I Am Grateful

I am visiting a dear friend of mine who lives in New Bern, N.C. I worked with her husband for many years. He and I were close friends and I became close friends with his wife who I will call Miss B in the remainder of this post. John, my friend, passed away several years ago after a long and agonizing decline brought on by symptoms related to having been a smoker. Miss B and I have remained great friends and I have a standing invitation to visit with her at any time. Her family has taken me in as one of their own. They are close knit and often eat their evening meals together. All of them are in their late seventies to mid-eighties. All of them have many stories to tell of the area we live in and around. Time with them puts me in mind of the years when folk would sit at the table or in the living room and talk to each other.
Miss B lives in the historic district of New Bern. New Bern is the second oldest town in North Carolina and, arguably, the home of Pepsi Cola. Miss B's home was built in 1904 and is basically a shotgun house. It is as solid as a rock and comforting. I believe the strength in this home comes from both the construction and the love that has permeated the fabric of the home. I stay here when my husband is in the local hospital or, as in this case, because it comforts me. Miss B spoils me. I have learned to let her spoil me.
I called her yesterday and asked could I come visit for a couple of nights. She said yes without hesitation and began making plans for our visit immediately.
There are people who have come and gone in my life who brought something into my life that sustained me and lifted me up and over difficult times. Miss B and her family are those kind of people. She and I love to reminisce about John. We talk of him often and tell the same stories over and over again. Miss B and I loved him so much and he loved us. He found a great deal of joy in our nagging him and threatening to tell on him. When he passed away I realized what a huge place he held in my heart. Like myself he was quirky and given to coloring outside the lines of convention. He was humble and, as I found out later, far deeper than I imagined.
Paintings hang in their living room that John painted. I am convinced he was a high functioning autistic. I knew him for years before I knew he painted. It took him two years to paint one picture because he did intense research to ensure he represented the subject matter accurately. One of his paintings has a forest with pine straw on the ground, grass pushing through the pine straw, trees full of leaves  and a variety of other plant life. Every blade of grass is individually painted, every leaf on the trees is individually painted. The effect is exquisite in detail. It defies imagination. He used an old pencil drawing he found in a book as the source of his painting. He changed the trees in the painting because the trees in the pencil drawing were not indigenous to the area portrayed in it.
I could go on and on and maybe I will one day. John was a man within a man within a man. I learned so much about him at his funeral. I learned things I would never have guessed. Wonderful things. Tender things. He never mentioned them. He was that humble in his response to his many amazing life choices outside of work.
And yet, he was a conspiracy theorist who would go off on a tangent in a skinny minute and talk it through for hours. He was naïve of the technical world. Like many men his age he never trusted computers or their output. He refused to learn beyond a certain point and taught himself what he felt he needed to do on a computer. This made him the subject of a number of jokes. I don't know if he ever caught on because he stayed on track about the stupid computers and why should he use them and how "they" could see "us" and hear "us" over the computer even if we were not using the it at the time. Yet he developed a detailed catalog of a large variety of aircraft parts, their names and assigned part numbers. He did this on  a computer along with small pictures for demonstration purposes. This was awesome but in no way meant that he planned to learn anything further about the computer and the systems we utilized.
So now I am sitting at the computer in the home he resided in since the 1960's and I am certain that he highly approves. Anything that made Miss B happy made him happy. He lived for her happiness.
Miss B and I have learned to live with his absence but we do not see the time when it will feel natural to us. We talk of him often. We laugh at stories of him and at times we believe he is nearby grinning and feeling happy that we are happy.
Tomorrow I will drive the 30 plus miles back home. I made a good choice when I called and asked could I visit. Love given freely and without reservation is deeply healing. I return home having been gifted a wee healing from my friend who loves me freely and without reservation. I am grateful.

Two Snows

It is a few minutes after 10 p.m. and my imaginings began the moment the support group chat ended.

I thought I heard a bird calling from a tree out along the treeline. (There is no treeline and it is the night which is how I knew these were my imaginings.) 

The sound of the bird drew me to a sense of joy and wonder. My grandfather, on my mother's side, could call up many different kinds of birds. He was a true outdoorsman having lived as a farmer for many years. He had a natural gift for mimicking and a love for storytelling. The sound of the bird out along the treeline was a form of a memory. I stood in the yard many an evening as he responded to a variety of birdcalls. It was magical. He would stop and wait for their response and cup his hands around his mouth or form his lips to make a different call.

