Old Dogs, New Tricks

I was reading a Harvard business article. It was advising people to do something really radical: ask for advice and admit when you're wrong. Two sage pieces of wisdom, going way back to the dinosaurs, masquerading as cutting edge swag. But hey, when it works...

I have a friend, she is the same age as my youngest child. She just had a baby and messaged me yesterday, asking for help with some decisions they are making concerning their child. I pulled up those old files in my brain and told her what we did. What a wise mother! Rather than rely on what the latest magazine touts, she taps into several older mothers who she respects, gets free advice and makes use of the paths that have been carefully traversed before. Not to mention, she makes these old birds feel pretty useful.

I am a realtor. I got my license back in '07, right before the housing industry fell apart. My husband and I had incorporated -- he was going to build houses and I was going to sell them. I had ten darling Southern Living house plans lined up with ten specific building lots. We were going to bring adorable bungalow-ism to Douglasville.  My Dad and I had just signed on with a new, tiny firm that didn't have its sea legs when the crash started. When strange terms began invading real estate  (like "short sale" and "foreclosure"), and the terra firma began to crumble out from under us, I had nothing to cling to. Daddy decided it was time to retire, my broker decided he had to get back to painting cars and my husband got a life-threatening illness. I started painting rich peoples' houses. They all decided to fix up their properties since they couldn't sell them. There was always a little confusion when the fluffy white girl showed up to paint (they seemed to expect someone else -- different gender, nationality, etc), but I am grateful that God gave me the will and the opportunities to do it. My realtor card slipped quietly into the background and I did what I had to do. Fast forward a few years and I find myself drinking coffee with a handful of wily realtors who made it through the mess. The best thing that I do is to sit and listen to them, ask questions, pose scenarios. There's nothing like a seasoned, divorced realtor to bring some salt back into your world. There is not one encounter where I don't learn something new. I had no clue I would be learning so much, this late in the game.

There are trajectories and plans that people make: finish high school, go to college and maybe grad school, get a career, make a family, work for x-amount of years, retire and move to Florida. Real life is rarely like that. Ken and I have had several makeovers in our lives, looking nothing like a planned orbit. More like rabbit trails leading off other rabbit trails, but always with God and our family at the center of it. We could have been more intentional about a lot of things, but we were definitely laser-focused on taking everything to the Lord, hoping to glorify Him through our mess. Maybe it was about throwing ourselves on Him, from one crisis to the next. Yeah, that's more like it. Meanwhile, we've depended on the advice and wisdom of our opinionated and astute parents, pastors, elders, and grandparents over the years. I don't know how we would have made it through without such guidance. 

Harvard's fancy article about admitting when you're wrong and seeking advice: not so new and not so fancy, but still right on the mark. Listen up. You might learn something.

A Life Remembered

There's a story in our family that bides deep in my soul. I cannot think of it without fighting back tears. It has probably made me far more morose than I should be about dying and death. It is the story of my husband's birth mother.

She was the only child of a kind, sentimental farmer and his diligent and cheerful wife. She grew up on a farm but was spoiled and adored. She was smart and sassy, valedictorian of her senior class. They married young and had a big bouncing boy a year later -- my husband. Two years, a second beautiful boy was born, his brother Kirk. With a toddler and a four-and-a-half month old newborn in her arms, she came down with a sore throat that quickly escalated into pneumonia. Within days she was dead, probably from a strep germ that was unreachable with the antibiotics they had at the time. Twenty-four years old, with her whole life in front of her. How utterly impossible, how cruel. The boys stayed with the grandparents, as their Daddy was still in the military. A few years later, he met a tender-hearted woman who embraced the two boys and raised them as her own. Dad's employment always took him away, first in construction and then truck driving. She bravely jumped right in and never looked back. She never referred to them as stepchildren and did not view them as anyone's but her own. They eventually added a sassy little girl of their own and lived quietly on a street in Smyrna.

I met my husband and he told me he had three sets of grandparents and told what had happened to his birth mother. I, being too curious for my own good, wanted to see a picture of her. He had never seen her. He and his brother spent summer breaks, holidays, visits with his maternal grandparents, but had never viewed his natural mother. He knew nothing about her. When he did venture to ask questions, he was met with choked words, brimmed eyes. It was too much to bear. Better to pretend it didn't happen, than to open that infernal gate. In many ways, it was as if she never existed, though the wake that the tragedy left behind nearly emotionally bankrupted Ken's grandparents and others. That tore me to my heart. How could you leave someone's life to the grave and not remember them to their children? The black hole that is left when a parent loses a child defies description. And this was their only one.

