Today I had a funny thing said to me while in a conversation with my sister-in-law on the phone and it cracked me up so much as our talks usually do and sent my mind reeling to the point that it made me think long and hard about life and the frailty of it. She was telling me about a recent surgery and she had gone back to the doctor for the stitch removal from the back of her neck. Now as a rule these stories of medical adventures are not something that I take joy in hearing about from most people. It isn’t that I am particularly heartless or uncaring, (although I have been told that Mercy is not one of my strong spiritual gifts) it is just that I get a bit creeped out by all the messy details, but I attempt to listen intently and nod in concern at the proper times. On this day I was paying close attention because my dear sister is dealing with an awfully frightening battle, one that I am prayerfully hopeful will be a conquest for the Lord which will reveal his mercy and healing power, so I am astutely interested in all the details, she is my husbands only sibling and has been one of my closest friends for the last 28 years. We have raised our kids together, been through ups and downs as families go, day to day crisis, jealousies and frustrations, good times and bad. We have had many times of rejoicing, we have been in ministry together (I secretly prayed for her ability to cry every time she walked into church, seems so caring!}, encouraging each other and telling each other the plain truth on most occasions. It has not always been pretty but, it has always been fun, we have laughed about all the ridiculous stages of our lives(this one being funny, thank goodness for cell phones in compromising situations), kept each others kids, stayed snowed in playing cards all day with our men and taken our family vacations to the beach. We haven’t always agreed but we have always eventually been able to talk it out and remain friends. We know more dirt on each other than anyone else, it’s in the vault and will remain until Jesus comes..we are buddies, com padres, friends and freinemies! To sum it up…sisters, she was there when I was missing my two sisters, I was her only one, even though only by marriage, she was with me in the delivery room with my third child, she made him a southpaw…I am convinced of that, needless to say… we are tight. So when she said that her stitches were so tight before the doctor took them out that “it felt like her pigtails were too tight!” it totally cracked me up. The visual was killing me and if you have ever had that problem, i.e. pigtails too tight, you can completely empathize with her. It took me straight back to when I was a little girl with pigtails and the awful pain, one that hurt your head all day long and it finally dawns on you after the headache that won’t go away, that it is the pigtails that are causing it. Then you have the decision to make…do you endure it or take down your hair and deal with the awful humps in your hair from the rubber bands? So you leave it up till you get to the safety of home and that is why it was such a funny thing to say..it was so childlike, so naturally plain and real. It was a remembrance that made me feel happy. Happy is what I want to be when talking to her about her situation, a hard one to stomach, yet she has handled it with all the grace and courage that I would expect from her. This is typical of her, strong yet frail on the inside, she will maintain this attitude of gratitude for her family and her Lord. She has much faith and she is a force to be reckoned with so good luck Devil! You’ll not win! Her precious grandfather who passed away a few years ago at just short of 100 years old, who by the way was just about the most quick witted person ever born, would often say…”bring me my flowers while I am still alive!” So to my precious sister, not just in-law but for real, here are your flowers, you are important, you are a valuable prayer warrior in God’s army and and a friend of great heart and love. The times we have laughed and they have been many will be some of my most sacred memories and when the day comes that we actually figure out how to be committed to our adjoining rubber rooms in the insane asylum, I know we will have many more, three square meals a day and all the rook playing we want. And eventually, which ever one of us that makes it to heaven first, be sure to find out where the best bathroom is! We have covered most of Tennessee, Alabama and the Gulf, that will be a new frontier for us. Seriously, we must always be prepared for anything! AHHH, middle age….ain’t it grand!
