My Bible, My Friend

Here is my facebook status update from November 28, 2011:

“On June 3, 1983 Michael Frazier gave me a Bible. It came so soon in our dating that I actually spelled his name wrong on the "Presented by" line. (Apparently yearbooks are not excellent sources for checking the spelling of names.) I have recorded the deaths of grandparents and my mom's passing in it. Today, I recorded the marriage of Daniel Frazier to Bethany Gray. It is worn and covered with notes of all kinds. I am thankful for my Bible, and the way it feels in my hands, and the way it feeds my soul and shapes my life.”

I love my Bible.  Except for my New American Standard Inductive Study Bible—which will always feel like a college textbook to me—and the Bible I carried in my wedding, all the Bibles I have personally owned have had red covers.  Probably not significant, but it is true.  But this Bible, my red 1983 NIV, with its frayed spine and peeling cover, is my favorite.  It is marked with pen, pencil, colored pencil and maybe even crayon.  It is stained with tears and coffee.  There are sermon dates and minister’s names scribbled in the margins. Scattered about over the words are symbols and arrows and exclamation points. A few pages are ragged at the edges, and there are sections that look barely worn (sorry, minor prophets).

Often when I think about certain scriptures, I can visualize where they are in this Bible, where the verse falls on the page.  I’m so familiar with this particular Bible that I really don’t want to choose another when it comes time to study or read.   This Bible is my friend. 

Psalm 19:7-8 says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.  The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.  The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.”

I need all of these things.  I require reviving.  I need wisdom.  I desire joy.  I need my darkened eyes to receive the radiant light that His Word gives.  Don’t you need these things as well? What about your family and neighbors and the students in your choir?  God’s Word is there to bring these things and so much more.

Would you be willing to take a challenge?  Would you be willing to try to instill as much love for God’s Word in your students as you do love of music?  Would you be willing to help them encounter God’s Word in ways that are so meaningful to them that they develop a life-long friendship with their Bible, too?

Encountering God’s Word is life-giving.  It is not boring or stale or just something for grown-ups to do.  What will these “friendship encounters” with God’s Word look like in your classroom?  How can you marry the love and beauty and excitement of music with a love and passion for God’s Word? 

“The ordinances of the Lord…are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb” (Psalm 19:9-10).  Who doesn’t like gold and honey?  Make rich, sweet deposits into the lives of your students—through music and the Word.  It is a powerful combination.

Feasting on golden honey,

Rhonda

(This article originally appeared in Share the Music, a newsletter for Brentwood-Benson Music Publisihing, distributed by the Hal Leonard Corporation.  It was used here with permission.)

Music Memories

What are your favorite musical memories?  There are probably too many to count, but think about it for a bit.  What thoughts, feelings, or pictures from your past come rushing forward when you begin to reflect on the impact of music in your life?  

I grew up in a church tradition that regularly married the old and the new in music.  Every pew was outfitted with The Church Hymnal—loving referred to as the “Red-back Hymnal” even though in later years it could be purchased in a new-fangled green.  In fact, when I was little I thought that was the name of the book.  In addition to this hymnal, every year we got new paperback songbooks for the choir to use.  The songbooks represented a collection of new songs recently written and were filled with verses about salvation, God’s goodness, heaven and Christ’s return.  Alto and tenor leads were prevalent as shaped notes danced across the lines and spaces.

Back then, our choir was an “anyone who wants to sing come on up” group.  There were no formal choir rehearsals and song leaders chose the next song sometimes on the fly.  Children and adults were welcomed to head up to the choir loft, grab a songbook and belt out whatever you could bring.   The song leader never quite knew what cacophony of parts he would hear from the loft until we got started, but it usually worked its way out as singers shifted parts to accommodate the harmony or melody as needed.    It was at the same time chaotic and beautiful.  

One of my oldest musical memories is of my standing on the front row of the choir, holding my songbook in my little hands and realizing that the lyrics went in an order.   It was like a miracle to me when I realized that the first line of each stanza was sung first, then the second line, then the third with the chorus coming between them.  It seems funny now, but it was as if I had discovered some secret of the universe—a great mystery had been opened up to me.  What may seem strange to many is that I was allowed to go up and sing in the choir before I could read!

While I appreciate the heritage and tradition that I grew up in, I’m not advocating that you start an “everybody come on up” choir.  My challenge to you is for you to continually offer the children in your choir and congregation opportunities to build these kinds of lifelong memories with music.  Create an environment that allows them to encounter music in a life-changing way.  Give them opportunities to serve.  Give them opportunities to lead.  Make space for them to worship, not just in front of you, up alongside you.   

