Author: marybethweisenburger

Prayer Journal Pondering

A New Writing Partnership!

marybethweisenburger

I am happy to announce that beginning this month, I will be guest-posting on the Catholic Sistas blogsite! If you haven’t heard of this organization, you should visit them, pronto! You can follow the voices of a wide variety of Catholic women and be inspired by their strength and their struggles, just as I have for the last few years.

My guest posts, mainly on my prayer journal ponderings, will show up once a month on their site, and will also be linked from my site. I hope you enjoy this new development. See you soon on Catholic Sistas!

Tiny Revelations

Snorkeling Lessons

marybethweisenburger

Sometimes, you just have to say a prayer and jump in.

My friends and I were on a cruise around the West Indies islands not long ago when we signed up for a tour of lush St. Lucia. In the afternoon, our driver took us to a dock where we boarded a speed boat.  The boat ferried us to a hidden lagoon nestled between two jagged black mountains. I gasped when it came into view; it looked like something out of a movie. It was pure paradise with sandy beaches, calm sapphire blue water and swaying palm trees. And what did I spy on the tiki hut nearby? A sign that said, “Rent Snorkel Gear Here.” Yes! Snorkeling is one of my favorite pursuits. There’s not much call for it in the flatlands of northwest Ohio, so when I get the chance to snorkel on vacation, I usually jump at it. My friend Rachel and I approached the young man who was handing out the gear. Hmmm. This was going to be different than my previous snorkeling experiences. He did not look like an expert deep sea diver. He did not offer any instruction. And the mismatched gear he was thrusting at us did not look like it had been, shall we say, appropriately sanitized. Or ever sanitized.

I threw caution to the wind, said a quick prayer, tossed $10 in the salesman’s bucket and geared up. Rachel, possessing a great deal more common sense than me, hesitated. I waded out and sunk into the pristine water. I was immediately greeted by a school of underwater inhabitants that I had never seen on any previous snorkeling trip. It was like swimming in the middle of a rainbow! I stood up and waved at Rachel, who was only knee-deep in the water. “Come in, come in!” I yelled. She pointed to the (yucky) snorkel and mask in her hands and made a face. There was no way that snorkel was getting close to her mouth. “Look down!” I pantomimed to her. She looked down at her feet and saw what I had seen—a moving, shifting rainbow of colors so amazing she couldn’t resist. In went the snorkel and in went Rachel. We spent an hour floating along the shore, quietly peering into a spectacular world we were unaware of just 60 minutes before. A world we could have easily missed if we had given in to our fears.

This little experience reminds me: There will be times when we won’t get good instruction and we won’t feel well-equipped and conditions won’t seem perfect, but something still tells us to take a leap of faith. Listen to that little voice, girlfriends. Say a prayer to help you get past the real and imagined obstacles and then move forward. Take a friend along if you can. Delightful surprises await all of us when we obey the nudges of the Holy Spirit.

Don’t give in to your fears. Say a prayer for courage and jump in. You’ll be glad you did.

Tiny Revelations

Glove Box Proposals

marybethweisenburger

I was sitting around a table with my old high school girlfriends (note that I mean the friendship is old; we aren’t). There was a bit of music playing and a bit of wine flowing. The subject turned to one friend’s son’s recent engagement announcement. Of course we wanted to know all the details of the proposal: Who, what, where and when, what the ring looks like and how romantic the proposal was on a scale of 1 to 10. Given all the videos on social media that portray husbands-to-be staging elaborate proposals complete with friends, family, photographers and the dog present, we knew the pressure was on for the poor guy to produce a unique and memorable moment.

I know I risk sounding old here, when I just pointed out in the previous paragraph that I’m not, but–my, how times have changed. After hearing a few stories about all the modern proposal fanfare, I posed this question to my friends as we refilled our glasses:

“How did your husband propose to you?”

Every answer was the same.

Each one of our future husbands had stowed an unpretentious diamond ring in the glove box of his car and took his bride-to-be on a drive before popping the question. Right there in the front seat. No cameras, no crowds, no confetti. Just two people. On a back road or a side street or (in my case) an airport parking lot. We didn’t record the event. We couldn’t post the announcement seconds later to gather in the accolades. And we didn’t have parents hovering around. We actually had to drive to our parents’ homes later and deliver the good news in person. And we called our siblings the next day from our landlines.

My friends’ spouses are all from the same hometown. I was in their weddings and they were in mine.  All of our ceremonies were held in the same majestic Catholic Church, where we also received Baptism, First Communion and Confirmation.  Our diamond rings were all purchased at the same jewelry store located on Main Street of the nearby county seat.  I am the only one who moved from our hometown, albeit a mere 15 miles down the road. We are a pretty solid, traditional group, especially compared to today’s culture. And we are all now approaching our 30th wedding anniversaries.

We’re also pretty happy.

Our hype-free proposal experiences may sound archaic to “kids these days” (yes, another phrase that makes me sound old). But I’m not going to knock it. In fact, I am grateful for it. Our glove-box men are dependable, faithful, hard-working guys. Our glove-box marriages have withstood wave after wave of challenges. Our glove-box rings still shine on our left hands after 30 long years. Thank you, God, for your many blessings on us over the years!

I think that calls for cameras, crowds and confetti.  Don’t you?

Tiny Revelations

Don’t Taste It!

marybethweisenburger

Every once in a while, a television commercial truly entertains me. Instead of fast-forwarding past it (or, more accurately, having my hubby fast-forward past it), I want to watch and enjoy it. Mostly, it’s been the insurance company commercials that make me hit the pause button and giggle. The “Mayhem” commercials influenced me enough that I named our adopted hyperactive/unpredictable/destructive stray kitten after the character. The “Jake from State Farm” commercials spawned Halloween costumes for my husband and me—he being Jake with the red shirt, name tag and, of course, khakis, and me as the suspicious wife in my robe with a phone in my hand. And I cannot get enough of the synchronized swimming dogs in the Farmers Insurance commercials. They just crack me up.

