Madame Rubies

Twinkies and Toilet Paper (or Closing the Cover on the Best Kind of Book)

2012-02-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

I was born of two readers. My dad was always reading. My mom, on the other hand, says she gave up reading when I was born. According to her, she never would have gotten anything done and there would have been no one to parent me, because once she started a book she would sit right there and read until she finished it. Being a person who usually reads multiple books, each with varying degrees of interest and different purposes, I couldn't grasp her reasoning. I can put a book down and pick it up later, the story like a good friend popping in for coffee in the early afternoon and then again for drinks after dinner.

Joshilyn's books are different. If she were to put them out weekly, I'd be like Mom and never get a thing accomplished outside of page turning and hysterical laughter. With most books, I mosey through them like I'm shopping for pleasure, nothing specific in mind. When I crack the cover of a Jackson novel, I am on an old game show with a cart and a timer and I have to get as much merchandise inside that cart and make it back to the front of the store before the ugly sounding buzzer goes off and signals game over. I find myself in bed, bug-eyed, sleep-deprived, desperate to know the next detail.

I finished A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty today. I slid her carefully onto the shelf by my other two signed hardbacks and lovingly nestled my little Between, Georgia fox girl by the spine. She'll be happy there, but I am already sighing. What do you read after that? I feel as I did when the final episode of the final season of Gilmore Girls wound to a close on my screen and I had no more witty Lorelei and Rory banter to anchor my days. Only, this is worse. No one but Joshilyn could write a line like, "It was just my best friend Roger, fixing my tit for me," and make you sigh at the sweetness. I mean, the word "tit" rarely elicits feelings of nostalgia and peacefulness, but if you read the scene, that line will bring a little smile to your lips.

Who knows when another novel will send me barreling through store aisles shoving Twinkies and toilet paper into the cart, tripping over three-inch heels, rushing to beat the clock and devour the story. Those are rare treats, those books, but every time I choose a novel to read, a part of me wonders, "Will this be it? The next book I can't put down?"

I'll let you know when the next one comes.

A Grown-Up Kind of Evening

2012-01-31T08:43:00.000-08:00

Last night, one of the youth babysat for me. We have some of the most generous teenagers, and I am very grateful. It is going to be a long year, Corey's final year of seminary, and time to myself is a commodity. I was nervous because the last time we left the kids with sitters, Haydn had one of his full-on Aspie meltdowns. However, I prepared him in advance for this event - no surprises. It was lovely to spend an evening out with no problems.

I drove to Oxford, about an hour away, to go to a book signing. Joshilyn and I met when we were both members of Momwriters, years ago. I remember the excitement over her first book, Gods in Alabama. I went to her signing in Jackson that year. I also attended her signing in Jackson when she published Between, Georgia. Due to my work hours, I missed her event for The Girl Who Stopped Swimming and she didn't come near here for Backseat Saints. It was lovely to see her again. I always enjoy her reading voice and the way she explains the creative process. The way we birth stories is similar, though not exactly the same of course. It was a fun evening with great conversation around a table at City Grocery before driving home to start reading.

I really needed to sleep. I have been sick and Corey was out of town and there was school today... You know the routine. I crawled into bed at 9 and planned to read till 10. At 11, I forced myself to close the cover and go to sleep. Well, I tried to sleep. Thanks to my cough medicine, I was actually awake more than asleep. I may as well have stayed up reading. But, I am trying to get some things done today so I can disappear into the story for a while longer this afternoon. I finished the third chapter of my work in progress and picked up some reference books from the library. I want to get my setting just right. I hate inconsistencies in books.

I'd like to offer you something deeper. I have a blog in my head (The Parable of the Ugly Spoon Rest), but I am foggy-headed from cough medicine and sleep-deprived as well. Hopefully I will have my wits about me by the end of the week. I don't like it when my life swims around me like a dream.

HT

Six Places

2012-01-30T07:58:00.000-08:00

Six Places

{1} Kentucky - I was born in eastern Kentucky. It is home. We moved from there when I was four, but we went back often. I was able to visit last summer, and it brought up all sorts of things. My body felt like the vines of history twined around each limb. Poetry poured forth after my visit. I want to go back this summer. I'd really like to take my boys there. You understand a person better when you see where they come from. My grandmother's white house is a part of me. The winding roads and dirt hollers map my heart.

{2} Rocky Road - When we left Kentucky, we moved to Hopkins. First, there was trailer #13 in McDonald's Mobile Home Park and then, a year later, there was the single-wide on Rocky Road. We lived there from the time I was five until just before my 13th birthday. Rocky Road houses my childhood. I had chicken pox there. Wendy and I played house, dressed our Barbies, put on plays. Ashley and I have a picture of us, sitting on the front steps, my baby sister between us. I insisted I was going to ice skate there (roller skates + snow = why did Mom say no?). That's where we lived when Dad left, when I cried all day on my pink bedspread. My baby sister arrived on Rocky Road. My Papaw died there. The trailer now sits empty, windows broken, lot overgrown.

