Two months later and with Doubt waving from his perch atop our For Sale sign, we were elated to finally get a contract on our house one Wednesday afternoon. I went to church that Sunday rejoicing. To add to my joy, my friend, Dan, sent me home with a new tune he’d written for Psalm 57. I took it home eager to sit down at the piano and play it.

The tune was quickly forgotten when I pulled into our driveway and saw that the “Sale Pending” sign had been removed. A call to our realtor confirmed what my heart feared: the prospective buyers had backed out. Needless to say, it was quite a blow. Since childhood I’ve always done one thing under such circumstances – sit down at my piano. I pulled out Dan’s music and began to play it and read the words… “Show me mercy, O God, show me mercy, for my soul finds its trust in you. In your shadowing wings I take refuge, until sorrows have all passed by…”

The sorrows of losing the sale did pass and a sale did finally come through, but not for another two and a half months. I’ve played Dan’s tune many times since. It’s in the key of D minor, and I love minor keys – whatever that may say about me. But a couple of months ago I asked Dan if he would mind if I transposed the last verse of the song into the major key. It took me four years and many trials and tribulations, but I finally realized that (for me, at least) I needed to sing the last verse with an obvious change in tone. “I will give thanks to you with the people, with the nations I’ll sing praise to you. For your love is great to the heavens, and your truth unto the clouds. Be exalted, O God, in the heav’ns, let your glory be over all the earth. Be exalted, O God, in the heavens; let your glory be over the earth.”

Last week I finished reading a great book, “The Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” It reminded me of another of my favorite books, “84, Charing Cross Road.” In church, we just started a study in the book of Romans. All these books have something in common that I very much like: they’re all letters – either a compilation (the ones about Gurnsey and Charing Cross Road) or a single missive (Romans).

There’s something automatically enticing about reading someone else’s mail. When it’s not published in a book, it’s considered rude and bad manners. And yet, elevated to book status, it’s like being given permission to read someone’s diary. It’ so personal.

Sometimes letters in books are like diaries – you only get that writer’s perspective – but if the book includes recipients’ responses, you get to find out if the letter was received the same way you would have received it. If there is no record of the recipient’s response, you get to imagine what it was. That can be fun, too. For example, when Helene Hanff wrote to Frank Doel (in “84, Charing Cross Road) “…we live in depraved, destructive and degenerate times when a bookshop – a BOOKSHOP – starts tearing up beautiful old books to use as wrapping paper…You tore that book up in the middle of a major battle and I don’t even know which war it was,” we know that Frank wrote back and said, “…please don’t worry about us using old books such as Clarendon’s Rebellion for wrapping. In this particular case they were just two odd volumes with the covers detached and nobody in their right senses would have given us a shilling for them.” The confidence and closure is palpable on both sides.

On the other hand, when the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires,” (Romans 9:18) we don’t know if those words created the stir among the readers that they do today. Did anyone write back to Paul and say, “You’re a raving lunatic, man?” “God would never treat people differently!”Or did anyone write back and say, “Dear brother, thank you for your beautiful analogy, that God is the potter, perfectly right in making vessels for both honorable and common use in order to make known the riches of His glory?” “What an awesome, Holy God we serve.”

Is it ridiculous to compare these two letters? I know that Helene’s letters are meant to be amusing and Paul’s letters are meant to be instructive and authoritative. But to me, it’s pretty significant that they’re both dealing with real people. The God who created people like Helene Hanff (and me) who love books and the adventures in collecting them, chose to speak to us through very personal means – letters. That can’t just be incidental or practical, can it? The people to whom Paul wrote in Rome were just as real as Helene and Frank. Helene had an interest in historic battles, and what Roman citizen wouldn’t have had an interest in the empire’s battles?

How beautiful that God chose letters to pierce human hearts with His word, that His letters are about the The Word (i.e., His Son, Jesus), and that when it comes to battles, His word is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword…” (Hebrews 4:12)

I don’t know if Helene was intrigued by that kind of battle and Word, but I am.

Cables breaking on elevators. Boulders tumbling down mountains threatening to crush my children. Masked intruders invading my house. The stuff of my dreams awhile back.

Lori Ventola is a Denver resident who wants to start a mobile after-school program that helps children of the homeless transition into school. I’ve read her blog, and she seems like a really neat lady. She’s also the winner of Donald Miller’s “Living a Better Story” blog contest. I want to congratulate her and acknowledge that no, I didn’t win.

Lori’s story seems to be a perfect match for the contest. Soon after the contest was announced, Don posted a tip saying”…if you want to start a dance school, for instance, it will require a building, some instructors, some interns, a computer system or whatever. The more specific, the better your chances of coming to Portland.” Lori outlined her plans, and she’ll soon be on her way to Portland – and enjoying that coveted vacuumed space. Seriously, I am happy for her and for those that will be helped as she lives out her story. But…

Always one to question what I “did wrong” in situations like this, I’ve wondered if it was foolish for me to have entered the contest knowing that the story I want to live isn’t exactly what was being asked for. Then again, someone once said, “That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!”