Today I had a very pleasant visit with my precious mother. She lives with my older sister, for which I am very grateful. My sister has taken the daunting task of “looking after” our mother of 82 years young and it is, I am sure a blessing and at times a frustration. Not to say it would be hard for my sis, she loves her with her whole heart, but anytime you have the full responsibility of anyone it can be a bit much, but she does this with great joy and love for our mom and our family is blessed to have our mom in a safe and loving place. For this I will always honor my sister for the sacrifice she has made. While visiting with my mom, whom of which I respect more than she could ever know, she was telling me of a time long ago when I was around 5 or 6 years old. Now needless to say, she like me can’t tell you where she laid her glasses last, but can remember the past joys and sorrows as if they happened within the past hour. Odd how that happens and I am already right there with her. We were talking about growing up with hopes and dreams for the future and I was relating to her how it seems odd to me that kids these days are many times without any goals or plans for their future. We debated it back and forth and we realized it is because kids of this generation or for the past 20 years or so have not had to struggle so much. We like most parents have tried to give our children everything they needed as well a wanted. I grew up not as poor as my Mom, but without a lot of the more modern doo dads of the day, hand-me-downs and such and I think I am the better for it. It gave me a strong work ethic and the strength to work for what I wanted as I got older. My mom grew up very poor, in a town that the main employment was a Limestone factory, Sherwood, TN, which is on the Alabama side of Monteagle Mountain. When the Limestone factory left, all the work left and men had to travel to cities close by (close meaning up a mountain and down the other side usually!)Her goal was to someday leave that tiny town and become something amazing, maybe a nurse? Well as fate would have it, she married a handsome man who joined the Army and took her to Germany, eventually, had 5 children total and ended up on a farm way out in Readyville, TN. Well, probably not the excitement she was looking for as a young girl but it was something. I am pretty glad, that is how I got here and I am lucky to have a great mom. She did have aspirations and her adventurous spirit came in handy after many years of marriage and the eventual time, after my dad left us, of just her and us kids, and later on she was able to take a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska to visit my older brother and his beautiful family, who was in the Army. From that trip she stayed and went to work on the North Slope, the gas pipeline and stayed for 9 years. My mom has lived her life renewing it over and over, never scared of the next chapter(or she never showed she was), forging ahead for a new adventure. During our conversation about the kids these days she proceeded to tell me a little story about myself. She stated that when I was home one day with her, which wasn’t the norm because I most days stayed with my Granny Maxwell, while she worked and my siblings were at school. But on this day she was home with me and she said I had an old handbag that my precious granny had given me and I was sitting on the step down into our kitchen in our old farm house. She said I was playing with the purse and talking up a storm (no!) and stated matter of factly that …Mamma, someday I am going to take my new purse and be an artist and go to New York City! I almost cracked up and said, why did I say that, did she know? She said it was because every afternoon of my young life, while at my Granny’s house, after lunch everything in our world stopped, and we would sit in the living room and watch her stories. Stories are Soap Operas and in the south we called them Stories! She said that the Stories were were all from New York City and I had always wanted to go there. What a revelation to me….I did not remember that, I did remember the handbag, it was black leathery and one of those claspy button closures on top for which I would usually pinch my finger every time, with one short handle, old school, old lady bag that always smelled like Juicy Fruit gum on the inside. The funny thing to me was I have always wanted to live in New York….You give me a good chick flick with New York scenes, i.e. “You’ve Got Mail” and I am there. I have told my husband and he has always known of my desire to go to the Big Apple and has told me plenty of times he would take me someday, I am still waiting, not in a hurry, I will go when it is the right time for me to, But I never knew I had that dream so young…to be an Artist and live in NYC! I may never be a famous artist, I realize my limitations but I might just get there someday? For this time in my life, the Lord made a different path to take, He set me on HIS path and it has been rewarding and a blessing, He gave me so much more than I had ever dreamed of, I am blessed. But someday I will go. This brings me finally to the point…I had a dream, hopes of a future, I always knew there could be MORE! It boggles my mind at the inability of the younger than me people of today who have nothing they want to do, not about money or success, but a dream, a hope of if there was nothing standing in their way. I don’t really know what to make of it, it saddens me, once a person looses hope, what is left? There is a song that Martina McBride made famous a few years ago, which to this day makes me cry when I hear it. It talks about getting out there and going for it, whatever IT is, just at least try…just dance! That is what I hope for my own precious children whom I have attempted to have influence on these past 26 years….JUST DANCE! Whatever you want in your heart of hearts, whatever it takes to make it happen…go for it. The worst thing that could happen is you could fail…so what. Failure is sometimes the best thing. It can cause us to get up and try again, which in turn builds character and faith and causes us to live and not waste away with what could have been. I still have hopes and dreams, I am not to old, I know there must be more and I will not miss the chance to dance( with my beautiful husband, hand in hand) and one day it might just be in New York, New York!!!
