Abundance in the Decrease

I had a dream last night, as real as earth. I could even smell the dirt, that delicious aroma. My family and I were deep into a structure that we had built years ago, with much sentiment rising from my emotions. When I awoke, I cried bittersweet tears. It at first seemed because of the loss of the house and the land, but the reality was the loss of that season of our lives. You simply can't hold back the tide of time. It moves ever forward. Change comes whether we want it to or not. Children grow up, our folks die, stuff goes into landfills. Our stubborn insistence that things must stay the same can hamstring us, though. I love the scripture in Proverbs 31 where God talks about that awesome woman, how she strengthens her arms and takes on the world and the future with a fresh face. So I got up this morning, washed off my sadness, read my Bible, prayed for my people and got on with the day. The devil is the father of lies and he'd like to keep us down for the count, with thoughts that are simply not true. 

My parents are facing the Big Move, where they are letting go of their home and moving twenty miles closer to civilization. It's hard to do. It feels like failure, like the end of the world. All the things that they've spent their whole life obtaining are going out the door for pennies on the dollar. It's an admittance that they are growing weaker and that they are on the decrease, rather than the increase. In the world's economy, all seems lost. But in God's economy, they are getting richer and richer. They started out as teenagers, poor and hungry, everyone doubting whether their union would last a year. They scrimped, saved, worked, toiled and trod water to make a life together. Inch by inch, they kept moving forward. Stability came. Three kids came. They improved everything they touched. The world again scoffed when the Lord broke through and gave them a heart of flesh for a heart of stone. Then came the salad days, the years of increase and full hands. Marriages, grandkids, great grandkids, houses, land, projects, more houses, much laughing. The clock ticked. The bodies began to feel the gravity. Sternums cracked open, years of desserts showed their ugly sides, tickers wore out. The air became heavy and not so easily obtained. Is this where, as Solomon talks about, all is vanity?

Nay, nay, quoth the truth. My parents, by God's grace, have a spiritual heritage far beyond what the eye can see, though the eye can still see precious fruit: three children (with in-laws), twenty-one grandchildren and lots of weddings, fourteen great-grandchildren (with one on the way), and untold numbers of spiritual children. Over Thanksgiving, with family all about, I heard three of my 4-year-old granddaughters (they came here in a batch) mention their love of God. I heard prayers from sweet little lips. I saw love and service all around. Where the world is at war, killing and hating, devolving into abuse and addiction, I saw a family filled with life, wisdom, hope. Funny thing, at the heart of it I did not see two people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. What I saw was a couple surrendered, humbled, trusting God more than their own goodness. People full of faults, cracked at their core but turned over to the grace of God, grace that is greater than all their sin. On this planet, there are manifold riches -- gold, land, houses, prestige, titles, fame. In the end, none of those matter. They all burn up. But in the harvest of days, when all is said and done, there are kings that are not of this world. Truly, all that glitters is not gold.

Who Needs Marital Counseling When the Man Wears Carhartts?

Ken and I always seemed to move in October and when I was pregnant. Since we were eternally busy tearing out and putting stuff back, we grew to think that was normal. I am naturally lazy, so I have to put enormous pressure around myself so that I'm forced to get things done. That's where this November's project came into being. I could see that big Turkey Day 2017 looming and saw my chance to make myself miserable for a couple of weeks so I'd have to get it finished. I invited the family for Thanksgiving and got started. 

When we bought this lovely Victorian home in Villa Rica, five years ago, there were so many cool things about it. Twelve foot ceilings, intricately patterned hardwood floors, five fireplaces, stained glass, a walk-in pantry, and too many other things to mention here. It had been beautifully maintained even though the walls were uglier than a mud hut, with all the dark 80's wallpaper and colors. Each room was its own entity, with no flow or continuity. I've been working on putting that right, with some rooms being painted a couple times already. But then there was that living room ceiling. It was dark with age, wallpapered years ago with a cream-colored paper. There had been roof leaks and moisture damage, so there were ugly splotches here and there. The woodwork hadn't been painted in decades, so it was chipped and sad. It is a gigantic room, and I couldn't decide what to do with it. Our eldest son, a master carpenter, decided that we needed to coffer it. Time, money, and three babies put the quietus on that one. I saved up, though, and bought these awesome reproduction ceiling tiles. Two of my boys popped the lines on the ceiling and threw a few of them up there. That's when I decided I had a deadline. Thanksgiving was in a week and a half. 

So tonight here I sit, turkey and cranberry sauce on my mind, with my house turned upside down. Sure, the tiles are up now (thank you, Daniel son, who put the hammer down on his day off from the fire department). I've got the woodwork and upper wall above the picture rail primed with Kilz....like to have Kild me with the fumes. Tomorrow is Monday and Baby Girl and me are revved up to get painting. Trouble is, we have to caulk around each and every one of those ceiling tiles because Mama didn't think about painting that nasty ceiling before she started, so some of the nastiness shows through the gaps. That's 450 square feet of tile times four sides of each 20" tile. I am not adding that up, no matter what anybody says. 