We cling so tightly to this life. The barren holes that are left by death are viewed as something to be feared and avoided. We don't want to look into them, to travel them. It is too deep, too scary, too unknown. As we age, we see more of the holes. We live our lives avoiding the subject, but there it is on the sidelines, looming ever closer. We're just lucky it wasn't us, and if we speed by quickly enough and stay distracted enough, maybe we won't have to acknowledge it. Grief doesn't take holidays, though over time the storm becomes a regular pattern of waves, sometimes easier, sometimes not so much.

I think of her sometimes, still, when I'm thinking about the purposes that God has for our lives. It seems that a large part of hers was simply to have those two babies. They've now grown into grandpas who have raised wonderful families and are now handing off to the next generation of babies. My husband didn't know her, my children or grandchildren certainly didn't....but her life mattered. God had a much larger purpose than even she could have imagined. 

Isn't that the way it is for all of us? One little light shining on a hill dispels so much darkness. Darkness is easy...just blend in. But light is always a choice, takes the extra step, burns, sparks... Let us look around us, get outside ourselves, give way, love. Stand for what is good and right. Find the noble things, the honorable things that matter the most in this life...and live our lives to make a difference. What's this got to do with a 24-year-old woman who died young and is still held dear? Simply that old cliche: that every day counts and that we're not promised tomorrow. Live.

Summer is Overrated

When our children were wearing out the days of my life, and I was constantly foraging for enough food and sustenance to keep them full, my life was simple. I didn't think so at the time. Hands full, pockets empty, busy running and doing. I remember getting hot blooded mad at them sometimes, and when I'd had it up to there, the cork popping off the top of my head and all that steam rushing out. We've all heard the sounds that kettles make. As a busy mother, your life tends to be in overdrive and very moment-to-moment. There's not lots of time to contemplate tomorrow or next year. I kept a Reader's Digest magazine and my journal on the back of the toilet, since that seemed to be the only place I could find quiet moments. I thought once all these humans grew up, I'd be tranquil and my cork would quit blowing off. And life would be simpler. Insert: trials, troubles, human nature, more bends in the curve. But not all bad, mind you. Where I was busy with young people and survival, I've been busy ever since with all sorts of mortals and yep, survival. But summers, they never really change.

This afternoon I sat on the swing in our backyard, basking in the humid breeze that was trying to whisk by. Dog at my feet, lovely overgrown lawn (the mower's broken). My husband blew in with his really-old car (but hey, he keeps it polished and the oil changed). I began to bless God, because even though we did lots of things wrong, we mustered for all these years to eventually pay cash for a house. We did insane things for that to happen. Fixing up homes, living in squalor, going on murderous rampages while tearing out walls and putting up wallpaper, living in basements, parents' homes, even a camper, while we worked on said homes. Today I looked up at our beautiful, solid Victorian house, 116 years old. There is truly something different about a place that is paid for. We really own it, not the mortgage company (though the tax man might disagree). I worried that because it was so old, it might feel like someone else took up all the history here and it wouldn't be "ours." But it's as comfortable as an old shoe, and since I'm busier than ever, it sorta looks like that, or maybe an old boot. It has a sweet spirit and it seems to forgive me when I neglect it. People ask me all the time if it's haunted and I tell them, yeah, the Holy Ghost lives here, praise God. We prayed over it and it's all covered. These thick, plaster walls and the 12-foot ceilings make it nice and cool in the summer. And the winters aren't bad either, thanks to those walls and storm windows. Our last house, super-insulated and shored-up, wasn't nearly as energy efficient as this one. How weird is that? 