Stories like Lori’s are greatly needed (I think that was the point of the whole contest) and should be greatly admired, but I don’t think those of us with more subtle stories should feel like losers. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I am like that wee squishy packet in the condiment bin. In fact, I might be one of the packets at the very bottom of the bin. Just when the supply starts running low, and I might actually have a chance of being plopped onto someone’s plastic tray, someone in a logoed polo and cap comes and dumps a bunch of fresh packets on me. But that’s OK because I’m still here – taking up space, helping the bin look amply supplied, and being available in case I’m needed. Being available might sound passive and taking up space is often derided, but I think there are better stories being told here than might be obvious.

Consider the concept of zeros as placeholders in numbers: 1,000,000 would only be “1” without them. “Are you serious?” you ask. “Being a zero is the story you want to live?” Well, here’s another story…

Little Amy lives on a big ranch in Wyoming. One day her daddy takes her to a horse show in Casper. It’s her first visit to the big city, and as the sun starts fading on the North Platte River, they pull their crew cab into a fast food chain. Amy’s eyes grow wide because it’s just like the ones she’s seen on satellite TV. Daddy lets her carry her own tray and then lets her get her own ketchup for her kiddie meal. She stands on her tiptoes and stretches her reed-like little arm to the eye-level condiment bin. Concentrating with her tongue between her teeth, she can barely reach into the bottom of it. Her groping fingers find a wee squishy packet. Lord knows how long it’s been since someone reached that low into the bin! She holds it close to her face and tries to read the label; after all, she is six and trying to read everything. She’s not quite sure it says “Ketchup,” but she trusts it is exactly what she thinks it is, so she gently places it beside the colorful box on her tray. After Daddy finds a booth seat and helps her unpack her meal, she takes the wee squishy packet, tears off a corner with her teeth (she watched her daddy do this first) and then she smears a tiny blob on a salty, golden fry. For some time she sits, swinging her legs and bobbing her head, happily eating her chicken and carefully ketchup-topped fries. Finally, she holds the shriveled, smudgy packet up to her daddy’s face. “Here, Daddy,” she says. “I used it all up. Is that OK?”

“That’s what it’s for, Cowgirl. That’s what it’s for.”

Sense and Sensibility is one of my favorite movies; I watched it again last night. In the final scene of Emma Thompson’s screenplay, ribbon-waving children revel among the tombstones in the churchyard where the misses Dashwoods have just been married. For the first time last night I appreciated the irony of this setting. But perhaps it’s just my American sensibilities (pardon the pun) that imagine irony where none was intended. Perhaps, if anything, the scene depicts a confirmation of some of the deepest nuances of life – youth, marriage, eternity. (Perhaps I should watch the commentary with Thompson and director, Ang Lee, and see if they have anything to say about this image.)

Here in America it’s not a common image to see children (excepting Halloween pranksters) reveling in graveyards. Indeed, unless you’re in Small Town, America graveyards are not common sights at all. This first dawned on me back in June when Jay and I were driving around Ireland. As we came upon Gothic cathedral after Gothic cathedral, village church after village church, I wondered if the Irish ever take for granted all the architecture and symbolism rising through the misty air. Admittedly, I went to Ireland fully expecting to see the churches and high crosses. What I hadn’t really considered is where the crosses would be found – in the cemeteries right next to the churches! I was struck by this visual reminder of the concern for both living and departed souls. At least that’s what this abundance of churches and cemeteries seems to represent. It could only be superficial, but the fact remains that they ARE THERE. To paraphrase Francis Schaeffer, “Churches and graveyards are there, and they are not silent.”

Sometimes I think we American (Christians) pride ourselves in knowing that church buildings are “just” buildings. They are not the True Church, the hearts of the people who worship in them. So we meet in strip malls and schools, and people can drive right past and think about earrings and dodge ball and never consider their souls.

We do the same thing with cemeteries. I’ve lived in Phoenix for four years and have yet to drive past a cemetery – at least to my knowledge. This isn’t the way I was raised. Cemeteries used to be a major part of my life. I didn’t revel in them, but from age 10 to 18, I joined my mother and younger brother on Memorial Day pilgrimages of sorts. We drove from our home in north central Nebraska to a little country cemetery in the panhandle of Texas. We put flowers on my father’s grave and then we spent a few days visiting with my older brother and sister and other relatives. My stepfather and stepsister made a similar pilgrimage, in a different vehicle, to a cemetery in Oklahoma where their first wife/mother was buried. Some years my stepfather and stepsister would leave a few days before us and then we’d meet them in passing – usually someplace in the middle of Kansas. If they recognized us, they’d wave. Kind of like what we do with churches and graveyards.

Note on the photograph: A cemetery near Beech Hill Hotel near Derry, Northern Ireland – and more evidence that our prayers were answered on Grafton Street.

