THE GOODBYE THAT MADE ME THANKFUL

This morning I had breakfast with four friends.  It was another of my goodbye meetings, one last meeting with friends I love before Jim and I move to Florida.  Today my breakfast companions were Bible Study Fellowship women.  Anita, with whom I went to high school, currently serves as the assistant class administrator of a nearby day class.  The other three, Linda, Joyce and Ruth, all like me, former leaders in BSF,  served in an evening class together which met in Pompton Plains, New Jersey at one time.  Collectively, we represented more than 50 years of service to the Lord through the ministry of BSF.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, these goodbye meetings have primarily been sad, but that’s not how I felt coming home from this one.  All the way home I was filled with gratitude for the privilege of knowing and working alongside these women of God for all those years in BSF.  This morning was a taste of heaven!

If you have never been in Bible Study Fellowship, then let me tell you a little about it.  It’s an international group, with classes all over the world, and many, many - day and evening, men's and women's, classes - here in the US.  BSF now offers 9 in depth studies of the Bible, including John’s gospel; Romans; Isaiah; The Life of Moses; The Life and Letters of Paul; the history of Israel and the Minor Prophets; Genesis, Matthew and in September 2015 they are offering for the first time, the book of Revelation.  Each study encompasses an entire year.  None of them are fluff, all are deep, challenging studies that will make you work hard, and leave you forever changed!

There is daily homework to do on your own, which you bring along to the class.  At class, in a small group setting, you go over the answers and everyone is invited to share what they’ve been learning.  The class ends with a lecture on the lesson by a trained teaching leader who fills in many of your blanks and challenges you to apply the lessons you’ve learned to your life.

I was a student in BSF for one year when I was asked into leadership.  That’s when my real training – as a Bible student, as a leader, as a pray –er, and as a woman of God – really began.  Leaders were all expected not only to attend the class itself, but also to attend a weekly leader’s meeting.  For our class, which was held in the evening, our leaders met on Saturday morning at 7 AM – from September to May - for a two hour training session to prepare us to lead our women on Monday class nights.  

 One year, due to the schedules of one or two of the working women, we met at 6 AM on a Friday morning, and then the working women went to work from there!  I remember that year well.  Because the leader’s meeting caused me to get to work an hour later than usual, I worked an hour later on a Friday night to make up the time.  Talk about commitment on the part of these all volunteer leaders!  It was incredible!

There’s a verse in the Bible that says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  I can tell you, the same is true of women.  When those committed, prepared leaders shared their insights into whatever part of the Bible we were studying that week, I was humbled by how much of a spiritual lightweight I was, and often blown away by the depth of their thoughts!  I learned so much from them as they shared how what we were learning was changing their lives as the Lord spoke through His Word. 

And then there was the prayer time.  

 I remember the first time I joined in prayer in the leader’s circle.  Each woman slipped off her chair and onto her knees as we, out loud, worshiped the Lord in praise, and then prayed as the Spirit led us, for the needs of our class.  I discovered very quickly that though I had been praying for all the years I had been a Christian, I knew nothing about true prayer.  Hearing the intimacy of their prayers which sounded as if they were speaking directly to God Himself, and the passion with which they prayed them, made me seriously question whether I was fit to kneel among them.  I knew nothing about prayer until I prayed in that leader’s circle.

Meeting with my friends today and talking about the blessing of knowing one another and serving together in BSF made me not only long for those days again, but it also made me supremely thankful to the Lord for giving me the opportunity to be part of BSF and their lives!  My life has been abundantly enriched as a result.  BSF and these sisters and co-workers in Christ were God’s gift to me for my spiritual growth.  I am not the same woman I was before Bible Study Fellowship and these women of faith entered my life.

So I came away from today’s goodbye breakfast, feeling a little sad, and feeling a lot grateful for the lavish way in which God bestowed His good grace on me through the ministry of BSF and of these precious women whose lives have touched mine.  Thank You, Father.

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO

I graduated high school in 1965 (can it really be 50 years ago???!!!).  I loved the music of that era.  If you grew up in the same time period and lived here in New Jersey, you may have spent summer evenings with your friends listening to Cousin Brucie's picks and dancing, or talking about boys, make up, hair or clothes, just as I did.  

The music of my era formed the acoustic backdrop for all of my significant high school memories, not just when I was hanging out with friends, but even at school.  I’m pretty sure this isn’t done today, but back then, after everyone had time to eat lunch (which we all did at the same time), the gym was open for dancing, and dance we did! 

Let me paint a picture.  As you came down the narrow stairs leading down to the gym from the floor above, what you noticed first was the great divide, a huge swathe of empty space like the parted Red Sea in the center of the gym, with boys standing along one wall and girls, all the way across the gym against the other.  Only during a slow dance was the divide breached, and only for the length of a song.  

My favorite memory of those lunch times is of doing what we called, “Emerson fast dancing”, but which a previous generation might have called the lindy.  My favorite partner for fast dancing was my friend Paula who always took the lead.  She was a natural at it - confident, with fluid steps, so easy to follow – and I loved dancing with her.  Along with the pony, the cha cha, and a bunch of other dances I can’t remember, dancing together to the songs of our day was our favorite lunchtime activity! 

