Hail Mary, Full of Grace

This week Pooh Bear reminded me that she's cut from the same cloth: she's a feminist.  As we waited for her bus one morning she struck up the following conversation.

"Mom, I wonder why women didn't count in the Bible," she questions.

"What do you mean, Pooh Bear?"  I ask back.

"Well, when the Bible counted people, they didn't count women OR children.  It just doesn't seem fair, like we're not people or something," she ventures.

"Hmm.  Well, we are people aren't we, and we should always be counted, huh," I summarize.

 "Yep."

"Yep.  I just filled out our U.S. census, and we're counted now.  You and I both on there fair and square.  It took a long, long time after Bible times for people to let women be counted and even vote. Some countries still don't count women or let them vote.  I love that we have that kind of freedom here now.   The people who wrote the Bible down didn't know any better, but God does. God made girls and loves us."

"Yep.  So, I'm kinda mad about somethin' else.  Why did God have to send a son instead of a daughter?"  she inquired.

"There are only two choices to pick from, and God had to pick one.  I like Jesus pretty well.  In fact, I'm crazy about him.  If God had sent a daughter, I'd have loved her just the same.  I have to say I'm not disappointed, but it's okay if you feel that way though.  You want to feel girls are important, and we are."

"I know," she states in her matter of fact, old soul way.

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The thirty minute writing assignment started "Like a fish" but the students were prohibited from using words like swim, water, and wet. Here's what Peace came out with:

Like a fish, I spent my weekend squirming and flopping about from place to place. My parents died in a car accident on the same day I was born. I never knew them. I am, of sorts, different in the head. People have been handing me off to the home of some other person. During the accident my brain got damaged. Dr. Lawson says that I'll never recover. I don't mind though. My brain don't work right. I tend to repeat myself due to short term memory loss. My head got hit in the accident. My memory is not its best. This weekend, I spent like a fish would- flopping around from home to home, because no one wants me. And my parents died.

I didn't realize I'd actually take time to read every weekend now, but it seems to be true for now. I finished, more accurately devoured Jenny Sanford's Staying True last weekend. Her faith and life instruct mine. Nothing like hanging out the laundry, and the fact is that her wash is clean, sparkly white. I admire her commitment to family, deep love and respectful way of letting go. Well done, Jenny.

This weekend Helen lent me her favorite book, The Time Traveler's Wife. Enjoying the story immensely so far.

Anyone have any recommended must reads, so I can have some things on queue?

And in the movie department. Thumbs down to Shutter Island and Precious. Sorry, Martin and Oprah. I wasn't inspired due to predictable yet depressing content.

Hurt Locker? Really?

I rented it Saturday from Redbox to watch with my son, Peace. Last week, Peace told me of his re-emerging interest in the military, so I set out to get that boy a war education by acquiring realistic blood and gut films for him to peruse. I nearly stopped breathing last Sunday when we had a where-are-you-headed-in-life talk and service to our country reappeared on the radar. I love this country. I love our soldiers. I am so grateful every. single. day. for how they put their lives on the line for me, but I'm not interested in this particular son heading to the Air Force unless he can convince me it's a word from God for his life. Just needs to hear the voice of God on it- that's all.

While viewing Hurt Locker Saturday, I spent the entire time in agony over the risks. I sucked in my breath and let it out with "Ooh, ohh, ooh. No, no, no, no. Ew, Eeee. Man!" the entire time the movie was on the screen. Imagine me thinking in the back of my head about my son in the risky positions of the characters.

And what to do with my own personal anti-gun and anti-war thoughts?

I think I won't worry about this today, and see where time takes us all. I mean, it can all change in a moment anyway.

I'm writing a story, only I didn't know it. I reckon it's not the kind of story which will ever be published. It's the story of my life, and it's such a good story because that's who I am. I've been writing it since I was born.

Thicket Dweller generously gave me a book which I'm now devouring called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. No stones thrown please when I say I did not go crazy for his Blue Like Jazz, but this book is about a million miles and a thousand years better for me. In Million, Donald mentions his previous lack of direction, and perhaps I caught onto that rather the snippets which vaulted his Blue to such fame. Makes me wonder if random and ADD weren't so darn popular these days, if Blue could have hit any printing press. Anyhow, all is forgiven as I fall head over heels into Million.

Here's the quote which sunk smack into my soul this morning, but first, let me set it up. Donald describes how a buddy of his, a dad, started living a better story in order to woo his teenage daughter back from a bad boyfriend. The dad took out a second mortgage and started building an orphanage in Mexico after finding poverty in the thoughtless way he'd been living. The daughter asked the dad if her family could go to Mexico together and take pictures in order to involve other people. And she dumps the jerk.