Pa says he'll do the grocery shopping and help with the cleanup. Meanwhile I don't let that man anywhere near a paintbrush. He puts the paint on too thin and takes too much time. It's so thin, I'd have to paint over it again anyway. I will admit he's very tidy, but I've got a schedule to keep. They say that people get divorced over home renovations, but apparently it works for us. He's got his roles and I've got mine, but his don't involve paint. There's nothing like the smell of freshly-sawn wood and turpentine in the morning. And turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

And did I mention, I sure do like that man in a pair of overalls? 

Maybe He's Sleeping With the Fishes...

Sun Valley Beach. They have one in California and they used to have one in Powder Springs, Georgia. It was half a mile from our house, made from a lake that had morphed over time into a beach. Years of work and thousands of yards of sand and concrete were poured into the coolest place we kids had ever seen. It was truly a concrete pond. When I was twelve, I started working there in the summers, teaching swimming lessons. This was apparently before child labor laws and background checks. We worked our fannies off so we could get free entrance to the park. The juke box played the top 40 all day and you could buy a frozen Snickers at the snack bar. Heaven.

One summer in high school, I decided to take the plunge and become a full-blown lifeguard. The owner at the time, Murray Homan, put us through our classes at night, after our extracurricular school activities. The final test included making my jeans into a flotation device and hauling a football player a quarter mile through chilly black water. I somehow passed. Then I entered the world of lifeguarding, where most of it is boring. But when it's not, it's truly epic. 

There were only a few times that I came close to saving lives -- one was a set of twin toddlers who were drowning each other in four feet of water. A simple enough rescue: I jumped in and picked them both up. Another was a fellow who had stupidly tied the rope for the Tarzan swing around his ankle and then missed the next rope, leaving him hanging upside down with his head under water. That one was not so simple. I loved cooling off and swimming through my entire 15 minute break every hour. We lifeguards thought we were the best thing since sliced bread, but we didn't care much for the head lifeguard, Stan. He was old, to us, something like 24 and obsessed with his feet. He was redheaded, freckled, and constantly sunburned, so ministrations to those feet were paramount to him. The jokes were endless.

One day, I happened to be at the snack bar, picking up my (very meager) check. I heard a commotion down near the water. There was a large crowd gathered, hollering and pointing towards the middle of the lake. Murray (the owner) ran like the wind and dashed into the water, yelling for someone to call an ambulance. He swam furiously to the dock, dove under and then hauled a man all the way to the side, where it appeared he gave him CPR. The man was revived and soon an ambulance drove up and he was whisked away. Murray turned back from the ambulance, exhausted, to see the head lifeguard, sitting up on the stand, dutifully rubbing his feet. Stan had missed the entire drama while he was preoccupied with said phalanges. 

I never saw Stan again. 'Nuff said.

Pogo and the Church Lady

I think I slunk into church today. Is that a word, slunk? This past week and month left me deflated like a used-up balloon. Months of work for a client finally closed and another stressful situation was tabled for a time. When Monday came, I slept ten hours, something I haven't done in a decade. A neighbor came to the door and I looked like something the cat dragged in. I felt sort-of like Jonah did after he preached to Ninevah and they actually repented... he felt sorry for himself and crawled under a bush and asked God to go ahead and end it. Sometimes big events, trials and even successes can leave us depleted. 

So that's where I was this morning....a big ole mess of used-up emotions. The pastor read from the Scriptures, I'm not sure even which ones. My husband was home sick in bed and I felt all alone. I looked down at my dress and realized it was pretty sad. Some of the beads had fallen off and there was a whole lot of wear showing on it. On top of that I was having a really bad hair day. I felt fat, ugly and squashed. That's just the truth. There was lovely music, great fellowship, confession, and truth laid open from the pulpit. I have a good vantage point, as I sit by the piano during the music and Scripture reading with my flute. I can see a lot of souls from there -- happy ones, tortured ones, mean ones, sweet ones, old and young, wrinkled and fresh. All hypocrites. Yes, we all are. We put on our finest, but we're still sinners. We hurt people when we don't mean to, we lie in ways that we don't even know, we steal time, we lust, we blaspheme, we covet, we don't love. And worse, much worse. As I looked around the congregation of hypocrites that all say one thing and do another, I feel sad for those who have left the church because they say it is full of hypocrites. Well, to quote Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

As Communion was served from the Lord's Table, I contemplated Christ....how He paid for my hypocrisy (and all the other stuff) and for those around me. Living this life so imperfectly, so messily, but also understanding that I'm seeing through a glass darkly, I left church still feeling grumpy, sorry for myself, selfish, defeated. After a long afternoon, husband still sick, my flesh and fear overtook what was good about the day and then I did it. I picked a fight with him. It was a doozy. As fights do, it degenerated into a stupid pick-fest, with he-said/she-said and much chasing of tails. We went round and round, the bites getting nastier. The dog was starting to get worried. 

