2011 seems like a long time ago....

09-28-2011 7:18:58 AM CST

Time Warp

Last Friday night, my husband and I rented a couple of $1 movies from the box down the road. We watched the first one and then Ken decided he didn't want to watch the second one. It was Jane Eyre, which he would have loved if he could have endured the initial protestations of his manliness.... and I dearly loved the movie. As I was watching it, Ken was in the other room on the computer....it was cool outside and the windows were open, with a breeze blowing in. It was dark in the room and I was very cozy wrapped up in my blanket. Something about the night reminded me of when we were first married, almost 30 years ago. I was reminiscing about those days but embracing these days and suddenly I had this feeling of time literally flashing by. Here we were, a couple, having a nice Friday night..... and the images of a packed life flashed from here to there. No, we haven't raised four children to adulthood. Surely not. How does a life that was so incredibly full and busy and filled with conversations, schedules, school, extracurricular activities, so many sports events, corrections, disciplines, distractions, meals, meals, meals....suddenly shift in a moment, it seems? Like a u-turn on a busy highway. It couldn't have happened overnight, but it sure seems like it did. Our first-born son married 3 years ago. Our two last sons have moved into separate apartments, both preparing to marry precious women in the next few weeks. Our youngest, our daughter, is off at college and very busy with studies and sports. When we go to sleep at night, we don't have to think about shutting doors or placing fans strategically to ward off noise. There are no giant feet bounding down the stairs. There are no monster appetites to fill at mealtimes, in fact, now we're spending a great deal of time trying to beat down our own appetites that threaten to send us to an early grave. When our youngest son, Jesse, moved out last week, I heard him talking with his Dad and hauling out the rest of his junk. It seemed bittersweet, but tolerable, until a few days later when I surmised that this was not him leaving for school....and that he will be back starving at semester break. No, that was his last tornado through the house. The things that I took for granted, the noises, the talk, the thumps, the finger marks all over the ceiling, the irritating need to make supper.... those things are not there, in a forever kind of way. Older women tried to tell me about this, but it seemed we were way too busy for that to happen.

Changes

Changes (This was written in 2012)

April 3, 2012 at 7:59am

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There is no way to describe the last few weeks. I have neglected to write it down because the emotion of it overwhelms me.

It appears that we have sold our home. We are due to close in ten days. I can't describe the depths of sorrow and grief that I am experiencing. I have made myself virtually sick over it. My stomach is like raw hamburger... largely because one of my children is so grieved. It is scary, different and permanent. That is the hellish part of change. It is usually permanent. You can't go back.

God has seemed to almost lock-step cause everything to fall into place. So strange. All these years, only a handful of lookers at our house. Then all of a sudden, they were everywhere....and we had two offers within six days of each other, then another offer this week.

The people on the other end, where we were looking to buy, took our offer and also gave us money for repairs. Every objection or problem that has come up has resolved, and quickly.

I seemed to find peace and then my son's depth of grief pulled me right back there. If he were just mad, it would be one thing. But when he wept with me on the phone, I could not bear it. It is a death, and I am ashamed that I have grieved more over this than I have over the deaths of my loved ones.

I also know that my fear and despair are more about the leaving behind of other things. Jon is married; Daniel and Jesse recently married. Liz is busy with her life away at college. Our children are grown. My life's main pursuit and goal has been to raise a house full of children. That job is over. Even Liz is now a woman. We have four precious adult children and that significant purpose is over. I am still here for love and advice (ha!) and frozen pizzas....but maybe it is just really hard to face that.

I am not healthy -- a hundred-plus pounds overweight and aching all over. My hands are bending in on themselves. It is nobody's fault but mine. And life goes on.

Meanwhile, the Lord....
His purposes are complex and unfathomable. Way beyond what we can see. The threads He is weaving are on the back side. Who am I to question His will or what He is doing? I used to think that His will would always be manifested with a slice of cherry pie...and that my world would be safe and secure, free of trouble and full of purpose and happy things. But as you age, you begin to see that just because you are His child, you are not immune to suffering, to the encroachments of a cruel and evil world. Towers fall, people get sick and die, jobs are lost, dreams fail. We realize we are indeed cracked at our very centers.

