Paint and Mozart

Paint is one of the cheapest decorating tools in the world. You can buy expensive furniture, accessories, wall hangings, curtains, built-ins....but the fastest and cheapest tool in any decorating arsenal is a can of paint.

 I love paint. It smells good. It is beautiful and smooth, a promise of new things. It has the ability to renew and resurrect the old. Obviously, it cannot do these things by just sitting meekly in its can. It requires me to come in with an arsenal of equipment... a variety of patching and spackling materials, various grits of sandpaper, a trusty ladder, brushes, roller cages, lots of floor coverings, rags, caulk and caulk gun, paint pans, 5-in-1 tools, water, my ipod, possibly my scaffolding. That's the short list. 

I don't know why, perhaps its my internal rebellious nature, but on nearly every single paint job I have ever done (which is a long list now), I cry at some point. Maybe it's when I find  my fluffy body stuck at an insane angle in the corner of a kitchen ceiling or it could be when I am done and crying in relief..... it doesn't matter whether it's an artistic endeavor or a plain ole paint job, somewhere in there I get the feeling that I just can't do this. I cry and want heaven to hurry up and get here. Then suddenly, after much work and travail, it's done and I can go home. I'm really happy with the results, usually, and just stand again in wonder as to how these things happen. 

 I have to believe in God. He makes things happen that I can't explain and that I cannot actually do myself. And now that things are much more difficult than when I was younger, I am even more amazed at what He does through us humans. I don't know whether Mozart believed in God or not....but he didn't think that stuff up all by himself. It just flowed out of him and he didn't even know why. I see this kind of behavior all over the planet. My husband, Ken, for example, has no artistic bones whatsoever. Or salesman bones. But he can take any situation, analyze it, see what is wrong with it, figure out his options and tools, organize it, slice and dice it, and get it all fixed. He could take 200 kids and run the world. He has the ability to understand who is best for a job and manage to get them to get busy doing it. This just flows out of him. He doesn't have to work at it. In fact, I get mad at him because it seems so effortless. When we were homeschooling and Ken was working with Lucent and had about 6 weeks of vacation a year, sometimes he would take time off if I needed rest or recuperation from back issues. He'd have the kids settled at their work after breakfast, dishes were done, laundry was tossing in the dryer, and meals were on time. House was humming quietly, neat and tidy, and school was finished in a timely manner. I wish there was a pill you could take to get those kinds of results, but no, they are a gift from God. I worked at acquiring those kinds of results, and got better over time.... but my art/music/flowery stuff just flowed out with little effort.

That is God! He gives us all gifts, some of service, some of mercy, some of organization, some of flowering up the world, some of making oatmeal....some exciting, some plain, but we all have things that are just who He made us to be. It's pretty amazing. Somehow this all fits together and makes the world go 'round. Don't despair at your neighbor's gifts -- rejoice in them and God's diverse way of tossing the salad.

Meanwhile, I'm dreaming about a can of blush-colored paint that's just waiting on me in the bathroom.

Woman Interrupted.....

Most of my days are spent in an abundance of activities. I keep thinking things are going to slow down or that I'll find some serenity in there, but there is precious little of that. If I do find a few days strung together with no real "purpose," I am bad about frittering the time away and then suddenly am hit with another onslaught of work or must-do's that keep the tornado moving. When my children were small, I thought that surely things would get normal someday. After years of those kinds of thoughts, I now know that there is no normal, we are not normal, and normal is really a stupid amalgam of an idea that doesn't exist. 

Anyway, last week was certainly a blur. All the things that I thought I needed to do did not happen. I kept getting interrupted! Just about the time I was about to climb on my ladder or sit down and write or draw, the phone would ring or the door would knock. It was amazing how providentially hindered I was by these events. I got quite frustrated, because I had goals in mind for my days and the week. One of my children was taking up large amounts of my brain as I worried about something amiss in their life. Then another of my children settled back there in another corner of my brain, then another. Then there were friends and old friends who needed a word (but really just a shoulder). I needed to make money for Christmas and bills, but there just wasn't time to do it all. One day, when a friend called and needed me, I put her off to do something else that needed to be done. In a short time, I realized that the Lord was interfering with my plans and that He wanted me to spend time with her. I called her and said, "I surrender! Please come over!" What I was saying was that I give up, Lord, You've got something better for me to do. 

One of the afternoons, I stopped and walked out to the mailbox. Then I decided to NOT do what was next, which was get on my ladder. I hooked up the puppy and took a stroll around the neighborhood. As we walked, I prayed for my children and others, looked at the sweet houses and trees, said hello to numerous neighbors, smelled leaves and oil and something baking as we passed by a house; an old friend from high school stopped me in the street as she gushed over my puppy.... it was a precious hour spent in existing where I've been planted. When we got back home, I stood in the front yard and looked at our adorable house, fighting back tears.

God sends us so many things, often frustrating and patchwork bits that seem to have no rhyme or reason. I only see through a glass darkly. It's usually murky and tumultuous. I sometimes catch sight of the threads that He is weaving through everything and it is enough to make me understand, at least for a moment, that the maker of DNA, my eyes, nose, and the mulch under my feet loves me. I am His child, snotty-nosed and all.

The Camper and the Throne in the woods (we did this in 1996)....

My parents  used to be avid campers.  I have to tell this, because it’s really ironic when I think about it now. I grew up camping at Lake Alatoona with my family, in a tent, on the ground, in a sleeping bag. My Mom was not truly crazy about camping, but she loved us and indulged these kinds of things from her family. She was the chief cook & bottlewasher and preferred to do that while we went out adventuring or swimming. Not long after Ken and I had married, I was driving down the road and saw an adorable pop-up camper at a yard sale. I asked the price and it was extremely reasonable. I called Ken and asked him if I could buy it. He said, “Does it have a bathroom?” I said, “What?!!!! A bathroom?! It’s a pop-up, for heaven’s sake!” He stated that if it didn’t have a bathroom then he was not interested. I realized that this was something we had not discussed before we were married. The pastor who married us did not ask enough questions. This crucial piece of information was missing when I walked the aisle. To put it plainly, I suddenly realized that my man was a Holiday Inn kind-of guy…. How did that happen? He looked very much like a hunky lumberjack, he wore flannel shirts and hiking boots. He was tall, masculine and had the arms of a body builder. He played football and basketball like a whirling dervish. So how did I miss the memo?  Apparently it all worked out and I would have to now say that, I honestly do not miss sleeping on the damp ground in convulated ways, particularly when you have mosquitoes buzzing in your ears and then when it inevitably starts to rain, while your slightly-unlevel-campground begins to flood. No, I’ll take the Holiday Inn….I’ll even take the Motel 6, if truth be known. Thank you, Ken!