{3} Lower Richland High School - The sidewalk by the library: that's where Brian kissed me for the very first time. It was the first time I was kissed by a boy I wanted to kiss me, and it was magical. The "Diamond" where my friends and I spent our lunches for four years: it no longer exists. They put a building on top of our place. Mr. Latham's class: where I learned I did NOT want to be a journalist after all, but I did want to write. He and Mr. Martin were my writing encouragers. I owe them a lot. The football field: homecoming in the rain. The computer lab where I spent hours with Lynn, preparing the school literary magazine: who knew she would be dead in just five years. She left me her words on so many pages. The psyche class where Pat doodled in my book and took my picture: he lived two years after high school. I found so many diamonds in that mine.

{4} Temple Baptist Church - I accepted Christ in that gym. It was painted two shades of blue. I met my husband there, though I'd have never guessed it at the time. Eric and I, kissing in the hall before VBS. Luke, his brother... yeah, I wasn't the best behaved teenager. But, I had friends there - drama and pain, but friends too. Kim and Rebecca and Karen and Dustin and so many others. Pat walking me to the sanctuary, one arm around my shoulders, ever the gentleman. George Porter smiling so big. Phil Chappell with the orange tiger paw on his glasses, flirting like only an old man can flirt and get away with it. Pool parties and pizza and just what did Jesus want from me. Trey baptized me there, and both of my parents came.

{5} Pilgrim's Way - God got us there through Ashley's sister forging a note so she could ride home on the bus with me. I took my first communion there, once I realized it wasn't real wine. I worshiped the teenagers and their lock-ins. Mom sang. She met her husband there. She married him and, later, Preacher married Corey and I before the same altar. I learned to read my Bible in Peggy's Sunday School class, where I sat next to Pam. Ms Anne offered a dollar for each commandment I could learn. The very next week, I recited all ten, thankyouverymuch. Now, it's where my Uncle Greg's body rests, near Preacher and Ms Virginia. The empty cemetery now holds too many friends.

{6} Target - It isn't there anymore. Rather, the building I worked in isn't there. It was bulldozed and rebuilt. Newer, cleaner, bigger, better. I suppose. I answered the telephones, and I could see clear across the store from my little desk by the fitting rooms. I met Joey there. Summer and Marcielle taught me more than just zoning and pricing and replacing watch batteries. Honestly, there is too much in my gut to write this one down. I suppose, I grew up there. That's all.

30 in 30 - Wrap Up

2012-01-27T15:21:00.000-08:00

The day got off to a bad start with the case of the disappearing diamond. When I went to bed, I left my wedding band and engagement ring on the nightstand. Normally, I put them in the bathroom before sleeping, but I was already in bed when I took them off. I can't sleep in them anymore, not since pregnancy #1. My hand goes numb when I try. Well, I picked up the band this morning and could not find the engagement ring. I have torn the room apart and have no idea how it could have gone anywhere. But, I am choosing to be calm. In a day or two, I will stumble upon it, right under my nose, I am sure. Instead of panicking, I took David to school. He helped me with my 30 Random Acts of Kindness by taking a Dr Pepper to his teacher and little treat bags of homemade yumminess to his principal and the school secretary.

My next stop was Starbucks. I ordered myself an apple chai. One of our youth, Josh, suggested I try one, and it was quite heavenly. I always drank vanilla chai when I was a Borders barista (RIP lovely bookstore), and I love apple cider, so the drink was pretty much meant for me. I ordered my drink and also purchased a $5 gift card. When I first walked in, no one was in line behind me, and I wondered who i would give the card to. However, an older man got in line behind me before my transaction was complete, and he seemed positively tickled when I handed him the card.

From there, it was home to make a plan for the morning. But, first, I stuck a candle in one of the chocolate pumpkin muffins I made for the goody baskets. I found the recipe on Pinterest, where I find most of my recipes as of late. It was so simple, and it felt crazy to not add milk, eggs, butter, etc... The two ingredients are cake mix and a 15 oz can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, pureed pumpkin). You just mix it all up and fill the muffin cups with batter. Unlike cupcake batter, you actually fill the cups all the way up for these. It made exactly 12 delicious muffins. I blew out the candle after making my wish, but I still have not eaten the muffin. I have been running all day. It will probably be breakfast in the morning (don't you judge me. It is fruit, right?) Tonight, for dessert, there is tiramasu that I brought home from lunch.