As I write my thoughts today, I am reminded of the most memorable day of my life with the exception of my Wedding Day, which was of course the day that changed my destiny forever.
But the memories that I have today are of the most amazing event that could ever happen. At the time I had only known about God for a few short months, I had only snip its of the awe inducing world of God and they weren’t much. I do attribute any knowledge of Biblical matters to my sister who is right above me in the birth order. There would be times when I would have questions, I would hear about it in school; this was back when it was normal to hear about God and the baby JESUS at school, and I would ask my sister. She being an avid reader, to the point of that’s all she did when she had the time after farm and house chores, she would ALWAYS find the event in the BIBLE and make me read about it. NEVER would she just cut to the chase and tell me, I would have to work for it and of course this would full fill her need to make me read more, for which I now thank her, I finally like to read, it is a delicacy in the world of four kids.
But back then I really only knew the high points, Christmas, Easter blah, blah, blah! At the time of my first pregnancy I had only given my heart to this God I speak of about a year earlier and being a new christian I was in the baby steps myself. I did have a good teacher thou, my new husband was raised in the “way” of the Lord. He had not always been all fired up about it but as the scripture states (paraphrased a lot) teach them and when they are old they will always return to it! It worked…He came back to it or should I say the Lord and he did it in a big way, all in that one was.. I was glad but he really got sold out and here I am twenty eight years later a preachers wife…..geez!
This brings me to this amazing event that was about to happen, how can after all the new events that had happened to me in the past nearly two years, married to my best friend (love of my life, funniest guy I ever met and loves me more than I deserve), salvation (getting to live in heaven someday and dodging the impending doom I was headed for) and now this…..the greatest miracle ever done. People say that it is a great thing but even a dog can do it and a lot more at one time ( I assume a man said that not that I am male bashing but really?) This momentous event is the birth of my first child. This is even more of a miracle than the obvious and anyone who ever knew me could attest to that fact. I was reminded recently that I had written in my High School Annual(Go Patriots ’77) that I thought then I would probably become a teacher and at a last resort get married. My hopes were not high at that time, I was a scrawny high school senior who had not yet crossed over to the maturity level of my peers at least physically.
Needless to say I didn’t get asked out much, I had lots of big brothers though which was actually more fun! The idea of marriage and kids were ridiculous and I am not exactly sure how it happened, maybe I was sold into white slavery, ambushed by a masked man who kidnapped me and brainwashed me? HaHa Nope, just saw a boy who was scary……..(Robert Redford-like) beautiful and blonde….that’s all she wrote…I was bitten..the love bug won…yeah for love bugs! This brings me to the birth…that event that made time stand still, on this day I became a mommie, I fell in love in a way that is only understood by those that have had the same event happen to them…wow it is amazing, the amazing love! How could this squishy little punk have such an impact on a reasonably smart woman. First of all, how in this world did all that happen inside of ME! Seriously, who thought that up? And how did he figure all that out? Never did I ever realize the existence of GOD as I did at that moment…wowza! did that really happen? I was awake, although I had a C-section….surprise! scary and totally foreign….I had never been in the hospital before and it was freaky and a bit unexpected, I was secretly happy, the thought of screaming my guts out and pushing that almost ten pounder through that Holy of Holies….well, that was an awful part of the event, Gods little gotcha….stupid apple, Eve what in the heck were you thinkin’, thanks for causing all of eternity to suffer well, the girls, typical! Not me sista..I got a pass, and boy o’ boy was I happy…five days of bed rest and pampering by my scared to death husband. He was as flipped out by the rush into surgery as I was. Worked in my favor though so cool. I never looked back, that’s the way to go, I say.
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So I was alert and I still say…how did that all happen, God is so smart, he is God for pete’s sake. This is an undeniable fact….HE really does know what he is doing, that is awesome, building a whole person inside one young girls body. Totally terrific and amazing, that is the only word for it….AMAZING!
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God gave me a little boy, we named him after his daddy, a junior, and it was the incredible thing that made me know how tender and precious life is. It all went well, he was strong and perfect and I was in love..immediately. How could God allow this to happen within Mary’s womb and allow his only son to be slaughtered by his own people, the chosen ones. Why would HE go through the pain He must have had and give up the only real and precious person he created only to know he would suffer?
