pieces and ponderings

I fixed a pot of coffee this morning in my coffee pot that I love (see earlier post)…and because it’s Friday and the end of the week, I decided I had better add a little of the caffeinated variety of coffee to my regular decaf variety. I could smell it brewing as I prepared lunches and breakfasts and let the cat in and the dog out.

I looked forward to my first cup…knowing that it would probably lead to a second cup after everyone had left the house except for me and the dog and the cat. So as the morning progressed and my boys and husband left for school and work, and I downed the last bit of coffee in my cup before I took a shower…I spit what I had just drunk into my bathroom sink.

“Yucky!!” I exclaimed in my head. The last gulp of coffee had contained a bunch of coffee grounds…which are so gross if they end up in your mouth. Now the coffee grounds were scattered all over my bathroom sink. I turned on the water and rinsed the yucky little coffee grounds down the drain.

I had noticed a couple of little…very little…black dots floating in my coffee when I had first poured it.  I had carefully removed them with a spoon, but I didn’t see any more than those couple of little…very little…coffee grounds…so I didn’t think any more about it.

After I spit the coffee grounds into the sink, I went and checked my coffee-maker and sure enough the filter had gotten folded up in it’s little filter basket and there were coffee grounds outside the filter that had also been washed down into the carafe.

“Ahhh…bummer,” I thought.  I dismissed the thought of having a second cup. Finding coffee grounds in a last swig of coffee just isn’t pleasant and I didn’t want that to happen again.

I considered that I could be very careful and drink the second cup s-l-o-w-l-y…NOT drinking the last little bit in the cup and leaving Herman the fish (see earlier post) covered with the half-decaf-half-caffeinated beverage.

Maybe that would work? Then I had an idea…light bulb!

Maybe I could place a filter in my cup and pour the coffee through a filter a second time?  It just might work.

So that’s what I did.  I got out another coffee filter and placed it in my washed-out-coffee-grounds-free cup and began to pour coffee down through it.

It took a little time, and a bit of effort and patience. But…it worked…for the most part.  In fact, my second-cup-of-coffee-for-the-day-in-my-Herman-the-fish-mug is sitting on a coaster on my desk as I write.

Even with the second filtering process having been implemented…there were still a couple of little black dots…very little black dots…floating around in the coffee as I removed the filter from my mug.  I know what that means…so I will not be gulping down that last little bit of coffee for fear of coffee dregs lurking beneath the surface.  Drinking the top half of the coffee in my mug will do me just fine.

As I was re-filtering my second cup of coffee this morning, I thought about filters and their importance.  For coffee lovers everywhere…filters ARE IMPORTANT! And I thought about other filters that serve important functions in our lives…fuel filters…air vent filters…internet filters…all the other filters that I don’t know about or can’t think of right now.

AND I thought about other kinds of filters in my life…filters for my spiritual life…filters for my conscience…filters for my thinking.  What happens when the filters that I’ve put in place in those areas get bent out of shape or moved out of place and can’t completely serve their function any more?

What kind of yucky dregs wind up in my thinking…in my emotional life…in my heart?  Filters…they are good things to have.  Filters…they serve a good purpose.  Filters…we need to make sure they are in their proper places so they can function at their best.

Child number 4 is on his high school’s varsity football team.  This past Friday night they had their fourth game of the season.  After winning their opening game, they had lost the next two.  They needed a win to keep up morale.  But their opponent for game number 4 was the favorite.

Throughout last week, when child number 4 would come home all hot and sweaty from football practice, I would ask how practice went and if he thought his team would be ready for Friday night’s big game.

“Practice was good,” he would say.  “I think we’ll be ready on Friday; we’ve got a plan,” he would comment, but he would not share what “the plan” was.

So Friday night came and my husband and I and children, numbers 3and 5, all loaded into our SUV and headed to the away game.  When we got there, we saw our team sitting behind one of the end zones waiting for the game to begin…the players sat in a big huddle and the coaches stood in a smaller huddle.  We went and found seats on the visitors’ side bleachers.

When the opposing home team entered their domain, they ran from their locker room down through the home stand and onto the field below, with their fans cheering like crazy.  It was inspiring…it was intimidating, and I think that was the point.

Our guys crashed through our team banner first as the visiting team, and then the home team took the field…looking bigger…looking undefeated this season.

As the game began, I thought I noticed something a little different about our team than in the previous few games…they had a spark…they had a heart about them…they seemed to want to win.

It was a hard-fought game…and our guys certainly fought hard.  They made plays that looked impossible.  They survived yardage lost on penalties and made first downs anyway.  They were enthusiastic…they were driven…they played with heart.

We fans did our part…we cheered…we yelled…we stood up on important downs and waited to see what would happen.  The cheerleaders seemed amazed because the crowd was actually cheering in response to their “cheer-leading.”

And during one of those cheering moments…as we watched one of our players run the ball AND continue to keep moving forward with three opposing team members hanging on him…the crowd went wild and I heard a young man to my right yell, “That’s my best friend!”

The cheering guy who had just yelled out the remark is a senior and he was cheering for his senior buddy on the field grinding out yardage against the odds.  He was so proud of his friend…he wanted everyone to know.  Throughout the rest of the game, I would hear his cheering…”Way to go, buddy!”…”Yeah!”

We won!  We won by two touchdowns!  Our players were ecstatic…the cheerleaders were ecstatic…the crowd…the moms and dads and friends and students were all ecstatic!  It was a sweet victory!

Our after-the-game snack at Dairy Queen was all the sweeter because of the win.  My football-playing son informed me the next day that Saturday felt even better because of having won.  I’ve tucked away some good memories from the evening’s events, and one of the memories in the fore-front is the guy cheering for his best friend.

