Author: Jane Foard Thompson

Jane Foard Thompson is an inspirational speaker and award winning author and poet. A former Montessori teacher in Texas and Utah, for eight years Jane and her husband were missionaries in Honduras, Central America. After working for the American Red Cross in Idaho, they now live in Florida, where she writes, leads music and women's Bible studies at their church, and enjoys nine grandchildren and her Golden Retriever, Lily.

Do you hear thunder?

Out of nothingness, God spoke. And there was light, day and night, luxurious colors of sunrise and sunset, delight in the sky. He said it was good. He continued speaking, filling the darkness and emptiness with constellations and planets and seas and land, plants and animals, all wonderful, all good, each singing its own harmony with his good song.

When all was ready, he crafted a man and breathed his life into him. God declared him good. Later, he created a partner for the man, said she was good as well, and charged them to reflect him, his love, his goodness and his generosity in caring for the world and everything in it.

In the cool of the evening, he walked and talked with them.

Can you imagine, hearing God’s voice every evening?

At the end of each day being told how good you are, how well you worked,
how much you are loved?

Sadly, they chose to listen to another voice, one that questioned,
“Does God really love me? If he cared he wouldn’t keep anything from me.”

They believed the lie.

They ate the fruit, the only thing God had forbidden,
in order to protect them from themselves.

When God came in the evening, they hid in shame.

Everything shifted from goodness, wholeness, rightness
to pain, futility, sickness, and empty hearts,

always seeking,

never finding.

“Banished from their home, the shattered mirrors became strangers, isolated from one another and their God. The desperate search to regain goodness had begun. Their anguished, futile efforts at goodness would supplant the joyful benediction, “You are Good!” So, in desperation to hear it once again, they sought ways to bestow it upon themselves.”
Give Them Grace

The history of the earth, our family lineage, and our own lives are filled with broken mirrors, sometimes with bits and pieces of the reflection of goodness, more broken than reflective, of joy and celebration, but never the whole image.

We never hear the sweetness of “You are good” in the cool of the evening.

Yesterday I listened to John 12, after Jesus entered Jerusalem amid crowds and palm branches and great approval, when he told those around him that instead of rising up as a political liberator, he would die.

He was vulnerable about how hard it was to approach his own death, but, believing the truth, said,

“Right now I am storm-tossed. And what am I going to say? ‘Father, get me out of this’? No, this is why I came in the first place. I’ll say, ‘Father, put your glory on display.’”A voice came out of the sky: “I have glorified it, and I’ll glorify it again.” The listening crowd said, “Thunder!” Others said, “An angel spoke to him!”

Often, we think if we’d been right there, saw Jesus in person, watched him raise the dead and heal the sick, and heard his voice, then we would believe every word he said, follow him anywhere.

I was struck with the different perceptions of the people around him that day.

When God spoke, most of those who’d just rushed up to crown Jesus as king only heard thunder.

Some really close to him thought the voice was just an angel.

They missed God’s voice.

Even with Jesus right in front of them, they still believed
the lie that God does not speak to us.

That he doesn’t care.

That we have to get our needs met on our own, through our own efforts.

I believe God is still creating. Still speaking his love into being.

What do you hear?

If it’s the thunder of condemnation that you carry on your back, of pain, or the weight of what you have done, or what has been done to you, what you feel you have a right to, but it seems God has withheld

could you exchange the lie for the truth, that God really does love you?

That Jesus came to restore your goodness?

Even those trying hard to be a good “believer” could be missing God’s voice, thinking it’s just an angel, or an over-active imagination.

Believing lies of I’m-not-good-enough

I-have-to-try-harder

do more

give more

hide the real me

Is it possible to lay it all down?

All the anger.

All he resentment.

All the regret.

All the anguish.

All the trying.

All the pretending.

All the hard work.

And simply believe his love?

Hear his voice?

Not all the same

Florida oaks in spring
various oaks in spring
Spring arrived in our part of Florida last week, with a flourish of pollen and new tree leaves. It amazes me how various oak trees handle spring. Some are totally covered in nothing but pollen, others shed brown leaves as bright green ones push them away, while some simply send out slender new leaves, tentative steps toward turning green. And others are ablaze with color. All oaks. All different. Maybe it’s the pollen, but I can’t help taking this deeper. With all the diversity in our world, what is it in our psyche that wants to box things in, group them all the same?
oak in spring with reddish leave
oak in spring with reddish leaves
new oak leaves in Florida
new oak leaves
willow oak with new leaves in Spring in Florida
willow oak with new leaves

Do you remember as a kid, when houses all looked like this?
kid drawing of a house
And we drew trees like this?
kid drawing of a tree with rounded crown
Or this?
kid's drawing of pine tree
And people, depending on our developmental age, like this?
kid drawing of a man
Or this?
kid drawing of a girl with digits
We’ve grown up from that place, and those who, like many in my family, have artistic skills can paint a wonder of houses, trees and people, none alike, and all wonderful.

