Step One

My husband occasionally asks if we have too many toys and my answer is usually a resounding, "No."  However, on one of these recent days while I was all alone in the house, I saw a slight absurdity at my entrance-way:  it generally takes about five minutes to open my front door, should anyone come to it, because I have to rearrange the "stash."

A thought crossed my mind when I realized this and I decided to make a note: Children Play Here.  Was I going to write about it?  Buy a plaque?  Share somebody else's blog?  I don't know, but when I got to my desk, this is what I found:

Cool, right?  One blank sheet where I could make a note.  It's obvious that children play here.

Okay, well now for the real story...

I now have four g'babies:  two pre-school girls and two infant boys.  When these guys first started coming at me those few years back, it was more than just a slight shock to the system.  Honey and I had barely experienced the empty-nester phase. The years previous to that (the time since we'd blended) had been tumultuous to say the least.  There was always good.  We were (almost) always (trying to be) grateful.  But raising our kids to adulthood was a feat and we were ready to rest.

Things don't always turn out the way we'd planned or hoped, huh?

During the past four to five years, my life has been pretty much centered around g'babes.  Honestly, it's not something I would have expected at any point in my life, really.  I've never really understood kids and certainly never thought I'd have a preference for their company.  What was the alternative, however?  This was the path that unfurled before me.

These past four to five years have been as tumultuous as any previous period but there's always good.  We're always grateful.

Even now, as things are once more not how I thought they'd be.  These days, I hardly see my g'babes.  True, that's "hardly" by my standards but it's still an accurate depiction.  True, it's partly due to the natural process of life but there are other factors that I can't tell about.  Those parts belong to other people and I must let them tell their own stories.  Also, there's some hurt and it's just hard to talk about.

When the new babies first started showing up, when our lives first started to shift, what did I lose that I'd anticipated so much before all my kids were gone?  The hours and hours of quiet time, perhaps?  The clear path to the doorway?  A notepad with more than just one clean sheet of paper?

I wouldn't trade those babies for any of it.  For anything.

Thinking back on my mothering years, for all the mommy dearest that I was at times, for all the coulda-shoulda-wouldas, I'm just grateful to have had them.

And the meemee years?  Thank you, God, for each day with a g'baby.

Maybe I haven't gotten the life I would have planned but I'm grateful for the life I've gotten!

Would I control it more if I could?  Would I develop and execute the most appealing plan?  Well, who wouldn't, really?!  The thing is, though, that life happens by a series of events over which I am powerless.  I totally admit it.  I also totally know that God, however, has the power to work it all out.

This post happens not to be about the addictions and compulsions that I seem always to be facing but the twelve steps are still relevant and restorative. One Step and then the next and then the next.  Sometimes we start over.

And my new mantra:
Everything will be okay in the end.
If it's not okay, it's not the end.

Because Momma Said So

Recently, my momma sent me a picture asking, 

"It's you, right?"

Ohhhhhh yyeeaahhh.

There are, of course, some obvious reasons that one might question this.  I mean, obviously my nails are shorter than hers!

And, truth be told, I don't have quite the uhhhh ... well, quite the nerve to leave the house dressed this way.

Or at least I don't have the nerve to leave the house having paired these two particular prints.

But the thing is ... I have a near match to each of these!

And another thing is that I like to do what I like to do, fashion-wise.  I like to do what I like to do and I will do it, fashionably speaking, most of the time.

It's really not that I'm fashion-gifted, or that I always get it right, or that I even get it "good" most of the time.  It's that I've learned - and it's taken me a great many years - to do what makes me happy, fashionably speaking.

So people may not ask me to give the origin of a print, but those who know me well know which ones I'll wear.

And so, because my momma said so...






The only thing I'm wearing that I didn't own before Momma's instruction is the red lipstick.  That's a whole 'nother story.  Think I'll make that a sequel.

Also, my cat's developed some weird thing for showing up in pictures. Hope this isn't the start of some weird new pattern.

Wait.  Should I have said, "print" just then?

One Is The Loneliest Number

"We are never more than one generation away from apostasy."

