Stumbling About In the Real World

 It seems to be inherently the human condition...that we run after idols and forget God. Idols like: money, boyfriends/girlfriends, prestige, the pull of a successful career, the adulation of people (thank you Facebook, for all those easy likes), and maybe a million other things that distract us. Our baser natures...the simplest of our natural, listing sins can become cruel masters of our destiny, starting with that easiest of flaws: laziness. It just feels so good to not do what we ought, to take the path of least resistance. Why get up and off my duff, to walk around the block, when I can just sit peacefully and relax these aching bones? All this stuff rusts if you don't move it around, but I like to attribute it to age rather than slothfulness.

And another thing, about forgetting God...you would think that after all this time, I'd remember how He works, and not neglect to be grateful for His crazy last-ditch rescues. He did that for me this very week. I wasn't paying attention to my bank account, as I am wont to do (if I'm honest). The second half of 2021 was a gargantuan distraction where I was ill with a newly-acquired autoimmune disease. I kinda forgot to keep working, since I was slightly preoccupied with trying to peel myself out of bed every morning and finding new ways to put my clothes on. We were bleeding money, attempting to find a cure, paying medical bills and trying every pill, supplement and voodoo doctor known to modern (and ancient) man. Somewhere in there, our savings got drained and my normal real estate pipeline dried up. I guess folks get nervous about hiring you to find them a house, when you're on the prayer list every week at church.

I might be the Queen of Freak-Outs and Ken happens to be the King of Calm. I can never seem to convey to him that there are perfect times to panic. I imagine I've worn him out with my dramatic life. Why would he need to react, when I'm doing enough for the both of us? This past week, what could have been construed as a really big train coming through town might have also been our latest meltdown. Yes, we still do that, even with fourty years under our belts. After our "discussion" was over, declarations were made, a peace treaty was hammered out and we snuggled up and went to sleep. There's no slumber like that in the whole world. We decided we'd eat beans and rice, order water wherever we went, and pray like mad. It's like I've been floating in the ether on my own merits and money, as if He wasn't our provider after all. We've been poor, not poor, then somewhere in the middle, and literally never missed a meal. What was I thinking?

After the peace treaty, well, I lay my head on the railroad track, waiting on the Double E. But the train don't run by here no more. Poor, poor pitiful me (apologies to Linda Ronstadt). Nobody showed up for my pity party and things just got worse. It was too cold, my bones were aching and God was not listening. I couldn't have gotten any bluer. Then we just up and went to church, Sunday School in fact. The class was about hymnology, which honestly seemed about as dry as old, musty pages in the back of some library. I showed up, with my bum shoulder throbbing like I'd had a beating. God likes to surprise me, I've found. He doesn't come in with the thunder or the lightning, or even with the whirlwind, but with the tiniest of whispers. It comes in after the storm, when you're spent and laid out on the floor. The army's done marched through and you've done given up. I really love that about God. He does what He wants, when He wants. He's not tied up with my timetable or my agenda. The longer I know Him, the less I know. I used to think I was pretty good. Now I laugh, because I understand that my sanctification isn't emanating from my pitiful "goodness" but from His blood-bought redemption. Where I'm seemingly going backwards, He's got it handled. Mysteries of the universe, for sure. 

Back to Sunday School...I was struck by the words of the hymn we were studying. It's hard to explain it except to say that it was describing how God pursues His people in love. He's not a safe God, though we make up all kinds of gods in our own image that have nothing to do with the truth. So I kind-of had an epiphany moment, where I suddenly just trusted Him with our troubles. I started crying and Ken (perfect Southern gentleman that he is) handed me his handkerchief with puzzlement over why I was carrying on in Sunday School like that. I reached into my purse, saw a strange piece of paper floating in the netherworld that is my handbag. When I unfolded it, there was a large check from long ago that I had not remembered to deposit, a significant oversight that God knew was there the whole time.

I might need to get saved. 

Winter Doldrums

There's a reason they put Valentine's Day in between Christmas and Spring. Besides a ripe opportunity to get people to spend guilt money on love relationships and such, it had to be so we wouldn't lose our minds in the frozen tundra of winter. My Yankee friends laugh, but it feels colder here than in Alaska (so says my Alaskan neighbor Jackie) because of the high humidity. I think, too, our wild temperature swings keep us from ever really acclimating to winter. We keep getting whiffs of balmy weather and getting our hopes up. February 2 is looming and I'm really hoping for a short winter. Ken and I desperately need to prune the old fig tree in the yard. I did it a few years back and thought I'd done killed the thing, but it came back and tried to take over the house. It might need a little humility and now's the time, if I can just muster up some winter courage. It's unbelievable how much you can whine, in this day of every sort of convenience. 

