march 2011

...is the next time I will purchase clothes. for one year i am going to (attempt to, at least) refrain from purchasing items to wear. it's been 3 months so far.

why?

many reasons.

One being "and why are you anxious about clothing? consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

.....

Daddddd(s)

happy belated father's day!

Sunday was yet another reminder of how lucky I am to be raised under such
godly,
faithful,
consistent
father(s).

I guess I just needed extra amounts of good fathering, because I'm blessed with Dads who pray and raise me still.

(I'm 25 and need all the help I can get.)


STAN:I love that my Dad STILL gets up
EVERY
SINGLE
MORNING
before the crack of dawn is a twinkle in the universe's eyes
to pray for me,
for others,
for my future spouse (uh, since I was first born... no joke).

I love that I still have wonderful memories of playing all sorts of made up games (which, as I look back now, all had some kind of strength/aerobic element for him...haha...multi-tasking?) from:

GusGus (the tickle bug),

to the

"Honey, I've lost my children" game
(he pretends he can't see us, which resulted in three kids jumping around and pulling at him saying,
"BUT DAD!!! WE ARE RIGHT HERE!!??! CAN'T YOU SEE US!?!?!"),

to "Rough 'n Tumble",
the game where we got our aggression out by trying to tackle him repeatedly to the ground (side note: I was raised with two older brothers).

I love that I have lots of memories of him being just around, helping him in the yard, talking about not being able to date til I was 30....And I love that as I've gotten older, I've grown to love and respect him and his choices even more. He is a good man who walks in humility and joy. I have always said, and probably always will, that my Dad is ever FOR me. No matter where I am in life, he has my back. He is on my side.

(And he even sends me vitamins still.)

I love that he gives me weird glasses and pillows embroidered with his Stan-isms (which maybe aren't so eloquent, as it turns out....). I love that he loves to memorize the Word and always asks me, "What's the Book say?" He is SO solid.

I like how he strokes his mustache when he's thinking - though I hate that he's usually chewing a gross cigar. I love that claps loud and big during worship, brings his anointing oil every where he goes, but still claims he's not charismatic.


FRED:Since I've moved in with Fred and Mary, I've gotten to become a part of a family with a completely different dynamic.

Fred is a Dad who gives of himself - who dies to himself - on an
EVERY
DAY
basis.

I've really never seen anything like it.
I myself (though just a recently inaugurated daughter) have been the recipient of many 'Dad' things, from a repaired A/C (amazing) to a half-birthday gift for school (!!!), to a father's ever-godly advice and encouragement.

One of my favorite things about claiming Fred as a father now is that every conversation I leave, no matter what we're talking about, I go away feeling like this girl:

("I like my hair! I like my hair cuts! I. Like.My.Whole.House!" *CLAP*)

Conversations with Fred make me feel like I can do ANYTHING.
Really. I can not only tackle huge, annoying obstacles of being yet-again jobless, but I can tackle them while imagining life as an exciting adventure that the Lord is taking me on.

I also can't say enough about how I respect the insatiability of his sweet tooth, his love for good books, and the perfect handwriting gene that he most obviously passed on to Anne. (Argh!! I shake my fist at the sky in crazed jealousy!) I loved that in college, before I even knew him as well as I did now, Anne and I would always pause as we considered doing something slightly un-Fred (like wondering whether or not we should speed or use a huge knife as scissors) and we would always stop because, well, "Fred just knows." We believed very strongly that Fred had direct downloads from God about our goings on in Waco, TX (180 miles away) and have proof to that point.

His patience and love for his family is this miraculous, unending fount that comes surely only from his time with His Lord, and I am so privileged to be a part of this home!

(And his Breakfast-in-a-Cup is a miracle in itself.)

What can I say? I am a 25-year-old with a penchant for excess-raising?

word to my mother(s)

In gearing up for Mother's Day, I realized that I had the very distinct privilege of honoring not only my mother, but lots of other moms who have been mommas to me.

