“We
should be astonished at the goodness of God,
stunned that He should bother to call us by name,
our mouths wide open at His love,
bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”
stunned that He should bother to call us by name,
our mouths wide open at His love,
bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”
I am in love…
Actually, I’m more in lust…
With a pair of Frye boots.
My current
boots, that I’ve worn almost every fall-winter-spring Minnesota day for going
on six years, are in really bad shape. The treads are gone, the heels are worn
down to next to nothing, they are dinged & scuffed & are quite frankly…
embarrassing. This might seem reason for
some to toss them out but fortunately for me, I don’t really mind them… too much.
But recently, they have begun to leak & that is a problem. Even for me.
DRAT!
So I began
to research purchasing a new pair. I know this may sound a little strange &
maybe a little extreme but this is what my librarian mind does. I just want to
get the best quality for the best price because I want to be wearing these new
boots for the next ten years or until the soles falls off. After all, it took me six months of researching,
test-driving some twenty-five different types of vehicles & finally Chuck’s
truck completely dying before I purchased my Subaru.
It was while
doing this extensive research that I found Frye.
Everything
about this company appeals to me…
“On March
10th, 1863, John A. Frye opened the doors of a small shop on Elm Street in
Marlboro, Massachusetts. The shoes he
made weren’t icons of fashion or fanciful in style. They served a simple
purpose: to ease the daily working lives of the hundreds of factory workers in
that small New England town.
The individuals who wore the
first Frye shoes were just like us: people who valiantly labored, honing skill
and craft, supporting their families and community. When homesteading sparked
adventurous New England families to head west in the mid and late 1800s, many
of those pioneers wore Frye boots along the journey.
In time, John Frye’s family would
grow and, along with it, The Frye Company would expand. Each generation of Frye
men dedicated themselves to the art and craft of shoemaking, creating new
patterns, discovering new materials, and even inventing shoe-making machinery.
Their fervor for the process of crafting footwear as durable as it is beautiful
has been our company’s benchmark, ever since. And this dedication has helped us
craft footwear with a long and illustrious history.” –The Frye Company Website.
Mmmmmmmm…. Can you feel the love?
The trouble is, they are expensive.
Um… they are more than expensive. They are ridiculous expensive. & while I
do have the money to purchase them & my husband gave me the green light to buy
them for my birthday, I just couldn’t. I mean, didn’t I just walk through
eighteen months of down-sizing, experience a life change & have a complete over
haul of the heart? As much as I wanted them, I just couldn’t reconcile the
price with what I felt God continuing to ask me to do in regards to our
finances.
Double DRAT!
So I expanded my search to
second-hand sites, consignment shops & the ever elusive ‘sale’, hoping to
find just what I want with a price I can reconcile with my heart.
I became completely obsessed with
the search & with my love… er… lust for Frye…
Then Saturday night it happened. I
found them. On sale. On the company website. No matter that it was two in the
morning, & I was up on the prowl because I couldn’t sleep & my brain
wasn’t at its researching finest. I had finally found the thing that my heart truly
longed for… at 40% off. EEEEEK!
So I threw caution to the wind
& did something I rarely do. I jumped into a purchase without reading the
fine print. Instead, I found myself gleefully clapping my hands together & doing
the dance of joy at my kitchen table in my jammies before running for my wallet
& ordering my very own pair of Veronica Slouch Boots, with the extended
calf. Size 8. In black. I could almost feel their buttery soft leather against
my legs, their superbly built in arch support under my feet. It was fabulous! I
tucked myself into bed with visions of tucking my skinny jeans into them &
taking my fashionable self to work & church without a hint of
embarrassment.
I rode that high right until after
church Sunday morning when I realized that I didn’t get a confirmation email of
my purchase. So I called the company directly, & I found that the website where
I had placed my order was a fraud. Yes it looked like Frye. It had slick
pictures & icons taken from the ‘real’ Frye site. It even posted the proper
telephone number to call if I had any questions. But it was a scam. Apparently,
Frye doesn’t have sales. Their boots are so great, they don’t have to. So there
was no great deal. No fabulous boots coming my way.
Instead I spent Monday morning on
the phone with my bank, alerting them to stop any kind of suspicious charges to
our account, cancelling out my debit card, admitting to my husband what I had
done & trying to salvage any shred of pride I had left. Fortunately for me,
the fraudulent company hadn’t tried to charge our account yet & I don’t
have a pair of pleather boots that I spent a half-an-arm & a half-a-leg on,
that I can’t get rid of.
I confess all of this today because
as I was trying to reconcile my total lapse of judgment, it hit me that this is
very often how we treat love. We obsess over it, we chase after it, & we
choose to accept the counterfeit version while doing the dance of joy in our jammies
at two in the morning. & when it invariably doesn’t live up to the ‘real
deal’, we dream of what ‘could have been’, while stroking it ‘one last time’
before we grudgingly begin to grieve it. & then & only then do we allow God to
pry it from our cold, clammy fingers.
Seriously?
God’s love is authentic... there is no counterfeit for it. It is unfailing,
undeserved, & unconditional. It is pure, perfect, & it is holy. It is
deep & wide & high & low & it will envelope us completely if we
let it.
As for me today… Not only am I
convinced I’ve gotta let the boots go, I’m finding that the last eighteen
months was just the tip of the iceberg of God’s work in me.
God, investigate my life;
get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!
get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!
-Psalm 139: 1-6
I could need a little more Jesus…
& a little bit less of me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kiLH0iyisw
"We choose to accept the counterfeit version of it..." yes, I get that.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lisa.
Thanks for stopping by my post "The Radical Choices After 'I Do'", and sorry for my delay in replying.
Jennifer Dougan
www.jenniferdougan.com