But when we decided on our Big Adventure and figured that we'd buy a used camper, Ken thought it would be helpful if my Daddy helped us buy one.  We looked at several, then we found one in Douglasville.  When we showed up to look at it, this incredibly short woman came out of the house.  She had to be about 4 foot 8  and weighed at least 300 pounds.  Later, we found out that she was a fortune-telling witch of sorts and had a tarot card reading business....she also must have had the gift of deception, because we certainly were blind to what was wrong with this camper.   My brother in law, Brian, lended us the money until we closed on the house so that we could go ahead and prepare it for what was to come.  When we pulled it to our house, we discovered many wonderful things about it.  The refrigerator didn't work.  The heater didn't work.  And in particular, the whole thing leaked like a sieve.  I hauled myself onto the roof, scrubbed and bleached it, waited for it to dry and then painted it with some sort of stuff that was like a rubber roof.  We cleaned the whole thing inside and out and then filled it with the clothes and things we would be living with at the campground.  I remember the last night in the house, before the final closing.  I had a huge yard sale a couple of weeks before we moved, selling everything that was extraneous or junk....all those things that you really don't want or inherited from the dump.... I even sold our kitchen chairs because they were awfully uncomfortable and had gotten beaten to death by all of us.  Ken's parents graciously agreed to let us store the rest of our stuff in their basement.  We hauled everything over there, squeezing it so tight that it only took up about a third of their basement.  My mother-in-law and other family members had bought me some beautiful Johnson Brothers china from England that arrived the day before we moved out.  It went straight into my Mom's basement.  That was tough.  In the camper, we only had room for a few things, so I packed a saucepan, a Dutch Oven, a couple of casserole pans, our old set of stainless, some detergent and toiletries and a few utensils and pot holders.  For the next two years we would eat off paper plates and from our laps.  I remember the last night in the house.  Everything had been moved to the appropriate place, all the furniture and beds were gone.  All that was left in the house was everybody's pillows and some bedding.  We camped out on the hard living room floor.  It was a sad and scary time, but also exciting because our adventure was beginning.  Who could know what lie in store for us?  How in the world were we going to do this crazy thing?  I am still in awe that our parents didn't absolutely freak out (maybe they did, they just didn't let us know about it).  Ken and I with four kids, ages 12, 10, 8 and 5, moving into a camper like a bunch of gypsies.  

We lived in that camper for almost two years (21 months to be exact). It is a strange thing, to live in a camper for that long. After a while, you adapt to all the little things you have to do to make it work. There’s no room, so you just don’t keep much stuff. You realize you actually only need a couple of pans to cook with. In a shower where both of your hips are touching the walls, you get quicker about getting done with your business. There were two very good things about that beat-up camper….one was that it had an abnormally large hot water heater, so you could get good and clean in the micro-shower. Two, the air conditioner worked really well…so once you were clean and in your right mind, you could crawl into the sack and sleep unmolested by sweat or mosquitoes. Those two things made it tolerable. If we had not had lots of hot water and lots of cool, dehumidified air, I am absolutely certain I would have lost my mind. As it was, we learned quickly how to cook, clean, eat, and sleep in very close quarters and without a lot of luxuries. In short, we realized how little it takes to survive. People all over the world live in small huts, small apartments, wee corners of homes….with no thought as to their “plight.” That’s all you really need to live. In America, we live in massive homes, with Sam’s cards to buy our masses of groceries, supersizing our McDonald’s combo meals, etc. and I am as guilty as anybody. In fact, maybe worse than other people. I tend to think if a little is okay, then a lot must really be wonderful. I’ve heard the expression “less is more” for many years now. I hate that expression….because I think, “more is a heck of a lot better.” Then I remember how we were able to live in peace, with a lot of fun mixed in, for two years in a tiny, beat-up old camper….and I wonder what I’m doing in this (relative) mansion.

Our plan, after selling our home, was to pull the camper up to a campground across the street from Six Flags over Georgia, an amusement park in Atlanta. It was around 30 minutes away from our land, and we planned to get the basic systems in place before we moved the camper to the land: electricity, running water, septic tank, etc. We moved into the camper in August of 1996. The Olympics had come to Atlanta the same week we moved in. Everybody thought Atlanta was going to be a crazy, swamped place….but the truth was that all the Atlantans either stayed home that week or left for other places on vacation. At the campground, we met numerous interesting people who were there for the games. It was fascinating to see all the hoopla surrounding it. My kids were given tickets and went with their Uncle Jeff to see an archery event, but Ken and I couldn’t afford at the time to see anything that was going on (much less have the time to do it). I have no regrets, ha! The campground owners were very kind people. They were tolerant of us planning to live there for awhile, and there were other people that were long-term campers as well. There was one family who had an elaborate cage system built onto their camper that contained their many cats (there had to be 10-15 cats in it). It was very humane, with places for the cats to perch, eat and sleep. I saw the cats constantly, but the people were very bashful and I never was able to speak to any of them the whole time we were there. There was a pool at the campground that we enjoyed cooling off in, particularly in the evenings. There were showers, a laundromat and a little store and we used all of those. The first time that it rained, after buying the camper, the roof began to leak all over the place. I found a product in Atlanta that was used for waterproofing campers, so I climbed on top of the camper and painted the roof with this rubber substance. It never leaked again. I was petrified as I was painting the roof, not quite realizing how often I was going to have those feelings over the next two years….feelings of falling, feelings of being overwhelmed by something I had never done before, feelings of being sure that my life was over and that I was never going to be clean again, and especially, feelings of being certain that we were warping our kids. But then, evening came and the hot shower, kids in bed, cold air conditioning and a sleeping bag…..and life was good. 

We stayed at the campground for around two months. I remember the first day that we went out to the land and began trying to clear some of the brush, just so we could get to the house site. We wanted to put the house in the middle of the five acres. People kept advising us to put the house near the road, to keep the costs down….and I was adament that we put the house in the middle. What would be the point of having 5 acres if the whole back of it is in woods and your house is crammed up on the road? Many of the folks on our road who have built on chunks of land have done that, and they do not use the backs of their properties. It’s just a bunch of trees and the people have acreage, but no privacy. Today, if you were to come to our property, you could walk around the house naked and none of the neighbors would ever know. That is a good thing (not walking around naked, just having that kind of privacy). On the other hand, we have the most wonderful neighbors. They are all salt-of-the-earth people that would give you the shirt off their backs. But when you have this kind of environment, it is made up of people who are like-minded. They have property because they are a certain type of people. They want some privacy too….and they’re just not into homeowner’s associations and covenants and who-didn’t-mow-their-grass this week. Back a few years ago a Yankee moved into the neighborhood, tried to start one of those associations up and it never really got off the ground. We were all too busy sipping lemonade on our front porches….

Back to clearing… I quickly realized how difficult it is to clear land, and also realized that we were going to have some major help in the form of equipment to do this correctly. We interviewed landscapers and heavy-equipment people to get quotes on clearing a driveway and digging the basement. We were shell-shocked and actually quite devastated to find out how much it was going to cost. It was way over our “budgeted” idea. I cried myself to sleep that night and begged God to help us. We finally found an old guy who did it for about half of what we originally got as a quote, but I also realized that we would have to hire him for complete days at a time, no “partial” days. He was about 5 hours into one of the days and I saw that he was really meandering and taking way too long….so I gave him something else to do so that he would be more efficient with his time. I asked him to knock down the trees in the front of the property, making me a big field…and also do the same in a back section of the property, making us a garden area. Ken still busts me up about that. He says that he would have liked to just have woods everywhere.  We have to have those areas bushhogged now, which costs money….but I wanted to have some illusions about a horse chewing on alfalfa in the front field, even if there never really was a horse. Plus, I get a little caustrophic if there’s too many woods and not enough sunlight.

