There's the Devil, then there's God

This earth that we are walking around on is a cracked place. There are evils on every side....we are experiencing racial wars, culture wars, political wars, and oh yeah, how-to-pay-the-bills-this-week wars. If you listen to the news or keep up with current events, you could easily lose heart and feel that nothing is going right in the world. I often let myself fall into despair about the state of things, but I (and we) should not. There is hope. I have seen God do the impossible in my own lifetime, and here's just one story....

When I was a little girl, we lived in a typical suburban neighborhood, not quite middle-class. My Mama stayed at home, raising the kids and keeping our lives organized, healthy and stable. My Daddy worked at the Post Office in Atlanta, doing things completely alien to his artistic salesman nature, to keep food on the table. If you compare the things that we had to what is "expected" now, we would be considered poor, though I never thought that. We had love and security in our home and that was treasure enough. 

My Daddy. A man who was raised as poor as possible....he grew up knowing hunger, extreme cold and heat, the lack of shoes to wear to school, very little education, a drunken father and hope in short supply. So when I say I saw God lived out in my father, it is no small miracle.

My Dad became a Christian when I was twelve years old. He had been a fun and kind Daddy before that, but when Christ redeemed him, he was changed all the way to the core. Where there had been rules, there was now relationship. Where there had been fear, there was now love. I saw him praying, reading the Word and loving his wife like he had never loved her before. My parents had been on the verge of divorce when the Lord swooped down and rescued them. And us.

A true Christian is marked by love. A true one. Bitterness can eat a person alive, but the forgiveness that God gives a repentant sinner emanates from that person's life. How can I not forgive, when I've been forgiven so much? I saw this walked out, when the devil moved next door to us in my teen years.

Our family lived next to a large wooded lot, probably 4 or 5 acres big (or not -- it seemed enormous). My siblings and I had grown up playing in that hallowed field. We had several tree houses, "forts" and trails carved into it and I knew every inch. We picked blackberries, played cowboys and Indians, "run away from the orphanage" (that was always so romantic) and all those things kids used to play. When Mr. Devil Man bought the property and built a house on it, even though we were getting older, it was a sad day for us kids. He built his house right up on the highway, so you couldn't see it from our side next door. But we sure saw him. All the time. My Dad had maintained part of that property because it hit right on a ridge that flowed onto our lot. Mr. Devil came over and told my Dad that he was not to maintain that part of the property and that us kids were not to step onto his land. When Dad would crank up his lawnmower, this man would run out of his house and stand on the edge of his property, making sure that Daddy didn't encroach onto his side. Any time Dad went outside to garden or do his many projects, he had a spectator on the sideline, watching and waiting for him to make a mistake or misstep. Devil man then cut a ditch and begin rerouting his runoff water onto our lot. He pitched fits about all kinds of things. I remember his red face, ranting and raving about who-knows-what. I was just a kid and wondered what all the fuss was about. This man seemed to have one purpose and that was to torment my Dad. I knew that my Dad would never purposely harm this man or impose on him, but with the way the guy was acting, I thought he should just punch him in the nose. Daddy was masculine, strong and capable of such, but I saw something else coming out of him that wasn't born of anything from this world. Something that made no logical sense.

My Daddy started praying for him. All the time. He said that he just needed love and Jesus, and that we were to be respectful to him. He could have sued this guy over the water issue and he could have thumbed his nose at him. But he didn't. Mama began taking him cookies. Daddy offered to help him with things he was working on. Still mad. Still grumpy. Still hateful. Years went by. So many years, my sister and I grew up, got married and busy with our own lives. I didn't think about Mr. Devil much anymore. Except one Thanksgiving Day, not long after Ken and I married.....

The table was groaning, the extended family was gathered, and the prayers were said. As I gazed about the room full of people, my heart was lifted in gratefulness to God as I saw what it means to be a Christian. Because that Devil Man was sitting right at the head of the table, eating, smiling, and talking with the family. He was now my Daddy's friend. 

Things could have gone so differently. We could and should have ended up with a war all those years. Certainly, Mr. Devil Man wanted one. He made no bones about lobbing his hate mortars our way, right off the bat and consistently through the years, even when my Dad's kindness was lobbed back, over and over... But God's love persisted way past the point of what was reasonable and fair or even sane. It was God's child acting like Jesus -- when he was persecuted and treated unfairly, he responded with the love that God had given him.