Then when all was exhausted and there was hardly anything else to insult each other with, the Lord gently reminded me about the hypocrite. That one in the mirror. My heart melted as His grace flooded in, as I asked forgiveness, as he asked forgiveness. Grace. It doesn't start at the top. It starts at the bottom, where ugliness and rancor and all that smells has seemingly won the day. Grace, where He finds us at our basest and replaces our heart of stone with a heart of flesh. Grace. Where love really does win.

The Monk and the Devil

Not Just Marking Time

There she was, in all her glory. She had on a big, red apron, channeling Rosie the Riveter. This gal wasn't working with metal or guns or planes. She was in the kitchen at Hardee's, of all places, covered with flour. Her work-wear face not flinching, writ with years of life experience. It threw me back in time, to all the many Southern kitchens I've been privileged to experience. Old women, full of wisdom and fire, working mysteries with white powder and butter. As a child, I would pass through those hallowed halls, awed by the power of food and sage women. I didn't stop on my way through, no, I was on my way to the outdoors, the woods and the ball fields. I got the lucky choice of playing in either place. 

Country rides were a favorite pastime of our family. Windows cranked down, dust roiling behind the car like tumbleweeds. We would make stops at various relatives' homes. Wooden, unsophisticated houses with no paint, pigs under the porch, dogs panting in the heat. The adults would sit inside while the kids poked around the creek or the barn. If we were really blessed, we'd get to ride somebody's pony and get bucked off in the process. My siblings and I might be some of the last generation to see these remnants of the Old South, the parts where the steam rose off the field, poor people worked hard for a living, fourty was old, and nobody seemed ashamed of what they didn't have. Maybe they were, it just didn't seem like it. I only saw bits and pieces of it, like dusky whispers on a hot June morning. Stopping by little creeks to fish. Trolling through miles of countryside without hurrying. Those things we know nothing about now. I remember the smells, the animals, the old people. I recall tiredness, but deep contentment. Houses baking in the sun, the big, sprawling brick ranches saved for the rich people. Cicadas buzzing, time standing still. It did stand still. Now it won't stop, but I'm thankful. I've seen the vestiges of the past and yet I'm standing in the future. The greatest generation, they're passing in front of me. The millenials, they're coming behind me. What a great time to be alive. 

Monsters are Real!

The old dragon sat dully, stuffed into his truck like a toad, eyes bulging. When I first saw him, he was puffing up like an adder, waiting to explode. He spied me walking across the lawn and I met the force of his vitriol as I made my way down the hill. I extended my hand but was met with hot breath and spittle, as he spat out his pent-up hate. My thought was that the only thing between me and certain death was his old beat-up vehicle. That, and not a few years of too many carbs on his frame. Of course I had left my gun in my car this one time that I might have needed it. Visions of Annie Oakley ran through my mind as I called upon the Lord to go ahead and send those 10,000 chariots right about now. 

I had never been cussed out, until that day. I am 57 years old and have lived a sheltered life, since I've never had the experience of getting brutally beat up, verbally or otherwise. I've had the rare blessing of being surrounded by good, noble men all my days. My husband, Daddy, sons, brother, brother-in-laws, father-in-law, nephews, pastors, elders, brothers in Christ.... so many great men. As I stood beneath the gale force of an evil man's barrage, spitless, my thoughts began floating around, pondering my sisters in the world who hate men and who wrestle with feminism in their souls. Maybe this is what they faced as children. Maybe dragons such as this rendered them powerless, so that when they escaped they armed themselves to the hilt that it might never happen again. God help.

I was calm, but quietly bipped the dragon in the nose with truth as I was able. I also rebuked his repulsive language, only to be met with more of it. Time was on my side, as he began to lose steam and strength. My gaze and prayers kept steady, until I saw his mind begin to right itself. Somewhere in there he regretted what he had done and began to realize the possible ramifications of his actions. Eventually he apologized for his language and asked if he had ruined our deal. I told him I didn't know. That opened another sluice gate of rancor, pouring out. I wondered what conspired to make this madman so angry, so full of hurt that he would delight in hurting other people. It could be a lot of things, either within or without. In the end, we are all responsible for what we do with that. I believe it is God's grace that enables anyone to rise above their depravity. We can cloak it with manners, money, strength, perfume and youth, but when it gets down to the end and we're out of all those resources, I'm banking on Him. The old fart dragon might oughta watch his back.