hope

Some things never change…

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 11 Comments

Some things never change, but then again, sometimes (almost) everything changes. Since my last post over 16 months ago, my life has been touched by nearly every major life-impacting event known to womankind. I thought about listing here all these tragedies, conundrums, and milestones, tempted by the shock value of their individual and accumulated status. But ultimately, that’s not really my style. Or is it? Maybe it should be. Maybe the newly transparent, vibrantly vulnerable woman that is emerging from the wreckage needs to boldly acknowledge my journey. Maybe I need to acknowledge my membership in the various tribes of which I now belong.

No. I just spent half an hour chronicling that tribes list here. At Number 17, it stopped feeling right. So I deleted all of them. But that doesn’t change my desire to put my stories out there – out HERE on my blog – not just in a shocking list, but in meaningful, redeeming ways. Because, despite all that is new, altered, damaged or rejuvenated in my life, my soul is still intact, with many of the same longings, loves and aspirations and convictions. It is truly a near miraculous reality and an evidence of grace beyond my mortal comprehension.

I’m still me, the “woman that never sleeps,” the lover of the quotidian life and the stories that reveal its sacred beauty. I hope you’ll stop by occasionally and join me in my marveling.

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Hungarian Hodge Podge Helper

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 6 Comments

Perhaps it’s fitting that a hodgepodge of H words has had my little imagination hog-tied for today’s H entry in the blog challenge.

I’m sure that by now it’s quite apparent I’m only a faux foodie, so it won’t come as a shock if I confess that Hamburger Helper was the first idea that lassoed me.  Aside from the appealing alliteration (yes, it’s a sickness with me) I don’t shy away from the place it’s had in the life of my family.  I know; I know…even as I type this, a zillion healthy food bloggers are ready to unleash their hounds upon me.  I appreciate that.  I also appreciate the convenient and budget-friendly solution that the product provides.   If you’ve never been in one of those situations, I’m happy for you.  Many people are, however, as I was reminded a few months back when I helped put together food boxes for Kitchen on the Street, a faith-based, non-profit organization that is fighting hunger in my state and others.  Just as I’m thankful that my family can afford to eat a little healthier these days, I’m thankful for the hope that these groups are providing – Hamburger Helper and all.

If my Hamburger Helper days represent days of tight budgets and hectic schedules, the Hungarian restaurant, Novak’s in Albany, Oregon represents a hopeful adventurous time of discovering new places and new foods and the people who lovingly labor over them.  This was one of the gems my husband discovered when a job relocation took us to the Pacific Northwest.   The schnitzel, pearl noodles, and red cabbage (and everything else I ever ate from their menu) are heavenly, but this place is great for two other hot H words – hospitality and history.  If you never make it to Novak’s, I hope you have something comparable closeby.  Everybody needs a hearty helping of hospitality and history every now and then.

You can’t go home

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 15 Comments

It’s always a sad day to have to disagree with Jon Bon Jovi and agree with your mother-in-law, but here I am.  When Bon Jovi asks with rock-n- roll bravado, “Who says you can’t go home?” who wants to disagree?  Not me.  And yet, when my daughter was preparing to make the drive home after her first semester of college, and her grandmother told her that going home wouldn’t be the same, I knew her MeMa was right.  My daughter didn’t want to believe it, she confessed to me, but before she knew it, she was experiencing all the angst that comes with wondering how things will be when you get home.  Will your friends treat you the same?  Will your parents and your siblings be the same?  Will all those familiar places calm the unsettled yearnings of your heart?  She learned that you really can’t go home – at least not the same person you were before.

As she was making that long drive home, across three state lines and past an obscene number of Subway restaurants, my daughter was anticipating a joyous reunion with family and friends, still clinging to the hope that her grandma didn’t know what she was talking about.  She wasn’t thinking about the fact that she has spent the last six months living with new people, working with new people, studying with new people, worshipping with new people, buying tampons and Top Ramen and Chai tea lattes from new people.  Those seemingly mundane activities can’t help but change a girl.  She has a whole new set of experiences that don’t include those of us back home.  She’s in that terribly frightening but awesomely exciting place in her life where she’s holding onto the fragile threads of change, trusting that they’ll weave her into a life that is every bit as durable as the piece of cloth from which she is being unraveled.  From one tapestry to another, this is the way the Weaver of our lives works.  He does not allow us to hang perpetually on museum walls, but rather proves Himself to be the artisan of living, breathing fabric that surpasses the finest breathable cotton cultivated on this planet.

Of course, my daughter did experience the reassurance of the love of family and friends this trip, and I am confident that someday she will be able to come home without angst and reservation.  Bon Jovi’s words will ring true, and my mother-in-law will be…well, a little less right.  There will be more strands of my daughter woven into a lovely new tapestry than will remain in the old, and she will be beginning to feel secure with the new thing of beauty that she will be.  Even if the Master Weaver does allow times in her life when the dust mites of reality nibble on her front side and the cold walls of perseverance chill her backside, she will know that “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.”

Quotidian Water

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 7 Comments

The thing I remember most about the sophisticated water faucet my teenage brother engineered for my cardboard playhouse, is that it disappeared overnight.

To call it a playhouse is a stretch.  It was a tall corrugated water heater box with that distinct pulpy cardboard smell, and it had barely enough room for me as a five-year-old to turn around in.  I could place a mud pie and a small plate of grass salad next to a wall.  I could sit a doll in a corner, but she had to hold her bottle on her own little lap.  The tight quarters didn’t faze me.  Having to do without the accoutrements of a well-equipped kitchen were insignificant to me, overshadowed by the one magical feature of my little room – my kitchen had running water.

Back when Miracle Whip jars still had tin lids, my then 14-year-old brother used one to make a water dispenser for me.  I don’t remember the details of his design.  Besides the jar, he used a long thin silver metal pipe and a copper spigot.  I still couldn’t explain the physics of it to you, but it took him all afternoon to construct and install it in my kitchen.  Finally, came the magical moment when he showed me how to turn the handle and water bubbled up in the jar and out through the spigot.  Just once.  Then he hurried me out of my charmed little cardboard haven to tweak his design.  I couldn’t wait to return to it the next day.

But the next morning it was gone.  It might have blown away in the Oklahoma wind, but more likely my parents decided they didn’t want a tower of cardboard in their yard.  Whatever the reason behind its disappearance, I was crushed at its discovery.  This might have been my introduction to dashed hopes.  Not that I was a particularly spoiled child;  my parents often told me, “No.”  I just had such visions for playing with that faucet, such hope for spectacular running water adventures in my little house.

Hope is a picture of a longed-for result and sometimes it seems that life is a series of dark room catastrophes – blessings that never reach the light of day.  The important thing is to come out of the dark room, keep coming back to the real world to take more pictures.  No new film ever originates in the dark room; it has to be obtained outside in the light – the glaring, harsh, glorious reality of light.

It surprises me less and less that the most memorable stories of my life contain quotidian elements like water.  Jesus used those very things to describe Himself, to help me understand who He is.  I understand more and more that who He is, is my one sure never-changing picture of hope.

 “Jesus answered and said to her,’Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever, drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.'” (Matthew 4:13-14)