Month: March 2025

A New Pony

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment
image by Andrey Altergott on Pexels

The elephant is gone.  For now, it’s gone.

These days, I’m breathing more easily.  I haven’t felt the weight of breathlessness on my chest for several weeks.  I haven’t had to reach for my rescue inhaler for most of that time, either.

I should be happy.  Ecstatic, even.

But, I’m not.

My general practitioner’s nurse called a few weeks ago to tell me the good news.  After checking with the formulary my insurance company provided, they had a long-term medication I could use to get relief.

Finally!

I had the prescription filled immediately.  Within days, I was better, even confident enough to leave the inhaler at home when I went out.

I can sleep at night again.  There is no longer any need to discuss the elephant in the room—the one sitting on my chest at intervals.

The elephant is gone.

So why am I not happy?  Well, it seems I’ve traded one animal for another.  Like the Pony Express riders, I’ve just gotten off one giant mount and thrown my leg over another.

What’s the new animal?  A horse.

No wait.  I meant to put that “a” into the animal’s name.  Hoarse.

That’s it.  No elephant; just hoarse.  The medication my doctor found for me makes me hoarse.  As in, “I’m a little hoarse.”  All the time.

I sat in the coffee shop this morning, having been served my usual cup of drip java by the kind shop owner, and I got lost in the words on my laptop’s screen.  You see, a little horse (without the a) is a pony, and the thought of changing mounts (elephant to pony) led me to visions of the Pony Express riders.

So I actually read more than I wrote this morning.  Wikipedia is a wonderful thing.  Or not.

I wonder if you know the Pony Express only existed for a short while?  And it mostly hired teenage boys?  Skinny teenage boys at that.  The top weight for the riders was 125 pounds.  They were in danger most of the time, with many of them dying or being wounded on the trails.  The company went bankrupt and closed down only a year and a half after its inception.

I’m sorry.  I’m not sure how we got here.  Let me reload.

I’m hoarse.  A little. It’s a side-effect of my medication.  When I talk, my voice sounds gravelly.  Rough.

Worse than that, I can’t sing.  Well, not so much can’t as shouldn’t.  I cough a lot while trying.  And the sound of my voice is not as pleasing as it once was.

This isn’t the outcome I was expecting.  Or wanting.

I love to sing.

But, I’ve figured out something else as I’ve considered my circumstances.

I need to breathe.  Breathing is essential.  And, that function is being facilitated much more completely these days.  It’s a good thing.

I’m not complaining.  Well, maybe just a little.  But, I’m grateful for the big blessing.  And, I’m attempting to be circumspect about the small inconvenience.

I did say I’ve been considering my situation.  It hasn’t escaped me that my hoarseness could be considered in the same light as the thorn in the flesh the apostle for whom I’m named wrote about in 2 Corinthians 12.

“Each time he said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.”
(2 Corinthians 12:9, NLT)

When I last wrote, I mentioned an epiphany of sorts, experienced in the middle of singing at church last week.  It actually occurred during one of my silences—as I waited for my voice to recover so I could be loud again.

Perhaps being silent isn’t such a bad thing, after all.

I want to sing out in the worship service.  I want to be strong.  It makes me feel good about myself when I am.

Oh.  That’s a definition of pride, isn’t it?

Selah.

I’m not going to have to use the medication forever.  I’ll sing again.  But, even if I don’t, I’m grateful to have breath.

Absolutely full of thanks.

And, full of His grace, which is enough—despite my weakness.

I’ll keep the pony for now.  I’m pretty sure it hurts less than the elephant when it sits down.

And besides that, the red-headed lady who raised me always told me, “Silence is golden.”

I wonder if she was right.

 

“Suffering is often the crucible in which our faith is tested.  Those who successfully come through the furnace of affliction are the ones who emerge like gold tried in the fire.”
(from “Unto the Hills”, Billy Graham)

“Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(Romans 8:39, KJV)

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

 

How Did Those Snakes Get There?