Ken and I have our fourtieth wedding anniversary coming up in a few weeks (we had a major winter distraction all those years ago) and decided to do a little staycation rather than a big trip. We're staying in dear ole Carrollton and going to the Carroll Symphony's rendition of Beethoven's 5th and other pieces. I'm old enough that that seems more exciting than Disneyland. That weekend, we also have reservations for Ray's on the River for the first time ever, if we can keep our eyes open that long. We really do need to get out more. 

Our family crawled through the big C-monster these last few weeks. Thank God, it was not dire for us, though I did manage to get pneumonia with it. One thing's for certain: those steroids make your joints feel like a million bucks. Too bad there's all those side effects, but isn't that the way of any medication? I'm really sounding like an old lady and I must resist. My Daddy insisted he was 39 up until the day he died, and that worked pretty well for him. Bears and snakes and other critters hibernate. They fatten up in the fall and then sleep it off until spring. I think that's a good strategy and probably explains why we don't feel like doing much after Christmas. I'm gonna look for a patch of sunshine this afternoon and try to soak up what I can. I just gotta say it -- that groundhog fella better not disappoint this year...   

Claustrophobia in the Heights

There are moments in life, when suddenly you realize you have made a bad mistake. Or maybe a lot of them. Perhaps those thoughts hit many folks right before they expire, when a train runs them down because they had on headphones and didn't hear...or the two-story deck gives way (after years of the wife nagging about the shakiness of it). Not to be morbid or anything. I found myself in a pickle last week: two stories up on a balcony, freezing cold, locked out of a vacant building. I was with a prospective realtor and we were checking out our company's cool new digs, all the way out to the fun party deck, when the door slammed shut behind us and summarily left us locked out in the weather. She looked at me, I looked at her and we started hollering "Oh no!!!!!" It was surreal, how my mind began to backtrack our steps up there. I had left my phone and purse downstairs (don't I know better than that? I'm a Realtor, for heavens' sake. Our phones are glued to our bodies. Normally). My prospect lifted her phone out of her pocket, about to die any minute. But of course. I rattled off our company phone number as she dashed about, calling the broker, to  no avail. She looked up the insurance agent who shared an office, with no luck. She called her husband, too far away. We began to shiver, brainstorming a way out of the cold. I climbed over the railing to the flat roof next door, inched my way to the exterior windows but bless Pat they were locked. This was a perfect time to panic. Yes, we were in the middle of town (two stories up and all the other buildings were one-story and down-yonder). Yes, surely someone would call back (but would the phone still have a charge?) Yes, we might freeze to death out there. My mind pondered our modern state, where we live and move from one conditioned building to another, unless you're into those gyms where they roll tires around the pavement under ungodly conditions: heat, cold, dead of night. I look with amazement on those people as I turn on the seat warmers in my SUV. I'm pitifully ill-equipped for the Apocalypse. 

Time seemed to stand still as we gaped at each other and then the tops of the buildings around us. I couldn't believe this was happening. My partner-in-crime began to talk about shimmying down the gutter. Bad ideas are born of desperation. Just as we were about to start shouting at the tops of our lungs, to passersby (though we had seen none) her phone rang. The broker said "there's a key beside the door." We hunted, felt all around it, looked high and low, to no avail. "There's a nail with a key on it." With her phone literally powering down at any second, I saw a tiny rusty key hanging, nailed to the side of a step tread. With trembling hands, for surely I would drop the thing, I tried the lock. Shouts of hallelujah went up as we bundled ourselves back into the building. I can't remember feeling so free. 

The doors that we lock behind us...sometimes we bar them to escape danger; often because we are weary; then occasionally because we are presuming the door will let us back in. There's lots of life lessons about doors, but the best ones for me, today, are about the open ones.  

That's The Good Stuff

A great pain in my right leg woke me up tonight. They say if you don't use it, you lose it. Apparently I haven't used my legs, because I tried to yesterday and now I'm limping like an old gimp. Ken and I worked on our neighbor's yard, to get it ready for sale. This was after I had vacuumed and cleaned inside all day. I haven't been to the gym in months but decided to double up, all in a 24-hour period. Silly girl.

I was about eight or nine years old when my Daddy started teaching me to work with him on the lawn. I didn't learn to cook until after I got married, but I could cut down a tree. I sensed that Ken wasn't planning on cooking or cleaning inside, but was a whiz at yardwork. So I put down my hedge trimmers and broke out the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. I received it as a shower gift, some 40 years ago, and it's still the best reference for simple meals I've ever found. Mine is greasy and falling apart, but there's not a week that goes by that I don't use it. I didn't know how to boil water, so those directions for mashing potatoes came in real handy. We seem to eat out more than we eat in these days (thank you, Trading Post, Cowboys and that wonderful Waffle House by the Villa Rica Walmart). We raised four jumbo-sized chillun to adulthood, by hook or by crook and with the help of those big, flat carts at Sam's Club. I look back and wonder what planet we were on and how we got here. Time just flies like the wind, and you can't grasp it as it slips through your fingers. 