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Amazing love, that is why. I get it…He loves me that much, we are all His children and He loves us all that much. I can’t see it and it must be why He is God. I know I couldn’t do it but HE did..thank you my sweet Lord. And now on the eve of my own first borns birth, twenty seven years ago, I am still in awe of the miracle of birth. I am thankful for that child of mine and the three others that followed but, I must say the first time is amazing…Happy Birthday to my first born.
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The amazing love that I have for you, is pale in comparison to how much the Lord loves you. You have blessed my life and I am comforted in the fact that HE loves you even more than me and HE will always keep his hand on your life, choose Him everyday, HE picked you out especially for me and I am honored to be your mom. Even if you are a “pill” most days!
Recently, I was reminded by my dear friend from college of a time when I had thought my life was a great as it could be. She posted some pictures of us laughing and having a blast like we always did. It made me pause with nostalgia remembering a girl I had seemed to forget about. An ordinary girl with big dreams and places to go.
The future looked bright; I had it all ahead of me.
I was young and popular and the pictures weren’t ones I wanted to hide in a drawer. For me it was a good time in my life. A Kappa ALpha Fraternity “Southern Belle!” It wasn’t always that way though.
Growing up on a my beloved farm and then having life take an awful turn when I was ten, created a feeling of loneliness and abandonment. There was only one thing that I had on my side, I thought….but it was the best thing, Hope. Somehow during this time of unknowing and fear I had this tangible feeling, a sense of freedom that told me, “you can do this, you can have Hope!” I thought I could do anything I wanted, accomplish anything. I felt that deep down in my soul even though I had no real understanding of what I felt. I wasn’t raised with a strong christian background. My maternal grandmother whom I adored did attend church regularly.
But, I have not many memories of being taught any strong spiritual strengths from that time except for my sister who made me read the Bible when ever I asked a question that could be answered by the Word.
For some reason I have always had ….the look on bright side personality which is ironic because I spend most of my thoughts about myself assuming I will end up walking in a hole or tripping up steps and splitting may pants or something equally embarrassing. Not normal I know but I have a constant movie reel running in my head and when I appears the worst thing could happen I fear it will. On the flip side I have crazy feeling of “Hope” and I just believe that life will turn out okay.
What I do know is that I was raised with a strong work ethic, my father and mother always were hard workers, none of that laying around watching television for them, there was always something to be done. I know that if you want to eat you must work, if you want new shoes…work to earn them. They were not special, that is how they were raised, children of the Great Depression. They had little or nothing. They were just ordinary people living their ordinary lives raising ordinary kids day in and day out. And I was an ordinary girl but I always had my sights on an un-ordinary life.
What I saw for my life was fantastic and fearless, full of excitement and mystery and an unabashed determination to get where I wanted to be. I am here to say today that to this point I feel like I have made it, maybe not what I had first expected my life to be, but what I got was so much better. It has been a road less traveled and a road that has been splattered with rocks and dirt and puddles and blockades.
But when I total it all up I have been given a great gift, the gift of a belief that there is always room for more, the day can always bring better and I have the ability to make it a better day for someone else. I still believe I will become all the things that my little girl mind had hoped for. I have had some pretty exciting times in my life and I have been loved by some very fantastic people.
The mysterious meanings of life have been revealed to me (well, some of them) and I have raised some fearless children and I still have an unabashed determination to get where I am going with a pretty special mate to go there with me. I am still hopeful…hope filled actually; and for an ordinary girl who could ask for more.