Researchers say that “smells” are the strongest of the memory triggers.  I don’t have any scientific data, but my own experiences tell me that music has to be pretty high on the list as well.  I’m sure that no one in my little church would have guessed that there was a moment on Sunday night when music and the world of reading collided, but it did.  What will the children in your choir remember 10, 20, 30, or 40 years from now?  

Vicious Cycles of Crazy

I know better.  You probably do, too.  We’re supposed to set boundaries.  We’re supposed to know when to say “yes” and when to say “no.”  We should be confident enough and self-assured enough to not get caught up in pleasing people.  Loving people—Yes!  Pleasing people—not necessarily!  Sometimes we confuse the two.  

Yet so many times, I find myself right back in a cycle of piling more and more stuff on my plate—more stuff than I have been given the grace to handle.  For me that is the key to knowing when I’ve taken on too much—there is no grace.  None extended to me, and especially none for me to extend to others.  I’m short-tempered, sleep deprived and hard to get along with—not very gracious.

Sometimes I live as if the concept of being “in over my head” is scriptural.  I function as if the only way to allow God to move in my life is for Him to constantly come to my rescue.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love being rescued.  I love when a deadline is looming, and I cry out in desperation for inspiration and help.  I love it when it comes.  And God is faithful.  He hears the cries of His people—even me.  

Often, I want to think that I would not have been so desperate if God had inspired me earlier, but  if I’m completely honest, earlier I was probably so busy with stuff I was not supposed to be doing that had inspiration dawned, I most likely would have used it on the wrong project, or I wouldn't have recognized it as inspiration at all!

When I get into these vicious cycles of crazy, I try to apply 2 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”  But then there’s the problem of the truth of this passage.  Grace is sufficient for my weakness.  While I’m piling on, saying yes to everything, and pretending to be a Jack of All Trades (and clearly the Master of None), I’m touting my strengths (real or imagined), I am moving in the flesh.  And my flesh, by its very nature, cannot give birth to things of the Spirit.

So as I’m travelling around this mountain pass—AGAIN—I’m asking the Holy Spirit to continue to be my teacher and helper.  I have learned the power of the truth of 2 Corinthians 10:5 “… and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  Is it possible that I need to also apply that truth to appointments, opportunities, projects and such?  What if before I said “yes” to something, I actually took it to Jesus and made the very idea of it obedient to His plan for me, rather than simply seeing a tiny opening in my calendar that I can fill.  What a concept?  How many more truly good things could I say “yes” to, if I were simply willing to say “no” when “no” is what Jesus wanted me to say?

What do you need to take to Jesus?  What do you need to say “yes” to?  I’m praying that the next season of ministry for you will be filled with grace beyond measure and absolutely no crazy from self-imposed chaos!

(This article was written in September 2012 and published in Share the Music a newsletter from Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing for folks  involved in children's music.  It is shared her with permission.)

My Rice Story

This is going to come as no surprise to those in the culinary know, but all rice is not the same.  I'm ashamed to say I've cooked as long as I have and am just discovering this in my own kitchen.    I only feel the freedom to express this here because I'm pretty sure my friend, Clarissa, doesn't read my blog. She would probably cackle at me and my lack of rice knowledge.  She makes some of the most incredible Filipino rice dishes.

So, here's my back story.  I grew up in South Carolina.  Yes, we eat rice in South Carolina, but in the Piedmont (foothills for you non-Sandlappers) where I lived, potatoes were reigning king of the table--mashed, fried, baked, stewed--several times a week.  Smother them in brown gravy, white gravy, add cheese.  It was potatoes!  OK, maybe it was just my house, but I actually have no memory of ever seeing  my mom cook a pot of actual, real rice until after I had moved away and gotten married.   Although we did occasionally eat a sort of rice imitation.

I will admit it.  I was reared on Minute Rice.  Shocking, I know.  In fact, one of my favorite lunches during the summers--when I was home alone and there was no adult around to say that I shouldn't just eat a bowl of rice for lunch--was a bowl of Minute Rice with copious amounts of butter, salt and pepper.  I think one of the first meals I cooked for Michael included Minute Rice.  He married me anyway.  Bags of rice were foreign to me.  Seriously, I remember with some trepidation the first time I cooked "real" rice.  I don't remember how it turned out, but it didn't scare me off.  I cannot recall the last time I purchased Minute Rice, and I wouldn't be caught dead with it in my grocery cart now.  Yes, you heard me.  Would not be caught dead!

And I did explore the rice world just a bit.  Alright, I bought brown rice and white rice.  But it is only recently that I discovered that all rices are not the same.  I know.  I've seen the shelves at the grocery store.  Their names are so intriguing.  But come on.  How different could they be?  Night and day, people.  Night and day.