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

I know it’s not the right way to begin an article.  NCIS Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs would have said it’s a sign of weakness.

But I want to apologize anyway.

I’m sorry for the photo that accompanies these words.  I know the subject matter is triggering for some.  Childhood memories.  Terrifying stories told by uncaring siblings.  Nightmares that can’t be erased from the mind.

I hope the reader will give me a chance to explain.

My grandchildren came to help me in my yard a few days ago.  I never raked the leaves from my lawn last fall—never cleaned up the mess from the dying of the year.  They knew I was embarrassed by my failure.  So they came to help me make it better.

Several hours, they labored with me that day.  The monumental stack of black bags full of oak, maple, and pear leaves they left behind bore testament to their hard work.  The monumental back-ache I had that afternoon also bore testament to mine.

At some point during the early afternoon, one of my grandsons noticed the snake.  It wasn’t huge, just an ordinary garter snake.  The harmless reptile was stretched out near a hollow in the ground left when our lilac bush died a couple of years back.

My grandson, brave young man that he is, picked the snake up by its tail and, swinging it back and forth, carried it to the back fence and let it go into the wooded area behind our house.

As I examined the hollow in the ground, I noticed movement near a hole in the center.  Our activities had shifted all the leaves that had been providing cover for the den.  It soon became clear to us that it was home to more than just the one snake.

The two curious creatures in the photo were wondering what happened to their roof, and perhaps, to their brother (or mother, or sister).  We helped them relocate over the next couple of hours, as well.

Later that evening, when I showed the photo to the Lovely Lady, she drew in her breath sharply.  She then suggested that it might be best if I kept the photo to myself.

A wise husband follows the advice of his spouse in such matters.  I’ve never considered myself especially wise.

I had a reason to share the photo.  In my mind, it was a good reason.

Knowing that I have my own terrors about snakes and that I am frequently awakened by dreams (not the good kind) about them, I wondered about the things we give power to.

I wanted to drive home the idea that it is our own foolishness that leads us to give fear a place in our everyday lives.  I had a number of examples to add to the snakes.  Storms.  Wildfires.  Financial disasters.  War.  There are any number of things of which we are afraid.

Things we give power over us.

And, along with the photo, I wanted to write words of condemnation, words of derision.  A put-down of the foolishness of heeding the utterings from the terror merchants among us—the doomcasting news media, the fearmongering meteorologists, the pulpit-pounding fire-and-brimstone preachers.

I repent.

I stood in a church building this morning and wept.  It wasn’t the first time I had done that in the last day or two.  But, it was merely a line of a song that pushed me over the edge today.

“Our call to war, to love the captive soul,But to rage against the captor.”
(from “O Church Arise”, by Townend/Getty)

I wonder if anyone else sees it.  And then, I think that probably I’m the only one in my tribe who couldn’t see it before.

And that’s okay.  I see it now.

Jesus came to free the captives and to heal the sick.  He came to set the oppressed free from their oppression.  He clearly declared that was who He was.

I have been comfortable showing them their captivity and their oppression and then have blamed them for their situation.

Why do we rage against the captives—against the oppressed? 

Everywhere I look today, I see it.  I hear it.

I do it.

I said that worship service wasn’t the only time I had cried recently.  I had a conversation with a friend who was frightened by an approaching weather system last week.

My friend’s admission of fear was the only trigger I needed to set me off.  I began to rant about the folks who are responsible for building up that fear and about folks who hide in their fraidy holes at the mention of a storm coming.

My rant was cut short as my friend’s eyes were lifted up to mine. 

Words fail.

I made my way home, seeing through tears.

Do you know what it’s like to be alone?  To be impaired?  To feel helpless in the face of danger?  To not know if anyone will remember you as they evacuate?

God, make my heart soft.  Where it is hard as adamant, make it as tender as Yours.

I’m not a newbie at this following Jesus thing.  It’s been a lifetime.  And still, I repent.  And will need to again. 

