly refused to think that if a person is going from NC to AL he would take a 421N.

Thank goodness Hillary (another daughter) called. I asked her to look on the internet and find out where I was. Her husband did so while she tried to reassure me. You see, by that time, I was really worried that I had sent David the wrong way and he would never know. There's a long ending to this story, but I'm going to tell you the short one. We were supposed to go north on 421. It hit interstate 85 pretty soon. Yikes!

David, with his inborn sense of direction and common sense, thank the Lord, had figured out quite early on that he was headed due south and that interstate 85 moves southwest, so he turned around and went the right way. I had a GPS in my car and finally decided to use it to get back where I was supposed to be (there could be a spiritual lesson in that, but that's not the one for today!). David and I never crossed paths again. In fact, I skipped going to Pelham and came straight home to Opelika.

There's a spiritual lesson in this. God and I need to be in the same vehicle. That vehicle is his Word. Listen to some of the promises from Psalm 19 (NLT):
The instructions of the Lord are perfect,
reviving the soul.
The decrees of the Lord are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The commandments of the Lord are right,
bringing joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are clear,
giving insight for living.
The laws of the Lord are true;
each one is fair.
How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart?
Cleanse me from these hidden faults.
Keep your servant from deliberate sins!
Don't let them control me.
Then I will be free of guilt
And innocent of great sin.

When I try to follow God without being in his vehicle (his Word), I so often go the wrong way. Lord, I pray that I will not go so far on the wrong path that I never catch up with You again.