The divine porch is beckoning but I'm not going out there 'til September or 'til Pa puts me a ceiling fan up. It just kills me, all these magazines that shout "Summer's here! Time to break out the grill! Put up party lights and invite guests over for supper on the deck!" Dripping on the deck is more like it. Did they ever actually live in the South? We don't do that partying stuff in the summer. That's done in the spring and fall. Summer means slogging through thick humidity to everywhere you have to go, getting inside as quickly as possible, or finding a swimming hole somewhere. We go to Florida about once a year so we can throw ourselves in the ocean, bake all the saltwater off, jump in again, then hurtle headlong into a cool pool. Repeat. Then beg God for maybe one more chance to do it again before September is over. There's nothing like that sensation of floating in cool water when your skin is cooked into a par-boiled state. Even as I write this, I can feel that part of my soul that is in Panama City just waiting for next year. I always hate myself for not appreciating it more while I'm there. So for now, I'll content myself with that soulish place in my mind. Summer's almost over, praise the Lord and pass the peas. 'Cause if I can't get fully immersed somewhere, Fall might as well come on down.

Drought, Rain and Other Solutions

My husband likes his privacy, whereas I believe that my whole life should be broadcast, right on down to the warts. That may be why he let the bushes on our front porch grow into a veritable forest. I was starting to have fears that we'd be like this house I drive by often, where the house is completely hidden by a tangle of greenery resembling the wicked thicket in Sleeping Beauty. But finally, he consented and wacked it down to normalcy one afternoon. And of course, then came the drought. Our poor bushes! And my newly-planted Carolina Jasmine plants! We were watering them, but things were looking bleak. Everybody was praying for rain. It has been hotter and more humid than Hades this summer. The sky would clabber up and look like rain, but then blow over. This happened over and over. Finally, one fine afternoon, the sky let loose and it poured. I happened to be in the car with Ken and we had to almost stop the vehicle (which means that it is really bad. I've mentioned before that the man doesn't drive, he qualifies). Then the drought began to lift and the grass went insane. The bleak bushes started putting out some leaves. My Jasmine curled right up those 116-year-old columns like it's supposed to and I should have more romance added to my porch by next year. Hopefully we can keep the storybook thicket at bay.

I couldn't help but think about gratefulness and God's gifts. A lot of people think that we're supposed to be praying about living in the Promised Land, getting to a higher plane, experiencing the Deeper Life and all that. And some of that is good, it's positive thinking. But we don't live on a perfect planet and this life always has its stinky parts. Struggle is part and parcel of the plan. If there was no struggle, why would we need redeeming? Would we appreciate the good things if we never had to work for anything or experience the darkness? 

We prayed for the rain, but didn't expect it to storm. 

I heard a wise man giving a sermon one time. He talked about how good and bad run along parallel tracks and tend to arrive at the same time. Life is a mixed bag. A friend of his told him about how his son-in-law had cheated on his daughter, leaving her and two beautiful children. He asked him, "If you were God, what would you change?" His friend replied that he would go back in time and make sure that his daughter never met this man and married him. Then the preacher asked him if he would also be willing to part with those two precious grandchildren, because they wouldn't be here without that particular Daddy. He smiled and understood. Sometimes, and often, the bad comes along with the good. I believe that living in peace means finding that pearl in the middle of the nasty, stubborn oyster. When I get down or depressed, if I will stop and spread out my hands on the table and begin giving thanks to God for the good (and yes, even the bad) things, the fog lifts and I can find joy in the mud. The key is in actually doing it. 

Do we have to fight this war again?

Our country seems to be on the verge of exploding into another civil war. My Daddy has often pondered that. I was a child of the 60s, where the world was changing. In that decade, we saw a President, his brother and a brave civil rights leader murdered. Marching, peace signs and hippies were everywhere. Privileged teenagers rebelled against staid institutions and ushered in a generation of free "love," pot and rock-and-roll. I grew up in the outskirts of suburbia, next to the edges where urban meets redneck. We might have been a little behind the times, but we were in the deep South and right close to Atlanta, where Daddy worked at the Postal Service. I had older cousins whom I saw spiraling out of control into drugs and alcohol, diving into the hippie culture. I would gaze in awe at their forbidden rock-and-roll albums and gauzy, tie-dyed outfits and wonder what California was like. The news was full of things that were scary but far away from my world. Or so I thought. 

