Moms Were the First Private Investigators

By Connie Cavanaugh –

If every empty-nest mom went to work as a private investigator, it would solve the “What now?” question as well as put a lid squarely on crime. No one is better qualified for detective work than a woman who has raised a vanload of kids.

Case in Point: Our 17-year-old son JP slouched in to the kitchen and sat down. Glancing up furtively then lowering his gaze, he began, “Uh, I have, uh, something to, uh, tell you.”

I stated coolly: “You hit a tree with dad’s car.”

His head snapped up, eyes bugged out, mouth went slack. “Who told you?”

PIs never reveal their sources. I smiled. An email from the mom of one of JP’s friends had arrived earlier. JP’s friend mentioned the accident to his older brother who immediately squealed. The friend’s mom was my prayer partner. Bingo!

I handed my son a Ziploc bag that held the bit of tree bark I had extracted from the dented headlight’s rim with tweezers moments earlier.

“You’re good,” he said shaking his head in admiration.

Case in Point: On her 19th birthday our oldest daughter decided “to be a bit rebellious.” Christine secretly acquired a navel ring. She had queried me some months earlier: “If God wanted us to wear bellybutton rings he would have put earlobes on our abdomens!” She never raised the topic again.

After getting the ring, she wore long shirts and avoided me. If I saw her at all, it was her back. I quickly diagnosed her strange behavior. But I waited, knowing she’d eventually crack. A week passed and she found me in the kitchen – the confessional in our home.

“Um, mom. I, um, need to, well I want to, I mean I should probably let you know,” Christine began, her head lowered.

I cut to the chase.

“You got your bellybutton pierced.”

“How did you know?” she shrieked. “Did Anita tell you?”

“Your sister never said boo. I have a certain je ne sais qua,” I blithely replied.

“Wow,” she whispered reverently.

The truth was, I peeked one night after she was asleep. Gotcha!

Case in Point: But the easiest detective work I ever did involved our middle child. During her first year of university in a nearby city, she lived at home and carpooled to classes. Occasionally she borrowed my car. On one of those days, she asked if she could stay in the city for the evening to hang out with a chum. I was a bit nervous when she mentioned which friend. I knew this cowgirl liked to frequent a certain western-theme dance club in the city and I didn’t want Anita going there. She assured me she wouldn’t go near the place and she’d be home by 11 p.m.

As promised, she came home on time and after a short visit with her dad and me, went to bed. The next day when I went out to my car, I saw a small piece of paper under the windshield wiper. It was a parking ticket. From the parking lot of the club I had asked her not to attend. Exhibit A!

“I gotta hand it to you Mom,” Anita croaked.

I can’t take all the credit for this fine detective work. I owe something to my mother who passed on to me the prayer she prayed – with great success – for her eight children from the time they were tiny: “Lord, I don’t expect my kids to be perfect, but I do ask that when they’re not, You help me catch them!” Amen!

A Change of Perspective

By Kim Stokely –

For the hundredth time that day I looked in the mirror and cringed. My schedule had been too busy to drive the extra miles to the woman who usually cut my hair and I’d let it get too long. Cousin It from the Addams Family had more style than I did. To top it off, I had less than a week before I hopped a plane to visit my mother back East whom I hadn’t seen in a year. I’ve always said her biggest disappointment with me was that I never cared if my purse matched my shoes. What would she say to the kitchen mop draped over my head?

In desperation, I texted a girlfriend of mine who used to work in a beauty salon, “Do you have anytime this week you could give me a haircut? If not, I’m shaving it all off.”

Bless her heart, my friend texted right back, “NO! No! Don’t shave it! Come over anytime today and I’ll see what I can do!”

Two hours, a pile of hair on the floor, and a tube of dye later, and she’d given me a radical new hairstyle and a new outlook on life. Now when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see a frazzled, frumpy, forty-five (plus some) year-old woman with desperation leaking out of her eyes; instead, I saw a vibrant, put together, forty(ish)-year-old woman, ready to take on the world and my fashion savvy mother. Nothing could hold me down.

It’s amazing what a little change can do for our perspective. It can invigorate us to set a new goal or energize us to pursue old goals with renewed passion.

I thought about how that can be true in our relationship with God as well. God says in Isaiah 29:13, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (NIV). Do you get excited by your time in the word or are you reading out of habit? Have you let your prayer life become a laundry list of needs interspersed with a few moments of praise? Maybe pray at a different time of day or write out your prayers instead of saying them silently. Buy a new Bible study or a find a devotional to help you focus your thoughts and stir your curiosity. If we think our relationship with God has grown stale, imagine what He thinks. Perhaps it’s time for a change of perspective.

Road Trip!

By Liz Cowen Furman –

We recently drove our middle son out to California to start college at California Baptist University. (Amazing place!) But before we could leave, l had to drive the eight hours from our motel in Dubois, Wyoming, home to meet up with my hubby and son to start the journey. Then on the return journey I left him in Conifer, Colorado, and drove back to Dubois for the last week of our season and to close the motel for the winter. The total miles traveled in one week and three days was 2,648 through six states. Whew! Good thing I love road trips.

On our journey, I discovered some amazing things…here are the top ten.

10. Sunflower seeds, cinnamon discs and singing loudly work well to ward off drousies while driving.

9. August might not be the best month to travel from Wyoming to California and back. Hotter than Hades.

8. Southern Utah is a beautiful place.

7. Oceans are one of God’s coolest inventions.

6. Israeli Melons! Yum!

5. Rainbows – we were chased all the way across Utah and then again at the beach by the most gorgeous rainbows which we decided were a sign of great things to come for our son. (Wish I could include pictures with this article, they were AMAZING.)

