What I Saw Today

Every day is a new day of discovery! God’s world, both physical and spiritual, is filled with wonder. Come explore God’s world with me as I see it for the first time.

June 6, 2018 by Karen Wingate Leave a Comment

Seven Steps That Will Unravel Any Tangled Mess

Sometimes life feels like a tangled mess.

Guess what I saw today. I saw a skein of yarn in one big tangled mess. Oh, no! It would take hours to untangle that heap of knotted twisted yarn. And it happened at the worst possible time – right as I was changing colors of yarn in the middle of a knitting row. I put my big girl pants on and started in on the arduous task of untangling that yarn.

In the process, I learned a lot about how to untangle yarn. I also realized the same principles of untangling yarn apply to the tangles of life.

These seven steps will help you unravele any tangled mess.

1. DON’T linger on guilt. I could have managed my yarn better. I should have looked more carefully for the right end. Why do yarn companies make yarn skeins so convoluted anyway? Casting blame on myself, others, or yarn manufacturers wastes time and does nothing to solve the current mess. Yes, I need to learn from my mistakes so I can do better next time, but for right now, I need to let it go, and move on so I can attend to the task at hand. Like Scarlet O’Hara – I’ll think about that tomorrow.

The apostle Paul wrote:

“But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus (Phil 3:13,14).”

Paul had a lot he could regret. What a time waster. Let it go and press on.

2. DON’T get frustrated, angry, or impatient. When I allow my emotions to overrule my logic, I started yanking on the yarn. That only tightened the knots. The Old Testament poet, David, would agree with that. He said:

“Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil (Psalm 37:8).”

I’ve done my share of yanking at people and situations, trying to solve it myself and letting my emotions rule. It doesn’t work in solving relationship issues any better than it works in untangling yarn.

3. Observe the trail of the yarn. Before I pulled at the yarn, I had to see where it twisted next. Was it free? Or was the twist headed toward a knot? When you face a tangled situation, stop and analyze. What’s causing the tangle? Before you act, decide the best action to take. Look at the reasons for the tangle and decide what steps are needed to unravel the next section. Don’t try to solve the whole thing. Work only on the section straight ahead of you. Ask for God’s wisdom. He’s promised:

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you (Psalm 32:8).”

4. Be creative. So many times, either in unraveling yarn or facing a tangled mess in my life, I’ve said, “I just have to go through it.” Not necessarily. Be willing to look at different options that ease the going through process. As I’ve straightened out my skein of yarn, I’ve found I can:

Pull the yarn toward me
Untwist a section of yarn that frees the main strand
Pull aside a chunk of yarn that free the main strand underneath
Pass my growing ball of yarn underneath another strand.

Sometimes the fix is so easy! I’ll gently pull apart what I thought was a knot and a whole bunch of yarn comes free. That’s so true in life. There’s always more than one way to do any task. We so often stay in our tangled mess longer than we need to because we’ve convinced ourselves there is no way out. Take a deep breath and allow yourself to find creative solutions.

5. Walk away. I could spend hours upon hours unraveling that skein of yarn when I could continue to work on the afghan I’m making, write, or do so many other things. I wound enough yarn to be able to continue the next section of my afghan. Over the last few days, I’ve set the timer for ten minutes and unraveled yarn for those ten minutes. You see, I don’t NEED the entire skein right now, so why waste time doing something that isn’t urgent? Besides, if I stubbornly persisted, I would get tired and start pulling – which we know makes a bigger mess.

It’s easy to view our tangled mess under a microscope lens which deceives us into believing it is the most important thing. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to walk away from the messy knots in your life so you can attend to other important issues and life events. Getting away for awhile will give you new perspective.

6. Cut your losses. This is hard. I have so many reasons why I shouldn’t clip the yarn and start a new ball. I’ll have to tie ends in the middle of a knitting project and then my knitted item won’t be perfect.

Perfect is so overrated. The only one who will notice is me and maybe a county fair judge or my knitting instructor. That’s all right. Life is full of tangles and loose ends. It’s just that way. At some point, we need to learn to live with imperfection so we can focus on the greater good.

7. Do it together. My husband walked in, saw my mess, and asked if he could help. My pride said no. I was embarrassed at the tangled mess I’d made. Intrinsically I knew his help would make the job go faster. Moreover, we’d have fun doing a project together and we’d build relationship with each other. I needed to heed the proverb I repeated to my children many times: “The process is more important than the end product.”

Solomon said it well too:

“Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:11,12).”

If you don’t ask for help because you are embarrassed about the tangled mess, relax. The person who can help you probably already knows about the mess. Your goal is to get out of the mess and having someone help make the job faster and easier.

God is our best help. He may not join us in the flesh to untangle a skein of yarn. But he is available for our other tangled messes of life. He’s invited us to take His yoke upon us because His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Mt 11:28-30). When we share our messes with Him, the weight of the mess is lighter.