At the same time that I begin to see these truths, I also begin to deeply and subtly understand the heart of the gospel: that I need saving. The fatal flaws that run through me and threaten to shatter into a million pieces are irretrievable. There is no hope, but for Christ. The picture becomes clearer.

I am undone. My world is shattered, oh so temporary. I cry out to Him in anguish. I don't understand. I am afraid. It all is slipping through my hands.

But God.
He's in the boat. The waves are crashing around, there is no hope. Damn it, He's asleep. He doesn't even care that we're going to die.

With a word, He hushes the storm. The waves fall. The wind stops.

He wasn't asleep, after all. He did care. He knows everything.

He works all things, even the storm, to my good. Then He admonishes me because I didn't have faith.

The storm is huge and roaring. It's all I can see. It's what I can taste and feel. Yet He tells me to trust Him.

I determine, today, to keep my eyes fixed on Him. Not the storm, not the boat. He is there at the eye of the storm, where all is still even though hell rages at the door.

Guilt on Planet Venus

There's really so many things I should be doing....

- eating organic
- selling essential oils instead of just buying them
- populating my Etsy shop with all the stuff lying around in my studio
- shopping and then re-selling things on Ebay
- getting rid of all the junk in our garage on Ebay
- painting my garage
- exercising every morning, at the gym I'm paying through the nose for...
- contributing to people in all sorts of downtrodden places
- writing a book
- taking a lot more supplements
- doing Kegels
- getting a regular job where I'm chained to a desk and get a regular paycheck (well, maybe not. We don't need more shoot-outs or postal episodes)
- doing all the Dave Ramsey stuff that I promised myself I would do
- growing a garden
- finishing the two commissions I have in my studio
- wearing earth shoes
- doing yoga. But hey, when I do that plank thing, my stomach's touching the ground, so....
- typing standing up (not sitting. I'm not joking. This is a big movement now. Somewhere. On some other planet.)
- worming my cats
- taking my dog on play dates (seriously?!)
- practicing my flute 2 hours a day
- joining the Symphony and the High Museum
- juicing
- cooking, for heaven's sake
- cleaning the house, instead of taking naps when I get the chance
- doing something miraculous for my grandchildren
- not ever eating sugar again
- etc.

So here's the thing. I really believe there are enough hours in the day. There's just not enough juice in the engine. So if something wonderful or productive or even close to that happens, something else gets neglected. So if I sell something, there's no gas to make supper. If I clean the house, nothing gets sold. If I start painting, heaven forbid, all hell breaks loose. And at this age and at this stage, I have to be honest -- I got nothing. No answers. No miracles. No promises. It's all like a production mired in molasses, where you're gonna get maybe one little fireworks show a day. After that, you might as well forget it or hope for an anomaly. All I've got to say is, thank the Lord we're getting something done and we're still breathin'. It could be a whole lot worse.

Daughter-in-Law of a Southern Belle Biscuit Maker

Heritage and Lineage. We hear those (obviously important) words a lot. My Daddy is a geneology junkie. Even though he is a king of a man and doesn't seem to understand that fact, he needed validation from his ancestors. He had his DNA examined and has done thousands of hours of investigating murky details of the past. There's no summing it up, because hey, in the end we are all related to Noah and his wife....but Daddy has found that we are the grandchildren (10 or so generations back) of the King of Ireland (Brian Boru), the descendants of a Revolutionary War bigshot (Daddy's now a proud member of the Sons of the Revolution), very close offspring of a Cherokee Indian chief, and progeny of a southern Baptist minister who fought for the Yankees in the Civil War. That's the short list. And we are not going to mention all the horse traders, thieves and pirates. Either way, I have a long, illustrious list of relatives that should make me proud and mark me as a validated human being. But what really bothers me is that, with all that heritage, I have never learned to make a decent biscuit.