4. While Vegas is touted as a very FUN place I found it to be desperately lost and so sad. Not to mention dirty and unbelievably HOT.

3. 113 degrees + 80 miles per hour = melted tires. Oops.

2. Older motels run by families are a blessing.

And the number one thing I discovered on this most beautiful trip?
Leaving a child at college states away from home is not for wimps… Gasp, sob, smile because I know who has him in the palm of his hand.

We had a great time with Matthew on the way there and are so thankful God has his back.
As He has ours. We can take this promise to the spiritual bank. Check out Joshua 1:5 “No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Joshua 1:5, NIV)”

Visit to NASA

By Judy Davis –

During a visit to the Kennedy Space Center, the awesome accomplishments of space travel amazed me. Rockets from Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions stand as monuments to the scientific achievements of mankind.

I visited the Space Center several times when I attended the Christian Writer’s Conference held each year in Florida. However, I have never seen a rocket blast off into space. I came so close to seeing this happen several years ago. I was staying with some friends and we got up in the middle of the night to go and see this spectacular event. We stood for hours it seemed in an open field near the rocket site. As we were waiting patiently, and so excited, the final countdown finally arrived. 3…2…1…and then suddenly an announcement over the loudspeaker: “this mission has been aborted due to technical problems.” Needless to say it was disappointing. Later, we laughed as we thought of how we waited and waited….and then missed it!

Even though I’ve watched many launches on television, it’s hard to comprehend that a rocket weighing hundreds of tons can be blasted into space. When Neil Armstrong took his first historical step on the moon, some people doubted whether he really did. Though I don’t understand how, I believe astronauts have orbited the earth and landed on the moon. I believe because eyewitnesses who were at the space center reported what they saw, whether by television, radio, newspapers or magazines.

As a believer in Jesus Christ, it’s hard to comprehend that the son of God actually walked on this planet over 2000 years ago. But just as I believe man can defy gravity, I believe in Jesus’ divinity and humanity. Jesus came to earth on a mission from God. He walked on the earth because many eyewitnesses saw Him. They didn’t have the technology of today to photograph Him, but they wrote plenty about what they saw. If there were a monument to the mission of Christ, it would be the cross He died upon.

Whether you and I understand it or not, God sent Jesus on the greatest mission ever. “For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).

Jesus on Your Grilled Cheese

By Carol Barnier –

Warning: Serious Cynicism Alert

Few of you will ever know the thrill of seeing the face of our Lord Jesus on your drywall. I can tell you first hand, there’s nothing like it. The problem is, in my case, the face that emerged looked more like the Sith Lord from Star Wars rather than Jesus. And that’s not the first time I’ve seen a clearly-not-Jesus face appear. Karl Marx appeared in my wooden door grain, Mark Twain on my marble floor, and I’d swear I saw John Goodman in a cow pie (my apologies John, but it is what it is).

There have been Jesus sightings by people all over the world in the most unlikely of places—places like Cheetos, clouds, banana peels, baby scans, end of a log, grain of a rocking chair, stained tea towel, rusty side of a refrigerator, bacon drippings, freeway underpass, tortilla, granite countertop, bottom of a turtle shell, and my personal favorite—stains on the coffee mug of an atheist. These people are serious. They take photos, slap them onto Facebook, and start a viral ooh-and-ah fest round the world with amazed and reverent supplicants. This behavior actually has an academic latiny-shmatiny name: pareidolia, which loosely translates to I think I’m in love with my toast. So powerful is this longing to see the face of Jesus in an unusual place, this year’s Christian Retailer’s extravaganza provided the opportunity to purchase a George Forman-like grill that imprints the face of Jesus on your grilled cheese sandwich—(No. I’m not making this up. Google Grilled Cheesus if you don’t believe me . . .which begs the question, just how do we know what Jesus looked like, and moreover, does He prefer Gouda, Brie, or Cheddar?

I don’t want to rule out the possibility that there may indeed be some authentic appearances, but you’ve got to know how to evaluate these things. The Catholic Church, being fully aware of just how often this can become silly, has taken this evaluation process very seriously, even producing a checklist of Rules Regarding Apparitions explaining how to judge the validity of a sighting. Among other things, it includes looking at the individual who found the sighting with a very cautious, even cynical eye. Is she a true adherent? Or did she jump on this bandwagon recently, bringing with her other questionable practices like swinging dead chickens over her head before prayer? Is this an unusual thing in her life? Or did she also see David Bowie in her freezer’s frost last week?

My sightings of the Sith Lord, Mark Twain and John Goodman have taught me something; if you look around long enough, you’ll see faces in everything.

But I think I’ve also learned something else. Rather than looking for the face of Jesus in our coffee stains and our mulch piles, I think our time is better spent trying to BE the face of Jesus. Doing an act of kindness when others turn away. True—it’s not Facebook worthy. No one’s going to line up and pay money for a trinket representing your act of kindness. Little bobble-head dolls aren’t going to appear with your giant grin nodding reverently toward an adoring fan club from the back of someone’s Kia.

No. There is a hurting world out there. They need to feel a loving embrace, a drink when they’re thirsty, a hand when they’ve fallen. They need to know hope. They need to know that the God of the Universe knows their face. And I suspect, that no matter how beautifully rendered, they’ll never find such truth in a cow pie.

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