The mockingbirds and the whippoorwills were the first to show up along the treeline. I don't remember any of them coming much closer. If I could be so bold as to consider the mind of a bird, I would say they were puzzled by their response to a call with no imaginable source. It seemed to come from that tall figure standing a short distance from the woods. But what could that mean and how crazy would they have to be to flit over on what could be a suicide mission. I am taking extreme liberties in imagining their thoughts. But it takes an imagination to watch your Papa whistle up birds and have them come to the treeline in response. My grandfather would tire of calling them and move to go to the house. If I was lucky he would take the time to recount a short story of other times he experienced with the birds. 

That set of memories evokes the distinct smell of pine trees, pine straw lying deep on the forest floor and a light wind blowing through causing the trees to sway a slow dance back and forth in rhythm with the wind. A sandy, narrow road ran from the main road to their house and continued further down splitting three different ways to access their old house and two tobacco barns. It continued on around the side of a large field used for tobacco, vegetables and, on schedule, to lay fallow for a year. Wow, "to lay fallow" what a great analogy for resting with purpose.    

The large field had long rows but a trick of perception, created by a slight rise midway in the rows, gave the illusion of shorter rows. For some reason, the illusion tricked me over and over again as I was growing up. I would help to sucker tobacco and get happy that the row was ending and another step forward would reveal that darn row running out ahead of me for quite a long ways to the bordering treeline. Why I was tricked yet again by that illusion is a mystery to me. 

I titled this post "Two Snows". I am going to leave the title as it is because I was going to write about two snows. It is incongruent but I can't imagine anyone cares.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

A Love That Will Not Let Me Go

I am standing in a thick, black darkness. I am surrounded on all sides by this darkness. I begin to feel as if the darkness has substance. I move my hands to touch it. I imagine it feels like a rich velvet material. I sense I am facing towards something but the depth of the black darkness numbs my senses.  I begin to know the darkness is the dread in my heart. I am, for the moment, willfully blind to the what lies ahead of me. I sense a vast, unyielding space and I wish to back off from it, turn and run. I wish for the light and the innocence of a time I believe I remember yet the memory does not penetrate the darkness.
 A wind begins to gently blow tousling my hair as it swirls the darkness around me. A low, whistling of wind blowing over and under something comes to me on the flow of the wind. The darkness swirls yet does not part. The wind blows yet cannot change the depth or texture of the darkness surrounding me. There are no tiny openings for light. No reference points. The absence of a frame of reference alarms me. Part of me begins to believe I am descending into a dark madness. The whistling of the wind subsides. Silence! I strain to catch the sound of the wind. The remoteness envelopes me. As the wind blows harder and harder the darkness begins to lift. I strain to see yet wish not to see. Slowly the swirling darkness lifts up and over me. I am standing on the edge of an unbelievably beautiful chasm. Birds flit and fly through the clear, blue of the sky. The scent of flowers pouring out of every gap in the stones of the side of the chasm fill the air with a sweet aroma. The aroma is delicate. It whispers over and over of love and yet more love. A golden glow permeates every atom of the air, the flowers, the stones. I cannot tell the glow apart from the stone or the flower or the air or the birds. The air plays a melody apart from the wind, apart from everything I can see with my eyes. The air fills with a melody that permeates the golden light that permeates all that I can see. The wind, air, melody, golden light and magnificent aroma blend, twirling and twirling together forming a strand of all that I see and experience. The strand grows longer and fills with the essence of the lovely chasm. The wind drapes the strand of all that I have seen around my neck and seems to kiss me on the cheek. Everything around me fades into a mist into a dream. I wake up. Oh,  love that will not let me go! I call Your name and You answer. I cry out and You hear. I am forever changed. I am forever Yours. Forgive my fear!

