The charges were dropped, then refiled by a district attorney who refused to look at all the evidence. The judge harassed Craig’s many witnesses, including two large animal vets. Even worse, the judge refused to allow Craig’s chief witness to testify–the foremost cattle expert west of the Rockies, a UC Davis vet school professor and author of the textbook vets turn to when treating cattle. Craig was convicted. It was the worst day of our lives.

Joseph in the Bible faced similar injustice. Joseph had NOT succumbed to Potiphar’s wife’s temptations–instead, he had avoided her at every turn. Insulted and angry, she accused him of attempted rape…and Joseph went to prison.

However, there is a “But” in this Joseph story. “But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden” (Genesis 39:20-21). Joseph was put in charge at the prison, and “…the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did (v. 21).

The same was true for us. Thankfully, Craig was never jailed but given “only” a huge fine and probation. However, our marriage became stronger as Craig and I worked together on his appeal. Two years later we won, and the conviction was overturned…a rarity, we found out.

Injustice is painful–whether it is caused by the criminal justice system or an employer or hateful prejudice. But–God always provides a “But”–our Lord can redeem our pain and use us within the context of those painful experiences. It’s just up to us to find out what opportunities he will give us to be his hands and feet in that challenge…or give us the wisdom to change the system so that others do not have to go through similar pain.

After the trail when my mother saw the many kindnesses people extended to us–in addition to all the letters of support in our newspaper–she said, “Craig, you could run for mayor and win.” Guess what? For the last year he has been a member of the city council in our town. God uses us wherever we are…it’s just up to us to look for the opportunity.

Fiber: good for you...or maybe not?

I did one of the best things for myself last week. Not a pedicure. Not a massage. Not a personal retreat. I saw a dietician.

For years I’ve been my own dietician, in essence, reading the latest recommendations in women’s magazines and news sources, listening to weight loss leaders, and even following doctors’ orders.

The last medical directive from a doctor about diet was “Eat more fiber and drink more water.”

So, I did just that…and over the last year I’ve suffered. Horribly.

The dietician was fabulous — with an hour of what to eat, what not to eat…and when. And when I told her the doctor had said to eat more fiber, she said, “Oh, no, don’t do that…stop that immediately.”

How do we know what to believe? When we find out that the experts — those people we trust because of their education and experience — are wrong, it kind of shakes us up, doesn’t it?

I’ve recently been reading some controversial but popular books that are prompting new theological discussions. And I wonder: Okay, God, what is the truth?

There’s a pretty good one-liner in the book of Matthew. Thirty times Christ says, “I tell you the truth…” I’d never noticed that before. John recorded about the same number — with Mark and Luke recording some of those as well.

John also recorded Christ’s “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him” (John 14:6).

I tell you the truth…

I suppose that life will continue to bring surprises to me that flip over those ideas that I’ve held as reliable. But I know that Christ’s words are truth…and that they will never return void.

I had come home from work, exhausted from the many-layered pressures, and opened the door to the house expecting to see the worn out carpet and the cracked floor files…but instead stepped into…

My dream home!

Designers were fluttering from room to room unpacking beautiful dishes and straightening up beds and setting out fresh flowers.

You see, I’ve watched my fair share of HGTV and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. And there I was seemingly in the middle of my own wonderful surprise, all orchestrated by my husband Craig.

He was a little dazed and confused, too, as he wandered through the maze of rooms seemingly straight from the pages of House Beautiful.

A smiling lady with designer fingernails was unpacking red serving dishes in my new country French kitchen.

“Oh, I’ve never had red before…,” I said, “will these go with…”

“Not to worry,” she said, “look around.”

And as you would guess, smatterings of red punctuated a pathway from room to room.

I found Craig in front of a new big screen television that, oddly enough, had me right there on the screen with a Why did this happen? look on my face.

“You’ve been through a lot,” he said — somehow without opening his mouth.

It was a pretty cool makeover. I was liking the fact that people had stepped into my life and not only taken care of my fix-it/to-do list but made my surroundings beautiful.

Wouldn’t that be nice…having someone make everything better, like how your mom used to kiss your ouchies?

I’m actually afraid to sit down and write a to-do list. I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately. On it I’d have to put “paint the house” and “replace the decks.” But it’d also have to include “give more” and “step out of your comfort zone.”

I hate myself when I’m sluggish and indecisive and indifferent. I’ve been waiting for the wind to push me one way or another.