YD painted this.

Chocolate by Youngest Daughter
Chocolate by Youngest Daughter

Sometimes it looks like houses to me, and sometimes people. When I asked her recently what it is supposed to be, she said she wasn’t sure. That is a clue to her winsomeness — that she doesn’t need to nail it down, put it in the box of “house” or “people.”

Snowflakes . . . Fingerprints . . . DNA . . . No two alike.

The Creator obviously celebrates differences, or there wouldn’t be thousands of different kinds of insects!

So why do we expect, or want, people to all fit in a box? In the land of “I did it my way,” and the supposed importance of the individual, it surprises me how much we want to herd others into pens of alikeness.

How little we really tolerate anyone who deviates from the norm, unless, of course, it’s our norm.

Here come some stereotypes – sorry, I can’t avoid it even to make my point.

If you’re in Arizona, you want to seal up your border with Mexico and suspect everyone who looks “Mexican.” (Never mind that Arizona was once a part of Mexico and the oldest families, once Mexican, have been ranching there for hundreds of years.) But if you live in Oregon, then the citizens of Arizona are intolerant, stiff-necked red-necks, not worthy to call themselves Americans.

If you don’t believe me, just read the letters to the editor for a few days, or listen to the talking heads on the news stations.

Attacking the different ones, and the different ones attacking.

Sadly, sometimes we are hardest on ourselves. How many times do we test our worth by how well we fit in with those around us?

Why should it hurt so much to be different?

I couldn’t resist adding this video.

(photos this week from my cell phone)

Compassion for those suffering the shadow land of dementia, and for those who love them

The other side of the true religion equation is caring for widows. In the months leading to my widowed mother’s death last July she longed to be free of her dementia ravaged brain and the bizarre world she crept through each day. When she died, I thought I’d feel peace, for the end to her torture, and for me, relieved of the day and night weight of trying to ease her pain, brighten her life, lift her load, with rare success.

Mom and a great-granddaughterInstead, I miss her wacky presence. I miss having a Mom, even if I’d been the one mothering her for years. Instead of taking care of a widow, I am an orphan.

And I have become extremely sensitive to the multigenerational relationships around me.

I notice the middle-aged woman easing her father out of her car to the wheel chair—often a great challenge in itself—and chatting with him about what he “needs” to buy in the grocery store. I want to hug her and encourage her to keep on.

I also see the daughter or son impatient with their confused or fumbling parent in the doctor’s office. I want to intervene and say:

I know the days are long —

Often the nights as well, if you have your loved one at home, or just can’t sleep because they are on your heart and mind.

I know they can be exasperating, exhausting, argumentative and unappreciative.

I know sometimes you are so bone tired you don’t know how much longer you can do this.

At times you don’t even want to see your “loved one.” And you feel guilty. Somewhere you know, probably unprocessed, they are not your enemy. It is the ravages of dementia you both battle.

And in the midst of it all, you are grieving.

All the little losses of who they used to be, or say, or do, or love

As they lose abilities and you take on more responsibilities, you know this is slow.motion.dying.

It rips you up inside.

My humble advice:

Let go of who they were.

If there is anything at all that they enjoy or respond to now, go for it, in spades.

If I had a do-over I’d give my mother more baths, more back rubs and loads of ice cream, because that’s what really brought a smile to her face, until near the end.

If your once unsmiling, go-by-the-rules mother is all of the sudden giggling at all the wrong moments, giggle with her.

It hurts to see your once proud, successful father muttering in a wheelchair or wearing diapers, but he still needs a kiss on that wrinkled cheek. He needs you, not just folks paid to care for his needs.

If she wants to dance in church, go early and dance with her.

Don’t worry so much about their falling down or getting lost. This is strange coming from one who used to teach American Red Cross classes to seniors about safety, but at this point in their lives, I believe connecting is more important than safety.

Seek every opportunity to relate to whomever you have before you, today.

I believe that even with those who seem to be disconnected, deep inside, your loved one is still there waiting for you to reach in when they can’t reach out.

Waiting to feel loved.

Needing so much the security that only connection with you can give them in the nightmare inside their head.

Find music from their childhood or youth and play or sing it. Sometimes a song can “wake” a person who hasn’t responded in months. I sang in a nursing home to a semicircle of wheel-chaired patients, one in the back slumped over, oblivious. When we started singing an old gospel chorus, she sat up in her chair and clearly sang every word with us. We learned later she hadn’t talked or responded to anyone in months.

Several years ago my sister told me about the book Still Alice. I read it in a wash of tears, and it changed how I looked at behaviors that once confused or irritated me with our Mom. (I’ve heard the movie is also good. If you go, take lots of tissues.)

Impatience turned into compassion.

So cry when grief hits your gut, then wipe your tears and dance, hug, rub backs, and sing.

And hold them and pray, out loud, because their spirit is still alive, hungry for eternal words when the words of this world no longer have value.