Really, I should be one of the more well-rounded individuals I know with all this extra mothering. Either that, or I just needed a lot of extra help.

Momma Meyer

Mrs. Meyer is whose house I partly lived in from 7th grade until the present. Her house is the one where I can walk into without knocking (I love that). I love that she has SUCH patience. She works herself to the bone to serve and bless her family. I love her love for old musicals and for deep friendships. She has taught me much about faithfulness in the little things. I love that she teases me and asks me about boys. She gives GREAT hugs. I love how she thinks of me as one of her own, and I even have a "thinking of you" bird to match the one in her house. I love how she considers people at all times. She is always poised, but can DEFINITELY cut loose (uh...baking soda and water anyone?)

She has given me so much KINDNESS.

Marrrryyyy

Oh, dearest M. Since moving to Dallas, the Lord saw fit to provide a safe place for me to land while going to Seminary and working part time. Mary didn't hesitate one second when offering me a place when finances were getting thin. When I had dinner with Mary and Mr. Fred one night while we were talking things over, she exclaimed, "Where's your bags!?" I loved the open invitation. I LOVE LOVE LOVE when she dances. Since being here, and since knowing her through my college years, I have learned many practical useful things, as well as a few completely non-useful, but wonderful things (as follows):
1. How to draw a map properly (N at the top of the paper).
2. How to clean a sponge when it gets that dingy smell (put in the microwave for 20 seconds with a little bit of bleach on it).
3. How to tell if food is spoiled (she has an incredible sense).
4. How to make someone feel loved when they've tried their best even when it's failed terribly.
5. How to CELEBRATE with someone!
6. How to laugh and enjoy the little, ridiculous things in life (uh, SNL, anyone??).
7. How to confess minor discrepancies in a way to make the other people laugh.

She has given me so much JOY.

Mom

My mom is a weird lady. A lot of people tell me that's where I get it from (and though I pretend to hate it, I secretly love it). She taught me how to laugh at myself when you don't feel like laughing. She taught me how to care for other people fully and without thought to yourself. She taught me how to give. I love her love for great literature and how we both think speed limits are mostly just suggestions. She taught me to cook. She taught me to persevere. She's a weird bird, but I love her to death (even when she puts her undies on wrong). I love that one time when we were talking on the phone, she dropped the phone, put it back to her ear and then started screaming, "Jennie!! Jennie!? OH MY GOSH I'M GOING DEAF I CAN'T HEAR YOU SUDDENLY!", not realizing that she had put the wrong side of the phone to her ear. I love/hate the fact that she speaks in terribly broken Spanish to the people at Chipotle (But ONLY at Chipotle???). I love that reads the Bible through every year. I love how she hears from God.

She has given me LIFE.

Thank you Jesus for these women. I pray that these years of their life would be filled with love, joy, peace, patience and kindness from those they loved SO well.

Thank you for the privilege I've had to be raised under them.

Amen.

my beloved Friend

In celebration of my dearest, most wonderful,
hilarious, kind, adventurous, precious

F*R*I*E*N*D

on her 25th birthday,
I am writing a "Top 10 Moments with AEH" post.


10. Sitting across from AEH and FH at Bush's Chicken in Waco after she had moved in to the apt and declaring to FH,
"We're practically the same person."
And then spending the next lovely years figuring out how much of a reality that was.

9. Coming home from Europe at 1 AM jet lagged and exhausted, and STILL finding myself staying up until 4 AM with AEH baking and catching up and pondering why we decided to spend that semester apart.

8. Taking Christian Hermeneutics and Racquetball together senior year at Baylor.
She hit me with her racket at least once a class.
And I'm sorry I ever suggested we take the Hermeneutics class.

("IT'S IMPORTANT TO LOOK HOT! IT'S IMPORTANT TO WEAR BIKINIS!")

7. When we first got "real jobs" after college where our only survival tactic was to e-mail back and forth to discuss how bad of a choice that was.
(And then planning our inevitable delay of adulthood via YWAM...)