Haydn helped me load the car full of trash bags we have filled over the last month. The boys selected toys to donate, including a box of K'nex that went to Haydn's therapy office. I cleaned out my closet and the craft room. I was ruthless with myself. I no longer own anything with an empire waist. So, there. No one else should have reason to ask when my baby is due. *wink* We also filled the car with baskets of baked goods, a box full of children's books (to be shipped to the Chocktaw Mission), a stack of books inscribed "in memory of Natalie Rose York," and other random materials to make the day a success.

We stopped at the church first. I dropped a stack of postcards in the out box. Those will go to a handful of youth. I love sending them little cards just to say, "hey, I'm thinking of you today." We also taped a bag of change to the soda machine, stocked Corey's fridge with Coke Zero and Mountain Dew Voltage, and delivered a basket of cookies and muffins to the janitorial staff. Those men and women care for the house of God and do not get thanked nearly enough. The basket in the picture is the one we dropped off at the library, but they all looked about the same.

We made it to the post office next. We always go to the downtown branch, because it is next door to the church and one block from the library. That just makes it insanely convenient. The same man and woman are always behind the counter, and I look forward to chatting with them each time we visit. I ship things often. I love getting snail mail, so I try to send snail mail as much as possible. I also do some Amazon trade-ins and resells, not to mention swapping paperbacks through Bookmooch. With family and friends spread all over the world, the post office is my friend. So, we stopped there to ship the aforementioned box of books, and Haydn gavel boxes of cookies to each of the postal workers. He loved getting to do that. I loved seeing the grin on his face as he gave gifts to others.

Next stop: the library, where we delivered the basket of treats and donated a bag of books for the Friends of the Library bookstore. Also, we donated a game called Booktastic. The library here does a monthly board game night. I have had Booktastic since I found it at Borders when I worked there, years ago. Corey and I played it one time (and he beat me, go figure), so I decided the library would be a better home for it. We also put a dollar in the fund for those who need to print but are short on change. I planned to put inspirational bookmarks in random books, but I forgot the bookmarks. Also, after we drove away, I realized I had forgotten to put my coupons in the library coupon baskets.

Well, I had an extra basket of goodies with no specific recipient planned, so I decided to be even more random than we already were. We stopped at CVS. I used to be one of those weekly CVS shoppers who always paid with Extra Bucks and had a billion coupons. Homeschooling ended that for me. I got out of the routine and never have gotten back into it. However, I still run into CVS for this and that, and I see one particular cashier on a regular basis. She is kind and helpful and always remembers who I am. So, we took her the basket of goodies. Then, since I still had those coupons, I walked up and down aisles, leaving coupons next to their product. Hopefully that will help a handful of strangers. I left one of the Nattie books there, as well.

On our way to Walmart, we stopped to donate the bags of stuff from the trunk and backseat. Then, inside Walmart, I left quarters on the claw machines and in the gumball machines by the exit doors. We dropped off a few more coupons near their items and also left a Nattie book in the bathroom and another Nattie book on top of one of the candy machines.

Our last stop of the day was the Dollar Tree. I picked up a few things (including a couple of audio books, because how can you pass up audio books for a dollar) and we hid dollar bills in the toy aisle. I hope some kid found them and had his day made. It was hard not to hide out and watch to see who found them and how they reacted. Haydn bought himself a pack of magic playing cards (magic is a current obsession) and decided to do his own act of kindness by buying a pack for his brother as well. I am very proud of him. He had a rough day yesterday, due to his brand new airplane (purchased with his own money) getting blown into the road and then run over by a car. If it tells you anything, my little aspie boy let me hold him while he cried. Letting someone cuddle him is reserved for the worst pains.

Corey met us at the house and handed me a birthday card that uses Star Wars music to call me old. Classic. Also, he gave me an Olive Garden gift card and sent me to lunch by myself. It has been so long since I went out to eat with my book for a date. It is one of my most favorite things. I left the final Nattie book in the bathroom before being seated and ordering my usual (cheese ravioli with meat sauce). I disappeared into The Passion of Mary-Margaret (Lisa Samson is one of the exceptions of my typical aversion to Christian fiction, but that is for another post) and then ordered dessert to go and tipped the rest of the gift card to my server before driving back home.

Haydn and I made cocoa balls (a recipe I found in the Everything Kid's Cookbook) and filled a little mailbox shaped tin. I left that in the mailbox this morning, flag up, for our mailman. He is always so nice to Haydn and even left Haydn a Christmas present. After picking David up from school, we saw the flag down, so we figure he got those. There was a box on the stoop, a package from my friend Ashley. She and I have known each other since I was 6 and she was 3. We lost touch for a while in middle/high school but then she managed to track me down again, and I am so glad she did. It is amazing how some friendships just are. No matter time or distance, they just are. Ash sent me 30 happies for my 30th birthday. Yes, I am spoiled. But, I am a very GRATEFUL spoiled.