I can't seem to determine the precise source of this statement but I'm in a hurry to put this down.  I like to give credit where it's due, but sometimes, perhaps, it's more important to be timely.

I actually considered calling this one, "One is the Timeliest Number."

Anyhow...know what apostasy is? It is, according to dictionary.com, "a total desertion of or departure from one's religion, principle, party, cause, etc."

Joshua sent the people of Israel on their way, and each man went to take possession of his own share of the land.  As long as Joshua lived, the people of Israel served the Lord, and even after his death they continued to do so as long as the leaders were alive who had seen for themselves all the great things that the Lord had done for Israel.  The Lord's servant Joshua son of Nun died at the age of a hundred and ten. He was buried in his own part of the land at Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim north of Mount Gaash.  That whole generation also died, and the next generation forgot the Lord and what he had done for Israel. Judges 2:6-10 (GNT)

Never more than one generation...

My congregation* began a new series this morning called Parental Guidance: Raising Up The Next Generation, and I'm stoked.  While it's true that my own kids now have their own kids, and true that what's past is done, there's still a new generation coming up ~ one that needs guidance and good examples ~ one that stands to be a very lonely generation if they don't know the LORD.  There is a new generation and they need us to raise them up.

There was a Whole Lot that resonated with me this morning, but there's one particular point I'd like to share.  Over these few years that I've been involved with my congregation, I've seen a lot of things change.  Some of it was hard for me to accept (cough, "contemporary service", cough, "casual attire", cough, cough), but I've warmed to most elements of our evolution.  I should think it would be hard not to come around when so many new folks - and especially children - are coming around (to church now.)  My pastor gave me a good, little reminder this morning.

The message does not change but it is okay for the method of delivery to change. What's important is that we get the message through to the next generation.


*Crosspoint United Methodist Church
Worship service videos can be viewed here after a couple of days.
Worship services can be viewed live via webcast here.

My GIF To You

...because I'm a trekkie, not a techie.


Sorry.  Had to.

A Picture's Worth

This is my family.*
This picture was taken on Christmas morning and promptly posted to Facebook.

This picture possibly received more 'likes' and positive comments than anything else I've posted.

"Beautiful picture."
"Blessed family."

And each such comment causes me to snicker cynically.

Sorry, folks.  Just trying to be honest here.

They say, "a picture's worth a thousand words," and I can go along with that, but what does this particular one really say?

To me, it says that having us all in one room, so close together, all smiling so gleefully is an astonishing feat.  But then, I'm reading it with a bias ... as one who knows the back-story.

I happen to know how much anger and disappointment and hurt and frustration and dysfunction is contained within this frame.  I know how hard a year it's been, how hard it's been to bring us all together, how hard it is for us to smile when we're all in one room.

Sorry, folks.  Like I said...

However, believe it or not, this is not a pity party.  This is not me telling you how bad things are around here.  This is me pointing out that things are not always as they seem.  For all the "perfection" that a picture can portray, there is always something behind the scenes.  Something you don't see.  Something you can't know unless someone tells you.

What I'm telling you is that my family is not perfect.

And - if I believe what I say, that things are not always as they seem - then even I can view this through another lens:

• Four healthy g'babies have been born and all remain members of our family
• We've grafted in a couple of sons and another g'babe
• One of us has survived a heart attack
• An antidepressant is working for at least one of us
• Each of us is still here
• None of us have been to jail

• Okay, at least not lately

• Okay, at least not for more than a few minutes

There's good here even if there is some bad behind the scene.
It really is a beautiful picture.  We really are blessed.
I think I'll focus on that!


Some folks might say I've used this for some kind of divine photo op.  Okay.  Maybe.
Some might say that I'm hanging all my laundry in the yard.
Okay.  Maybe some of it.

But what I mean to be is telling you to look very closely and consider very deeply everything you see in life.

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for." John Lubbock


*I have folks and a sister and a niece who reside elsewhere.  And cousins, and in-laws, and, well, more family than is pictured here.
*Also, that blur at the bottom of the picture is my cat.

Where Have All The Good Words Gone?