Freedom

I'm thinking of what fear feels like and reaching back to find times in my life where fear grabbed me around the throat and choked off my joy or my chance to do something thrilling or fulfilling or anything that was on the other side of fear. I am thinking of this because I just had a discussion with someone very close to me about fear and I felt that fear slide up into my throat like a cunning viper snake and I remembered that I am not accepting fear at the moment. The door is shut and locked and I am not peeking out to look at the fear. One look can last for days and days and paralyze me with overwhelming imaginings of "what if" and I know that "what if" never happens. I am not talking about healthy fears here, just to stop that train of thought, cause I am not crazy or dumb. Healthy fear is good and I welcome it and there are times when I wish it would kick in for me.
I am talking about the fear of the other variety and I am going to try a few "remember when's" to express that fear of the other variety and what happened when I stepped through it. So here goes and welcome to the jungle.
I remember standing on the edge of a floating pier that was out in a lake and the water was over my head. I wanted to jump into that water and swim around and feel the coolness but the six inches from the platform into that water looked so far from the water to me and the darkness of the water seemed to swallow up any bravery I could summons. No one knew. I agonized many times from many edges over water that I wanted to jump into and enjoy. I did this for many years. No one knew. I pretended I did not know how to swim so I could be in the beginner class of swimming in my senior year of high school. The idea of jumping from a diving board petrified me. No one knew. I could not voice a fear that I knew was unfounded. I watched people dive into the water, fling themselves into the water, cannonball themselves into the water and they did not disappear into a netherworld or dissolve or die on impact. But I was frozen in that fear. I was in my forties when I met a swimming instructor with the gift of teaching people with a fear of the water. First I jumped from the six inches into the water. Oh, what joy! Then I did simple dives from six inches over the water. I saw myself going to the Olympics and being the oldest champion in swimming. But it did not stop there, friends, my most amazing story is that I became a certified lifeguard through the Red Cross. In my forties, I became a certified lifeguard. I passed the tests. I rescued the fake baby in the deep end of the pool. All of those years of fear that paralyzed me melted away. I looked back and I could see myself full of that fear and feel sad for that child, the teenager, the woman who simply could not make the next move. But then I did and fear showed itself to be a liar. Fear is a liar. The moment I made that first, short jump I knew the fear was a liar. As I type I can feel the freedom from the lie engulfing me again.
Fear of the unknown was huge for me. What was in the dark? Who was upstairs when I knew I was alone in a two-story house?  What lurked in the quiet woods near me when I was alone? Hours and hours of listening and waiting for that "something" to show up and...and what? I had no idea what would happen when and if "they" got me or the woods came alive and took me into their world. Lord only knows, my imagination was as big as this world and I used it to scare myself out of my mind when I could have been sleeping. Again, fear robbed me of the fun other people were having and the freedom they experienced coming and going in that "place" where I just knew something horrible held court. Lack of sleep watching shadows and listening to sounds and waiting for the shadows to move towards me and for the sound to show itself as an indescribable...indescribable what? I had no idea. Again, I became an adult with this fear as strong in me as it was when I was a child. But one day I found myself needing to confront that fear and move through it. The fear was in my way and what I needed was on the other side. I stepped through it. Joy! Nothing hurt me. No one did whatever it was that someone was going to do. Freedom. Precious freedom. Did I have moments later on when I had to walk through this fear again? Yes. Did I walk through it? Yes. Fear is a liar. Fear tells me in an anxious whisper that I better turn around and run. Fear lied to me. I did not run. I walk through it and today I can go where I want to go and stay where I want to stay and I do not have that liar named Fear calling the shots and the "what if's" evaporate and are replaced by the "Yes, I can!"Freedom!
Now I am in a new phase of my life and my husband is very sick. I have sprung a few leaks myself and we don't have a financially bright future and things are getting ready to change and the changes are going to hurt. They are going to hurt to the core. They are already hurting to the core. And the answers are elusive and the journey is fraught with the unknown and yet the known. Fear begins to creep in with the awful and ugly stench I know so well. But this time I have closed the door on fear. This time I have all the experiences of stepping through fear and I have a God who goes before me and, for today, I just slammed the door in fear's face. After all, fear is a liar and fear brings confusion and fear tells me I can't and I won't and things will never be o.k. and what if! Oh my goodness, what if? What if I keep that door closed and throw away the key? What if I dare to be fear-free? What if I choose to believe that I can, and I will, walk free and what if, when I remember the fearful times from my past, I just smile and keep on walking? 

Romans 8:31King James Version (KJV)