No girl who plays the role of a hero dates a guy who uses her. She knows who she is. She just forgot for a little while.

I haven't forgotten who I am, but I'm encouraged to be the hero of my own novel. Hope it ends well. Though my plot has changed drastically these last six months, I'm working towards the best possible conclusion at the end of the days God gives me. Right now the outcome looks much less like a Nicholas Sparks book and more like Come be my Light, but it's all good.

Dispatch from a Log Dog

In my new position at work, I have a variety of interesting tasks to do each day. My coworker, Puddin', is great, great, great at handling all our data. Even more importantly, she works well with people, drivers in particular. I think we've become quite a team. Our sweetheart of a boss had a sketch of two bird dogs hung in our office, and I mentioned how very apropos. Puddin' and I set to the task of sniffing out violations and are now known together as the log dogs.

Anyhow, yesterday we watched something painfully beautiful. One of our oldest drivers needed to come in, and he didn't recognize office staff he should have known. Though he's something of an old codger, he was handled gingerly. He was given a hotel room though his truck is his home, taken out for a big lunch, escorted personally by an extremely kind owner to the physician and disqualified temporarily from service until he could get home and get more help. The company found a couple of married drivers to drive his truck home for him. This man was treated with kindness and dignity through what must be a most difficult time for him. I am so proud and impressed with my company. I imagine other truck liners might have handled the situation much differently throwing around ugly words involving liability and termination. Instead, our man received the best from each person he encountered. Makes my heart sing and cry at the same time.

I have the sweetest sweet peas of children. I might not be saying so tomorrow, so I figure I better blog this while I feel it. Remember, I've got three real teenage boys and something of a spicy little girl. Here's the why behind my sweet thoughts today.

Claudette the Chicken was hand-raised from a chick by us in her own personal little single clutch of humans. She became a true pet more than a valuable hen, as I can't remember the last time she actually laid an egg. The kids would wildly swing on the swing-set with her in their laps and walk around with her perched on their heads. When we moved from the farm, friends sold us a red barn chicken tractor to match Clifford perfectly which became Claudette's new home in the city, all at Pooh Bear's request.

Here comes the sad part. Claudette was completely enclosed and safe in her abode, I thought. However, we were working on a fence and only the gates hadn't been installed when the crazy (I'm told but have never met her) neighbor's dogs somehow violently liberated our pet from her house, and you can guess what happened next. What's worse, is that Pooh Bear came home from school found the dogs and Claudette being eaten in progress.

Pooh Bear fell to pieces as you might imagine. She informed me that she would ask her second grade teacher to exempt her from any upcoming chicken projects at school. I asked Pooh Bear, "Exactly how many chicken related work is coming up next in class?"

Pooh Bear replied, "I have no idea, but just in case, I'm telling Ms. Long that I shouldn't have to do any of them. It will make me too sad."

As her brothers heard the news, they were also grieved. Claudette represented a significant part of their childhood and the loss of our farm life. I watched in awe as Peace offered Pooh Bear the rest of his beloved cat, Patches.

This sacrifice may not make sense to anyone but me, so let me explain. Peace's best friend is Patches. Patches came to him as a child via a lady at our church, Francis. Francis auditioned Peace to see that he would make an appropriate pet owner for her very fat and sassy "stray". Upon Peace and Patches first meeting, Patches rolled to his back and let Peace stroke his belly which made Francis gasp, "It took that cat a year to trust me like that!" It was love at first sight.

When we were selling the goats, baby goats, chickens, dogs, Pooh Bear and I cried together as each precious beast made it's way down our driveway and out of sight.
Peace found us sobbing after Ripley and Sarah had departed and responded with compassion, "Pooh Bear, I'll share Patches with you. He can be half yours and half mine."

I asked, "Pooh Bear, which half would you like? The front or the back? I highly recommend the front!" Peace and Pooh Bear sealed the deal that he'd clean the litter (oh, how I wish this were true), and she would do the feeding which seemed to so lighten the mood, and they would both be proud owners of a one-eyed, one-toothed geriatric cat.

So when Claudette passed away, Peace's tender response to Pooh Bear's heartache touched me deeply. I so pray Peace's generosity and kindness grows and spreads to make this world a better place.

Pooh Bear's friend also offered to give her a pretty new hen named Pudgy when we are ready. What a blessing.

Is God Big Enough?

It's so sweet. People worry about me. When I call with a need, folks lay down their lives on a moment's notice and take up my cause. These people are the hands, feet, ears, voices of Jesus to me, and I am so grateful. I am overwhelmed with the generosity and kindness of mankind and God Himself. So, I don't want anyone to fret about what I'm about to write. It's just my feelings at this time.