What tangled mess are you in?

Do you feel like the farther you go, the behinder you get? You solve one problem only to unearth ten more?

What’s getting you down?

Finances
Relationships
Too many moments in your day
Too many Murphey moments – where if anything can go wrong, ten things will.
Compounded health issues
A combination of all of the above

Don’t fret, don’t blame, do take a deep breath, do the next thing, be creative, let the less important go, and be humble enough to ask for help.

God can and will untangle your mess – one strand at a time. One day, you will be completely free.

Check out my Wonderful Wednesday video about life’s tangled messes on the Facebook group, What I Saw Today:

May 29, 2018 by Karen Wingate Leave a Comment

Eyes of the Lord: God Is Looking Out For You

Don’t ever doubt it. God is looking out for you.

I saw my husband go to the emergency room for his first experience with atrial fibrillation, where the heart beats rapidly and erratically. Often, the heart corrects itself within a few minutes, but Jack’s heart rhythm didn’t resolve, even after several hours of medication in E.R. The cardiologist admitted Jack to the hospital, had him hooked up to a heart monitor and an I.V. drip, and changed his medication several times, attempting to get the heart to revert to a normal rhythm. We were within hours of Jack needing the invasive procedure of electro cardioversion, or electrically shocking the heart. Praise God, 19 hours after the heart went out of rhythm, it resolved on its own around 5:00 in the morning.

Several times during the night, Jack had to get up to use the bathroom. The activity made his heart rate spike and every time, a nurse knocked on the bathroom door. “Are you all right?”

After the third time, Jack remarked, “You’re really watching my numbers, aren’t you?”

Her answer was quick, “Like a hawk.”

God is looking out for you with even more vigilance.

Two days later, I saw this verse:

The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry. (Psalm 34:15)

How comforting! God’s attention is focused on you. He’s watching you like a hawk.

There’s more:

The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all;
He protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken. – Psalm 34:17-20

Is life pressing down on you with all kinds of troubles? Are you feeling crushed in spirit and broken in heart? God hears you. He will deliver you. He is close at hand, watching whatever is trying to get at you.

There is one catch.

Did you see who the Lord protects? The righteous. God’s attention is focused on the righteous who fear him. Like a vigilant cardiac nurse, He is ready to run to your side whenever you cry out. Those who fear the Lord lack for nothing.

Three Ways To Show We Fear God

What is fear of the Lord? Many define fear of God as reverence for God. Let’s get more explicit. Let’s unpack this according to what Psalm 34 says.

Those who fear God:

refrain from false and malicious speech
pursue peace
cry out to God when they are in trouble instead of relying on their own strength.

Why should we fear God more than the things that can harm us on this earth? Why should we fear anything that is less than God? He is bigger than anything that can harm us. He is the one we should fear for He holds life, death, and the scales of eternity in His hands (Luke 12:5) We should be far more concerned about what will happen to our eternal soul than what will happen to our earthly life.

When your heart is right with God, nothing will separate you from His love. He will focus His attention and watchcare on you. But He wants you to ask. Catch those words, cry out. Crying out to God means more than a folded hand, sedate prayer request. It’s a gasp of desperation. “Lord! I need You.” When you do, you can count on His deliverance.

He’s looking out for you.

What’s giving you trouble this week? Stop right here, right now. Tell God you need Him. Cry out. He wants to hear from you.

April 11, 2018 by Karen Wingate Leave a Comment

Clouds In The Sky and the Reality of God

I saw clouds in the sky today.

Did you ever lay on your back on the warm prickly grass, face up to the warmth of the sun, and imagine shapes within the clouds in the sky? Well, maybe as a child. Now, only when we’re with our children, grandchildren, or Sunday School class do we allow our imaginations to roam outside the boundaries of decorum. We cup our hands over our eyes to guard from the sun’s glare, sway our backs till we look like sideways donkeys, and take on the imagination of a child once again.

Remember this conversation between Lucy, Charlie Brown, and Linus?

“Aren’t the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton… I could just lie here all day, and watch them drift by… If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations… What do you think you see, Linus?“
“Well, those clouds up there look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean… That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor… And that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen… I can see the apostle Paul standing there to one side…”
“Uh huh… That’s very good… What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?”
“Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but I changed my mind!”

Try as I might, I was like Charlie Brown when I was a child. My two-dimensional eyesight couldn’t make out the shapes other kids saw. I just saw smears of white on a blue background, like some minion had extra fun with a can of white and purple spray paint. I had a pre-Renascence mentality about the atmosphere. The sky was flat and so were the clouds. That’s what my eyes saw, so let it be written. To not look like I was lost in the fourteenth century, I played along with my childhood friends. I let my mind fill in the blanks and convinced everyone I had an over-active if not quirky imagination when it came to shapes of clouds.