“Do something,” our pastor urged us a couple weekends ago. He said that perhaps it didn’t matter much what kind of good we were doing — just do something.

Yes, it’s Up2Me to make my life beautiful…to adorn it with generosity and compassion and grace. And I guess it doesn’t matter what my home looks like, as long as others see love in it.

Got your prayer eyes on?

Devotional prayerwalking is praying for your surroundings while you walk — for the folks in those homes you pass, for the businesses, and for other passersby as well as other needs you sense as you traverse your town. It’s not checking names off a mental list but, instead, praying at God’s leading with a caring heart.

If you’re interested in starting to prayerwalk, here are a few tips:

• Make a date. Commit to a specific time on a daily or regular basis. Make this commitment a priority. Cut the unnecessary out of your life, so that you can incorporate this new discipline.

• Find a partner. We’re more likely to follow through with any exercise discipline if we know that person is going to be knocking on our door.

• Get ready. Acquire a good pair of shoes. You also will want to plan ahead for weather concerns–umbrella for rain, snow walking boots for winter, layers for colder weather, sunscreen for the sun. You need not spend a lot of money on any of this.

• Be safe. Make sure your route is a safe one. Take your cell phone, and tell someone where you will be walking.

• Open your eyes. Look for the needs in your community. Are neighbors arguing? Pray for their marriage. Is blight a problem? Pray for hearts turned toward God.

• Become responsive. Bogged down by distractions and mental lists? Pray for the concerns and then release them. In this manner you will begin to be more focused.

• Read the Bible. The more you allow God to speak to you through his Word, the more you will be praying in his will.

Keep it going! Through prayerwalking you will learn that wherever you are — whether you are prayerwalking or not — there’s a reason for prayer. God has you right where you are this very minute to notice the needs around you so as to entrust those needs to him. In this way you can partner with the Problem Solver to make a difference in the lives around you.

May God bless you as you pray for your community!

© 2011 Janet Holm McHenry

Find more help and encouragement about prayerwalking:

http://www.amazon.com/PrayerWalk-Becoming-Prayer-Strength-Discipline/dp/1578563763

I wanted to "Escape" after buying an earlier lemon this summer!

I made two mistakes recently — one stupid, the other nearly disastrous.

The stupid decision was buying a car that turned out to be a lemon.

The worse decision was trusting a car salesman’s advice over my husband’s.

I’ve been whipping myself ever since.

It took 37 days, numerous phone calls, a firm letter, and daily stomach aches to rectify the stupid decision.

It may take the rest of my marriage to fix the other.

No, I’m exaggerating. I think Craig has forgiven me and says he won’t bring it up, but it probably still hurts him that I didn’t listen to him and that I allowed leather seats and a sun roof to turn my head.

Proverbs 10:13 tells us, “You’ll find wisdom on the lips of a person of insight, but the shortsighted needs a slap in the face” (The Message).

My apparent need to solve problems quickly — so that I don’t have to think about them anymore — often drives me toward the shortsighted solution. My husband, however, weighs decisions carefully.

No, that’s an understatement. He weighs decisions seemingly interminably…at least for this “Just do it” girl. I need to remember, though, that he just about always comes to the right solution.

For example, when he was a college freshman, a friend challenged him to investigate Christianity for himself by reading the Bible.

He did — from front to back. I remember his saying something like this at the time, “It made sense, so I believed.”

It made sense.

That was the trouble with the whole lemon car deal. If I had listened to my husband’s wise counsel, I would have realized what he was saying made sense.

I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll listen to my husband’s wise counsel on car matters, and I’ll go back to reading the Bible all the way through…so that I, too, will better recognize sense over stupidity.

Does anyone know the name of these flowers?

It was well after dusk when I discovered these beautiful pink flowers blossoming in my little rock garden in the back yard. All summer long I watered and fertilized, waiting for something to spring from the unassuming low-lying leaves…only to be disappointed with each glance.

Until tonight. There they stood on this September 1 cool evening after my walk — a tall tower of bells chiming the end of summer and beginning of fall.

They reminded me of students past and present — ones I’ve watered and fertilized with English teacher-ese and counselor-ese. Many weeks seemingly fly by during a school year, and I always wonder if I’m making a difference at all. Even at the end of this summer I agonized over my return to the classroom.

Maybe someone younger, someone full of new ideas should take my place, I thought.

And then I read, “Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

But I’m too old to sow seed, I pleaded with God. Don’t you need a younger gardener?