But, His declaration to the folks in His hometown—the prophetic words from Isaiah, the ones that nearly got him thrown off a cliff by his neighbors—is still true.

For me, it’s true. 

And for anyone who comes to Him.

He still sets the captives free.

That Gibbs fellow was wrong, he of television fame; it is not a sign of weakness to apologize.  It’s a sign of strength—of resolve. 

And I’m still sorry for the snakes. 

I think the Lovely Lady will let it slide.  This time.

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
    that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
    and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”
(Luke 4:18-19, NLT [from Isaiah 61:1-2])

 

“I’m unfinished. I’m unfixed. And the reality is that’s where God meets me, is in the mess of my life, in the unfixedness, in the brokenness. I thought he did the opposite, he got rid of all that stuff. But if you read the Bible, if you look at it at all, constantly he was showing up in people’s lives at the worst possible time of their life.”  (Mike Yaconelli)

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

Still Sitting in the Dark

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

She left to go to choir rehearsal without me; the Lovely Lady did.  As she gathered up her music, she asked the question.

“What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

It didn’t take long for my answer to come.  I say it often, sometimes even in jest. Okay, mostly in jest.

“I’m going to do what I always do when you’re gone.  I’ll sit in the dark and wait for you to come home.”

Pitiful, aren’t I?  The thing is, I sometimes do just what I said I’d do.

It’s not always because I’m sad or down.  Sometimes, I just need to think.  And the dark is better for thinking.  There are not as many distractions in the dark.

I was going to stay in my easy chair to sit in the dark while she was gone, but then I remembered that my sister had sent a note about the moon earlier.  It, Ruler of the Night, decided to come out before sunset this evening.  I suppose it decided that if we puny humans need to save the daylight by changing our silly clocks, it could help by shining an extra hour or two before its appointed time.

So, instead of sitting in the dark in our den, I went outside and sat in the dark there.

Except it wasn’t.  Dark, that is.

I had been thinking I’d look up at the sky before I came back in.  Then I could write my sister a nice little note to tell her the moon was okay.

The sun had gone down over an hour before.  But the moon was doing its best to actually give us some daylight.  The yard and field behind my house were illuminated like daytime, complete with shadows cast by the still-naked trees.

So, I couldn’t have sat in the dark, even though I wanted to.

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall fall on me,’
Even the night shall be light about me.”
(Psalm 139:11, NKJV)

David, that shepherd boy who became king and poet, also thought he could sit in the dark and let it wash over him.  He was wrong.

He was made to live in the light.

I was, too.  I think we all may have been.

We don’t always understand what the light is, though.  It doesn’t look like we expect it to.  Just like the moon tonight, we are often surprised by the light around us and where it comes from.

Earlier in the day, I walked over to a neighbor’s house to talk with him for a minute.  I was a little unsettled by the sound of his router. He had been working on another project under his carport for an hour or more.

I wanted to listen to the songbirds.

The cardinals were being all sociable, with half a dozen of them at a time gathering in the oak branches out front—flashes of red in the sunlight everywhere I looked.  The finches and wrens fluttered in and out of the holly tree’s foliage, some carrying grass and leaves for the nests they are busily slapping together.

I did.  I wanted to listen to the birdsong.

But that noisy router just kept screaming as it ripped into the pieces of wood on the neighbor’s workbench.  So, I went to visit with John.  I had no intention of grousing at him.  I just figured the router would be quiet for at least as long as we visited, and I could hear the birds in that relative silence anyway.

He grinned as I approached, turning off the machinery as I anticipated.  Reaching out, he gave me a hug, and then he showed me his project.  He is making a container to hold antique serving dishes.  Not for himself.  A friend, whose grandmother passed away and left her the dishes, was worried they would get broken, so he designed and is making a container for them.

As we talked, he mentioned some things he is storing for another friend.  Then, still motioning to the stack under his carport, he told me about a different project he is planning for an acquaintance using the scraps of lumber he has there.  In passing, he made the offer to me to take anything I needed from his bounty.