Ken’s Dad and he built a wonderful shed on the property, to put the camper under. That was a great idea, because it kept the camper from even possibly leaking again….it also gave us a little porch and a toolshed to work from. I believe that Ken’s Dad paid for the lumber for it. It was a precious gift and it was another of those things that made all the difference in us being able to do the impossible. During the winter, we would completely wrap the camper and the porch with plastic, to keep out the weather. When we were finally done with building the house, the boys dismantled the whole shed and built a two-story barn with the leftovers! They insisted on doing it themselves and would not let Ken or any of the menfolk help them. It is still there and has been used to keep all manner of tools, puppies and chickens safe, warm, and clean for many years.

To get water to the house site, my Dad and Ken and the boys had to run piping all the way from the road up to the house site. They bought pipe and rented a ditch witch and ran the piping 400 or so feet from the road all the way up to the house site. It was a project that seemed like it should be simple, but of course it was not. They kept running into shale and rock.  I think they had to take the machine back to the shop two or three times before it was completed, and I thought they’d never get the water hooked up to it. Of course, the thing froze a few times before we figured out how much we had to insulate. Ken built a box around it and crammed it full of insulation. Finally we had water. It is now 15 years later and that pipe is still holding. 

Then the fun part of our life really began. The unmentionables. The things that really show us what the Fall of Man is all about. I am talking about the septic system. Poop is what makes everything in life difficult. We have raised myriads of puppies and chickens, cats and children. And the worst part of all that is all the poop. There are all these idyllic pictures of animals on posters and picture books, pictures of farms and hills and valleys. What they don’t show you is the barnyards, the cesspools, the diapers that are full of it. It does not just go away. It collects. It stinks. It amasses. And what are you supposed to do about it? Mankind has come up with a wonderful thing called a septic system. Some brilliant dude came up with one that snakes all through peoples’ backyards. They try to make us all think that the poop is not there at all…it’s buried and safely ensconced deep within the earth. But time and more time, and more people or animals, and it rears its ugly head. It cannot hide forever. It is coming for you.  This subject was the most difficult part of living like we were living. The septic guy that had the best price came in with a big tractor. The fellow could sure run that machine, but he could hardly walk. He had bad joints and nice long lunch breaks with “beverages.” He would show up after lunchtime with his equipment and several men. He would manage to climb onto his tractor and diligently dig. The other men would stare at his machine and him, leaning on their shovels and not doing much else. Eventually he had a long snaking hole tunneling through our backyard. To my amazement, he pushed down very few trees. But as to what he did, I am not so sure…  

We connected the camper’s sewage system to the septic tank via a big, long flexible pipe. Pretty much immediately, someone kicked a hole in the pipe, so we repaired the hole with duct tape. Occasionally it would work its way loose, so don’t let anybody tell you that the Nortons are not rednecks. Or that anybody in the world is truly civilized.

The very worst part of our camper days, for me, was all the septic system complications. Skip this part if you are squeamish. Every few days, I would have to run a special hose and attachment into the septic tank in the camper…and blow it out to clean it. We had to keep certain chemicals in the tank to break things down and use special toilet paper as well. Sometimes the system would break down. Towards the end of our time in the camper, it started leaking and giving up the ghost. Someone lent us a little porta potty that did not hold very much. One of my very-precious sons (should I say his name?) took it upon himself to empty said potty in a special place in the woods…sort-of an outhouse-hole in the ground. This was quite burdensome, to say the least. Finally, the boys took left-over blocks and built a virtual throne-in-the-woods, complete with a large hole in the ground and a place to put toilet paper, etc. At the time, nobody lived between us and the river a mile away, so you could enjoy the open air. When it was raining, not a very fun place to be. Actually, nothing about it was fun. This was extremely distressing for me, to say the least. Eventually the porta-potty was put into the big house, which by this time was dried-in but had no sheetrock on the walls. One day, I was in the makeshift porta-potty area, and one of the boys forgot to yell before they stepped into the house. They weren’t exposed to anything before I saw them and screamed for them to get out…but I was at the end of my rope. I got a little emotional and cried over it and the lack of privacy we were experiencing. Next thing I know, the boys constructed me a “bathroom” inside the house by taking old plywood and enclosing what would be the half bath. They made a little magazine rack and had a nice nail for the toilet paper. It was so very sweet and funny (now that it’s all over I can say that). Not long after, my Dad came over and helped Ken fix the septic system on the camper. That was probably to keep me off the ceiling and out of the crazy house, for sure. I was never so thankful for anything in my entire life.

Puppies and the American Way

The life of a puppy....

I really adore my two cats. They are funny, smart and interesting. They are also very independent. You put food on the porch and they eat at their leisure, they poop in the leaves or the litter pan and then cover it up (thank you), you can leave them all day and they don't give a rip, heck, you can leave them for two weeks and go on vacation and they don't even seem to notice. They entertain themselves with the occasional mouse or bird, then sleep the rest of the day. If you pick them up, they really don't like it. They'd rather sit beside you and be stroked gently. They act aloof and get rid of rodents. They are low maintenance.

But not puppies. They are more like children. They need constant supervision or they will pee on your floor or chew up your furniture. They require serious training about where and when to poop. You cannot leave them unattended all day and expect to have a decent dog. They need positive reinforcement and doggie treats to be trained properly.  When you go on vacation, you have to think long and hard about what you are going to do about them. Their psyches can be damaged easily by harsh or lenient training....you can end up with a neurotic dog if you are inconsistent or mean. You can end up with a rotten, spoiled or aggressive dog if you do not establish your benevolent dominance over them -- your Alpha position in the pack. It can be complicated. But then again, not, if they are a hound dog on your back porch that gets a pat a day as you pass him on your way out to work. 

I love dogs. I love animals. They are God's special creations, beautiful expressions of His nature for our enjoyment and use. They are NOT people, and that's where some folks get confused. They might treat a dog better than they would another human (which is wrong), or they might treat a dog horribly because they are not human (which is wrong).  God talks about how the righteous man treats his animals humanely, but it never recommends substituting a dog for a child. So balance is in order. In this day, there are folks who would favor butchering their unborn baby over neglecting a dog. To quote an old saying, what is this world coming to?

So, back to dogs..... our children grew up with dogs, puppies, cats, chickens, gerbils, birds, and some kind of weird lizards. There were folks that we knew that thought that pets were superfluous, wastes of time and money.....that pets were actually an evil thing to have. I am not kidding. We bred beautiful Golden Retriever puppies for many years. Oh my.....!  There are people in all kinds of circles that think that breeding dogs is evil too. All I've got to say about all that "evil" is that sometimes people might need to get their own lives and quit worrying about everybody else's. Somehow, I thought we came over on a boat to this country for the purposes of freedom and the American way, just to mention a few... Things have gotten way, way out of hand in so many arenas. We have never lived in a neighborhood with regulated covenants for a reason. Well, many reasons. Ok, I'm digressing....again. My kids grew up with the responsibilities of animals, and most living things in our household have been required to pull their weight. Parents have work or chores, children have chores and jobs, cats have mousing responsibilities, dogs have guard duty and puppy breeding, and chickens contributed eggs and alarm duties. Somehow the birds and lizards skipped out on all that. Maybe they substituted for video games. Either way, our children learned to parent and nurture their animals....a precursor to adulthood and those responsibilities. A worthy cause. 