I always thought I was so busy in my former life, and I was. I took Tater to football, attended Peace's cross country meets, made sure Wise One got friend time, and played lots of Uno with Pooh Bear. While I still do these things and work, it's in a much smaller window than I'd ever dreamed, and I hope and pray it's enough. Having three determined teen boys and a strong-willed, beautiful little girl in the house feels like the perfect storm at times. I ask myself frequently, "Is God big enough to take on these broken hearts?" My head says,"Yes", but I admit that my heart has doubts. This is especially true when my oldest states with all honesty, "The only thing I want, I'll never have." I wonder if I'm selfish and sacrificing my children at some level for simply wanting dignity following a tragedy. It's a terrifying thought. This is where I try to lean into the knowledge that God is quite big enough to cover me and all my mistakes.

I determined when I was twenty-two or so to have a life so well-lived that I'd never have regrets. I naively thought I could make it happen, but then life hit like a hundred ton steam train screeching off the tracks. I have regrets stacked like red bricks around an untended secret garden. I promise I don't look at them and agonize all the time. In fact, I'm learning to let go, really let go and move on. I can't tell you how many times when a new horrible consequence pops up, I answer the question of a concerned friend, "How are you doing after..." I say, "It's not happening right now, so I'm fine." Kinda like Scarlet O'Hara saying, "I'll think about that another day" but really meaning it. I just don't want more bricks of regret in my stack if I can help it. It's not easy watching my children suffer from my choices- though they may be very healthy choices for me.

This morning I woke for my morning prayers. I found myself approaching God with an an agenda, my agenda, and of course, it wasn't going well. I felt like I was trying to force God to answer me without being willing to listen. How would that ever work? So, I laid my thoughts aside and struggled just to be, just to remain in the Healing Presence. Man, I must have some big issues under all the junk on my brain, but apparently I'm not ready to deal.

I'm currently wrestling with the fine line between disappointment, mourning and resentment. I am stumped about what constitutes resentment. Wouldn't it include feelings of revenge or getting in a jab? I just don't have that in me. or at least I believe I don't. Hurting someone else in my own pain doesn't make sense. However, I was born with an unsinkable sense of justice, and I worry I hide resentment under the guise of healthy boundaries taking form in the wide-legged stance of "Don't tread on me."

If you have any thoughts or stories on resentment, I'd like you to share. I'm looking for clarity.

New Beginnings Again

I feel like such a big girl now. I worked a forty hour work week for the first time since before the personal cell phone came into fashion. Everyday I dress up like a grown up, get the kids up and on a school bus, and drive ten minutes tops to an office. I pull records, make phone calls, invite folks into to sit down beside me and talk about truck driving. Do you think the drivers know that I have never been behind the wheel of an eighteen wheeler? Oh, yeah. It's obvious, but I have learned some new things about another world I'd never known this week. It's like Avatar for me on so many levels. I put on my Avatar trucking self, by the way which I think will be named Catfish (wink to Kayce), and explore a brand new culture. Drivers are from all walks of life, and I have a new respect for the smarts it takes to drive safely and wisely. These people work so hard and so long away from home for long stretches of time.

Now onto the home front.

My children are quite into the school routine now after 2 1/2 months, even the two who never set foot inside a public school before. I am so grateful I did not have to spit them into the system the day I got a job, because no routine would have been established. The timing on finding work is impeccably God's. I squeezed in an entire Christmas season before employment with my young 'uns as well. I will try to look back on the treasure of sixteen years at home with joy instead of dwelling on the abrupt, unplanned end. It's a force of sheer will for me not to nit pick all the things I do not appreciate concerning the disservices done to children sometimes in an institution. I advocate and work hard to keep a positive attitude instead. Time home and homeschooling has been a sweet ride, and I've been one lucky woman to have had it.

Clifford is a perfectly beautiful home now. The blessings and handyman skilz of Andy, Buddy, Jack, and Don have created showers, kitchens, closets, walls where none had been before. I and an army of friends have covered the walls in paint with more colors than present in a rainbow. I look forward at to spring and creating a new truevyne garden. Stop on by for dinner if you're close.

I am loving my new job. It's such an answer to prayer for me. It includes things like:

cultural diversity
challenging work
helping sometimes reluctant people
great hours
good pay and benefits

I especially like that the two people I work closest with love to laugh.

I'm looking for a CB handle for myself. Any suggestions? It has to be trucker savvy.

Life is good.