I just finished along phone call with my mama, whom I adore, and now I am going to order some Papa John's (my favorite pizza) and play a game of In a Pickle with my boys. Here are some other pictures to chronicle my 30th. Now, go do something nice for someone else. You will be so glad you did!

Friday Felicities: My Birthday Edition

2012-01-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I posted my Felicities. I was posting "Multitudes on Monday" for quite a while and the two lists were often the same. I am still keeping my 1000 Gifts list, but I am no longer typing them up once a week. So, it seems a good time to return to my dear friend, Natalie, and her Friday Felicities...

Friday Felicities

Chocolate pumpkin muffins

Apple chai from Starbucks

Successfully completing 30 Random Acts of Kindness today

Birthday cards from family

Constant texts, tweets and FB messages to tell me happy birthday

Blog readers that make my spirit soar

Our church building, early in the morning

Fat pen refills, at last

An email David sent me from school today

The boys helping me bake this week

Lunch with a good book at my favorite place

PS I miss you, Nattie-Pie.

30 for 30 - Let the Party Begin

2012-01-25T17:39:00.000-08:00

When my parents were my age, they had a three year old. Little me, with my white skin and black hair, their little china doll. That's what people called me back then. I had three years left to be an only child. In other words, my mom wasn't finished having babies. Me? My youngest is seven, and he will be the last Truett baby unless God moves in a mighty way.

Look at me, rocking' my feathers well before the trend.

I don't fear thirty. I am not approaching that number with any dread or trepidation. I doubt it will be so much different from 29. Before I know it, 30 will pass to 31 and 32 and 33 and so on. Or else it won't. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us, is it?

Alright, before I grow morbid...

I blogged earlier this month about my plans for my thirtieth birthday. It will be a busy weekend for my minister man, so I decided to take the celebration into my own hands. My birthday just so happens to fall on Friday this year. Friday is traditionally pizza and a movie for our family. We will be having Papa John's, because it is my favorite. And I get to pick the movie, of course.

Also, the boys and I will be doing 30 Random Acts of Kindness. Originally, the plan was to do all 30 items on my list on my actual birthday, the 27th. However, timing has worked out so that we started today. I have been baking a lot, prepping baskets of goodies to go here and there. I found the most adorable little mail box shaped tin at Target. We will fill that with yummies and leave it in our real mailbox for our mailman. Haydn and David sorted toys and donated many. Today, Haydn took a box of K'Nex to his therapy office, along with cookies for his two main therapists. I mailed a surprise to a friend today. "Just because" cards are in envelopes, already stamped and addressed. They can go in the mail Friday morning. We have a box of cookies for our trash collectors, if we can catch them in the morning. I will photograph some things, but some are private kindnesses that no one need know about.

All in all, I am having the best birth week I have had in a long time. Normally, I countdown to the big day as though something really amazing is bound to happen. There is no way not to be disappointed when Jesus Himself doesn't part the clouds to present my cake and watch me blow out the candles. This year, however, my mind is mostly not on myself. I'm having fun baking and planning and gathering supplies.

If you want to give me a birthday present, please do something kind this week. Hold a door for someone whose arms are full. Pay for the food of the person behind you in a drive-thru line. Make an effort to smile at the people you pass while doing your routine errand running. Say thank you to the people who rarely garner the notice of those around them.

May you be blessed and be a blessing.

A Narrow View of Verse

2012-01-25T07:35:00.000-08:00

I actually managed to participate in a Tweet Speak Poetry Party last night. I missed the last few, and it took me a few prompts to get going, but I had so much fun. I found myself drawn to rhyming couplets for some reason. They're not my usual style, but they just kept popping up. The compilation poems will appear on the Tweet Speak blog soon. For now, here are my lines from last night:

Listening to a voice sing whiskey and gin,
thinking about you growing up back then

Spinning our rhymes on the world wide web

of verse and song,

typing and singing all night long.

We plant these seeds and they grow into children and who are they?
Them or us?
Is the farmer his farm? The singer his song?

Tomorrow, maybe, I'll turn over a new leaf. Or, instead, perhaps

I'll prop up the old one and hide in the weeds.

The leaves shed their green dresses, dawned red ones, then yellow,
then they dried up
and danced away.
Now, I am left with cold and empty trees,
and I wonder if spring
will really come. Am I waiting
on nothing?

She has forgotten more than I will ever experience.

Her brain spins webs I can only imagine.

She is high above me, and I dream that she

could love me.

I don't like the taste of alcohol, but I like the sounds of the names.
I like saying Mimosa and Tall Gin Fizz and Sex on the Beach.
I like the look of a martini glass with an olive and no ice,
but I'd rather drink a Diet Coke, a glass of water, a V8 Splash.

Will her words come my way again?

Did I say too much, spill out my broken heart

too soon?

