October on the Horizon

The trees are just plumb weary out in my yard. The green leaves are hanging on for all they're worth, some of them yellowing and falling already. They want to believe it's still summer, but us humans are begging for fall. I simply love the days where I can open up my doors and windows, with just our big screen door between me and the porch. Ken rescued it from the barn -- over a hundred years old -- and fixed it up real nice for the house. I can't tell you how much I love that thing, especially when a grandchild bangs it on the way in or out. Once in a while, I can barely hear the drums playing at the football field from across town. There will be just a tiny lowering of temperatures and we're all throwing open our bins of fall decorations. I have a whole closet of scarves that I look at every year, beautiful warm colors that would go fabulously on that outfit. I look, but don't actually use them. When there finally is a cold snap, I forget to throw one on. I end up in front of Sassy Ladies boutique, freezing, wondering how Yankees do this stuff.

Please don't hate me if you are a Yankee. It's not your fault. I'm half Yankee too, bless my heart. 

Our little town, with the high school band playing, the new cute shops popping up all over, a craft brewery coming on in, the yummy restaurants, the kind people, the occasional cobblestone revealed...it's a sweet place to live. I think we can fit everybody - the old folks, the young ones, heck, even the hipsters. I actually know my neighbors in our borough. I'm a realtor and I try to get all my buyers to move here. Why wouldn't they? October is a-coming, the best thing on the calendar since Easter. I'm thinking of all the iconic things -- cider, Indian corn, pumpkins, football games, myriads of leaves falling. And this year, I believe we've got a bumper crop of pecans. That means I'll have to go into retirement for a month to get them all picked up. Sit a spell and get crackin'. I never knew what that meant until we inherited two of the biggest pecan trees known to man. 

Next month is everything good in the world. It's when several of our grands were born, two of our sons were married, my Grandma's birthday, the month we got engaged, and the month that Jesus rescued me. Now if He would send some rain and cooler temperatures right on down, it'd be perfect.

Intentional Parenting

Bullies have always been around us, ever since Cain and Abel were in the Garden. They scope out the crowd, looking for someone they can pick on. Something in their psyche demands that they lord their "strength" over another person. They have uncanny ways of figuring out what pushes somebody's buttons. Maybe it's that they feel inferior, or maybe it's that they really have no conscience and believe they are superior. Either way, they've been around since the fall of man.  When I was a kid, my Daddy (a gentle, merciful soul) told me a strange thing. He said that if someone ever hit me at school, I was supposed to turn around and whale the stuffin' out of them. I said, "They'll expel me from school!" He said, "No worries. I've got your back." In the next sentence he said, "But you are never to hit or hurt another person unless it's out of self-defense." Heaven help me if I'd have done that. Now all of that sounds very violent. I don't want to offend anyone's sensitivities, but we have lost boundaries in our culture that are allowing people to bully one another. There are reasons I was not bullied as a child. I was taught both things: to stand my ground and to be compassionate and kind. Standing strong meant respecting yourself and others, but also not encroaching on the rights of others. There seems to be a prohibition these days of defending ourselves when necessary. I especially believe that parents, even under the most stressful of situations, have to be vigilant about talking, shepherding and loving their children. It's only a minute and they are grown. We only have a bit of time to influence and teach them before peers and the world rush in to steal their hearts. There's no more important job than raising our children (if you have children. If you don't, please do what you can to help!) Computers, video games, social media, TV, phones -- all these and more have come in like a tsunami to plunder all of our attention. It's a challenge to be intentional about relationships now, because we're following the glow of our devices rather than talking and connecting to each other.  I'm not a spring chicken, but even as we were raising our four children, I saw how even the TV interrupts our relationships. As a teen, I wondered at the fact that a thirty-minute sitcom showed weeks or months of peoples' "lives" -- and how boring real life could seem in comparison to that. When our kids were at home, we limited access to our tiny black-and-white TV (I got a lot of flak for that). I shooed them outside when they got bored. They explored, played and got filthy, old-school-like.  Maybe our air conditioning is really our problem. Nobody wants to go outside anymore and there are such interesting things on those screens. Our kids are grown, but I still have to fight my own proclivities to sit and stare. It's just so much easier than working at connecting with a human. God help us all.   ReplyForward

Floating

I was sitting in this very spot in my study a year ago when the call came. It was my brother-in-law, telling me that Daddy had collapsed and they were taking him to the hospital. My Pa was the original drama king. We always said that we'd never know if it was truly the end, because he had a hypochondriac way of making everything huge...he lived large with a full range of emotions on every occasion. He loved and was loved by virtually everyone who knew him. Only an evil person could have resisted his loving, fun personality. But when this call came, I knew it was the last one. I dropped everything and ran out the door. We had three days of travail, because they technically revived him and got his heart beating again. I still don't know if his spirit had already gone to Jesus, because it seemed like it at times. When we let him go, it was heaven on earth. Our entire humongous family crowded into his room and sang him home. 