Starting a full time job tomorrow. I haven't held a job in literally sixteen years, besides being a trainer for CGS and writing. Though even I couldn't be more surprised, I'll be working in the trucking industry helping with driving logs. I think it will be interesting. Maybe some good blog tales may come of it.

Wish me luck.

The Fifth Season by Frederick Ohler

For four seasons
and all the cycles within them
within us and without us
for periods, tides, phases
for birth and growth and decline and death
thank You, God.
To live is to have rhythm
and time is the signature on all Your compositions.

Forgive us that
too often we fight against the rhythm
trying to be twenty when we’re fifty,
craving adulthood when we're still children
coveting summer when it’s winter,
detesting the heat when it’s July,
too often unwilling
to let go and let You be
in. Your good time.

Forgive us no less when we worship Chronos,
cower before clocks
schedule surprises
and tick our lives to death.

We are not Canaanites, we are Christians
and for us there is a fifth season.
You became flesh
that flesh might become You.
Love invaded time
and love is the fifth season
not bound by daylight time
or standard time
or Pacific time
or troubled time
or any time.
always seasoned, always seasoning
as old as ‘in the beginning’
as permanent as forever,
as new
as now
as possible as Christ.
Make Him possible in us.
Amen.

This is my prayer for the New Year. Would you like to join me?

Peace turns 16 tomorrow. Um, really? Someone find the brakes and put them on time. Fast.

We're celebrating Pooh Bear's birthday instead with a huge little girl birthday party. Hardly seems fair.

Attended my usual DeLo New Year's Eve party. I can't remember laughing so long and so hard in a very long time. Something to do with that crazy SNL skit about the woman with baby hands on Lawrence Welk and Helen's dance moves to "Don't Stop Believin'". She totally rocked it. Picture a serious expression, full body sway, jerking head, and dramatic arm waving during "up and down the boulevard". Then there was the overheard comment during our slam dance to the Ramones about what that kind of dancing does to women's bodies who have given birth too many times.

I'm seriously looking for a job in Knoxville. Call me with leads in town friends.
Tough time to enter the job market after sixteen years of stay-at-home momness.

Oh to grace
how great a debtor,
daily I'm constrained to be.

Let Thy Goodness
Like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander,
Lord I feel it.
Prone to leave the One I love.

Here's my heart, Lord.
O, Take and seal it.
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Just to be sure I wrote a simple message to my blogging friends...

Merry Christmas.

May this be an especially lovely and peaceful time for you and yours.

It's official. I now have three teenage boys. Wise One turned thirteen. It's also official that I am an all out geek. I took the boys to see Avatar and loved it. Anyone else see it?

Yesterday, I spent the day at Shands Hospital in Gainesville mostly waiting to get my son's toe re-examined. It had turned nice and black. Those who knew anything about it were concerned the part of the toe became a mass of necrotic tissue which needed to be removed by painful scraping. Can I say how delighted I am that we were wrong? It wasn't certain until the site was opened and drained that it was a "runners hematoma" which is simply a nasty blood blister with a few infected spots. As long as the site stays clean it will heal quickly!

Tonight Christmas lights. Happy Holidays, friends.

Peace stayed home from finals yesterday, but attended today. He'll make up the other two tomorrow (saying prayers/crossing fingers). He would say he's a bit better. The toe looks pretty awful, blue and swollen, but it seems more localized to one place on the big toe rather than a flaming red foot. Could this be good news? I'm hoping so. So far, it doesn't look bitten by zombies, but I'm positively sure I wouldn't want it to be my toe.

A Memorial For Tina Lillig

I am not surprised at how moved I am by this.

It wasn't a jammed toe after all. Peace has an awful spider bite- we think from a brown recluse. Peace called me from school saying, "Something is about to explode in my toe. Come get me."

The doc loaded the boy with antibiotics, steroids, and hydrocodone. He stressed the fact that the antibiotic and steroids probably wouldn't do a thing, but he was giving them anyway, just in case.

"Mostly, you just try and make it through the pain with the pain meds till it's over," he said. Great.

Peace explained, "I have finals tomorrow. Will I be able to think?"

"Nope. This pain stuff isn't so great for studying or taking tests. I'll give you a note," he answered.

Um. A note for skipping finals. Not a great plan, but it's what we've got to work with. We headed back to his school and the secretary called the principal.

Peace whispered, "We're taking this to the top, Mom!" Love that sense of humor.

The principal in all her grace assured us the school would do whatever was necessary including letting him make up finals after Christmas. Oh, I so hope it's not necessary.

Prayers for him please. He's really torn up about skipping his first two finals today. They are his hardest subjects.