Daddy coached two softball venues: our girls team and the Post Office team. I remember dreamy summer evenings, driving into Atlanta. We played around the bleachers and playgrounds with both white and black children, getting filthy with that persistent red dirt. Black girls would ask to touch my fine blonde hair. I would ask to touch their creative, wiry hair. We would laugh and wonder at the differences. My Daddy was (and is) a kind man and was keen on there being equality between races. He was called ugly names by trolls at work because he refused to be racist. When I was in second grade, a black girl in my class was shot while walking beside the railroad tracks in Powder Springs. Thankfully she wasn't killed, but I don't think much investigation was done into who did it or why. Daddy took me to the hospital to see her. He was outraged. Another time, we were at the public pool when a black family got in the water. The white kids started getting out of the pool. Daddy told us to get in the water, so we did. Others quickly followed. 

Maybe "following" is our problem. The human condition tends toward sheep-like behavior. Wherever the crowd is going, we like to follow, whether they're headed off the cliff or into a pasture. Mobs form when some passionate person or small cluster of people begin to move in a direction with impunity. What is good or right is often left behind, because it's difficult to swim against the current. It seemed our culture had made a great deal of headway, since the 1960s. There were horrible injustices, stemming back since slavery, that were still being foisted on people, but advances and changes were being made. I grew up in a mostly peaceful environment, racially speaking, once the 70s encroached. Underneath the relative peace, however, were roots that were quietly growing. Growing and spreading, poisoning those that they touched. Roots of bitterness and anger that had gone underground and untended. It's ironic that the fruit of a thing is usually perpetuated, not so much by those that were hurt, but by their progeny. Who of us has not seen whole family lines who nurse anger, generation after generation, passing on tendencies that seem to have no reasoning in them? It's that bitter tree, growing, defiling all it touches. Both sides of this war have history and reasons to find fault. Like a pendulum, swinging back and forth.

All of our DNA can be traced back to a single family. It started with Adam and Eve. The more we find out about genetics, the more we can prove this fact. The human race has a very diverse gene pool, which can manifest in many different appearances. But we are still humans. Put five families on an island by themselves and in a hundred years, you'll have similar traits, quirks, and a unique culture. We tend to find comfort in sticking with our own, with what is familiar to us. Genetic shuffling is a complex process. Look at dogs, for instance. A dog is a dog (unless it's a poodle, of course). Technically you can breed a toy Chihuahua to a Great Dane and you're going to get a dog. I would recommend the Dane being the Mama...but I digress. Mankind has bred them for many reasons, originally for practical ones but now more for appearance and temperament. Either way, we have breeds that we recognize, all the way from the tiny teacup Poodle up to the Irish Wolfhound. But they are still dogs. The same goes for humans. Thousands of  years ago, when transportation was at a snail's pace, people were isolated into pockets of civilization where they congregated to live, breed (if you will) and congregate to survive the harsh conditions of their environments. Physical characteristics morphed toward similarity, according to how the particular environment reinforced the survival of that people. Over millenia, "types" of people emerged as their DNA mixed and adapted to their territory. This is not macro-evolution, where we are taught to believe that species jump to become something else. This is genetic adaptation, where characteristics already encoded in our DNA are shuffled, through things like die-out, breeding, location. I am no geneticist or scientist and do not pretend to understand all the mysteries of this. I am making a point about race. Our "islands" and pockets of people that have produced different colors, races and ultimately cultures, have the common root of being not actually a bunch of races, but the human race. Race is an unfortunate word, because it infers that we are different species from each other. We are not. We are one species: mankind. One blood that has the capacity to mix.

I'm going to be honest. Even though I know better, I still wrestle with racism. Where I have relationships with people of other cultures and colors, people that I love and admire, when it comes to downing major barriers -- barriers like interracial marriage with my children or grandchildren, I have fear. Fear of cultural differences, of outside judgment, of rejection, of the unknown. I have several black friends who are some of the best people on this planet, people who have faced the giant spectre of this American culture and swam upstream, daring to raise their children differently, remaining steadfastly faithful to God and their spouses, laughing in the face of stereotypes and trials. They haven't allowed themselves to be distracted with hate, bitterness or discrimination, even when it has been all around them. They are better than me, giants in the land, even though they don't seem to know it. Where I feel fearful of the unknown, I think about what God has done in these people and families and I have hope. I pray that we can come together as a nation, to understand and embrace our differences. But without the grace of God and revival in our country, I don't know how this can happen. God, give me a clean heart and a love for those who are different from me. Help me to not fear or hate. Give us eyes to see what You see.

The Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands

The world is an ancient place. Not ancient like we were taught in school, millions of years…but still old. Indian warrior old. When I drove up to this cabin where I am staying this week (for a little sabbatical from humanity), I accidentally came the long way around, which involved a sketchy gravel road and a mountain. It was already getting dusky. I rolled down my windows. The air was thick and green. I could hear cows, cicadas and chickens. I love the country but was beginning to get nervous until I came around a curve and saw several cabins scattered about. There it was, a tiny log house down in a hollow. Real logs, not those fake kind. A broad front porch that wrapped itself around to the back of the house. A kind place that asked me to come inside. Also a sad place because my friends who bought it are now divorced.  Sometimes life hands you things that you can scarcely believe. The thoughts that drift across our minds, the things we don’t speak of, the things we hide….sometimes they surface and manifest themselves despite our best efforts. I sit here on the porch, a soft breeze blowing up from the creek. I can smell the ferns and moss. The woods, I can imagine them five hundred years ago, where they grew unmolested with only an occasional Indian stealthing by. It’s not like other places, where there were civilizations that built grand palaces then got crushed by another great civilization, leaving behind ruins and structures to be rediscovered after being buried for millennia. It’s just the woods, the earth, the wind, and it has been like this since it was created. The stars out here are brilliant. There’s no unnatural light to obscure their beauty.  I’m reminded of the Scriptures that speak of the trees clapping their hands and the rocks and nature crying out praise to God. I wonder about all that. We are so intent on making our marks on the earth, rushing to and fro to stamp all over our territory and to leave a “legacy.” We are worried about other people, about what they think of us. So worried about being acknowledged, being important, being relevant. What if God really doesn’t give a rip about that? What if he just wants us to raise our eyes to him and clap our hands?

Freedom's Not Cool

Now that I am an adult and not so excited about sweating and being in the heat, the Fourth of July doesn't exactly ring my bells. I am embarrassed to admit that even though I love fireworks, hot dogs and America, I would really prefer to stay inside with air conditioning and a fan blowing on me. Or even better, float around in a swimming pool. No grilling obligations, whatsoever. Since we don't have a swimming pool (yet), I'm left with the sloth's solution to the holiday. This year, our wind ensemble had two concerts, one on the Third and one before the Carrollton parade, on the Fourth. Both involved sunshine, walls of heat, numerous hours, and blowing hot wind through musical instruments. After these commitments were fulfilled, our family went home mid-day and passed out, nursing lemonade and fresh fruit to rehydrate ourselves. 

I was still trying to avoid celebrating this broiling hot holiday. The heat index said 103 degrees at one point. But one of our sons called later, inviting us to come over and grill. The operative persuasion was that he was the one grilling. All I had to do was bring some meat, show up and pat out burgers. After our blissful afternoon siesta, my husband, daughter and I (and the dog) packed up and headed out to Rockmart. On a whim, I began pulling up patriotic songs on my phone and downloading them to the car speakers. Elvis started singing  Dixie about the time we rambled through Villa Rica. In the thirty minutes it took to get to our son's house, we also heard Allen Jackson, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Lee Greenwood's take on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I had been crabby, crotchety and ill all weekend, completely missing what this fateful July 4th day means to our country. And to me. Parades, concerts, fireworks, crowds of people, heat, policemen everywhere....all lined up to make mention of what has been bought with the dearest price -- rejection, blood, death. All for the notion of freedom and a free country, unbound by the fetters of an oppressive government. 

We pulled up to my son's house; the sprinkler was running in the front yard. Granddaughter Maddie jumped off the stairs into my arms and we ran through the water over and over until we were soaked, grass sticking to our soggy skin. I remembered what it felt to be a child, to be free from so many obligations and worries... running through a sprinkler with your clothes on, just because. Holding that precious child in my arms and laughing with her, I prayed that God would have mercy on her generation (and ours)...that in these coming years we would not find ourselves more and more fettered by government or allow fear to overrun our good sense and imprison us, just to keep "safe." Lee Greenwood's admonishment to stand up means we stop, get our butts off our chairs, and come to attention. Freedom is a gift, but it doesn't come free. It can't be neglected or it will erode. Recall, treasure, revive the good, and leave behind the bad. We need to wake up! God bless America.