I’ve learned over the years that when all I hear is my own echo of complaint, I just have to keep on keeping on.

The day I went back into my school to put together lesson plans, I found a lovely journal and letter from “Mary” on my doorstep in a pretty pink bag. Mary had graduated just months before and was on her way to college but wanted to give me a thank you for helping her learn to write and helping her through a particularly rough season of her life.

On the front of the journal was the “Footprints” vignette, which closes:

“’The Lord replied, ‘The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand, is when I carried you’” (–Mary Stevenson).

The letter was carefully penned, every line with cross-outs and corrections — a work of art for this dear girl who had struggled with writing the last four years. Each sentence, though, was perfect sketched, just as an oil painting artist scrapes and layers until ocean waves are crashing photographically on the canvas.

Yes, the bell-shaped flowers tonight were a reminder that sometimes it takes a lot of watering for students to blossom. But they will.

And so I must teach…and wait for the next set of blossoms to brighten the dusk.

Craig and I at Frazier Falls

I love waterfalls. Often, though, they’re not just along the roadside but tucked into an isolated canyon at the end of a windy road.

Such is true for Frazier Falls, about an hour from our home deeper and higher into the Sierra than our mountain valley, which sits at five thousand feet. We drive the long stretches and the switchbacks until rock walls finally reveal their treasure, the 180-foot plummet of Frazier Creek into the canyon.

Twice this summer I visited the falls, once with my friend June and once with most of our kids and a handful (or rather shouldersful) of grandkids. After the long drive, we hiked the half-mile trail — up, down, and around. Along the meandering path a prism of wildflowers decorated the rock crevices, inspiring our camera close-ups. And then…finally…the falls.

They did not disappoint us. The winter’s sixty-one feet of snow (yes, you read that right: 61 feet) in the Sierra provided a payoff for falls followers unmatched for almost sixty years.

The snow plant is a rare Sierra find.

But we got another payoff as well: several snow plants still remained along the trail. The chlorophyll-less, bright red plant grows in high elevations under pine trees and is a stunning surprise in shady forest spots. Interestingly, it gets its nourishment from a shared fungus from the pine trees’ roots — beauty growing from rot, seemingly.

Oh, but isn’t that what our Lord does with our lives — create beauty from our rot?

In fact, he is in the business of transformation.

Water to wine.

Cripple to whole.

Burdens to forgiveness.

Sometimes I wonder why my own path to snow-plant-like transformation takes such a circuitous route. Life’s flowerlike attractions — fleeting pleasures that don’t satisfy more than moments — seemingly distract me on a regular basis.

I’m just thankful for grace and that I can fix my “eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). Without his graceful, transforming power, I’d have no hope that my rot will some day be a thing of beauty.

Are the things on your To-Do List falling into place?

If Loose Ends were a Facebook entity, I would not be clicking [Like].

I am a hater of loose ends. I love it when my To-Do List becomes a To-Done List. I don’t enjoy dwelling on problems. Conversely, I’ve noticed that a strength of mine is problem solving.

Right now, though, there are WAY too many things on my To-Do List. Broken lawnmower. Lesson plans. Car that doesn’t work.

Lately, the To-Do List has jumped off the counter and has started messin’ with my theoretically sacrosanct Hour of Power when I walk and pray. I don’t like that…and I don’t like myself if that occurs more than a couple times during the week.

However, if I’m absolutely honest with myself, I know that there’s a lot of time I have let slip away from my day — mostly involving out-of-control digestion of anything and everything online.

I came Facebook-to-Facebook with a passage from scripture that I’ve never been too fond of, mostly because I tend to identify with Martha. A friend posted this:

“’Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.’”

In particular, the word needed jumped off the page, because I’ve been worrying about how I will ever be able to get everything done when I return to teaching in a week, given that my days this summer have been very full. Clearly, the Lord is teaching that the only essential things in our lives — the only needed things — are those that would draw us to him. Study. Prayer. Reflection.

Yes, I tried to fit “Facebook” under reflection. No, it didn’t post.

Because prayerwalking in the mornings will make sure I’m getting what I need on a daily basis, I will return to that routine when school starts. And so that I can get up at 5 a.m., I will have to do the following:

• Cut back online time
• Grade papers only until 8 p.m., so I’m not editing mental essays as I try to drop off to sleep.
• Head to the bedroom by 8 p.m.
• Turn the lights out at 9 p.m.

I [Like] that To-Do List.

What’s yours for the fall?