With a new puppy in the house, I am being painfully reminded of what it feels like to have a baby again. Early morning potty breaks, crate training, walks around the yard, feeding and socializing.... checking on pup's proximity to chair legs and dangerous electrical cords. I'm exhausted. But I sure am loving that fluffy, sweet face greeting me every morning. 

Grandmas, Part 3 -- My Christmas Story

My two Grandmas, opposite as night and day.....I cherish both of them for different reasons. They have both been gone a very long time, but I think of them often and miss them fiercely. Any time my kids do something to make me proud or make me laugh, I think of them and wonder if they can see all their grandkids everywhere, and pondering how proud they must be. 

Grandma Betty was a Yankee, oh my word, my mother's mother. From the heart of Chicago she hailed. She was, to me, beautiful and glamorous. She had cat eyes, green with brown stripes in them. She was affectionate and bold, and would stare right into your eyes and kiss you right on the mouth. She loved excitement, culture, people, and new places. Wrong choices were made in her life but she stood by them, stating that she did them for love. I think that those choices grated at her and she had to fight internally the consequences, all of her life. They may have even killed her in the end. These things can wear your heart out.

She grew up in downtown Chicago, in a mixed family that was complicated, to say the least. She loved the city and I have fond memories of her showing us the choicest parts of it. The Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum, the zoo, etc....  She was a voracious reader and her house was always full of books, new and old. She worked for a publishing house (appropriate) and always gave me full access to whole boxes of books, sending me home with any that were unfinished before trip's end. My Daddy says that she was responsible for getting him to read and find the cultured parts of life. She loved music, dancing, travel, and pretty things. There was a bedroom in her house solely dedicated to her "stuff" and she would let us girls dive into drawers and closets, playing dress-up with her good jewelry, shoes and formals. I remember a whole closet that was full of shoes alone and an entire large dresser full of costume jewelry. She affected me with her bling and I carry on her glitzy DNA with a vengeance, though perhaps a smaller pocketbook. I have the Slate genes too, which gravitate to sales and thrift stores, praise the Lord.

Our trips to Illinois were once or twice a year, so I did not see her as often as my other grandma, but she was a faithful writer....and when we did see her, it was always a memorable and rich time. But I have to tell about my favorite Christmas and what God did one year, back when I was about 12 years old.....

It starts with my mother. When I was a youngster, she was a rock. She made us very secure with strict rules and boundaries. Our home was a clean, well-scrubbed place, rather hospital-like in its sanitation. She cleaned the entire house, every day. And you had better not upset the apple cart or the glass of milk. She was very angry. I did not know why. I was too young to know anything about her past or her family's complicated underpinnings. I did know that when we visited Grandma, we would have a nice visit at first, but within a few hours or days, a fight would erupt, sounding rather like two cats fighting. It seemed like some of it involved talk of religion and such, but I can't be sure. The nice visit became awkward and was cut short. This went on for years. My Mama was a Bible-toting Baptist, living in a black-and-white world where there was no room for complacency or dirt.

But then...

Our church began going through what I consider to be a modern revival, a turning away from religion-as-usual to a rebirth of true Christianity. People who had been sitting in pews for years started to wake up and realize that they were hypocrites and not even born again. We began hearing truths from God's Word that we had never heard before. Peoples' lives were being changed. It was during this time that my aunt and uncle were visiting. Mama and my uncle were arguing about something, and he blurted out something like, "You are always talking about God and carrying that big Bible around, but you are bitter and you hate your own mother." It hit her right between the eyes and she realized for the first time her own hypocrisy. God changed her that day. He gave her the grace to repent of her unforgiving heart and to forgive her mother of things from the past. Her bitterness melted away in a divinely appointed instant.

Our home changed instantly as well. Where there had been an institution, it became a warm place. The walls literally bloomed with color as her creative juices began to flow. She started making clothing and putting up wallpaper, painting, creating. It was virtual forgiveness, being fleshed out. The best part was that something vital changed between her and our Daddy. They began to spark and laugh, hold hands, kiss, go out on dates to the Dairy Queen. Then special weekends to the mountains. Within a short time, maybe a year, Daddy walked down the aisle at church and laid down his life to the Lord. We all thought he was just being emotional, that this was a phase...he was already a good man, superintendent of Sunday School and teacher of the Royal Ambassadors. But no, he was now a different man from his core. His heart truly changed and he was in love with Christ and his wife, for the first time. Us kids looked in awe and wonder at what had conspired. One of the most memorable evidences that happened was that one night, at supper, I spilled a whole glass of milk. I held my breath, waiting for the onslaught from my mother. She jumped up, ran to the kitchen and grabbed a towel and helped me clean it up. No screaming, no ranting. This was impossible. There was a God.

That next Christmas, our family piled into the car, loaded down with luggage and gifts, and headed to Illinois. It was the happiest trip. We played Carpenter's tapes and sang and us kids slept dreamily in the back seat. When we arrived, it was dark outside and there was snow everywhere..... as we pulled in, the door opened to their townhome and light spilled out onto the snow. We were all hugging and cheering, so happy to finally be there. All the luggage and gifts were hauled in and we settled in, warmly ensconced in the living room. I looked up from my chair, into the kitchen. There was my Grandma and Mama hugging. Not just an obligatory hug. It was a bear hug that went on and on. I cried silently to myself, as I had never seen anything like that. 

Until the day Grandma died, many years later, my mother and her never again fought. My Mama made peace with her and loved her, without pounding her with her 20-pound Bible. She instead lived that Bible, changing the world around her. Going into my teen years, I was tempted by my own dark side, attracted by the spectre of boys and more boys.... but because I had seen Christ lived out, because I knew He was real and that He was the saver of hypocrites, I knew that He could be trusted with my own heart. 

Now that is my Christmas story. 

Grandmas and Trains, Part 2

The Continuation of MawMaw's Story.....

Since there were eight siblings in my Dad's family, and they seemed intent on filling and subduing the earth with their offspring, we had tons of cousins. Any time we visited MawMaw, there were people coming and going. There was always really black coffee and a pan of stale biscuits on the counter. Her hockey-puck biscuits were pretty sad examples of Southern cooking (maybe that's where I get it) but beggars can't be choosers. (I married a man whose Mama makes biscuits that taste like pieces of heaven. How do you get over that?) PawPaw died in a car wreck when I was seven years old, dying like he lived...drunk. I remember that night so vividly. My sister and best friend, Melanie, and I were throwing a ball in our front yard and Daddy was working with a wheelbarrow. Mama ran outside suddenly and spoke with him, then he flew out to his car and squealed out of the driveway, almost running over the wheelbarrow. Mama took us inside and told us the sad news. Sometime later, we went to MawMaw's house, where our huge extended family had gathered. A large group of cousins went upstairs to the attic rooms. I remember feeling numb and horrified that he had died. My older cousins talked into the night and Melanie and I sat holding hands, mutely, listening.