And now because of a new cook book The Feed Zone Cookbook, I've been introduced to a new level of loving and cooking rice. It started with my making rice cakes for Michael to eat on his bike rides.  Now, put aside any dried-up, air-puffed rice cake of your past.  These are wonderful sweet and savory sticky rice cakes that are so delicious.   I know for some of my foodie friends it may seem absurd that I just recently bought my first bag of Calrose rice.  Why didn't I know about this before?  This is some seriously good rice.

I hoping to get up enough culinary courage to make homemade risotto. I'm sure you'll hear about it.  But for know, I'm just going to feast for a while in this new rice heaven.

You know the old Indian math folklore of Rani outsmarting the Raja by asking for the payment of one grain of rice, then doubling the grains of rice every day for thirty days?   Well, make mine Calrose, please!

Love, Sweat and Tears

Today, I gathered with some teens, young adults and a couple other adults for our weekly gathering at Wherry for our summer outreach called Love, Sweat and Tears.  I knew the Bible  passage for our morning devotion was to come from Matthew 5:13-15--salt and light.

Alan Smith, one of our other leaders, alerted me that Bruce Coble (we love Bruce!) had several different jobs we could work on, but the one he would  really like to tackle (if we were up to the challenge) was to clean out an apartment that had been abandoned for about a week.   "Up for the challenge?"  The gauntlet had been thrown.  We would accept the challenge.   I knew that's what we were supposed to do--where we were supposed to be.

Bruce gathered with us after prayer to lay out the conditions we'd be headed into.  He told us that the family had been living in real despair and darkness and abuse.  He encouraged us to pray again before we went to work.

The team was dismissed to gather supplies and walk to the home.  I explained to the kids a little about what we might be in for.  Michael, the property manager at Wherry, told us a little more and encouraged us to go in as warriors, not afraid of spiritual darkness.  We did.

We prayed.  We prayed for our hearts and minds to be protected.  We prayed for the family that had just moved out, who had been unable to receive the blessings of being the Wherry community.  We prayed that God would set them on a new path.  We prayed for this home to be reclaimed as a place of blessing. We prayed for the cycles of poverty and .abuse and hopelessness to be broken.

None of that prepared us for what we would see and smell.  Later in the day, we were saying what we always say,  "Why didn't we take 'before' pictures?"  But today, I thought no.  I would never want the new family to see what this was.  Molly Watkins said it well, "We don't want that image frozen in time."  So we only took pictures of the apartment after three truck loads of garbage and debris had been removed, the carpet had been pulled up, and the windows cleared .

To say that the old windows at Wherry aren't energy efficient is a gross understatement.  To combat this, the family had filled the windows with styrofoam sheets and some sort of insulating foam  There was little to no light in the bedrooms at all.  This added to the despair.  So we pulled down the dust-caked, soiled curtains, disposed of the broken and sad mini-blinds and cut away the stryofoam insulation.  We let the light in.

The team who worked outside scooped up the rankest garbage I've ever seen and smelled.  Really the only thing missing was human waste.  They pulled unimaginable amounts of garbage from the hedges--a couch and a dirt bike were hiding in there.  They trimmed and tamed the wild backyard.  It was shocking the crazy amount of work those kids did out there.

The team inside bagged up vile garbage.  Some too vile to talk about here.  Some things I wish your kids hadn't seen.  Things no child should see.  And this family was living here just a week ago.  In this stuff, this stench, this mess.  Just a week ago.  Oh, Jesus!  My heart cries.

We salvaged some clothes that family had bagged up and some expensive sports equipment just in case they show up in the next week to claim them.  Hopefully the cockroaches will have scurried from the bags if the family comes for them.

We been given a rare opportunity this year.  A few folks (ministry teams from other churches) will work on the apartment on other days, but by and large the rest of our Wednesdays this summer will be spent loving on this apartment.  We don't always get to see a project to completion.  We're often just a step in the process.   We prime the walls.  Another team paints.  We scrape the metal cabinets.  Another teams finishes them.  We scrape up the old tiling from the 50s and another team lays new flooring.  It's a process.   I'm looking forward to seeing our teens spend some extended time in this one home.  Hopefully by the end of the summer, it will be ready for a new family to move in.

So we'll keep being salt and light at this one little corner of Wherry.  Next week we'll scrub and clean and scrape another layer of grime away, getting ready for the next phase.  And slowly, but surely, this house will become a home!

It's a good summer for Love, Sweat and Tears!

2011 in the Rear View

Here are just a few highlights of 2011.

December

Several culinary milestones were met. I cooked my first-ever Christmas Day dinner. Yes, I realize that I've been married for eons, but we've never, ever been home all day on Christmas Day, so it was my first. The best thing was we got to share it with our great friends, the Clements! I also managed to prepare my first prime rib roast for Christmas Eve, (I'll be doing that again as soon as it's on sale.) and made perhaps the second worst dish of my married life--since the spinach lasagna fiasco of 1985. Yeah, it was bad! It's the dish that shall not be named. Birthday month for Andrew. We repaired the Camry for him for his birthday. I think he got the best end of that deal!