It's funny how the circles of life ebb and flow around us. I've had a year of freefall, in some sense, not tending to my health as I ought. Who wants to be tough when there's a beautiful brownie in your future? Life is short. Eat up. Ken and I got the delightful opportunity to really vacate this last week -- to the crystal waters of Seagrove Beach, where we ate and slept, read books, floated around and thought about everything and nothing. Ken loves the ocean, but that doesn't involve actually getting in the water. I would live in it, if I could. Our 38-year-old habit is that he sets up base camp on the sand, I sit until I can't stand the heat another minute, then I throw myself in the water. When the water gets about waist-high, the ahhhhhhhhs start to happen. There's simply nothing like looking at God's magnificent creation and getting to float right there in it. I can still feel it. My Daddy loved the beach too. We would saunter out into the water and talk, sometimes for hours. He was blessed that his funny, goofy inner child never left him and that he died with his boots on (he mowed his grass the day he arrested!) If we could all be so lucky. 

The last day of our trip, on my last foray into the blissful water, I started floating back to shore. I had just spent a few minutes thinking of Daddy, crying and then thanking God for blessing me with a Pa like that. I was not 50 feet from shore, when a man arrested and died in front of us. Kind people worked to revive him, but he met his Maker right there on the white sand. Suddenly there were people, strangers, praying, comforting one another, crying, waiting...a surreal day that I will never forget. When all was said and done, I stood still, alone, and gazed out to the sky and the water and asked the Lord to help the family, to help the little 7-year old boy Aidan who saw it all and didn't understand, to help all of us to see that our days are numbered and how to have peace with that and with Him...I thought of His word saying, "I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." Ps. 121
The Keeper of souls and the maker of the universe...may you rest in Him. 

Labor Day Lazy

Here we are again, at the Redneck Riviera. It's not so redneck anymore. I wonder if it even remembers who it was. There are craft-beer-swilling hipsters walking around everywhere with big fuzzy beards but smooth, uncalloused hands. I don't see anybody carrying their lunch in a paper bag or any tomato sandwiches. Me and Ken are lounging like two pigs in a mudhole, but they're jogging and biking all around us. I keep wondering where they're headed. We're not worthy.

Trying to put a pause on all the busy running of our lives doesn't come cheap, even if you find a reasonable place to stay (thanks VRBO). I was only going to book 4 or 5 nights then at the last minute said baloney, we're going for broke. That means we might really go broke. Someone asked me what we could find to do for ten days. I said are you serious? You could put us on a desert island (as long as there was a food source) and would not be bored. Actually we wouldn't need a food source, just some clean water. I think we've got enough fat stores to keep us 'til winter. I've got something kin to a TV set running in my head at all times with plenty to think about. Could this be characterized as a mental illness? I honestly could hole up for a month and get these cobwebs cleared clean on outa here. The ocean air, the sand, the delicious breeze that wafts by the door....these things are healing. Who can be stressed when the waves are lapping around your feet? I'm grateful we are able to do this again. I'm breathing better already and we're only two days in. After I shed one more real estate must-do, I'm leaving it all to my broker friend and colleague who insisted on helping me vacate. Treasure.

I think there's a lot to process from this last year. Here we are, Labor Day weekend...the 38th anniversary of Ken and I's first real date. For years we'd go somewhere, usually with his family, to enjoy the mountains. And we also spent time at the beach with my folks in September. It's always been a kind-of reset time for us, marking a new school year and remembering the past. Nineteen years of schooling my kids are long gone, but I fondly recall the sweet (and exhausting) years of them being home, our world all a-tumble with their energy and antics. I see them and our grands often, but I miss them sorely. There was so much to do and so much going on, who would believe it would ever end? I can't think too long on the ends of things or I'll never quit crying. Remember. Kiss the past and my loved ones. Smile at the future.