Once, on a whim a few years back, I decided to draw.
Serious stuff: I bought pads, pencils, and fat, grey, official-artist-looking erasers.
I had a fervor for about a week, and somewhere in this house is a drawing pad with a couple of not entirely crappy sketches.  (By my own standards.)

I’m pretty sure that “artist” was on my list.
You know: the third-grade “What do you want to be when you grow up?” list.
The top of mine, I still remember very well:

-President
-Nurse
-Singer
-Poet
-Teacher

Maybe not in that order, but I dreamed of manifesting myself in every one of those occupations.

It seems reasonable that “writer, author, story-teller, world’s greatest blogger” would be somewhere on that list, even if farther down, right?  It’s not too high a goal, right?

Of all my dreams and goals and fervors, I think I’ve never had such a need to follow through as I do for writing.  Looking back, I see I’ve always done it.

It started with songs:

Ohhhhh, you’ll meet the cute kittens someday
They’ll make your day bright and gay
And if you shout it all around, you’ll dance like a clown
Then we’ll have some fun 
Dancing in the sun
And everybody is happy!

Wrote that one for my club, The Cute Kittens (myself and two other six-year-olds), in about ‘76.  (Quick, what rhymes with six?!)

Then the more melancholy:

Fly, fly, fly far away
Fly little birdy to the land of the great
Fly little birdy and fly little bee
And fly butterfly that is looking at me

Wrote that one in just one afternoon to soundtrack my couple of hours of jumping off the bed into a pile of laundry.  I was the bomb.

Later, it was poetry ~ some of it sweet, most of it dark, nearly all of it private.

I’ve journaled off and on, in one form or another, since I was in my teens.  (How many diaries have I thrown away?  How many times have I thought that it was time to start over and that starting over meant trashing any record of the past?)

As I illustrated at the beginning here, I’m not really a follow-through sort of girl.  I don’t decide to do a thing and then do everything necessary to be good at the thing. I don’t take classes.  Don’t watch tutorial videos.  Don’t read “_____ For Dummies.”

Generally, I’ll take a shot if it interests me and then I’ll generally grow bored and quit.

Not so with writing.

Understand that I’ve no inclination that I’m carrying the great American novel in my heart or that my memoir would touch and change lives forever or that I might write words to change the tide of history.  It’s not that I think my writing is good or important or even read by people!  It’s that I need to do it.

And these last few months have been hard because I haven’t been able.

Great things come to mind.  Drafts develop.  Inspiration and excitement ensue.
And then all of it dissipates rather quickly.

I keep reviewing my year, looking for answers.  There’s a pattern that only I may recognize.  (Or so I’d like to think.)  There’s a lot of stuff betwixt my lines.

There’s so much behind the scenes that, as much as I might like to run screaming it through the streets, too many standards prevent me from sharing.

And then I have to consider the possibility that I am simply done.  It’s not that I’m bored because the urge to write things down is sometimes the only thing that moves me.

But maybe it’s supposed to be private.  Maybe I’m not supposed to write it publicly. Or maybe I’ve said all that I’m supposed to SAY.

I just really hope not.
Or I hope, sincerely and mostly, that God will show me what’s next (any time now!)
And that I will follow through when He does.

Is this piece it?  The follow-through?  Nope.
But it is an attempt to revive my fervor.  I really need to write.

And to close, I hope only for now, here’s a really cute video that I found while perusing just last night.  Obviously, I didn’t write it ... but I sure do wish I had!

Mason Jar Music presents Laura Gibson

Allegory

I don't always have a plan 

or even know what I'm doing,

But things generally 

work out in the end.

For instance, take this costume-y 

jacket that I found a year ago,

And these super-fly shoes that 

I found recently (for 80% off) 

while at an out-of-town wedding,

And the skirts that I've 

collected over a year's span...

Voila!

Oftentimes, we have to just do what we know is right, trusting that things will all come together in the end.

Whatever you're working on today - 

a question, a family, a plan - 

I pray that you go through it with 

joy and peace and assurance that 

it's worth sticking it out.

Merry Christmas!