I try to be grown up, but I'm really barely two.

Today, my house smelled like a brown-sugared heaven

with meat in the crockpot and Nikki's voice reading poetry.

How do I teach my son to write words
that play across his paper and make him smile?
Words are rocks to him. He throws them at me.
Words are plants that grow in me and their flowers spill over,
blossoms on the edges of my life.
The stems reach up to the stars. The petals float
over my body like lace. Green leaves are my mystery.
I hand my son the soft petaled words of flowers
and he rips the pretty things to shreds, spits them back at me
like bullets.

It's so hard to keep my mouth shut lately.

Something inside me is screaming to be heard,

to be right, to be

to be to be to be...

Sometimes,
the words paint my skin like lace,
delicate tendrils of silk falling
across bare breasts and hips and thighs.
No one to see
past shame.

Open your mouth, here,

take this flame, lick it with your tongue,

taste the fire of a moment,

come alive.

I am a girl named Fire. I burn.
I am a girl called Flame.
I burn my name.
Lava on my legs, lava pouring down
and coming up and traveling
through the night, burning away
on the girl named Fire.
Magma, boiling deep down,
pit of my stomach churning, preparing
for the eruption that will end it,
make it all, all of it finally
go away.

I framed her words on my wall.

I look at them and think, me?

she wrote to me? But then

the day takes over,

waves on the broken shore.

My hopes are delicate and still somehow strong.

They have survived all kinds of rejection.

They still love to dance in the darkness.

A teacher told me once

that vases symbolize womanhood,

empty and needing to be filled...

up.

I choose instead to shatter the glass.

Empty Vase he called me. Seventeen

and oh so sure of who I was.

I defied his need to define me.

Come on now, teacherman,

tell me again that I am empty and I will spill

out all over you, magma to lava to your own

pompeii.

I fill my own vase, thank you Mr. Teacherman.

I fill my vase with roses and daisies and tiger lilies too.

And who are you

but your own kind of empty,

angry when we refused

to fill you.

Mr Teacherman, you told me the moon

in poetry always symbolizes

sex, and I still think you

have a narrow view

of verse.

My slippers are red and my road home is yellow.
My twister is a 9-year-old smart little fellow.

Sorcery on the screen, scripture in his hands,

poetry on the paper and strewn across the lands.

His smile was liquid hurt.
It spilled over his lips like lava,
burning up my eyes. He was the prize.
He was the ebony dagger I tried to buy in Mexico
when I was only 16.
He was the end of me. I was his queen.

He wrapped me up in thorny vines. I held his heart so close to mine.

I moved carefully, untangling vines, tripping my way while dodging mines.

Where is my tropical jungle of a man,
the one who broke my heart with the dagger of his smile,
the temptation in his smirk?

I am sitting on the edge of my broken memory,

feet swinging, legs dangling,

heart finally free.

He was sex walking and talking in the world,
and I was just a lonely and broken little girl.
I was sweetly tart, oblivious, unknown to him for time...
for time and time and time again,
until I gave in.

She the poison, I the darling little anecdote,

now that you have poisoned me,

you became my antidote, my story to tell,

my own little hell.

Most days, I never even think of you, but some days I do
The earth bubbles up beneath my feet,
and I turn to greet
your memory, the old you alone
always waiting
forever waiting
for me.

I was the tiny little rosebud, and you

forced my blossom much too soon.

Good thing my God is practiced

in the art of resurrection.

In my dreams I built you palaces
and pyramids of stone
where angels sang you home.
I painted rainbows on the palace floor,
but no one lives there anymore.
Polychrome has gathered up her skirts
and journeyed home.
And now, a thousand songs lighter,
I can lie on my back, gaze at the stars,
pop the bubbles and dream of mars.

You stretched my skin out on your loom,

wove your love like a fresh tattoo,

till I was forced to scream

and give in to you.

It was a violent sort of sorrow
that held me at your tomb.
I dreamed a violent sort of morrow
for the baby in my womb.
There were fairy tales
for you to tell,
but you left us here,
I birthed new hell.

Sometimes the words teach me things I never knew before.

I cannot know for sure how I feel about a thing
until I've taken pen in hand
and tried to make its memory sing.

Poetry, my medicine,

the only cure and also the root

of my private disease.

You perfumed by sleep with dreams of suicide,
trees on the dark road, driving alone
in the middle of the night.

Echoes of who we were together

show up in the day to day revelation of my work.

I am always studying you.

LostLoveology. Let's say adieu.

I am one of the Weird Sisters.
My caldron bubbles with this perfume.

Do not say the name.

The Scottish play,

the dead girl Ophelia,

she breathes again.