When I met the difficult teen years, made mistakes, put my toes in the water, was tempted at the cliffs.... there was this place of refuge in my soul because I had learned, firsthand, what it means to trust in a God like that.

The Very, Very Wicked Day

I am sitting here before my computer, numb. The soft air of a fan is rushing by my face. I am now mostly sane, in my pajamas, safe, cool and everything is blissfully quiet in the house. 

It wasn't always this way.

The very wicked day started in a not-too-unusual way. I switched a paint job to start a day later so that I could help my daughter-in-law with our almost 2-year-old grandbaby, Madelyn Rose. Maddie is my namesake, though after today she might want to change her name. Maddie had a terrible reaction to something from a handful of trailmix on July 4th at the fireworks in Douglasville. Anaphylactic shock, they called it. She broke out in hives, then more hives, then swelled up like a botoxed balloon. Thank God, my son Daniel had the good sense to get her right to the hospital, where they administered an epi pen and emergency measures. Everybody's lives will change now with how and what we do with Maddie. Today was a follow-up with her regular doctor. So we trawled our way to Kennesaw in the blistering heat. Poor baby had to have more blood drawn, but she was a trooper, showing everyone her new booboo and proudly brandishing about 20 princess stickers.

Suddenly, my daughter-in-law, Jessica, gets a text from my son....that he was at the hospital with an abscessed tooth. He was in horrible pain with a toothache and wound up there before he could make his way to the dentist. Before we could get to him, he drove himself, unwisely, to the dentist...so we detoured our trip to collect him, drugged and bloody, from the dental office. With a fistful of prescriptions to be filled, Ma and Pa were dispatched to the drugstore while I took Maddie back to their house in my van to get a much-needed nap. So a thirty-minute drive later, my bladder is about to explode. I had been dismissing hints from it all afternoon, trying to save time.

I shouldn't have done that.

It messed up all my sense of logic. Not that I actually have any of that. Maddie and I pulled into their driveway. My normal modus operandi is to push the button to open the sliding door of my van, before I turn off the car. But did I do that? No. I was conflicted. My bladder was in pain and I was afraid to even pick up the baby. In my muddled brain I thought I could run quickly to the bathroom before I took her out of the car seat. So I ran. The car door neatly slammed behind me (I told you this was an evil day) and I heard the door lock. I am not kidding. I do not know why it did that, but it did, locking my keys in the car. And the baby in the car.

Now I am standing in the driveway, wailing to our oldest son, Jon, on the phone about what I've just done. He tries to calm me down and tells me he will call my husband to bring the other key. Which meant, approximately another thirty minutes of hell. To add insult to injury, my dog (who was in their backyard) realizes that I am there and starts yowling like a coyote. Meanwhile, there are forces in the universe which inevitably kick in, no matter what I do. Gravity. Time. Stress. Bladder torsion. Yes, it is true. I have now been entered into the Bad Yaya Hall of Fame. Locked the baby in the car and then peed on myself.

God is real. I know this because He providentially caused me to put a huge, rude wad of gum in my mouth before I did the evil deed. So as I'm waiting for Papa Bear to get there, I also get the divinely inspired idea to blow bubbles with it for Maddie while we wait. She is laughing behind the glass, trying to duplicate what I am doing on the other side. Between 24 verses of Old McDonald, with me calling up every animal sound known to man, Maddie keeps begging me to blow more bubbles. I know that there is a statute of limitations on the elasticity of gum, so I'm interspersing the bubbles with more verses. Occasionally my emotions get the best of me and I have to turn my back to her and sob my heart out for a few seconds. Have you ever tried to pray, really hard, while you are blowing bubbles? Maddie seemed to think it was all very funny, praise God, and Papa Bear's mad driving skills got him there quicker than I want to think about. We got that baby outa there lickety-split. Two cups of juice, a bowl of applesauce and a change of clothes later, she's snoozing like a kitten in her crib.

Yaya gets home, Papa Bear tucks her in and the world is right for the time being. But now I've got this twitch in my left eye which I suspect might not ever leave.