Before the funeral, his coffin was put in the front parlor of MawMaw's house. I was both fascinated and frightened by seeing him there. I could never again go in that room without being reminded of that sight. It was the first death I experienced. I had this urge to laugh and then to cry. I put my hand over my mouth and pinched hard to keep quiet. I kept going back to the coffin again and again, trying to make sense of death. How do you do that when you are seven years old? 

After that, MawMaw seemed to thrive. One time, in a weak moment, she told me that sometimes she would wake up from a nightmare, where the police were banging on the door, looking for PawPaw. Then she'd wake up and realize that he was dead. And that was a relief. I can't imagine the drama that she lived with all those years, with trouble and sorrow weighing her down. But after his death, she had so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, there was always someone visiting. Her old, rickety house was eventually burned down by the fire department, after a cinder block shop in her backyard was fixed up and made into a darling little bungalow for her to live in. She had the greenest thumb I've ever seen. If she stuck a stick in the ground, it would grow. She was always piddling in her yard and around her garden. It was a riot of vines and color, just like her. She was an old soul and she loved people. When we would get up to leave from a visit, she would fuss and try to get us to stay longer. Yet, if she came to stay with anyone, she would get restless and want to get right back to her own house. I loved the times that we drove around the countryside with her, with her showing us old homeplaces and fields from her childhood in the Buchanan area. Those memories never fade.

When Uncle James, her oldest child, died from a lung illness, I was about 20 years old. It almost put her in the grave. She got very sick, unable to digest her food or enjoy anything. Eventually she was hospitalized and managed to muster out of it. She was one of those people who bore things deeply. She worried and fussed. She was a strong Christian, a Pentecostal who spoke in tongues and embraced all the charismatic gifts. But she admitted to me that she always had a difficult time trusting God. She had seen many hard  times. She had known extreme poverty, hunger, deceitfulness from others, hardship like no one I've ever known..... she loved God though and struggled with her trials. When I think of her now, many years after her death, I smile because I see her in heaven, unburdened from the heavy load that she had borne here on earth. I can imagine her laughing, with no cares, living in perfect peace and love, never hungry again, never fearing anything again. I can just imagine her exhorting us to not worry, because He really does have it all under control, even when it doesn't seem like it. As I touched her leathered, sweet hand in her casket, it occurred to me that this was a woman that worried every day of her life that she wouldn't make it through. But she did, dying easily in her recliner, with a coffee cup in her hand (not even dropping it) and a smile on her face. She had mowed her own grass the day before, fussed at all of us the week before and had made it right the day before she died. An imperfect gal who ultimately trusted in a perfect God. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.

The Universality of Womens' Birth Experiences

Yaya's Guide to the Mysteries of the Universe

It is a mysterious fact: once you are pregnant, you belong to a universal women's club. Your body becomes public property. Amazingly, people in stores and on the street feel the freedom to put their hands on your belly and ask you nosy questions about your personal life. They also begin to tell you their birth experiences, whether you ask or not. If it happens to be your first pregnancy, you will recoil at the horrific things that happen to other women. What you might not know yet, and will quickly learn, is that most birth experiences are over-dramatized when seen through the eyes of a mother who has endured the great rite of passage that is birthing a baby. I have had women that I have just met -- in grocery stores, doctor's offices, churches, on the street, on the phone, in parking lots, online,  in business meetings, at baby showers, wedding showers, weddings, funerals, pretty much anywhere....tell me their garish and hyper-detailed birth experiences. And I admit, I have told more than my share of the same. It is a unifying experience that bonds women together like nothing else. Ken began to be astonished at this phenomenon early in our marriage, amazed that complete strangers would give those kinds of details out as easily as giving directions to the gas station. It's actually quite humorous. If I had written all those experiences down, we'd have a funny book. 

With all three of my daughter-in-loves blessing us with (now) four grandbabies, I am remembering many details of my seven pregnancies and four births. It is like they happened yesterday and much of it is still fresh, delightful, or painful. I recall that my mother had a late cycle and pondered if she were possibly pregnant when I was pregnant with Jon, our first. A sympathetic pregnancy, perhaps?  Stories spilled out from her, stories I had never heard.... the shared experiences of bearing a child warmed the bond between us. My two grandmothers did the same, sharing details of their lives that I heretofore had no clue about. Now that I'm the Yaya, I'm talking to these younger women and I can tell that they are shocked that us dinosaurs went through the same experiences.

The beauty and miracle of conception and growing a child in your womb is a mixed bag. You are so tired that you cannot believe you got yourself into this. Many women are sick beyond comprehension, though I was fortunate to inherit my mother's iron stomach and did not experience that part of it. You are scared stiff that you have made a mistake, that you don't have what it takes to raise a child. I was scared I would be too easy on my children and they'd end up utter brats. It is an overwhelming place in your life, full of anticipation, wonder and trepidation, all at the same time. I used to read the Psalms and Proverbs that spoke of God's love for children, just to reassure myself that we weren't crazy...verses like: "You fill their womb with treasure; they are satisfied with children, and they leave their abundance to their infants."  Ps. 17:14...and-"I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread." 26 "He is ever lending generously, and his children become a blessing." (from Ps. 37) There are countless verses and affirmations of God's love toward the whole subject of children and infants. Those helped to reassure me that God had our backs, but I still remember the overarching sense of being inadequate for the huge job we were facing. Our children are now grown, with full years behind us. It is easy to forget many of the details and difficulties. We blinked and it went by. Now the circle of life comes back around and we see the grandbabies springing forth in rounded tummies, the joy and anticipation of the future, the uncertainty of all that is to come, the young couples working it all out. It is mysterious, ancient, and sacred. The earth revolves, the sun and moon and stars continue to shine, the seasons come and go. Babies are born, loved ones die, everything in-between happens and it starts over. The exquisite pain and joy of this life manifests itself in tiny details. There are intricacies and patterns that show that this doesn't just "happen." We have a brief time here on earth. So brief. I throw my hands up and tell Him how glorious I think it all is, but I can only say so much. I think I might just burst. Or bust, as we say down here.

Grandmas and Trains, Part I

Part 1
We have lived in downtown Villa Rica for three years now....and that has been pretty much three years of bliss. One of the first things I noticed, when we were contemplating putting an offer on this house, was the fact that there's a railroad track running right through the middle of town. Several people asked me if the train would bother me. I would smile and say, "Never!" I am inexplicably linked to many trains in my memory, and they are all good ones. Starting with MawMaw. I had the privilege of two wonderful Grandmothers when I was growing up. They were as different as night and day, but both of them left an indelible place on my heart. I miss them and often get a little misty, wondering if they can see the lives that now blossom because of them. 

MawMaw was my Daddy's mother. She grew up in the South, very, very poor. For most of her life, she had the uncertainty of not knowing for sure if she was going to make it through. She married young, a man who turned out to be less than stellar, a man who neglected his family, drank away the moon, and basically abandoned his post, but they still managed to have eight children together. She would say to me, "You know, I loved that man." She worked in the fields doing manual labor to keep food on the table. My Daddy was the eighth child. When I got pregnant with our third son, Jesse, MawMaw called me up and fussed at me....that I'd end up "an old cow like her, having a baby every other year" (her words). I said to her, "MawMaw, if you had had only seven kids, you wouldn't have had my Daddy and he is the best one and I know you are proud of him." We got off the phone, but she called me back a couple of days later and apologized to me for her harsh words. She remarked that she had never thought about it that way. We had a good laugh and told how much we loved each other. She died peacefully, a coffee cup in her hand and a smile on her face, in her recliner, the very next day. Did she know she was about to leave this world? I don't know. She has blessed me all of my life, even in her sometimes blustery ways, and even though she's not here anymore.