This is the day I reflect on the last year…not on New Years Eve or New Years Day but today…January 2nd. What is so great about this day? Nothin’ at all but, it is not a typical day that a person would typically make the run of the mill reflections or words of encouragement or wax poetic about the things to come. Since I do not consider myself…”run of the mill” I of course change things up and find myself on this day… pondering. The last year has been a time of many changes, the loss of precious family members, gone but never forgotten, as a matter of fact it seems as if they are only sleeping and soon we will be together again (that’s my two cents on the future…we will be together again soon…see you guys in heaven….Maranatha!!) We have survived another year of twists and turns, rebirths and confinements…healing and becoming the people we thought we had lost…..I am one happy Mom needless to say and I see a bright future for the first time in ten years. The world as we all know it has changed, presidents come and go, wars and rumors of wars stop and start and… the beat goes on. And sometimes lives sorta become frozen in time. The hardest thing about these times are the losses….or even more, the lack knowledge of the loss. There are times in a person’s life when the world becomes very small and somewhat retroactive. I have been plummeted in the middle of a life that has been halted, a season of unknowing the reality of the moment. And even though this time of life for us is demanding and frightening and even down right scary as hell(yes I said it) it has also had some comforting realities. I am living through a time in my mother’s life that has over the past year or so been gone, even though she is physically in the here and now, she is mostly living in her memories and wanting to share those good and bad times of her life with me. It is an education to say the least and even though painful, has opened up a whole world that I had not known…a time before me or at least before I was old enough to understand. It is somewhat fascinating to hear about what the life back then was for her, as well as sad but it gives me comfort in knowing that our memories are what we have, sometimes the only thing we have and they are precious…to be savored…until that day when they have vapor ed away. I do not look forward to that day for her or for that matter, myself. After one particular day of stories…painful…funny and at times disheartening it was time for me to leave and she thanked me for listening…it was sweet and I said I enjoyed it and she is my friend…and her reply was…”you’re my BEST FRIEND!” I was honored to say the least, knowing of course that my sisters are probably hearing the same stories and been given the same title, but for me it was a sweet surprise that I will always cherish. Mostly because she is my momma but also because maybe when the day comes that she may not know me as her little girl anymore…she may remember me as a friend…her best friend and that will be enough. I hope! Later that day as I was telling my precious husband the story of my day and I asked him if he will take care of me if this awful disease befalls on me…he smiled and said..”yes, I will NOTEBOOK you! Boy… what a way with words that man has….I instantly know what he meant.(his reference was to the book/movie THE Notebook by Nicholas Sparks)which is the sweetest story ever of unfailing love. Now there is a best friend and once again I am blessed by this man of mine. So to those people in my life that have given me so much love…I am the one that realizes my joy is in the memories we make and remembering the days..good, precious and even the hard ones and as long as I have my best friends I have a good year ahead. Look out world!
Last night my beautiful husband made me a fire in the fireplace.
Made meaning..lighting the pilot light in our gas logs, though he would have made the “real” kind if we had one…sort of a pyromaniac that one. He loves to build a fire and watch it burn. Must be a family trait!
Sweet one as he is, he noticed that I was all bound up under a blanket while watching and old movie..(“Love Affair“-made before “An Affair To Remember“-Charles Boyerand Irene Dunne..a must see!) and offered to warm me up with a fire and I happily said yes.
An Affair to Remember (Photo credit: saturdave)
It was a sweet gesture for which I will never forget to notice and one that gave me a well needed comfort here at thebeginning of what will surely be many cold nights.
Have I ever stated publicly how much I HATE COLD WEATHER! Let’s just be clear on that. It is so cold…not fair, we live in Tennessee not Michigan!……. Okay, finished with my rant!…. As I sat there looking at the fire even more than the movie, I pondered about the times that I remember… one of our own who LOVED her fireplace. It is an image I will always have. I would tell her…..”you realize it is expensive to run that gas log fireplace……you should only run it when you have a special night of company or Christmas! “And her reply…… “HUSH!….By the way, since when did I become so frugal”…… (busted!) and I would just laugh and we would go on yammering about everyday things.
It’s those everyday things that I miss the most…we could get on a soap box better and faster than anyone..and we were always right…its the people who were wrong!(Sybil movie a.k.a. Sally Field, reference) Way back when, before her swanky, flip a switch fireplace, I remember her standing sprawled out, both legs wide across the grate in the floor of the hallway at her old house, when they had the kind of furnace thingy in the basement. She would stand there getting warm and toastyfor what
Sybil (1976 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
seemed like forever.
Depending on where you were..in the living room or kitchen, she would flip around and carry on a conversation……no big deal! This was when our babies were small and eventually one of them would step on the grate…..have crisscrosses on their feet but, it would teach the others to stay away. Survival in the kid world I guess. But anyways, as I sat and watched the fire burn I realized how short life is and watching a fire burn IS a fun thing to do, I don’t know why but it is. Even more, it is the cozy factor which is what I think she liked the most. She would say that she runs her fireplace more than the heat and I would guess that was true and good for her! I am glad she did and every time I foolishly use mine I will do it in honor of my dear sister (in law)….she is one of our own who left us way too soon and it is even as I write this, painful to talk about.