I was raised here in the deep South, with a true-blue Southern Daddy and a Yankee Mama. Daddy lived up "there" for only a couple of years, long enough to find my Mama and have me. Then they had to hurry back down here. My children still torment me, saying that their mother is a Yankee, because I was born up there and because my Mama is one. What they fail to acknowledge is that, in the Bible, the Daddy is the one you go by in the geneology and by the way, I was raised down here, except for six months of my life. Now I'm not disrespecting my Yankee Mama. She is amazing. She had a lot to do with finishing my Daddy into a gentleman and she raised us right, with plenty of homegrown love, including hugs, a clean home and lots of good food. She made us behave and expected us to do our homework and chores without complaining. She made Mayberry out of a lot of chaos and I will always be grateful for the security and light she brought to our world. She's a black-and-white woman. Right is right and wrong is wrong. So I grew up thinking everybody was like that. 

When I hit about the fourth grade, I began to realize that there were rules besides the ones I was growing up with. Southern Rules. I had a couple of friends who knew about the Rules. They said "Yes ma'm" and "No ma'm" to our teacher. They said please and thank you with just that extra bit of sugar on top. My Mama had no use for such confections. She said that she'd seen trashy, no-good women use those terms and it didn't make a bit of difference in their character. Let your yes be yes and your no, no. I knew that when my Mama said something, there was no embellishment and you could count on whatever she said to be true. Even if it stung. There wasn't talk behind your back, because she would tell it to you straight up. Now that I'm older, I appreciate that kind of candor. But there's also a place for the Southern graces, when done sincerely. And therein lies the problem...

I married young, into a family of Southern belles. I thought I had learned all the rules by then. But I had not. When we got engaged, I began to realize that I was clueless. There were layers and layers of Southernese that I had not absorbed, even though I'd been here since infancy. Ken took me to meet his people in Lincolnton and Washington, Georgia, where the real Southerners are. The women were as luscious as maple syrup and sassy as fresh lemonade. When they spoke, it sounded like a balmy, sweet breeze across a wide porch in the evening. They were thoughtful. I received the most beautiful, traditional gifts of crystal, silver and monogrammed correctness you can imagine. They wrote kind notes, showed up for showers and blessed us all around. I had known kindness all of my life, but I had not known the full-blown culture that was the Old South. When I partook of my mother-in-law's beyond-heavenly pecan pie and biscuits, I realized that I was in big trouble. I knew how to saw down a tree, clean and scrub anything, mow and trim a lawn, rebound a basketball like a wildcat and run like the wind.... but I didn't know one thing about making a biscuit. Or a pie. Or a roast. My husband had grown up with all the Southern rules that I didn't know, but he had also been the recipient of daily helpings of food that defied description. Food that you can't just make from a recipe. It was time-honored and Grandmama-honed stuff that you can't write down in a book or take in a class.

In our early days of marriage, I cooked a blue streak, making thousands of mistakes and a few successes along the way. My artistic soul won't let me do anything the same way twice, so my experiments with biscuits were nearly always disastrous. The Lord gave us four gargantuan children -- three stunning Lumberjacks and a Wonder-Woman-worthy Amazon. Somehow, with monthly trips to Sam's Club and lots of coupons, I managed to fill up and grow them to adulthood, with (still) no real progress in the biscuit category. One morning, before my boys married, one of them made breakfast and presented a couple of pans of perfectly-made biscuits. I asked in astonishment how he did that, and he said, "I just followed the directions on the Martha White bag, Mama." Now why didn't I think of that?

My days are still full, but not with a whole lot of cooking, much to my husband's chagrin. I'm just really grateful that Hardee's and Bojangles make some pretty mean biscuits. They're definitely not my mother-in-law's, but they beat the sight outa mine. 

"I Hate Snakes, Jake, I Hate 'Em!"

In any given life, there are snakes. Snakes live among us. Whether you want to believe it or not, they are everywhere. They don't want to be stepped on, shot or eaten. They really don't like to run into us. They are the introverts of the animal kingdom....are they really animals, though? They're cold-blooded reptilian-like creatures. Have you ever held one? Weird and cool skin, like they're living dead or something. Snakes scare us. They are mysterious, sometimes dangerous and like to lurk under bushes. And then there's always that event in the Garden of Eden... I have more snake stories than one person ought to have in a lifetime. As I began musing about myself and serpents, I decided to detail the high points and leave the safe stories behind. Here goes...