She had an ancient house in downtown Smyrna, more of a shack than a house. I remember it vividly. It had an attic upstairs, where us kids would sleep if we stayed over. There were these impossibly steep stairs, with a room to either side. It was a little spooky, with a hole in the wall going to the nether parts of the house. I was always nervous about that hole, dreaming of the big rats and ghosts that surely lived in there. We would hunker up with our cousins (I had dozens of those), telling stories and playing card games. MawMaw had an old chamber pot, in case you had to go to the restroom in the night. It was a toss-up between negotiating those stairs in the pitch dark and dealing with the pot. Usually you just tried to wait until morning. But the scariest part of sleeping in the attic was the midnight train. The tracks were right next door, and when one came through, the house shook, the windows rattled, and you were certain it had jumped the tracks and was coming through the middle of the house. I remember having that feeling you have in the midst of a scary movie -- a mix of fear, horror and delight. Then relief that you didn't die. 

The railroad tracks next door were a source of immense curiosity to us kids. We would walk on them, lay pennies on them so the train would flatten them (despite well-meaning aunts who would tell us that we would derail the train if we did that), and cross over them to the shopping center that was on the other side. We would scrounge for Coke bottles and take them up to the grocery store, where they'd give us a nickel for every bottle we brought in. We'd then trudge down the road to G.B.'s Diner, which was also right on the tracks, and get triple scoops of ice cream for fifteen cents. The fella would give us gigantic scoops, almost more than the cone would hold. As an adult, I wonder if the guy was feeling sorry for us poor, barefoot urchins who were covered with dirt and sweat from all the playing we had done that day. Either way, those are sweet memories and simple pleasures I will never forget. Our cousin, Joe, was particularly brazen about the trains. He became a legend when he hopped one of them and took off to worlds unknown. My Aunt Ellen whipped out of the yard with her car, sped down Atlanta Road and pulled right onto the tracks and stood on top of her car to make the train stop. It did! What a sassy gal. Thank God for sassy gals.

Men and this economy....

Thinking this morning about what the economy and maybe our culture in general has done to men....

Men need respect as much as they need air..... because if they don't have it, they pretty much wish they were dead. They go into tread-water mode and lose all incentive and traction when they don't have it. As women, we go into hyper-survival mode, in a sense more practical and pragmatic when these things happen. The men tend to squat on their haunches, look into the distance and fog up as much as possible. If the women are not wise, they will completely take over, bowling their man right over, frustrated and angry at his seeming inactivity. He does the things that are opposite to his recovery. She does precisely the things that cause him to stay in his frozen state. Why should he try to compete with this megawatt woman who is suddenly full of spit and fire, who seems to know exactly what they should do? His manhood gets threatened by everything he can see. He insulates himself by going under water, immersing himself into another world where he can't see the real world or hear the yapping of his wife. He is drowning but he doesn't know it, or maybe he doesn't care.

He needs respect, a lot of it. He needs to know he's still a man, despite the accusations repeating incessantly in his head. He needs good, solid work with his hands.

 I see it all around, in this tanked economy, where good men don't have work, where credentials matter more than actual work ethic, where all the rules have changed, where you are rewarded by the government if you just roll over and quit trying. 

I don't know the answers to fixing it. If I did, I could write a book and make a million dollars.

The Funny Farm

When we bought our 1904 Queen Anne Victorian home a few years back, the former owner told us all about the pecans. He said that on many years he made enough from pecan sales to pay his taxes (!) Hurrah! So I have watched these pecan trees, researched about what to do with them, asked the old folks how to properly harvest them, etc. But -- the former owner also warned us about the squirrels. When we were in the process of buying the house, we kept hearing this odd, high-pitched squeal which seemed to be coming from above. We wondered if it was some kind of alarm that had gone haywire. It certainly sounded like an alarm, and put my teeth on edge every time we came onto the property. When Ken's cousin, an old-house-specialist, inspected the property, he went straight up into the attic and turned the noise off. Come to find out, they were "chirpers" that were made to chase off squirrels. For the first time, everything seemed peaceful at the house and I didn't feel like I was in the middle of a Psycho movie. I was very happy to be shed of that noise.

Time has gone by. We moved into the house, unloaded all the boxes, got to painting and decorating... with no evidence of squirrels, much. Our cats killed a few baby ones, but I wasn't hearing anybody squirreling around in the attic. Until yesterday. Now the pecans are in full regalia, starting to plop down on the roof and yard....every time I cross the yard I get several large pocketfuls. And the squirrels know it too. Yesterday, with the weather getting chilly, they knew they better set up camp. So as I am doing my morning reading, I heard the sound of boards being moved. I am not joking. I thought my neighbor across the street was jostling something out of his truck. But no -- it was above my head in the study. Sounded for all the world like boards being moved. We already exorcised all the ghosts and demons, so I knew it had to be the squirrels. This morning, I heard more noise. This time, it sounded like they were digging up there. There is nothing to dig into except insulation. So I guess they've moved the floor boards, dug into the insulation and are now building their condo. 

I got online to find out how to get rid of squirrels. There are several options:
  1) Trap them and relocate them. This means that the squirrels actually have to walk into your trap, supposedly baited with the best peanut butter you can find. This does not work. Apparently, the squirrels are smarter than us and know not to go in there. I was told today, as well, that it is not legal to relocate squirrels. Citizen's arrest?

  2) Shoot them with a pellet gun. We live right in town, with neighbors on all sides. I don't think they'd like it if they look over and I've got a gun sighted in their vicinity. One of the neighbors told me recently that the former owner of this house was visited by the police for nearly whizzing somebody while he was shooting at squirrels. A little morning exercises might do me some good though. I guess it depends on how insane I get about the Visitors in the Attic. Citizen's arrest?

3) Hire some bozos who charge a gozillion dollars to come up and seal up our house and trap the squirrels, relocating them legally. Don't have a gozillion dollars and don't have a whole lot of faith in bozos. 

4) Turn the chirpers back on. Watch Mama finally wind up in the psych ward.

5) Put the cats in the attic. Now I'm kinda likin' that option. I bet they would too. But, then again, ASPCA might be on our tail if they found out. Citizen's arrest?

So since I don't have those formerly mentioned dollars and our options are limited....I guess you'll see me in the papers soon. Hopefully somebody will bail me out.
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Raw Exposure!

The walls that we surround ourselves with.... are they really safe? I have always struggled with fear, for some reason. I have examined that at length, and I now know a lot about fear. For one, my MawMaw and my Daddy have also struggled with fear....and we are like three peas in a pod. Very similar in personality. We are (or were) fractious, fun people who love life and people and all the drama. We're a little bit hypochondriac in our natures, a little over-the-top in our Greek-tragedy-lives, and just love a party. We also fail in our self-control and our tongues, are forgetful, sometimes insensitive to others' needs, and basically undisciplined. We love life. But we fear the loss of it or the fact that yes, we are having a party, but the wolf just might be at the door.