See subject line and message: (also note misspelled name from corporate. wonk)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bower, Jenny
Date: Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 3:52 PM
Subject: RE: blah blah blahblah wednesdayblah blahblah blah
To: Anne Hennighausen



Hahaha true that.
8 minutes


Jennie Bower

6. YWAM in general.
Beaches. Kona coffee. Confession and repentance. Dried mangos.
bliss.

5. Whatever point it was that we decided to start calling each other "Friend."
(Capital because it is "THE" friend)

4. Our talk of the joint condo when we are married to our respective husbands....and how the condo will promise to unite us...till we are old and gray...but still fun and like to snorkel.

3. The moment captured below.
Proving the fact that whenever we talk/hang out/mention one another,
there is inevitable laughing with hysteria.
Without. Fail.
She is probably the funniest person I know.

2. Rebukes
(both ways) (but mostly my way)
How we discussed that some girl forebodingly told us we would not leave YWAM as friends, because of hard it is spiritually and emotionally.

AND HOW WE SHOWED HER WHO IS BOSS,
because we came away from those months with a deeper, truer, richer relationship with the Lord and with each other based on total honesty, vulnerability and brokenness.


1. How she told me she was going back to YWAM,
leaving the comfort of her home, friends and growing family,
because of the boldness and strength of her relationship with Jesus,
and because she is too adventurous to settle for anything less than
AMAZING.






Dear AEH:

"Whatever it is souls are made of,
yours and mine are the same"

love,

Friend

Miss Hazelyn

So, one of the 12.2 jobs that I have currently puts me in direct contact with very old people. And by very old, I do mean nonagenarians.

I met Hazelyn one day during breakfast (It was "Hazeline," but she changed it when she went to college). She is a crinkly, tiny black woman with huge glasses that take up most her face and some of her forehead.

She still has noble cheeks.

She wears her hair combed back, in a bun. It's mostly white, but there are still stubborn gray and black streaks around her temples. She moves slowly, and I usually have to use all my strength to help her when she wants to stand up.

Today, I helped her take a worn book down from the bookshelf so she could read up on her husband's liver condition. She wanted to see how likely it would be that he would need to be on dialysis. He's 14 years her senior, is now debilitated with Alzheimer's, and lives in a home in Houston.

She grew up in the deep south, segregated but not poor. Her slow, southern drawl gives her heritage away especially when she transitions from one subject to the next (or rather, when she keeps trying to get herself back on the original subject at hand) with her "anyyyyywaaays" expression.

One of her first jobs was working as a teacher, in a school where she was the only black woman. The principal there, a white male, made sure that she was always backed by the administration, even when white students' parents would complain that she would steal things from the white students. She was 23.

She is now 78 and lives lives in a country where a black man is president. Her home now is apart from her husband, her children, and she has a flat screen that she never uses. She writes notes down on any available piece of paper in an attempt to remember things she means to look up later, or people she encounters, but usually loses them shortly after. She keeps a daily journal. Today, she had me print my name and address for her "just to have on hand."

Sometimes as I sit listening to her as she travels from thought to thought, I go between watching her and her slow, deliberate movements, and looking at the portrait painted of her and her husband, he standing with his arm on her shoulder, she seated in a leather chair.

And sometimes, the things she talks about seem like a least a million years ago.

Funnies

Favorite quotes from life here with F&M:

1. "Jennie is the new Anne." (M)

2. "What an adventure you are on." (F & his amazing ability to have a godly perspective)

3. "Your cooking makes me think we are on an episode of 'Touched by an Angel.'" (F)

4. "Mary has something to confess to you.." (F when M has had a taste of something with my name on it in the fridge)

5. "Don't make sing!" (M said in a wonderfully dramatic accent)

Found

"But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you'll get away!"
- CS Lewis


"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the Sons of God."
- Romans 8:19

Praise Him for new sons.