Snake Rescue #1
I was a freshman in college, up in Dayton, Tennessee, where the hills look like God just threw down giant dirt clods and covered them with magnificent ferns and trees. It was a beautiful fall day, with leaves falling and crunching underneath. I was with a friend and we had hiked several miles into a place called Pocket Wilderness. We were climbing a steep hill, where you're not exactly walking or climbing but somewhere in-between...using hands to help yourself but not fully vertical. My friend was hiking maybe ten feet in front of me. I happened to glance up just in time to see two beady eyes staring at me, about two feet right in front of my face. Did I say right in front of my face? I couldn't see a form yet.... just the eyes. But then the fat, coiled body of a sage and wily copperhead snake materialized like Houdini out of a cloud of steam. I froze, steeling myself for the strike. But he froze too. As we stared at each other, I was able to carefully inch my way backwards until I was at a safe distance. My hiking partner was asking what the matter was...then he scoffed and said there was nothing there. He moved towards where the snake was and I screamed before he could get too close. The snake took off for home and the guy nearly jumped out of his skin when he finally saw it. All I could think about was what would have happened if I hadn't seen it? We were miles into the wilderness and if it had bitten me, it would have hooked me about the head and shoulders. Shuddering.... So God rescued me that time.

Snake Rescue #2
Fast forward a few years. I am married with a toddler and pregnant with a second baby. It is cold outside but we are playing in the backyard. I'm sitting on the swing when my 18-month-old starts babbling excitedly. At first I was just looking at his face, but then notice that he is pointing at the ground. At a coiled-up snake, ready to strike, right in front of him. I couldn't tell what kind it was, but it looked dangerous and had one of those diamond-shaped heads, with variegated markings, silver and black. It didn't look like any King snake I'd ever seen. I quietly said, "Jonathan, don't move." This was a child that never stopped moving and always pushed the limits. But thank God, he stood still while I Ninja-ed my way to him and was able to silently pull him away from the snake. Just as this is happening (nobody is going to believe me when I tell it)...my husband, Ken, pulls in the driveway. I'm about 15 feet away from the snake, which is still coiled and staring at us. I tell Ken and he sees it. He runs back to the truck, where he happens to have a flat-headed shovel. He hastens to the snake and with one stroke, chops that snake's head off. When it calms down and we can examine the snake, it has rattles on it. It was a Timber Rattlesnake. So....here we go again. God rescued our baby.

Snake Rescue #3
Many years later (with not a few more tamer snake stories in between) -- one day my three teenage sons and Ken were in our yard and basement, cleaning up debris and construction materials. I heard yelling, mostly, "Mama! Come here!" I ran down the stairs to see my guys all by the boat door, surrounding the biggest, fattest Copperhead I had ever seen. It was writhing, coiling, springing, and carrying on like a demon. They all thought it was very funny, particularly Mama's horrified face. I'm afraid boys never outgrow the fun and exciting possibility of scaring girls out of their wits. This is what had happened -- Daniel, our middle son, was carrying armloads of debris from the basement out to the truck. He got to a pile of plywood pieces and reached down and picked up a large section of wood. As he lifted the piece, the snake leaped out at him, barely missing his neck. After the initial shock, the guys surrounded the snake and were basically taunting the thing. Ken reached around and got his trusty flat-headed shovel and once again, acting like Poseidon with his trident, he lopped off that snake's head with one smooth motion. The dude is impressive, I'm telling ya. The guys are acting all macho, but that head is not dead yet. It was rolling around the ground, snapping its jaws open and shut. They had to bury it to keep somebody from stepping on it later. I can still see that thing in my mind. Yikes, now I have to try to sleep. But I can sleep, because I figure God's got some kind of purpose for saving our son.

Three different times, three of us have been precariously close to being impaired or probably killed by deadly snakes. But who knows how many snakes, human and otherwise, God has spared us from that we knew nothing about? I'm pretty thankful He's my friend. And oh yeah, that Poseidon guy's pretty handy to have around, too.