Dear David

2012-01-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

Lately, you are quick to be defensive and negative. I hate that for you, though I recognize why you fall into such pattern. Your big brother is often extremely negative. He is supposed to be your role model. On top of that, you are seven at the same time as your mother is turning thirty and struggling to launch a writing career while homeschooling your brother and supporting your Daddy in his last year of seminary. In other words, life is tough right now.

You are not a negative person. I know this. I see your huge heart in your teary eyes whenever you feel hurt. You are sensitive and, usually, very kind. The notes teachers send home speak of your creativity and your enthusiasm for learning. I love that, David. If you love to learn, you'll never stop growing, searching, expanding. If you love to learn, the whole world is handed to you on a platter. Life is your buffet; serve yourself.

Right now, you probably feel left out a lot. You go to public school while your brother stays home with me. Your dad and I have discussed bringing you home as well. I have prayed over it a lot. You are blossoming in the public school environment though. You come home excited everyday. You talk about your friends and what you are learning. You are such a social creature, and though I could make a bigger effort to keep you in social situations despite no classroom full of 15 kids, I don't see the point in fixing what isn't broken. You love school and school loves you, so I leave you where you are for now. I promise, schooling decisions are not things we take lightly. You are where you are because we love you and feel it is best for you.

I know you miss your sister. You are still too little to grasp the hugeness of that situation. You pray for her, and I feel the heaviness in your little boy heart. I wish I could carry that for you, but I cannot. The missing of Savannah is yours to hold. The ache to have her around is something you will carry into manhood. It will affect how you treat others and how you handle separation from those you love. In short, the hurts of childhood shape the person in adulthood, so I have to let you feel those hurts. If I carry them all for you, how will you ever learn to walk without holding my hand.

I hope, one day, you will come home to visit. With you will be a young wife and a new baby. I will hold that little bundle and coo and say, "Son, he looks just like you." Your wife will say, "Tell me about David when he was little," and I will tell her so many stories. I'll tell her how you once told a teacher that you couldn't quit talking because your mouth just had "so much information." I will tell her about your first tee ball game and how you rode on a float in the Christmas parade in Tupelo and once put a twenty dollar bill in the offering plate at church because the air conditioner was broken and you wanted to help them fix it. I will overflow with stories that show you to be...

silly
smart
friendly
generous
thoughtful
kind

you... exactly the you God intends you to be.

Mom

Seven Wants

2012-01-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

I am a person who wants things, lots of things, all the time. These aren't always material things, but often they are. I am participating in an online study of a book called Made to Crave, so wants are on my mind right now. The premise of the book is this: we were made to crave all sorts of spiritual things, but we try to satisfy those cravings with material things. The concept isn't new to me, but I am trying to pay closer attention to my cravings and how I respond to them. So, with that in mind, here are seven wants...

{1} My boys to be obedient and kind. I am aware that this isn't going to happen overnight. Raising children into adulthood is hard work, and I am not always up to the task. I also have to admit that, quite often, my boys ARE obedient and kind. They are especially obedient and kind when I am not the person they need to obey and be kind to. I'm sure other moms can relate. What I crave, I suppose, is for my children to be people I enjoy spending time with. Sometimes, they are. I see glimpses of the people they will grow into, and I like a lot of the things I see.

{2} To somehow be closer to my family and friends. I have to drive 3 hours or so to see Leila or Cat, and I have to drive 9 hours to see Ashley, Rebecca, Kimmi, etc... My family is also 9 hours away. I have never experienced life as an adult with my family close at hand. Lately, I get lonely easily, but not lonely for people in general. I specifically wish to be close to the people who know me better than I know myself.

{3} A wardrobe that is both comfortable and flattering. I have gained weight, and I am okay with that. I don't hate my body or anything. I just want to dress it appropriately. The clothes I used to wear are tight in all the wrong places.

{4} To begin publishing my children's books. In 2011, I completed two manuscripts. One is a middle-grade fantasy novel and the other is a YA book about a girl who tells lies. I also finished a 10,000 word short story (not kid-lit) and began brainstorming a picture book with a friend. I am now working on another children's book. This one is about a magic library discovered by two children in Eastern Kentucky circa 1950. I sent the first manuscript to quite a few agents and got a nibble or two but finished the year empty-handed. I recently sent an exclusive query to an agent I particularly like, and I am waiting to hear back from her. So, this is a goal I am doing something about.

{5} Not just survive but thrive in 2012. That sounds all gimmicky, but it's really not. What I mean is this: Corey has one year left in seminary. He graduates in December. This will be a LONG year. I will be spending the majority of my weekends alone with the boys. I am the kind of person who needs me-time. Solitude becomes me. Constant noise and neediness makes me want to scream and cry and hide in my room. There will be little to no solitude for me this year. I am, quite frankly, terrified. So, when I say I want to do more than just survive, I am being serious. I would like to come out of 2012 without having to recuperate in a sterile white-walled asylum.