No time have I known anyone who believed so fully that she would survive this awful disease and it turns out she was right. She did survive it just not in the way we wanted her too. I am thankful no none has said within my hearing that God needed one of his angels back or another totally non scriptural or even more STUPID thing people who don’t know what to say have said. I am thankful for that…its the small things, ya know. But the truth is God is the only one who knows the reasons why..we can question all we want but still HE knows and it is not required for us to be informed. His grace is sufficient for us all and I put all my faith in Him and His wisdom.
She is One Of Our Own…Our age, Our family, Our friend, Our aunt, Our daughter and Sister; GiGi, Mom and Wife. It hits hard when it is that close and after twenty plus years of ministry with my husband I still know that the words are not there. I had always felt compassion to people in this situation but this time it is one of MY OWN!
There are no words that satisfy the hunger for answers, the longing for her back just to text or talk, endlessly about nothing and about everything….and the days in front of the fire..warming her toes…wasting all that expensive gas!….. OH..go ahead and waste it…it’s not a waste, silly me. Every time I look at my fire at my house it will be a warm remembrance of a time that was fleeting and a friend that was my best.
Take the time….linger by the fire…what is all the fuss about…not a darn thing we can do about any of it and even that gives me Hope…He has it all under control…Amen!
As I settle in to an evening of watching my Christmas tree twinkle, I can’t help but think back to the days as a little girl. As with most children, the excitement that comes with putting up a tree each year is the biggest day of the season…well, the first in a row of biggest days, actually. Not to diminish the start of Christmas vacation from school and the biggest day, Christmas morning to say the least!
That day was special as my dad or brother would go and cut down a big old cedar tree on the farm that we lived. None of those big city trees for us, nope…no way. And boy was I glad…that tree smelled so good, better than the others, literally fresh-cut! The tree was always huge, perfect and ours. My mamma had these beautiful decorations that she got from Germany when my family lived there during the Korean War.
My daddy was in the Army and she went there to live with him. Bless her heart, she traveled on an Army transport airplane with two young children in tow. She recently told me about this trip, (these days she tells me a lot of stories from way back when, she remembers those better than what has happened today, bless her heart) when she went far away from home with these little ones all alone on a big “non luxury” plane that took her to my daddy, which made it all worth it. This was back when they were happy and even had a third child in Germany. Those were the best of times. I can only imagine the life she had there. Those decorations were beautiful glass balls and I had always loved what they stood for, beauty and adventure and a life that seemed so far away from what is was now.
We also had the huge light bulbs all strung up in the primary and secondary colors, stark and bright! Cedar trees aren’t exactly known for their sturdy branches so needless to say it was an effort in fortitude to get those decorations to stay and not droop. We also had the bubble lites which were my favorite…always were a mystery! The tinsel was silver and like aluminum foil all crinkled up on a string and the finishing touch was icicles. At different years(when we were older and could do it ourselves) we would make ribbon chains for garland too and had painted wooden ornaments. Our trees were the prettiest of any ones….no ones ever could compare, I am pretty much a snob about that, unashamed so. I have no apologies to give because rarely do I profess so much surety about something about me.
Even now as an adult, I will tell you if you ask me that I have the prettiest tree of anyone. A few things I know for sure and this is one of them, even though I no longer have a cedar tree, I am a city girl now and loving that fact. My sweetart husband did cut me one for our first christmas together…how cute was that? The second thing I know for sure, that man loves me, after that it is stuff like I know all four of my babies think the world of me, not bragging on me but them, they all have a tender heart and especially toward their mamma ( and dad!( I say they love me more..ha!))but We never doubt that one and I know I make the best potato salad….
bar none!!!
Do I presume too much? I think not! This time of year brings out the brag in me and that is because I have so much to brag about…My GOD is so good to me….He has given me more than I could have ever asked for so I am only telling of HIS great love. This is my testimony of him. I am pretty sure he likes my Christmas trees the best too!
ough.
preacherswifeintheknow 