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.

Love is a Many Splendored Thing

What a day the husband and I had today. We hit the floor running, from one appointment to the next. Thankfully he went with me to Duluth, driving while I hammered out contracts, answered emails and made real estate calls (the wonders of technology today). I would look up occasionally and gasp, thinking we were surely about to die in Atlanta traffic. We hoofed it back home then criss-crossed our ways to more appointments. By the time I plopped in my recliner back home, I had no mojo left to even think about throwing together that healthy salad that was lying unassembled in my refrigerator. But I did have enough juice left to cobble together sandwiches and popcorn. We marshalled that down and then Pa said, "Let's go out to the porch." He turned off the TV and we sauntered out there, too pooped to pop. 

Our porch is of legendary status, the stuff of Southern Living dreams. The animals curled around our feet while we listened to the fountains splashing in the cool air (finally -- it's been fired up something hellish lately). Eventually, the sun went down and the crickets began to burr. The frogs joined them, along with the cicadas. A gentle rain was falling. Our daughter eventually got home and awwwwwwed her way on down into a rocking chair. She had the yack-yacks and then quieted down like us. There's not too much you can say, after you've expended the day's work, talked out your major problems and then found a good porch to set down to. There were things I needed to tend to, things that had worried at my mind all day. A file here, a download there, another email to send. I laid them far back in the yonder land of my mind, as I mentally excused each one. That one can wait 'til tomorrow. I'll do that one tonight. I'm canceling that silly morning meeting. It's a perfect night, my people are right here on this porch, and how many of those do we get these days, really?

Finally Pa moseyed on to bed, daughter padded back to her room, then the phone rang. It was fireman son Daniel, ready to talk. We mused on for at least an hour, something we very rarely get to do. He's either working at the fire department, up on a roof sweating day labor or playing with his kids. I enjoyed his fine humor and dear heart for a spell then headed to bed myself. I thought about all the things that we have to do to make a living, all the running that this modern world seems to require. But the gold that's there is still in the simple things. A quiet, serene night on the porch. Plain talk and laughter about everything and nothing. Crickets, frogs and love, warm as a blanket on a fall night. Blessed.

Starting Over Hurts Like the Dickens

When we moved here to our little slice of paradise in Villa Rica seven years ago, we had a moderate-sized fig bush growing beside the house. It was leggy and had a lot of old wood on it. That first summer, I noshed on sugary figs so sweet, I about went into a coma. There is nothing on earth so wonderful as home-grown fruits or vegetables. The warm sunshine on them, the fullness of true ripeness that you just can't get in the supermarket. Just watch out for those bird droppings. I grew up at the edge of the country, where we never thought to wash anything off. Why would we? Nobody had sprayed anything weird on things and it was too much trouble to go into the house to wait to take a bite. Tomatoes bursting from their skins, tender green beans, even sweet corn on the cob was often nibbled on before it made it into the kitchen. Pure nectar.

I'm ashamed to say that I have not raised one vegetable since we moved here, but God blessed us with that fig tree and two monster-sized pecan trees in the backyard. The fig was looking poorly, so I asked my neighbor Jodi (the Queen of all Gardeners, as far as I am concerned) what I should do for it. She recommended pruning it back in the dead of winter. So I did. A lot. It looked rather pitiful. Spring came and I began to assume the tree was dead. It looked tiny and sad. Then I forgot about it, until one day there it was, little but looking all minty green and fresh. New leaves all over. It even produced a few figs that year. Three or four years have gone by, and this summer it has grown into the Paul Bunyon version of fig trees. It's threatening to take over the house. My neighbors are despondent because they can't see us when we're out on the porch now. It sounded like a party out there, what with the squirrels and birds going haywire over those figs. There was a big hawk who was taking every opportunity to pluck his dinner out of it (not figs, but birds and who knows what else). Who needs a TV when there's a riot going on right outside your window?

Today I noticed the tree is suffering from the heat, getting a little too big for its britches. I guess I'll have to wait for winter and chop it back down to size again. It's sort-of like us. We get all puffed up and proud, then God has to prune us back a little (or a lot). The Good Book says that He prunes the ones He loves. It's painful, but it makes us grow and gets rid of that old dead wood. Bring on the hedge clippers.

Frazzled Fridays and Freakazoid Fruit Loops

Last week, I must have driven two thousand miles, all within the tangled suburbs of Atlanta. There was blistering heat, narrow city streets, gallons of diet Chick Fil-A lemonade, convoluted Google mapping, and that pounding-headache-sensation of "I just wanna get home!" Over and over. And over. The weekend was a blur. When the sun cranked up this morning and I found myself blurry and padding through a pile of dog hair in the bathroom, I just wanted to go back to the dark. I tried to get moving, but couldn't muster it. I smushed myself into the sofa with the dog at my feet. When I woke an hour later, I didn't feel any better. Papa Bear and I went to Chick Fil-A and were treated like royalty. There was plenty of coffee involved, but it still didn't help. We got back home, I tried to work. When I spilled a whole tankard of diet orange drink on my desk, I cracked. Papa said, "Go. Get a nap." But I already did! "Do it again, please." So I did, feeling a little better. Got up and dashed away to do homage to a dear friend's suddenly-and-unexpectedly-departed relative. Then went to see my Mama. 

Being a woman is a unique thing, I don't care what anybody tries to say. There's a twisted part of my brain that I believe is uniquely female. It's not the logical or the smart part. It's a nest of wires that get very knotted up when hormones, hunger and emotions all try to get on the same highway. I called Papa about 5 times and he wasn't answering. In between calls, I was calling our daughter and asking her to tell him to pick up. I was cranky, hangry and feeling sorry for myself. When we finally connected, I wanted to know why he didn't answer. Had he eaten? Yes, of course he had. But why? Why didn't they have deacon meeting tonight? Why did he go ahead and eat? I wanted to know. I could've come home. I didn't know he was there. My tummy hurt. My sugar was low. I'm supposed to be dieting but there's a Dairy Whup on the way home. I already passed up kale salad, and there's a Brownie Extreme Blizzard coming up real soon, right by the highway. It's the last fast food place before home and heavens-to-Murgatroyd you know I'm not passing by home to get a salad.

While I'm busy having my nervous breakdown (still on the road) and hammering my dear husband for no good reason, my precious, level-headed daughter calls and gently pokes the crazy bear woman, talking her off the cliff like the cooing of a dove. There's no full explanation for the state I had gotten myself into by the time I fell into my man's arms when I arrived home. There's no excuse for eating comfort food and chocolate extreme brownie Blizzards when my sugar's already too high. But I do know this... there's a thing called grace that circumvents everything logical and illogical. Grace that is greater than all my sin. God's grace. And then people grace that He chooses to let me enjoy along the fruity, freaked-out highway.