We had our annual trek to the Varsity on New Year's Day. Except for a couple of years, for the last 29 years our family meets up there for greasy burgers and onion rings. Yummmmeee! I've been behaving for nigh on two years, so I ate my healthy meal before I got there and didn't even feel sorry for myself. Well, maybe a little, when they brought out the fried peach pies. I want to know what the phenomenon is called, when there's a gathering and those last few minutes are usually the ones that mean the most. As we walked out to our cars, hugging this and that grandchild and saying our goodbyes, the sweetest things were said. It's like squeezing just that last little bit of juice out of the orange... the goody part. We all know that life is short, that we shouldn't take our loved ones for granted. In those last parting moments, there's always a bit of that knowing, even if we see each other often...that we need to hold each other a little tighter, and say the love things that we feel. Go ahead and do it. We aren't promised tomorrow. Today's the day.   

Reaping Where We Have Not Sown

While sitting here, bloated from the Christmas feasting, though I'm not sure I feasted. I had no sugar, flour or wheat and turned down the immense temptation to order a pecan waffle at Waffle House. But I did have popcorn (non-GMO, of course) a few times and some amazing (real) french fries at Hudsons BBQ. At our family Christmas dinner, complete with roast beast (Jon's smoked brisket) and everything but the kitchen sink, sweet little ginger Addison piped up: "Yaya can't have sugar because she's already had too much!" I love the astute observations of children. We should all hark back to our youths and be so honest. That got me to thinking about the subject of sowing and reaping. There are so many things written and spoken about it, but I've never been so aware of the ramifications of it until my bones began to ache like the dickens in recent months. The doctor says it's rheumatoid arthritis, although my bloodwork doesn't tell that tale; the naturopath says it's from all the years of toxins that got released when I lost a bucketload of weight. It's the latter opinion that made me think about the sowing...

We all sow things, good or bad, especially in our youth. Some are noble causes, but often, we leap to sow to our spring-fed flesh. There are a lot of roads to go down when we're young, and we usually don't realize it's a road until it's too late. You can't really back up, because time doesn't behave like that. You can full-stop and reverse, but you're actually going to take a different road, not traverse from the original one. This can, in truth, be a very good thing. The mistakes and sins I've made often and usually inform my future choices. The broken road can light our path to the right one. Without regret, I can see that God leads us when we lay down in the dust of repentance, usually when we've fallen deep into the wagon wheel ruts of life. 

I love the Scriptures where they talk about Joseph. Remember him? He's the guy who was sold into slavery by his delightful brothers, then went from bad to worse, from rich to poor, then back again. He ended up ruling right under Pharoah in Egypt, eventually saving his bratty brothers who'd been lying about his supposed death to their distraught father for decades. What did he say to his family, who crouched in fear when the truth was revealed? "What Satan meant for evil, God meant for good."  That is the grace of God, where what appears to be the worst is actually His purposes moving forward. A prime example of when evil was sown to the wind, and God redeemed a people anyway. He does that. I'm really grateful that I don't actually get what I deserve...

Meanwhile, the new year yawns before us. After the two behind us, we're really ready to shed some roads. When the gym opens after January 1, it will be full of new converts. The diet plans and programs will make enough in a month or two to scoot by until the next year. I've tried all those resolutions - sometimes they work and mostly they don't. What I actually can do is walk better: By laying down my devices more; Stop and listen, instead of waiting for the other person to quit talking. Wake up and say, "God, I can't do this, but You can." Especially, do the next thing. My Daddy had a little sign on his workbench, and because I have his DNA deeply imprinted on my soul (which includes ADOS - "Attention Deficit, Ooooh Shiny!"), I should heed the same admonition. It says, and this was before Nike: "Just Do It." As I rise to get the dog out the door for her walk, I say, "Yes, Lord."  

The Fun Parts of Influencing

When our grandchildren come for a visit (usually because their beleaguered parents need a date night or a doctor visit), I do what I like to do: we either paint or play instruments. Of course, sometimes there's a meal (and a fluffy, mindless movie, if Yaya needs a quick nap on the couch). I'm not really crafty, but painting and playing music are my happy places, and I so want to impart that love to our little folks. When we paint, they all have their own pint-sized aprons and sets of watercolors. There are no rules or directions about what to create...they just have at it. Sometimes the colors are stormy and gray, sometimes drippy rainbows. I don't ask them "what is it?" -- rather, I ask them to "tell me about your picture." They always have a story. God knows we all need to take some time to listen to the stories of children, before we forget the wonder of seeing the world afresh. When they all get a little older, I'll start teaching them about perspective and lines and mixing colors, but for now I want them to learn to be comfortable with throwing any and everything onto the paper. 

