What is that sound?

So, my husband is out of town. When he leaves I have trouble sleeping. I have to leave the back patio light on, just in case. I wake up easily. I don't like it. Last night, the first night he was gone, I went to bed around 12:30 and was brave enough to shut the patio light off. I snuggled down in my lonely bed and went to sleep.

At around 1am I was awakened by a noise. Now, I'm not the only one that doesn't sleep well when Dustin is gone. My little boys have trouble too. In a groggy voice I say outloud to what I assumed was Andrew, my seven year old, "It's okay buddy, you can get in bed with me for a while." No answer. I dozed back off.

I heard the noise again and looked at my cell phone. 1:27am. I looked over the edge of the bed on both sides. No child laying there with pillow and blankie. I heard the noise again. My heart began to pound. I prayed the sound was coming from outside and I listened hard to be sure. Alas, not coming from outside. It was inside. What was it??? I turned on the lamp and looked in the direction of the rustling. Perched on the edge of child's shoe box was a palm sized frog. My eyes bulged in horror.

Now, I'm not afraid of frogs. I picked one up in the backyard not that long ago. But Dustin is gone, it is 1:29am by now, I'm all alone and there is a frog in my bedroom! This is not right. Heart pounding and ears ringing I got up to search for something to capture it in. Racing through my mind was, "Think like Dustin! Think like Dustin!" It didn't work. He would know what to do, he always does. I couldn't find anything that seemed like a good option.

What if I miss and scream and wake the children. What if it hops under the bed, I'll never sleep. What if it gets on me and pees or something. What then? I decided to throw a towel on it and strap it around the box and run out the back door and fling it into the lawn. Seems good enough, maybe my husband would approve. Maybe not.

I decided to open the backdoor so that I would be completely ready for this event. That is when I remembered Squeaky. I closed my eyes, my face grimacing, chills running up my spine. Squeaky. Squeaky was a giant five inch moth that someone in the church gave my two little boys earlier in the week. I hate moths that measure 2 centimeters, let alone five inches. When we turned out the lights Squeaky flapped his freakishly large mothy wings inside his Tupperware prison and I thought I might die of horror.

Why was I remembering Squeaky? Because he was humanely released back into the wild a few days ago. He sat on the pine tree for a day and a half and then disappeared. I am sure that he is lurking under the eaves of the house or in the garage waiting for the perfect moment to attack me. This would be the perfect moment. Frog in the bedroom, moth planning an ambush. It seems like anything could happen.

I opened the sliding glass door in spite of my concerns about Squeaky and went back into the bedroom. By this time the frog had moved into a higher position on the box and was perched like he was going to hop off and escape somewhere. I hollered out, "No!" like you would to a dog who was peeing on the side of the couch.

The frog didn't move but I did. As fast as I could I chucked a towel over that creepy creature and knocked it inside the box. With shivers racing up and down my spine I tucked the terry cloth under the cardboard. You would have thought the box had the plague or was on fire with the horror in which I touched it. The frog was leaping about under the towel giving me a breakdown! I ran for the door. Dropped the package carefully and pulled the towel back in horror, looking to the sky for any sign of Squeaky's attack, I was safe. The frog jauntily hopped into the grass and there was no moth madness. I got back into bed and couldn't sleep. Every noise worried me.

Maybe there is a colony of frogs under the bed... You never know!

Listen to me!

Ethan is three. He is getting very smart. He has a problem listening. The latest thing is when he gets in trouble and a punishment is given he says, "I'll listen now. I'm listening." He even said today, "When you get in trouble and then you listen you are a good boy." The problem is he hears. He doesn't listen. Two very different things. He hears but he doesn't act. He still kicks the wall. He still kicks his brother. He still kicks dirt. He still kicks the babysitter. And that is just kicking. He hears us say, "Don't kick!" but he doesn't listen.

Ethan is three. I'm thirty. I think I'm pretty smart. I have a problem listening. The latest thing is I hear the voice of God pulling at my heart and I don't do what that tugging is asking of me to do. I hear it, but I don't always act.

If I want my baby boy to do it, how much more does God want me to do it?

Investment

Why do we make investments? I mean I know what an investment does. I can see how they are valuable in the financial world. I understand that they can make life much easier down the road because you will have a nest egg, a cushion, something to rely on. I get that.

We are living in times when investments have gone south for countless people. The economy, the economy, the economy. It's all we hear about. It's bad. It's going down the toilet. It's a recession. Could it be a ghastly second Great Depression? I get that too.

I understand the value of investments but I also understand the risk.

The truth is I don't want to talk about money. I'm not interested in the stock market. Investments of those kinds aren't what is causing me angst tonight. It is personal investment, life investment, relational investment that confuses me. Not only confuses, but conflicts and confounds, irritates and hurts. It hurts. It really does.

Certainly a bad investment in the financial world can hurt me. But a bad investment in the relational world, how do you recover from that?

If my 401k tanks, I can work past retirement, take out a loan, start scrimping and saving all the more now so I can live better later. I can do those things.

But if a friendship tanks, what then? How do I recover? If I have given my life to someone, offered them the care they deserve, showed them the love of God, dedicated myself to their well being and then things don't go the way that I wish, my investment doesn't have a positive return so to speak, what now?

But I suppose the real issue is that these kinds of investments are radically different from one another. In fact, in my heart I know that I don't invest in the lives of others with the hopes to get some positive return. That is a bonus, but that isn't the motivation. I invest in others because I love them. I really love them.

I want certain outcomes. But there are no guarantees. Relational investing is really a bad investment when we look at it through the world's eyes. The likelihood that I will lose is way higher than that I will gain. And yet, I still want to give, to share life, to journey, to take the time with others on the slight chance that something radically new will take place in their lives. It has in mine.

To be honest, the return is much slower than I would like. In reality, the return is sometimes a statement that reads losses instead of gains.

I still think it is an investment worth making. I do. Countless investments have been made on my behalf. I'll still invest even if the relational market is tanking.