My current pause-worthy commercial is from Geico. It features a bevy of raccoons feasting on leftovers in a dumpster and having a very human-like conversation about whatever is tickling—or terrorizing— their taste buds.  “Oh man, this is terrible. Try this. It’s awful,” one raccoon says to his buddy. “It’s like mango, chutney… and burnt hair.”

I laugh out loud every time.  Isn’t it so true that when we taste something bad, we want others to experience it too? I did it just the other day at a restaurant in a city known for its foul tap water. “Ugh! This water tastes like gravel,” I told my husband. “Taste it!” He didn’t fall for it. In fact, rarely does anyone over the age of 8 ever fall for this request. So why do we even bother asking?

I think it’s because we humans like shared experiences. We want affirmation, we want a co-experiencer, we want to pull someone else in so we can revel in mutual disgust! It’s much more fun to lament in a group than to complain or criticize in private.  And it’s harmless…as long as the subject matter is harmless. Bad water, spoiled food: harmless. Talking about people: not so much.

When the subject is people, girlfriends, that’s when we can get into trouble. It’s a slippery slope. We can be tempted to gossip, slander and tear down. Did we have a poor customer service experience in a store? We want to plaster it all over Facebook. Did someone disappoint us? We are drawn to tell others in our circle all about it. Did a co-worker make a mistake? We can’t wait to let others know about it at lunch. We want them to “taste it” too, whatever “it” is. This is a bad habit to get into–one that has eternal consequences. We can’t fall for it, friends! As Saint Paul warns the Ephesians in 4:29: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” When you are tempted, or when you are in a group that is giving in to the temptation to gossip, slander or tear down, take action: Say a prayer, tame your tongue, change the subject, walk away. Don’t taste it! It’s worse than gravel and burnt hair—it’s sin.

We (me included as a repeat offender) need to put a clamp on this kind of “sharing.” Proverbs 11:13 teaches us: “Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing covered,” So…let’s not reveal secrets. Let’s be trustworthy. Let’s vow to keep a lid on the destructive talk. When the subject is a puzzled palate, go ahead—invite others to taste it! It’s all in fun. But when the subject is people, let’s keep it covered, build each other up and give only grace to those who hear!  Deal? Deal.

And we can all just keep on wondering what mango, chutney and burnt hair tastes like…

Praying with a Pen, Tiny Revelations

Praying for Little Things (or Die, Stupid Wind!)

marybethweisenburger

The air was ten-degrees-below-crisp as I stretched my hamstring muscles and tried to get ready for a run/walk/trudge down the road. It was early morning but The Wind was already at an unfriendly level and I needed to give myself a pep talk. I can handle ten-degrees-below-crisp, but ladies I despise wind in my face. This is a problem because I live in the flatlands of rural America, you know, where “the winds come sweeping down the plains.” All day. Every day. When it’s not breezy, people around here are kinda spooked: “Nice calm day, isn’t it? For now?” I should be used to it, as I have lived 90% of my life in this area. But I am not. Like an angry old woman, I still shake my fist at The Wind when it makes me catch my breath, or nudges me off course, or blows my hair into rats-nest tangles.
In past winters, The Wind got the best of me on my daily walk attempts. I would high-tail it back to the house, not even making it to the end of the driveway if the wind was too strong for me. I gave up, admitted defeat, waved a white flag of surrender after about 3.6 seconds. Diet and fitness goals notwithstanding, I was not going out there to be battered about like one of those inflatable clown punching bags. I would retreat to the house, search out a chunk of a Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree candy bar (side note: a little bit of heaven on earth) and stew about my thwarted diet and fitness goals.
This winter I decided things were going to be different. I was going to ask my good friend the Holy Spirit for the extra fortitude I needed to take on my nemesis. Now friends, let’s get real here for a sec: Over the course of my lifetime I have had to ask the Holy Spirit for the fortitude to handle much more onerous tasks, believe me. On the scale of challenges for which I need Divine Assistance, wind in my face is not even on the radar. Still, I know God is interested in both the big and small obstacles in our lives, and I figured the fact that I liked to pray on my walks/runs would give this dilemma a little more weight with the Almighty. So I gave it a go. I prayed for resilience against The Wind.
Well, guess what. Outside of the few days when the temps dipped below humane levels, or the road was encrusted in death-defying layers of ice, I’ve been out there! In The Wind! Walking, jogging, wogging, whatever it is that I do. I’m feeling better, I’m getting outside, I have more energy and I’m keeping the winter blues at bay.
Granted, I bought thermal jogging pants, insulated sweatshirts, a hat with a pocket for those little warming blocks, fuzzy running gloves, head warmers, a hilarious fleece kerchief-type thing that goes over my mouth and nose and, yes– running goggles. People, I look like an escaping bank robber with bad eyes and a misshapen head coming down the road. But I’m out there, by golly, running against the wind just like Bob Seger wants me to do. With my uncoordinated yet highly effective attire and a prayer for strength before I leave the house, “The Wind” has been reduced to just “the wind.”
What have I learned? I pondered this in my prayer journal one morning this week. “God is truly invested in my day-to-day life,” I concluded. He is not just to be called on for the big honking problems I have. He wants to walk with me—and you–all throughout the day: through the highs and lows, the interruptions, the ordinary frustrations.
He wants to walk with us through the wind, the literal kind and the figurative kind. He wants to hold our hands and help us through it all, day by day, hour by hour, step by step.
I like this concept of walking through the wind of my daily life with Jesus.
And bonus—he doesn’t mind what I look like while we’re walking.