Sometimes I need to practice my flute while the young 'uns are here, so we make our own little orchestra. Some of them play the piano (no banging!), some sing, some toot on the tin whistles I have laying around. Occasionally one of them will make something into a drum, and my flute cleaning tool becomes the conductor's wand. These are all brief forays into music land, but loads of fun and maybe, just maybe, will be small doors into the areas these children are inclined towards later. 

Whatever path God has put us on, be it the creative places or cooking or proficiency with a calculator, there are others, both small and great, that can learn or be blessed by those paths. To contort myself into subjects that bring great pain to me might be needful at times, but when it comes to my grandkids, we're going to go where the fun is. God made us all different, glory be. We also all have our compelling thoughts and agendas that dominate our lives. I figure there are greater reasons for these, maybe eternal ones, that I don't understand, but I want to be an influence where it's possible. Lord help me to not be an influence where I wane in my weaknesses, though there's beauty to be found from ashes. I know for a fact that this is true. 

And happy late Christmas shopping to all, as I am right there with you!  

So. Much. Human.

One evening, during our fall family beach trip, two of our gargantuan sons leaped up after their team scored in a rousing game of Catch Phrase. They were fist bumping, then dancing, then belly-bumping. We were roaring with laughter when our third son jumped in with them and yelled: "So much human!" And while I'm sitting here, still chuckling about the image and hilarity of that night, I'm also thinking about how overwhelming is the weight of our humanness. Maybe it's the panoply of the last two years or the reality of the effects of gravity on my last few decades, but some days it seems like too much. In the naivete of my youth, I thought I'd get better and better, and that old age would just be a resting phase before glory. Little did I know that the real (and in truth, noble) challenges would come when strength ebbed and the burgeoning weight of reality became plainer. It was easier to muster through when muscles were thick and spry, when waking up wasn't a marathon unto itself. I know now that trusting God is harder when you've seen the dark side of hardships on every side. 

I believe that this is the way it's supposed to be. This life is not all there is. And for those who believe that it is, I do not see how they can have hope in their old age or through difficulties. The manifest picture of the new + old testaments is that we need saving, that we are not adequate in and of ourselves, and that there is a Redeemer who pays the price for that redemption. This last Sunday, the heart of the sermon in our church was about when the Israelites were slaves under the thumb of a wicked Pharoah. It's a long story, so I'd highly recommend reading it yourself, even if you know it. After many trials, the final solution that leads to their escape was the death of a lamb, with its blood applied to the doorposts and lintel of each house. The angel of death passed over each home that was under the covering of that blood, leading to their salvation and subsequent exodus out of Egypt. It's a gruesome history, full of death, blood, and grisly details. But it's also a picture of what Christ, the ultimate sacrifice, accomplished in His death and resurrection. It's a beautiful truth, weaving in and out of the scriptures, beginning in the garden with Adam and Eve and ending with the great revelation. 

And here it's Christmastime, with all the insanity and rushing about. Here's to an orange and some brazil nuts in the stockings, because we've gone way overboard (me especially). Last week, when I was melting down over all the overcommitting I have done, I laid my head on my desk and asked God what in the world. Why do we have to fill up every minute? And why do we make more of Christmas than of Easter? And why is it so hard to make the notes work on my flute? I have two concert commitments in the next week, and I keep thinking, "After that, I'll stop and breathe." Life gets like that, where we're just hankering for the next thing to be over, so we can get back to "normal." Truth is, there is no normal, there is no stopping the life train from happening. There is always the next hill. If I only keep hoping for the hill to be done with, I'm never going to find serenity in the here and now. How many folks have we seen, who keep saying that "when I retire..." and then they drop dead in six months, or become terribly ill and never get to enjoy it? No. I'm not going to wait until next week, next year, to relax and drink in what is right in front of me. I'm not going to listen to the siren song of the urgent today. I'm going to noodle on my flute with some joy (not despairing of the notes I apparently am incapable of hitting); I'm going to dandle my new grandbaby on my lap; I'm going to blow raspberries on another grandbaby's cheeks when he gets here in an hour; I'm going to squeeze my grandson and granddaughter who just moved in with us (along with their parents, thank God); I'm going to FaceTime the other three grandchildren who I'm missing terribly; and I'm going to kiss my husband full on the mouth when he walks in, just for fun. No more ba humbug!