November

Daniel and Bethany were married on Saturday, Nov. 19, just a mere 14 weeks after he proposed to her in Seattle, Washington, on a hot air balloon ride and a critical 8 weeks after returning home from the extended stay in Seattle. Their day was gorgeous and suited them uniquely. I think I was kept sane in November by the commitment to log into facebook with a daily status update of what I was thankful for. That was a great exercise for me. Sometimes, it was petty. Sometimes significant. Always thankful.

October-September

September and October can best be characterized as a blur of wedding planning, teaching, and dealing with random breakouts of hives along with my normal life of being a wife and mom. I don't remember much else about these hectic days except that Daniel and Andrew came home from Seattle. Bethany moved back from Seattle. Andrew moved out of our home to live with the Woerners and spread his wings a bit. Susanna started on her journey of becoming the only child at home. Music directing/conducting for Annie was a highlight of September! Oh, and with no pomp or circumstance, Daniel's diploma from MTSU arrived in the mail. Woot! I am the mom of a college graduate.

August

August was filled with final rehearsals for Annie. I've determined that I am just a good enough actor to play the conductor in Annie. I think I strained a muscle in my hand practicing conducting, and I've never spent so much time trying to master just a few bars of music. Michael is a patient, but picky teacher. His criticisms and tips made me much better at my job. Additionally, I added two new schools to my teaching rotation. It was a lot and maybe too much too soon especially with the upcoming wedding, but I didn't know about that when I took the jobs. Daniel and Bethany got engaged! The boys moved to Seattle for a short time--I miss them!

July and June

We vacationed in Virginia with Michael's family--mom, dad, sister, her husband, her three kids and their spouse and grandson, along with my kids, and Aunt Edith. It was wonderfully relaxing. Hope we get to do that again in a couple of years. Daniel finished up his coursework for school in Chester just in the nick of time. July is birthday month for Daniel. Susanna became a licensed driver. Daniel, Andrew and Susanna went to Mexico on a missions trip. We all volunteered at Wherry Housing over the summer.

May

Andrew graduated from high school, but didn't really want a party or celebration. Looking back that was probably a mistake. He's planning to take a year off before going to college. Hope it's no longer than that. Birthday month for Michael. Two high school graduates, one to go. There is a light at the end of my homeschooling journey.

April

I played the part of M'Lynn in Lamplighter's Theatre Company's production of Steel Magnolias. The cast was delightful and the role was quite cathartic for me. It's a role I'd always wanted to play, so I guess I can mark that off my imaginary bucket list. April 15 marked the first anniversary of my mom's death. We tried to get my dad to visit us during that time, but

he wanted to stay home. Mistake. Maybe next year.

January-February-March

We all readjusted to having Daniel back in the house after his semester in England. Scholl and work and life moves at a face pace for the Fraziers. Bethany returned from her trip to India, then decided to move to Seattle for a season. At the end of January, following Michael's lead, I started using MyFitnessPal and began my journey toward reshaping my body. Led a class on Wednesday nights of intercessory prayer for the nations. Wow! Just wow on how that can change and rock your world.

So in the Rear View 2011 was a lot about loss and gain. Fewer children live in my home, but I gained daughter perfectly matched to my son. I lost control of situations and gained renewed faith again and again. I've lost students, but gained graduates. I gained experience and lost inhibitions. I lost pounds (40-ish so far) and gained mobility and energy.

Here's to reflection and review. Here's to favored days to come and new mercy and grace each day!

Goes by in a Blink

A blink and a blur--that's how I'd describe this past year. The other night as the family gathered around the table we began to talk about the milestones of the year. Here are a few of our highlights:

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in January and in April passed away.
Michael's dad survived the Haitian earthquake and has made several trips back to help with building and transition.
Parker DuBose was born in January--our neice's son.
Susanna got her driving permit.
Daniel and Susanna went to Mexico on a mission's trip.
Andrew went on a six-week vacation to Madrid.
The boys took an eventful road trip to Chicago with four other friends. (That trip deserves its own blog.)
Andrew started college classes during his senior year.
Daniel moved to Chester, England to complete a semester abroad at the University of Chester with MTSU. (Back home now to finish up his senior year.)
Weeks of physical therapy to try to get me pain-free and restore full use of my knees.
Bethany went to India on Dec. 14 and is still there. (returning soon!)
We watched young families have babies, watched God start new families at several weddings and attended more funerals than probably ever before in one year.
I won the championship in our fantasy football league.

And Michael is still the most incredible man I've ever met, and I love him with every ounce of my being.

Not to mention the daily faithfulness of God in all things--big and small--along the way.

Indeed, it was a blink and a blur. What a journey!