I mentioned one of our widowed neighbors to him, and he told me of going over during a recent storm and bringing her to his house so she wouldn’t be alone while the wind and thunder were raging overhead.  And then, as I prepared to head for home, I mentioned that his firewood pile had diminished since I last noticed it.  He nonchalantly told about a fellow who had been walking down the street who needed wood for heat, and he had given him most of his supply.

I sit here, and realization hits me; my seventy-something-year-old neighbor isn’t sitting and moping in the dark.

He’s making light!  Shining it on everybody he meets, the light of God blazes from his face and fingertips.  I wonder if that’s what the apostle Paul meant when he said we were to be lights in the universe. (Philippians 2:15)  I think it may have been.

We’re not made to sit in the dark, awaiting whatever or whoever comes next.

We walk in the light as our Savior does.  And we have fellowship—communion, if you will—with all others who walk in that light. (1 John 1:7)

I admit it; I haven’t been as successful at shining His light as my neighbor has.  I’m not quite as noisy as he is, either, but I’m thinking I should get busy and catch up.

So, no more sitting in the dark.

It’s time to walk in the light.

And maybe—to make a little noise.

 

“A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness.”
(Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi)

Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.”
(Psalm 139:12, NKJV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

I’m Not Just The Guy With His Right Shoe Untied

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment
image by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

The guy with his right shoe untied.

I know I accepted the label when she used it.  I almost embraced it.  It does describe me.

Sometimes.

But more often than not, both of my shoes are tied—tied in neat square-knot bows. I often walk down the sidewalk without the tell-tale skritch-skritch-skritch of shoelace aglets dragging along the concrete.

My identity is not found exclusively in my untied right shoe.

Sometimes, my identity is found in the angry words that flood from my mouth when the person in front of me demonstrates an insufficiency in driving skills.  I’m confident if I asked the question again of the Lovely Lady at those times, she would answer it differently than she did the other night.  There would be no mention of the condition of my right shoe.

“Sure.  I know who you are!  You’re the man who has never learned to control his temper in traffic.“

She has not said those words to me.  But, she could.  I know they would be accurate sometimes.

I’m not proud of it.  I even told her the other day (without her prodding me whatsoever) how sorry I am not to have conquered that bad habit.

Sin.

I should call it what it is.

“People can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish,  but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison.”  (James 3:7-8, NLT)

So sometimes, I am the guy with his mouth full of poison. Spitting it with great accuracy like a cobra.

Then again, I can often be found speaking gently to folks and even offering a helping hand if they have need of it.  I have days when not a single angry or disparaging word leaves the vicinity of my mouth.

I have admitted, repeatedly, that I am not the man I had hoped to be by now.  Daily, I see ways in which I could make improvements.

“Please be patient with me; God isn’t finished with me yet.”

I remember hearing the phrase when I was a teenager.  It has become a bit trite now, as if an excuse for actions and attitudes.  But it’s not.

Both confession and prayer—the words admit fault while looking to a future and a loving Father from which improvement will come.

The apostle, my namesake, said it this way:

“I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” (Philippians 1:6, NLT)

If that doesn’t give one hope, I don’t know what will.

And, that’s an identity I’ll claim.  If you need words to describe me, say this:

“I know you!  You’re the guy with hope for what’s still ahead!”

Hopeful.

Because He’s not done with me yet.

And, never will be.

My right shoe won’t come untied forever.  The poison will be gone from my mouth one day.  I’ll not struggle with sexual thoughts, or hateful attitudes, or doubts and frustration.

It’s a promise to all He draws to Himself.

So it belongs to you as much as it does to me.

Patience.  And hope.

Mostly, hope.

 

“Numbers and photographs do not a person make.
I’m more than what a page can say of me.
My identity is not in my history.
All the best of me is in my dreams.”
(from A Voice, by Kat Edmonson)

 

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” (Galatians 5:23-24, NLT)

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.