{6} To travel. I am always dreaming about far away places. I haven't even renewed my passport, which expired in 2008. There's been no need. People around me make the pilgrimage to Israel or plan summer trips to England and France. I listen to stories from friends who recently spent time in Greece or Italy. My travels are confined to this country, thus far. I make it to South Carolina to see my family, a couple times a year. I finally made it back home to Kentucky for all too brief a visit in 2011. We go to Knoxville for weekends with Corey's parents and I drive to Jackson to see friends. I do my real traveling within the pages of books, and that is both wonderful and sad. I close a novel and feel as if I've been on a glorious voyage, but I also feel a new ache inside... yet another place I may never see in my reality.

{7} Write longhand easily. Carpal tunnel has always popped up in my life, here and there. Usually my hand will cramp if I write too much at a time or use a skinny pen instead of my Dr. Grip. When I was pregnant with Haydn, my thumb remained numb until I was almost a month postpartum. Lately, I can type without issue, but writing makes my whole hand feel fat and tingly. I wake up in the morning with a numb arm and fingers. I wear a wrist brace, and it makes things better about 80% of the time, but it is annoying to sleep in. I love journaling, and I am currently filling the pages of a beautiful Italian leather book my friend, Desiree, bought for me. However, most days, I look at the book and back at my hand and skip writing to avoid carpal tunnel issues. This is not cool.

Eight Fears

2012-01-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

8 Fears

1. I fear being wrong. I mean, 100% in the wrong in front of people where I have adamantly insisted I am right. Honestly, this can be a good fear in some cases. It has often kept me from opening my mouth too soon. Since I am prone to intellectual/spiritual pride, I am pretty sure I need a good healthy dose of this humiliating fear to keep my mouth in check.

2. I feel afraid when I am home by myself at night and trying to sleep. This has gotten a lot better over the years, but I cannot shake it entirely. Sometimes I have to take a sleeping pill when Corey is out of town. As soon as I close my eyes, I hear every tiny sound and my heartbeat quickens. The cats have been helpful. Now, when I hear a sound, I say to myself, "It's only the cats."

3. I am afraid of spiders. Especially the trifecta of spiders: wolf, black widow, brown recluse. This isn't a fear I hope to get over. They are gross and dangerous and I see no need to not be afraid of them. However, I am not so afraid of regular spiders. At least, so long as they stay in their nice outside place and let me have my nice inside place.

4. I am afraid of never making it as a writer. Define "making it?" I am not really sure. I don't expect to win a pulitzer or even write the next series of Harry Potter-esque books. I'd like to make a little money as a writer, enough to contribute to the running of our household on a more regular basis. I would like to publish children's books. I would like to be published as a poet widely enough for my name to be known. I don't need to be a name everyone knows, but I'd like people outside of my family and friends to perhaps have heard of me.

5. I am terrified of math classes. I am not joking. At. All. Math classes bring me to tears.

6. I am afraid of being seen as unimportant, annoying, silly, shallow, self-righteous, a burden and a bother. In other words, I worry way too much about what others think.

7. Crowds. Well, fear is probably not the best word. I just don't like them. When a group grows too large or rowdy, my heart rate speeds up and I want to hide. Ironically, I don't have stage fright. I love being in front of people, but I don't like being surrounded by people. I suppose the difference is a sense of control. I'm not sure.

8. I fear being exposed as a fraud. In my worst moments, I am lazy and selfish and I am not a good example of Christian/Mother/Wife/Woman. I fear those being the only moments that matter in the end.

Scary School with Darth and Voldy

2012-01-18T08:50:00.000-08:00

Corey has 2 semesters left, and he graduates in December. My plan is to sign up for an ACT prep class in 2013 and take my ACT. I took the SATs twice, in high school, but if I get a certain score on the ACT my tuition will be covered at a local community college. The plan is to do my core at that school and then, hopefully, transfer to Ole Miss. Ole Miss has a creative writing major, so that is where I want to go. Or, rather, Ole Miss has a creative writing major and is close to home, so that is where I will go. I somehow doubt I can make the commute to that other Oxford. *wink*

I suppose, this line of thinking explains last night's wacky dream. It started with me returning to college. Of course, I have to start over (my credits have expired), so the dream began with me walking onto campus as a freshman. The school was somehow attached to my alma mater, Lower Richland High. Incidentally, the first college I attended was a tech school down the street and we often called it "Lower Richland University" as a joke.

In my dream, two girls I went to school with were also going to the college. Rose and I went to school together from Kindergarten on and Rebecca and I met in high school. I was confused to see them, because both of them have already completed some form of college. But, there they were, helping me find my way to my new English class. They already knew the professor and loved the class, so I guess I was a late transfer (???). Anyhow, the school campus felt like a mix of all schools I have ever visited with a dash of shopping mall thrown in for good measure.