A few years ago, quite a few, I had three bouncing baby boys... we were so busy it was dizzying, but I was loving our life. I would look at those blonde heads and get all misty, I loved them so much. I would often think of Ken's Mom, who died when he was 2-1/2 years old and his baby brother, Kirk, was 5 months old. I would think of the sadness of that, and all that she missed. Ken's grandparents had lost their only child through that, and they were still, all these years later, inconsolable. You never get over those things, really, until heaven. I thought it was horribly sad that Ken never knew anything about his mother. It was as if she vanished into thin air. When I met him, he had no memory of ever seeing a picture of her or even of anyone talking to him about her. 

Somewhere in there, a seed was planted in my brain. My tendency to fear was watered and grew into something irrational. At the time, I had a mystical view of God. I had almost a "second sight" attitude about God.... that we could discern God's will by listening for His voice. That could come through a thought, a "sign," something I read, or maybe just the breeze coming through. I thoroughly believed in the Scriptures, but also thought that God spoke His will through other means. It was sometimes a torment to me, because I would worry that I would miss God's Best if I did not discern what His perfect will was. I would pray, read the Word, pray some more, listening for His voice. I would beg Him to tell me what His will was in different situations. Sometimes I thought I knew, but often I was afraid that I was just going to miss out on His will. I thought it was that mysterious. It was as if He were holding out some unobtainable key, like a carrot, just beyond my reach. But I firmly believed that this was how He operated. Many of the teachings I had been under during my life alluded to this. 

Because of this worldview and because of the (not) handling of Ken's mother's death, I started to have a niggling fear of what would happen if I died with these three little boys to take care of. It started small, then began to grow. Yes, it was irrational. Yes, it might make no sense to anyone else. But to me, it was very real. I began to pray about it, asking God if I were safe. I also was having some physical issues with my stomach that the doctors did not seem to be able to diagnose. (Eventually it was determined that my gallbladder was ill, but in the HMO we were in, it was beneficial to them to keep passing me around rather than test for it.) Meanwhile, I began to worry that I was going to die. Then really worry. Then I began to feel, when I would pray and ask God for a word, that He was telling me that I was about to die soon. This engulfed me with panic and despair. It grew some more. Ken was working night shift and would leave at about 10:30 at night. I would beg him, many nights, not to leave. I knew that he had to go, but I would beg him anyway. The boys would be in bed, and I would lie awake, reading my Bible and praying, getting no relief. I took to taking big swigs of Benadryl so that I could go to sleep and forget about my fears. I would look at my boys playing during the day and become overwhelmed that I was not going to get to see them grow up. 

This was not something that I felt I could talk to people about. They would think I was crazy! And, in some sense, I was. I began casting about, looking for a resource to help me make sense of this. I would be in the grocery store or at church, and would look at other women and think, "Wow.... that must be nice to just go about your life and be normal, to not be afraid." No one really knew how nuts I was going on the inside. I began to talk to Ken about it. Along with this and the physical symptoms I was having, he was so tender to me....it was something God used to bind Ken and I to one another in ways that had not happened before. I began to understand that my husband really, really loved me. His patience and kindness through this still overwhelms me. 

Finally, after months, maybe almost a year of this, I was at my wit's end. I was so sick of living this way and being frozen in limbo, I felt like I might as well die. I was not suicidal yet, but I was at the point of despair where something had to change. I remember the day very clearly. Ken got home that morning at about 8:30 a.m. When he walked in, I told him that I was going to have to find someone to help me with my fear. I could not live this way anymore. I told him that if I didn't get help, he was going to have to put me in the loony bin or something. I was not coping, I was not able to do what I needed to do for the boys or him, and that I was going to try to find some counseling. He asked me what I wanted him to do. I told him to go ahead and go to sleep and that I would wake him up if I needed him. He hugged me for a long time and trawled upstairs to sleep.

I got out the phone book and started calling agencies and ministries. If I had truly been suicidal, I'd have been in trouble. Most of them tried to book me several weeks out. I would tell them, "No! I need help today. You don't understand." But they didn't understand. I didn't want to talk to anyone that I actually knew, because I was afraid they would, again, think I was nuts. After numerous attempts and calls, I finally called Reach Out ministries in Chattanooga. I talked to a wonderful lady there and she recommended I call a fellow in Atlanta, a speaker and counselor whom I had actually heard on numerous occasions. She thought that he could help me. Providentially, when I called his ministry, his secretary said that he had just happened to pop in, but that he only had about 30 minutes before he had to catch a plane. He graciously got on the phone with me and said that he had twenty minutes to talk to me. He could hear the boys making noise all around and asked me to lock myself in the bedroom so I could talk to him. 

I told him my story, from stem to stern (I still wonder if he caught his flight).... he took time to pray before we started. Then he said to me, "This is not nearly as complicated as you might think. Ultimately, fear is sin." He then explained to me that, no matter what happened, even the worst case scenario -- that I indeed might die, that it was imperative that I aggressively give these boys and Ken to the Lord, that I trust God with anything that happens, and that I surrender everything to Him. Meanwhile, I had been trusting these internal "words" from God that I was going to die soon. I needed to rebuke that, to quit listening for some ethereal sign, and to rest in God's providence. He had me pray there with him on the phone, doing those givings and surrenderings, and also confessing my sin of fear. I saw, for the first time, that in some sense I had been setting myself up as God -- prophetess and priestess -- with my all-discerning ear. My fear had grown from a little whisper into a roaring monster, and where I thought I was listening to God, Satan was taking me right down the primrose path. Satan doesn't act like a red beast with a pitchfork like we think. He imitates our ideas of God, whispering, wooing, beckoning....in ways we never imagine. Whereas Satan couldn't get me to cheat on my husband or become an alcoholic or steal candy from babies (hmmmm, maybe it is possible I have done that), he was rendering me ineffective and bound by a simple fear of death, all the while tricking me into thinking he was God. 

I felt like virtual chains were falling off my body and my soul. I was free for the first time in a long time. Some of you have known what I am talking about, be it the day you received salvation or the unbinding of some sin.... but it is palpable, inexplicable. In some sense, now, I see my life as the time before that day and the time after that day. Before that day, I saw God as my personal genie. According to the mystical whim of this God, my life was going good or bad. His will was usually indiscernable, but I was mightily trying to figure it out. What He did for me was according to how well I was working and doing what I was supposed to do. If I'm being honest, I was viewing God as my personal puppet. If I do this, then God will do that. Put this ingredient in, you get that cake. Truth is, God is God. He is not my puppet, He is not my genie. He is not Santa Claus or the fairy godmother. He does what He wants. He has His plans and His plans for me and His people. He loves me and is working all things out for my good and my salvation. Even if it seems bad on this side. Ouch, that is hard to believe. But it is true.

I began to live in a simpler way. I began to rebuke those whisperings and notions. Anything smacking of second sight was sent away. It was a drier, more desert-like place at first. Over time I saw that the Word was clearer, sermons more applicable, prayer more distinct. I could trust the Scriptures, live free, enjoy life without questioning all the undercurrents. God's will was His business and I did not have to figure out what it was in order to get in on it. A few months later, the Lord blessed my womb with another baby, a precious girl. Her middle name is Hope because that's what I was experiencing. I felt that God was showing me the fleshed-out version of Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you a hope and a future...." That child, Elizabeth Hope, was pure joy for me as I rested in His plans.