My practical husband has said he could see rain squalls and snow bands in the clouds. That’s not possible, I often scoffed. You can’t see rain that far away. Rain are these clear little droplets, snow is white, and those clouds are dark and solid. I still saw bunny rabbits. I temporarily forgot he could see better than I can.

As airplanes in which I sat rose above billowing columns of white vapor, I tried to connect what I saw in the air with the view from the ground. Seeing clouds from the earth was like looking at the tip of an inverted iceberg. Earthlings could see only the bottoms and my lack of depth perception didn’t clue in that some clouds were at a higher elevation than other clouds.

Then I had the eye surgery that gave me better vision than I’ve ever had before.

[Read more…]

March 9, 2018 by Karen Wingate Leave a Comment

Platelets Donation: It’s What I Saw Today

I look comfortable and relaxed, don’t I?

Guess what I saw today? I saw two bags holding yellow color platelets. I felt the warmth of an electric blanket and the softness of a padded chair. I heard the care of a technicians voice, concerned for my every need and whim. I tasted yummy oatmeal raisin cookies.And I felt the emotion of unworthiness.

I’ve donated blood several times but this was my first time to donate platelets. Recently, spurred on by a national shortage of blood and impressed with my high-profile veins, the blood donor staff encouraged me to take the test for platelet donation. The test results showed I have an extremely high level of platelets; would I donate? Can I say they begged?

Platelets donation is a lot more involved than blood donation.

The process takes about two hours. The donor is hooked up to a computer and other machinery that draws blood out, separates the platelets from the red blood cells, and then returns the red blood cells back into the body. Platelets are used for cancer patients and some surgical procedures, helping to prevent massive blood loss. You can read more about platelet donation here.

After the usual number of questions that interrogated my drug use, travel habits and sexual activity, the staff escorted me to a padded chair and immediately covered me with a warmed electric blanket. The tech placed a neck pillow under my head and a bed pillow under my donor arm. When I commented that I didn’t even feel the needle go into my arm, she giggled with glee. “That’s the way we want it to be. I want your first time to be as comfortable as possible.”

It became a cushy experience.

The tech encouraged me to tell her if anything bothered me. I tried to explain that as a writer, I might make comments on my observations, but it wasn’t complaining. I guess she didn’t get the memo. As soon as I commented about a tingling around my mouth, she whipped out a bottle of Tums and dialed down the saline solution dripping into my arm. The tingling was a common side effect, but for some crazy reason, Tums reduces the sensation. It did.

Could she get anything for me? Water? Juice? Snacks? At first, I accepted a bottle of water, but she persisted. I agreed to some apple juice and one oatmeal cookie. She brought me four large luscious cookies. She replenished my half empty juice cup. At the mention of one hand becoming cold (another common effect), she produced a chemical pack that warmed my hand.

Apple juice. Cookies. Comfy chair. Warm blanket. Gratitude for my time and donation.

All Jesus got was vinegar.

Instead of a neck pillow, he got a backboard of splintered wood. Gratitude would come later; for that moment, all he received were barbed comments from his oppressors and abandonment from his closest friends. And I had the audacity to cry when my husband told me last minute he was too busy to take me to my appointment. Some willing tenacious sufferer I am!

That stack of cookies didn’t look so appealing anymore.

The tech who attended me wanted me to be comfortable in every way. At one point I felt like saying, “I want it to hurt. I want my mouth and legs to tingle. I want to get as cold as death. I don’t deserve this comfort. Giving should hurt – like it did for Jesus.”

Jesus and I both gave our life blood to give life to others.

I got mine back. I was in a sterile, comfortable environment where everyone lauded my generosity. Jesus gave his to the point of death and to the point of pain, agonizing pain, getting sympathy, gratitude, or understanding from no one for what He was trying to do. My blood will help save one life. His blood saves all who put their trust in Him.

“Thank you for coming in today,” my tech told me for about the third time.

What could I say? Telling her it was my pleasure and privilege sounded so trite. Two hours of laying around drinking apple juice and scarfing oatmeal cookies? Lounging about the rest of the day, reading, napping and telling my husband he had to take out the dog because I wasn’t supposed to lift or exert too much?

I didn’t begin to know the meaning of the word sacrifice. I walked away feeling so small, that my service was a mere drop compared to the life flow my Savior gave for me. As I reflected on His gift of life-blood, I felt so unworthy, yet so loved.

Mine was a donation. His was a sacrifice. He gave his all.

If you are interested in donating blood, platelets, or plasma, contact your nearest Red Cross location.

For those of you in the Missouri, Illinois and Iowa Region, check out the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center for a center or mobile unit near you.