31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

Swimming in Unknown Waters

I pull into the parking lot of the nursing home and rehab facility. I feel tired and numb. A nagging cough has worn down my system allowing a fog to cover my thoughts and muffle my hearing. Robert is in room 105 of this facility. I push myself to open the door to the building, sign myself in and go to his room. He is not in his bed. A few doors down I find him in the physical therapy room. He is in no mood for a bright hello. I don't think there is any activity he despises more than physical therapy. Someone is telling him what to do and for how long and for how many times. It goes against his grain. He looks at me as if I have brought him into the castle of Atilla the Hun and I say something cheerful to the room including him. Robert struggles to conceal a snarl. He is out of his element in another and more powerful way. All of the therapists in the room are women. For Robert, feeling as vulnerable as he feels now, a group of women having a voice in his routine makes him want to bite nails!  
A week later: I thought Robert had given up on himself. He did not want to do the physical therapy or watch t.v. or open the door to the hallway. He wanted to sleep and be left to his own thoughts.
The medical staff discovered that Robert had a UTI and after a couple of days of antibiotics Robert was back, kinda sorta, agreeing to do p.t. and watching a little t.v. and strutting a bit of will to improve. 
Christmas is almost here and I have not done one Christmas thing. Whatever a Christmas thing looks like these days. No tree because the cats would find a tree particularly enticing. No gifts because of no money. No people over or to visit in their homes because Robert is in the nursing home and no one has put forth an invitation to their home. No sorrow about any of this because Christmas is more than just one day of the year. Putting it in perspective, which I can do at the age of 66, creates a peaceful place in me. I get melancholy when I imagine life as it was or how I have crafted it to have been long ago. Life always looks better in the rearview mirror. Oh dear, that sounds pessimistic and I don't feel pessimistic at all. I feel real and I feel free of the burdens of recreating something that was meant for a time in my life but not for all of my life. I could demonstrate a different approach to Christmas. I could decorate the deck and bake cookies and any number of other things to celebrate the season. I just don't want to do those things this year and have not wanted to for a number of years. I love the decorations of other people and how they have hung lights from every available space in their yards. I love the coordination of song and decor so popular these days. I love all of it. I don't want to do it here. I have learned that I end up with piles of lights and screws, nails, a hammer, some tape and a partially wrapped deck when the mood goes away and the decorating grinds to a halt. 
If children lived here with us I would take another approach. If donkeys could fly...you get my point. 
Meanwhile, back at the home place, I settle down for a long nap and a few motivational thoughts drift through my mind. I shoot them down with my imaginary motivational thoughts gun and settle myself in freedom from unrealistic expectations.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Two Sides of One Coin

When you wear the weed of impatience in your heart instead of the flower Acceptance-with-Joy, you will always find your enemies get an advantage over you.” 

― Hannah Hurnard, Hinds' Feet on High Places


"Outwardly, I was a person of service, sacrifice, self-discipline, and apparent loyalty. But inwardly, I was filled with spiritual ambition
-- the earnest desire for some achievement and distinction and the willingness to strive to achieve it. I had an insatiable desire to be seen and counted among the mature and successful. This resulted in a deep inner struggle with competition, rivalry, and jealousy, and left me with an ever-pervading sense of restlessness--the feeling that there is something more that I have to do or put in order to feel valued, affirmed, accepted, or like I belong.

Jack Frost, Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship

Breathless

The little girl squatted near to the ground with her head bent over as she stared at the earth directly under her nose. She held her breath. She waited for one grain of sand to move near the entrance of a tiny hole in the sand.  Earlier she had stuck her small wood stick into the hole while singing the doodlebug song. Now she waited. It was the doodlebug's time to play the game and come up through the hole in the ground pushing a grain of sand to the side as it emerged. The emergence was the sole reason for the stick and the song. 
The little girl rocked back on her knees feeling a tingling and the beginning of discomfort from squatting. Her hope of seeing a doodlebug was fading when she noticed, a little to the side of the hole, a small ant carrying a tiny twig while moving at a fast clip up and over miniscule obstacles in the sand. At his size and with the weight of his cargo there were a great many obstacles. He zigged and zagged around first one and then the other piece of leaf, pebble and tiny trenches crossing his path. 
The journey of the ant fascinated the little girl. She forgot about the doodlebug. The tiny ant claimed all of her attention. 
As the little girl watched the ant she struggled with the temptation to interfere with his journey. She fought the urge to confuse him with larger objects or to move him off his path with a small twig. The ant, unaware that his plans were at the whimsy of a huge being squatted near his path, continued on with his cargo of a tiny twig firmly in his grasp. 
The child moved her body around relieving pressure from her legs without losing sight of the lone ant. 
She became fascinated at the determination and tenacity of the little soldier ant. He seemed to be on a solitary mission. Moments passed as he toiled away and she cheered him on finding delight in his conquests and anxiety as he worked through yet another barrier. Many moments passed this way until the little girl heard her mother calling for her. 
Mouthing silent encouragements to the ant she stood and turned to leave.
Seconds later the doodlebug pushed a grain of sand out of the small hole in the ground. He pulled himself up onto the flat ground. Strange, he thought to himself, he could have sworn he heard someone singing the doodlebug song accompanied by the swishing of a small stick in the entrance of his home. He sighed a little in frustration at the effort it took for him to answer the doodlebug call. Turning, he began the journey into the safety of the sand pulling a small grain of sand in behind him.
Meanwhile, the ant continued negotiating his way over and through a tangled mass of detritus. He did not think of the struggle. He thought no further than the challenge in front of him. Oblivious to anything outside of his mission he soldiered on with his tiny twig grasped tightly to himself.