There's an old saying, by St. Augustine (I think) that says, "Love God, then do what you want." At first that sounds like heresy or debauchery. But it's not. It's pretty true. If you only look at the "do what you want" you could miss the "Love God" part. Loving God is what informs the rest of my life. Where my heart wants to worry and fuss and fear, I need to rest in God and in His providence. He can take care of it. And I now know, after all these many years, that He does indeed love me and that I am the apple of His eye. My life, my actions, my deeds, are lived in gratefulness to Him for redeeming me.... not in fear of what might happen if I mess up. 

Big ambitions

I love babies and kids. In a serious way. That's all I ever really wanted to do -- to have a houseful of them, be creative and love my husband forever. There are people who would be disappointed in my lack of ambition. What they don't know is that I set out to change the world. Any mother does that....she changes the world, whether she means to or not. 

I am thankful that all four of our children grew up around a boatload of cousins and friends and babies....and they always have loved babies as well. God loves children. Don't people know that? Jesus fussed at the disciples for shooing the kids away. Any time you read scriptures about the subject of children, the womb, and seed....He's got something important to say about it. God's view of children, throughout, is that they are a blessing. Today's preeminent view is that they are a curse and a burden. They are not. They are our hope and our future. 

Ken and I have always looked forward to the advent of grandchildren. Through many trials and struggles, we now have two grandbabies on the way, one due in March, one in April. We are trying to contain our excitement (well, not too hard) and trying not to be a nuisance to our children. I have a little pair of old, old, old baby overalls that were used by some of our children and my sister, Melanie's, children. I have them hanging under the window. Every time I see them, I pray for those precious little ones being nurtured in their Mamas' wombs and for their Mamas and the Papas too.  God sees those little ones being knit in there and He knows them intimately. It is beyond miraculous what He does to make a person. 

Happy days as we wait, listen to the little heartbeats chugging like freight trains, see images on a screen, pray for them again and again...and again.

I'm kinda likin' this empty nest....

My husband thinks he's on vacation. Yes, he wakes up with the chickens (5 a.m.), exercises, reads his Bible, showers and leaves for work. The man should have been a Marine. He keeps telling me that it feels like we're waking up in a Bed and Breakfast. Funny thing, I can't ever get him to stay in a B&B when we go on our annual anniversary trip. We did that a couple of times and it didn't turn out so well for him. One time, there were some, well, very creepy people who were the owners and we felt a little uncomfortable sleeping in the room below them. Not explaining anything more about that. Then another time, we stayed in a beautiful Victorian B&B and found ourselves eating breakfast with a whole table of vocal and opinionated people from the opposite political persuasion. I found that fun and interesting, but I looked over at Ken and his eggs didn't seem to be digesting very well. He's a very tough dude, but doesn't in actuality like confrontation of any kind. Not to say that he hasn't had a few confrontations in his lifetime. He's had a few....and I'm going to tell you, if you happen to be a part of said confrontation.... not good. Because you are not going to win (unless you are me, of course).  This reminds me of an epic confrontation that happened to our family one year at Six Flags....

We had been waiting in line for some river ride for over two hours. It was hot, everybody was tired, but we were almost there. Our whole family was in line and about to go up a set of stairs to the landing where you got on the boats. Just then, two twenty-something-year-old-looking thugs jumped in front of us in line. I panicked, but then acted like I didn't see them. Not Ken. He leans across the two dudes, pushes them back with his well-muscled arm, and says, "Come on Rosie. Come on kids" as we file past the miscreants. Not leaving well enough alone, Ken announces to the crowd, in a very (very) loud voice, "I don't know about you people, but these guys just broke in line. I've been waiting two hours. My family and I aren't putting up with this." He turned and smiled at them while several more people filed past the criminals. They still were able to slip in front of a family, a few people back. I was  in shock at the amazing audacity of my husband to stand up to these guys. 

We got on the boat and had our (very fun) ride. When we hauled our soaking-wet selves out of the boat, park security was waiting for us. They asked us if we wanted to press charges against those creeps....because they had assaulted us. We were going, "What?!" And then Jesse pipes up and says, "Oh yeah, they threw a handful of money when we got on the boat....and it cut a place in my head." Sure enough, he had a little slice in his head that was bleeding slightly. I couldn't believe he hadn't said a word until then...

We ended up not pressing charges but asked security if they would throw those guys out so we wouldn't have to worry about them for the rest of the day. Jesse was grinning and enjoying his five minutes of notoriety. We were assured that they would be thrown out. 

I am still in shock. Sometimes I think we might die from some random confrontation like this someday, but I can bet it'd take about 30 rounds to get Ken Norton down.....

Why We Should Have Company Every Week (then the house might get cleaned once in awhile)

I have definitely figured this out: it is necessary, if our house is ever to get cleaned, for us to have company once in awhile. Not just your average company, but people that have never seen your house. It's kind-of like when people meet you for the first time....from then on, that informs their impression of you. I have seen this first-hand many times. 

Recent example of clothing impressions (I'm chuckling just thinking about this):  I had been doing a good bit of painting and art-related work for a growing company. They had had me in numerous times for painting, consultations, and the like. Pretty much every time, I was in my paint-covered clothes with a bandanna on my neck and sweat running down.... there was an editor there that I wanted to talk to about my book, but every time I was there I was in said clothing and didn't manage to show up in any other garb. So even though I met him and said the proper niceties when he would walk down the hall, I never broached the subject of writing. Finally, a couple of weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet. I emailed him some questions and he recommended I come to their office and see him. I got up earlier than usual, dressed up, went to the shoe store and got some new black pumps, size 12W. We Slate girls have really good foundations, by the way. Try to tell somebody you're not big-boned when you wear that size shoe..... digressing, I'm really NOT big-boned. If you don't agree, that's because you've never seen my bones, haha. 

 Anyhow, the editor -- after walking in all glammed-up, we ended up having a nice, hour-long conversation. During this time, I alluded to the fact that I had done a good bit of work for them. I told him I had met him before as well, without actually telling him I was the "paint girl." He didn't remember ever meeting or seeing me before. It was all I could do not to bust out laughing. So, you see, whether we like it or not, those impressions really do count. This guy didn't even recognize me when I was in two different contrasting outfits. I guess it was fortunate that he didn't remember me as the lowly servant girl? I have found that if I show up for a quote in my flowy-artist-girly clothes, people have no problem with me when I show up to work in my paint-splattered rags. They seem to have already type-cast me as the businesswoman artist. But if my first greeting is in my work clothes, I am looked at in a "lower" way. 

The unfortunate thing is that this is just the way we are....we can't help ourselves. We make impressions of people by their outside garb or our first contact with them. I have been guilty of judging people because my first impression of them indicates that they are cold or snobby. Later, as I get to know the true person and find out that they are wonderful and complex, I am shocked at my initial thoughts. You'd think I'd quit doing that. I'm trying. I DO hate snobbery, but I also hate my own tendency to judge. Cracked person! God have mercy on me!