With just a few weeks till we move, I’ve filled my calendar with dates.  I have breakfasts, lunches and coffees scheduled with friends so that we can say our goodbyes before we go.  All day today one of those lunch time melodies we danced to at Emerson high school in the 60s has been going through my head.  It’s the chorus to Neil Sedaka’s, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do:

“They say that breaking up is hard to do,

Now I know, I know that it’s true.

Don’t say that this is the end,

Instead of breaking up, I wish that we were making up again.”

Neil was speaking of the break-up of teenage romances of course, not saying goodbye to friends before a move, but the cry of his heart is the same as mine – breaking up IS hard to do!

I felt it last night when we arrived home after having dinner out with neighbors.  These folks we’ve shared the same suburban block with for the last 30 years wanted to treat us to dinner as their way of saying goodbye.  At the end of the night when we hugged and kissed and separated to go into our houses, I was suddenly hit with a great sadness.  Why did we not spend more time with them?  Why didn’t we talk about the things that were important to us long before this?  

This morning I had a goodbye breakfast with a friend I’ve known for less time but in a much more personal way.  Annissa and I became friends serving the Lord together in Bible Study Fellowship.  That fellowship, which included praying together every week, drove the roots of friendship deep! Not having seen one another in a while, we spent a lot of time catching up.  But then it was time to say goodbye to her too.  Oh Neil, you are SO right!

It’s hard to say goodbye, to “break up” with so many who mean so much to me. But at the same time, I’m really grateful to the Lord for the people with which He’s blessed my life in my years here in Northern New Jersey.  I’m thankful for family; former co-workers; ministry partners; middle school and high school kids; women from all walks of life with whom I’ve studied, counseled, and prayed; neighbors; friends of my girls; hospice patients; ESL students; doctors; dentists; and my kidney buddy Jennifer – each one having an impact on my life in one way or another.  What a blessed woman I’ve been!

If you are among these special people, then thank you.  Thank you for sharing your life, your time, your gifts, your sense of humor, meals, prayers, encouragement, tears, laughs, fill in the blanks. . . . with me.  The Lord has made my life so much richer because of YOU!  

Breaking up IS hard to do – but it’s also a good time to let the people I love, the people God used to bless me – know just how much they mean to me.  I’m grateful for every single one of you!

Philippians 1:3

I thank my God every time I remember you.

OUR HOUSE IS SOLD!

I realized today, as we set up a new computer for me, that I haven’t yet shared with you what has happened with our house, other than to mention in the last blog that it sold.

In the blog entitled, Our Crooked House, I explained that the reason I was sharing about the issues we had with the house was so that, when the Lord answered my specific prayers, you would be able to rejoice with me.  Well, get ready to rejoice!

We listed the house for sale on July 6 and had an open house for local realtors the next day, followed by an open house for buyers that weekend. The realtors’ open house was not encouraging.  Although we had a disclosure form revealing the settling, plus an engineer’s report saying that the foundation was solid, they were not optimistic that their clients would be interested. This was at least part of the reason why we had very little traffic at our first open house and few interested parties as the week went on. 

Since that was also just the week after the 4^th of July and a popular week for vacations, Jim and I didn’t get too concerned.  We thought it would pick up after a while.  It didn’t.  After about 3 weeks we came down in price, offered the house “as is”, and began to advertise to appeal to builders.  

If you read, Our Crooked House, then you will know how I had been praying since before we put the house on the market.  Expecting that it would be hard to sell the house I began praying specifically that we would sell it to a builder who would tear it down and build something new so that some other family might enjoy this town and neighborhood as much as we did, and not have a hard time selling it themselves later on down the line.

Early in August a potential buyer made a very low offer.  By that time Jim and I  suspected that we would have to come down substantially.  We determined that at our age, getting to Florida sooner rather than later mattered to us much more than the money, so Jim and I sat down and made a list of how much it would cost us to build a modest house in Florida and cover the expenses of the move, and determined a price we could live with.  After a little back and forth negotiating, we settled on a price, and sold our crooked house.

Want to know who bought it?  A builder.  He’s not going to tear it down to its foundation, but he is going to gut it, fix the issue that caused the house to settle in the first place, and make our 3 bedroom home a 4 bedroom home with 3 baths and a great room!  The people who buy it will get to enjoy our neighborhood AND, best of all, not have a single worry about settling when it comes time to sell it!  And Jim and I finally get to surge ahead with our move to Florida.  

As of today, we are almost ready to go.  Nearly all of our belongings are packed, furniture is given away, arrangements made for shipping the rest, and we are just counting the days till the September 10^th closing!  This week we put a deposit on a home in Florida so they can start building.

I’m so grateful to the Lord for undertaking for us in this house sale thing, answering my very specific prayers.  The process was distressing and disappointing at times - but not for long.  Through it all, the Lord taught us to just go with the flow, to access what we really NEEDED instead of what we wanted, and helped us to choose to value time over money.  

We are very excited about the adventure that lies ahead and can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store as we move to our new house, in a new town, in a new state.  God is faithful, as ever.