I can be a crazy kind of fan when my children are playing sports…I can yell really loud and clap and jump up and down in the stands and feel as if I can will them to make plays.  I can be an over-zealous fan.  I’ve also been told by my children who play these games that they usually don’t hear my cheering…my going crazy in the stands on their behalf.

When I first heard this news that they couldn’t hear my cheering I was surprised…I was disappointed…surely they had heard their mom making a fool of herself in the stands…and then I accepted that ok, they probably hadn’t most of the time (I still hold out for maybe they heard me a few times) but, this knowledge didn’t stop me from cheering for them.  I still get excited when one of my kids is on the field or on a court.  I still end up on my feet about half-way through a game…yelling, clapping, and cheering.  I can’t seem to help it…it just happens that way when you are a passionate person.

So I thought about the young man cheering for his friend…being so proud of him…and I thought about my kids and me cheering and being so proud of them…and I wondered how my cheering is for those I love when I’m not seated in bleachers on a field…when I’m just going through life…am I cheering just as loudly?  Am I cheering in a way that they can actually hear me?  Am I letting the people I love know that I’m proud of them…that I think they are doing a great job?  Am I doing some cheering every day…not just on game nights?

I hope I am, but Friday night’s game was a good reminder to cheer on those around me…and to cheer really loudly so they can hear me.

Yesterday I sat with my two youngest children and watched video from September 11, 2001.  We watched footage of the first plane crashing into the first tower of the Twin Towers.  We looked at pictures taken of President Bush by the White House photographer, Eric Draper, only moments after the president heard the news of the first crash…thinking like so many of us, “What a terrible accident.”

And then a second plane flew directly into the second tower and the realization that this was no accident began to dawn on people across our land.

We watched the news footage of a reporter giving the timeline of the morning’s horrible events.

We watched footage of President Bush standing on a heap of rubble at ground zero speaking into a megaphone, “I can hear you” and telling those first responders that soon the world would be hearing them also.

I looked at this video footage and choked back sobs…and I remembered.

I remember dropping off three of my kids at school that morning and hearing on the drive home the first reports on the radio giving the details of the first plane crash.

I remember going to my weekly Bible study…still wondering exactly what was going on.  I remember talking to my husband who was working on a military post at the time and him telling me that the base was under a lockdown.  I remember feeling like maybe the world was about to end.

Our two sons that watched the footage with me yesterday were only 5 and 1-years-old at the time of the 9/11 attack on our nation…too young to remember.  We watched several news stories together and I recalled to them the events of the day and the courage displayed by numerous men and women.  I remembered the way our nation rallied together.  I remember the way many people turned to God, crying out in pain…crying out for help.

One of the pictures that we looked at yesterday was a photograph of a badge worn by a New York Port Authority officer who had died in the Twin Towers on 9/11.  The badge was given to President Bush by the officer’s mother.  The article said that the President carried that badge with him in his pocket throughout the remainder of his presidency…so he would remember…so he could remind others of all that had happened on that day.

And I remembered that Tuesday afternoon on September 11, when I pulled into my driveway with all my children with me and watched the gate in our neighborhood close behind our car.  I wished as I watched that closing gate in my rear view mirror, that I could close out the fear that was rising up within me…the fear of the unknown…the fear of what might  happen in our homeland after those attacks…the fear that perhaps there would be more violence to come.

But the attacks had happened…the violence had been committed…our nation had been violated…an irreversible change had occurred.

Yesterday as I remembered with my children…I was thankful to be reminded of the atrocity…of the victims…of the many heroic acts.  I was thankful to be reminded that no matter what happens in this world…no matter how tragic…my God is still enthroned in Heaven…He is not caught off-guard…and He is not fearful…He is still at work…loving people of all nations…revealing Himself in big and in small ways so that we might call out to Him and desire His peace in our hearts.

This morning I aided my husband in rescuing a turtle.  The turtle, a big guy over 12 inches long, was caught in the volleyball net in our front yard, which had blown down during a storm.  Bryan noticed the turtle as he was driving down our driveway.  He called out to me that I would need to help a turtle and then thankfully decided to see to the task himself.  I’m glad he did.

I watched at a distance as my husband bent over the turtle and worked to loosen the net from the turtle’s legs.  What I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t only the turtle’s legs that were caught…the net was also twisted around the turtle’s neck.

Bryan asked me to fetch a pair of scissors.  When I reached Bryan and the struggling turtle, I was surprised by what I saw.  The turtle had foam gathered around his gaping mouth and from the turtle came deep gasping noises…the net was choking him.

Bryan Darling was calmly and carefully untwisting net strings and talking to the turtle.  Without help from the scissors there would have been no way to free the turtle from the snare.

The turtle was gasping for life-giving air and Bryan was working with the scissors.  I was gripped by the scene before me.  This big man bending over a foaming and struggling animal…fighting for life.   The compassion that I saw was overwhelming…this compassion also welled up within me.  We had to save the turtle…it was a life…it mattered.

Finally, Bryan was able to work around the turtle’s legs and head, that would try to disappear into the turtle’s shell, and cut him free from the net.  We carried him to some water so he could drink.  I tried to rinse the foam away from his mouth.  As soon as my husband placed him back on the ground the turtle was off…moving quickly toward the direction of his turtle hole.

The whole scene has stuck with me as I’ve tried to go about the day…the struggle for life and the compassion of a man.  I thought of a verse in the Psalms, actually two verses.  Psalm 103:13-14 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.”

This turtle was not near as important as a child to my husband or to me…still the compassion we felt was so strong…the desire to help overwhelming.  If we can feel so strongly about a creature…how much more must the Heavenly Father, our Creator, feel compassion toward His children when they find themselves ensnared…struggling…gasping for air and desiring life.