If you’ve never clicked on my song at the right, you can now hear it on a site you might find a little more exciting. My manager (oh, okay – my husband) got an email message today from a company saying that they were featuring the song on one of their links. If you click here on Presto Album you’ll find that they’re featuring it on an album of Las Vegas photos. While Woman Never Sleeps may sound like the perfect theme for Sin City, I find it very ironic. I wrote it about my stay-at-home-mom life, while I was in a garage band with two guys from my church. And please, don’t send me your desperate housewife stories and try to convince me that Woman Never Sleepsis more appropriate than I’d want to admit. I’m certainly not claiming sinlessness, but if something happened in Vegas and I had to stay in Vegas, it would probably be because my minivan broke down.

Members of the mission team paint a building on the Colville Reservation. (Photo courtesy Breanna Cole)

“Who goes to Ireland for nine days and comes back without any pictures?”

That was the question I raised to my husband under a cloudy, silent Dublin sky on June 9, 2010. My blog entry for June 20 recounts this story, the anxious hours we spent on the last day of our 25th wedding anniversary trip to Ireland. In that entry I wrote about how my husband accidentally deleted 600+ photos from our camera, and how we made a somber trek to a camera shop where we hoped and prayed our precious digitized memories would be retrieved. I wrote about how I tried to bring comfort to our fearful hearts: “I consoled Jay (and myself) by telling him that it would make a great story…” I even began to mentally write that story.

So, how does one get the idea to “write a story,” the ending of which she can only hope will bring comfort? By reading Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Even though I’ve been a story lover for most of my life, Don’s perspectives did much to prompt me to think about the stories in our lives, and especially how conflict is vital to these stories. Ironically, I’ve recently been reading another book by another famous author. That book, about the idols in our lives, helped me to pinpoint my biggest idol – Conflict Avoidance. Yes, the woman who is supposedly learning to have a greater appreciation for the importance of conflict, idolizes Peace and Tranquility!

As the Dixie Chicks sang, “There’s your trouble…” Knowing the place that conflict has in my story and truly embracing it so that I live my stories with courage and joy does not come naturally. Perhaps attending the Living a Better Story Seminar (click to find out more) might help me understand how I can delve even deeper, gain even greater insights, and live even better stories.

Going to Ireland was a story that was a complete surprise. But there are other more purposeful stories I want to live. There’s the story about how my husband and I open a restaurant that not only serves the best BBQ this side of Kansas City, but also gives jobs to young people who are excited about working for a place that pays them well enough so that they can donate their tips to a fund for the local food bank.

With the right investors, equipment and staff that story could happen. However, there’s another story that’s dearer to my heart. It’s complicated, it’s ancient, and it’s seldom deemed worthy of particular notice. I’ve been writing it for the past 23 years, will write it every day of my life and even from my grave. It’s a story about a woman who, like many others, raises kids who love God, love His Church and love others so that they don’t just look out for their own personal interests but also the interests of others. The kids do things like paint houses for Native Americans on reservations; they distribute food to homeless people; they crochet stacks of hats for newborns who were considered “unwanted pregnancies;” they help with Christmas meals for distressed inner-city families. The woman struggles to calculate the cost of raising such kids, these kids who will be sensitive to the plight of others. So far the price has included being uprooted and moved across the country more than once, sharing in their parents’ various losses and difficulties, and even suffering the consequences of driving drunk and endangering others’ lives. The plans for these stories are rarely clear-cut.

“Clear-cut” was what my objective was when I started writing this blog. I wanted to tell my readers about this seminar and try to win the contest so I could go to the seminar myself. I wanted to go and be inspired by more of the same ideas that helped me deal with the prospect of losing 600 photos on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. In “the end,” however, this endeavor has reminded me that the stories I want most to live have very little to do with me and a lot to do with others. They are the type of stories that create pictures that never need the aid of a camera shop.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12011394&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.

“Chocolate baby Gouda cheese. Chocolate baby Gouda cheese. Chocolate baby Gouda cheese.” That’s what was running through my mind when I woke up this morning. I realize that making such a confession might very well land me in the nuthouse, but if you’re a regular reader of womanneversleeps, then you probably know I need my noggin examined. You may even wake with such thoughts and wonder if anyone else out there does. See, I’m here for you.

This chocolate/cheese mantra wasn’t inspired by my dreaming, either, because in my dream I was in a room with various kinds of lighting arranged all over a spackled ceiling. The light bulbs had all been unscrewed, and I was standing on a chair trying to fix the one with the candelabra bulb hanging over the piano. And yet when the sunlight came pouring through my window, “chocolate baby Gouda cheese” is what I was thinking.

The real problem with these mental litanies is the lack of punctuation. Was it an exclamation? “Chocolate, baby! Gouda cheese!” Or was it a checklist? “Chocolate, baby, Gouda cheese.” Let’s hope it wasn’t “Chocolate baby, Gouda cheese.”

They say your body craves the nutrients it needs. My body always needs chocolate. And come to think of it, it’s been a long time since I had any Baby Gouda. A vital nutritional deficiency does sound like a pretty logical explanation. No?

I hope it’s a chocolate-covered nuthouse, at least.