Wildflower Writes

Photo by  Christopher Williams  on  Unsplas h In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers , Sam is trying to convince Smeagol the value of potatoes: “Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew. Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish.” Potatoes really are versatile. Sam didn’t even mention potato skins, tater tots, gnocchi, hash browns, home fries… my grandmother even made leftover mashed potatoes into cinnamon rolls. If we can do all these amazing things with potatoes, just think what God can do with you! Sometimes it seems, in the grand scheme of things, among 7 billion current earth dwellers, across thousands of years, our contribution is so small. But only God has to worry about the “grand scheme.” Just like a thousand individual paint strokes come together to create a masterpiece, you have a part to play. You may represent a scattering of snow on a mountaintop or the shadow of a tree, but the painting is not complete without you. We may not get to see...

My chips were disappearing rather quickly. It was a Texas Hold 'Em lesson, designed to prepare me to be a "pit boss" at our service club's annual poker tournament . And I am a horrible poker player. It's not that I can't get a grasp of the game, but that I have no "poker face." They even dubbed my reaction to a bad hand the "poker pout."  I am so used to wearing my heart on my sleeve, so to speak, that I found it very difficult to keep an emotionless expression, and be practiced with my actions as to betray nothing.  I'm a decent actress; I could have done better.  I just don't like having to be so, to be so, blah.  Even for a game. Poker is probably not for me.  Not only do I have an expressive face, but my mind has difficulty with strategy based probability-type games (I don't do well with chess or Stratego either).  And that's okay. I spent a good part of my life comparing myself to other people and wishing to b...