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This is a long, long book (700 something pages).  I'd look but I'd lose my place. I am terrible at reading directions and I desperately need to google how to highlight in a Kindle and then find stuff I highlighted.  I have always avoided reading directions and with a sweet smile just asked someone to show me which they've usually been delighted to do.

I did that standing in line once in Panera.    If someone is  under 30, they were born with a gene that enables them to operate anything technical.  So I said to the under 30 girl in front of me,  "What happened to my I Phone?  It won't respond when I mash the button?"  One glance....one nanosecond later she said, "You have to turn the phone on." I have not asked a random person since.

And I've begun to notice how many people over 60 ask about even really simple stuff...before they even think  or try to figure it out (i.e. me in the Panera line.) That has begun to drive me nuts.  We look like a bunch of bumbling senior citizens and it's mostly our own fault.

For some reason, it seems like people under 30 expect your brain to atrophy and completely dry up by the time you're 60.  Unless they are selling me something and need the commission and can put on this mask that says, "I know you are brilliant, you just weren't in class the day this was explained..." I don't ask.

So since most people aren't trying to sell me something, it's become paramount to me, that I PROVE my brain is not atrophying, much less dried up (even though everything else in my body is) hence...I either figure it out or decide I can do without.    I'm sure I'm not getting my money's worth out of my Kindle...but I'll take what I can figure out.

How did I get on this?

Ok..so I'm still reading No Ordinary Life by Doris Kearns Goodwin about the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt between 1940 and 1945.  This was an interesting quote:

"Looking back across the year," I.F. Stone wrote, "the President has much with which to be pleased.  The task of mobilizing a fairly prosperous and contented capitalist democracy for war is like trying to drive a team of twenty mules, each stubbornly intent on having its own way.  Only by continual compromise with the ornery critters is it possible to move forward at all.  Examined closely, by the myopic eye of the perfectionist, Mr. Roosevelt's performance in every sphere has been faulty.  Regarded in the perspective of his limited freedom of choice and the temper of the country, which has never really been warlike, the year's achievements have been extraordinary." (398)

That's me.  An ornery critter, intent on having her own way, examining closely with a  myopic eye.  Why do I do this?  I look down my nose at people who do this.  I have a good friend whose mom is highly critical  about almost everything.  A wayward brother finally came to faith and she was outraged he came to church in his jeans.  He could have come to faith butt naked and I  would have been  thrilled to death.  But am I like her?

As I wade through this book, it's obvious FDR believed in God...the God of the Bible..my God.  He and Churchill closed their first meeting off the coast of Newfoundland with a Sunday service...with the companies of both ships singing hymns he had chosen.

When North Africa was invaded with minimal loss of life,  he and Churchill alone  promoting this action, he thanked God over and over for the outcome.  "The Atlantic was  unusually calm that day," was not a fluke.  He knew that there were only about 12 days in the year that that particular spot they'd chosen, was not buffeted by 15 foot waves.

He planned the first ever Thanksgiving service in the White House in 1942 and personally selected the hymns.  "Though Roosevelt seldom talked about religion, " Robert Sherwood once observed,  "his religious faith was the strongest, most mysterious force that was in him."  Though he did not attend church regularly (christened an Episcopalian), it is said that he drew upon the Bible frequently for inspiration and greatly enjoyed singing hymns. (393)

It is always beyond amazing to me how God puts things together and then one day you raise your nose out of a book and  it all comes together and..... you get it.

If the story of my life was recorded in a book, and I were President of the U.S., not the PTA, and you were reading with the myopic eye of the perfectionist, you would be appalled, I'm sure.

The President lives in a glass house.  Not only are his actions recorded, but we read all kinds of intentions, motives, into them... thoughts, reasoning, lack of reasoning,  attitudes he must surely have.

But I need to look at my own life...and realize that all along, its been a process.  That when God saved me so long ago (and I know all the Bible answers why He did ... but humanly speaking, I have no clue why in the world He chose me), He knew He was in for the long haul...that I'd make some horrendous mistakes, terrible decisions.  That I'd say one thing that sounded so "religious" and "godly" and my heart was so eat up with dirt, I should have been struck dead.

Funny how your praying is so righteously militant about someone and God does a number on you...before He does something with them.  Because prayer is not just "talking to God."  It's also listening when He offers a course correction.

So here's the course correction.  President Obama states he is a Christian and that to me means a follower of Jesus.  He proclaimed Memorial Day yesterday as a day of prayer for peace.  I've never heard it proclaimed a day of prayer for anything. He is a work in progress if he belongs to Him.  So am I.  If he speaks to Planned Parenthood and supports the taking of human life, I may tell God, just to be sure that He's  aware....but if he is God's child, He knows very well how to correct wrong thinking.

I can say that from personal experience.