I sat down in my first class and was handed a laminated sheet covered in books. I could see only the books' cover art and titles. There were descriptions in teeny tiny print and I was squinting but could not read them. The boy in front of me kept jostling me with his over-sized book bag. He was wearing my son's marshmallow-like navy blue coat. He was laughing and joking around, but I was trying to focus on the assignment. Somehow, I had to pick one of the books and explain to the professor why that book symbolized who I was as a person and how my life had gone, thus far. I was highly frustrated, to the point of tears, because I had never read the books listed and could not see the descriptions.

Somehow, I got out of the class without being forced to answer, but my next assignment was strange. I had a rotary cutting tool in my hand, like my best friend uses to cut fabric. Or, maybe it was a pizza cutter. Regardless, I had to walk (crawl, really) around a certain part of campus, cutting the grass from the edges of sidewalks. I am not sure if this was a geometry lesson or what. There I was on my hands and knees pushing this tool along the sidewalk's edge, and a big truck pulled into the parking lot nearby. Who was in the truck? Someone who was simultaneously Darth Vader and Voldemort.

I think I might be a little bit stressed about returning to school.

HT

Thank You, Dr. King.

2012-01-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

On Saturday afternoon, I curled up on the couch to read with my boys. We were planning to start the second Harry Potter book, but first I asked them to let me read Rosa by Nikki Giovanni. In 2010, we read a biography of Martin Luther King Jr, and both boys enjoyed it. With Monday being MLK day, David has been learning about Civil Rights in school, but Haydn is homeschooled, so he was missing out. I was surprised when he did not know who Rosa Parks is, so I set out to remedy the situation. Kids, you know, need repetition. We had talked about Rosa before, but he forgot, and I want to make sure she is someone he remembers.

As I flipped the pages and read them Rosa's story, we came to a paragraph about Emmett Till. I was trying to read normally, but Haydn noticed my shaky voice and teary eyes and asked why I was crying. I stopped reading then and told my sons the story of Emmett Till in my own words. I told them how I feel for his mother and how amazing what she did (open casket) was. They didn't understand. Why would it matter if a black boy spoke to a white woman? Why did black people have to sit on the back of the bus? Why did they use separate drinking fountains and go to different schools?

At the end of Sunday service, a video was played. A handful of children were speaking, answering the question, "What does Dr. King's life years ago mean to your life today?" Many of the young black students explained how they can dream because King dreamed. They can go to college, have the career they want, even be president, because of the life King lived before them. One little white girl said she was grateful for Dr. King, because without the Civil Rights Movement she would not know the children who were her best friends.

I cried listening to them, as I cried trying to explain Emmett and Rosa to my own sons. I am grateful to Dr. King as well. This country isn't perfect. We have not wiped out all racism, but we do live in a world where my sons are perplexed by segregation. They cannot understand why it was ever the norm. It is so hard for me to explain what once was just a way of life to little white boys.

My sons can safely live a life filled with people of every color. My sons are free to ask, "Why did the white people think they were better than the black people?" because of Dr. King. Thanks to Martin Luther King Junior, I - a white woman - can sit on my sofa and cry for a dead black boy, openly disgusted by the actions of some idiot white men and the court that let them go.

Because of Dr King and those who stood with him, before him, and after him, I can read Nikki's words to my children. I was able to grow up with a variety of races all around me. I am especially grateful for that. See, I was one of those "different" kids in school. I struggled to fit in with my peers. At my high school, I would be the first to tell you, the black girls were always nicer to me than the white girls. They taught me to dance, calling me the "black white girl" when I was surprisingly good at it. They built me up, even as the girls I would have been forced to spend my time with, pre-civil rights movement, tried to tear me down.

Thank you Dr. King. Thank you for the country of your dreams.

HT

Sunday Poem: I Heard You Calling Samuel

2012-01-15T08:53:00.000-08:00

Twice this week
I've heard You calling
Samuel.
Is it any surprise
that between reading
the story once and
then hearing it again,
I found myself in need,
praying just to hear
Your voice,
wondering if You
were listening to me.
Is it any wonder
that the answer should come
in an unexpected way
just as I had given up
hope?

HT

My Best YA/Kid Reads in 2011

2012-01-14T13:17:00.000-08:00

Whales on Stilts by M T Anderson cracked me up. We listened to the audio version on a car trip. It is just silly enough without being annoying. One day, I want to write something similarly bizarre. :) Actually, I think Whales on Stilts has an air of Hitchhiker's Guide meets Nancy Drew.

A favorite line: “Lily told her about what had happened so far. (If you're interested, you can go back to the beginning of the book and read all the way through to this point again.)”

I am cheating a bit on this one, because Warriors is a series of books, not just one. Haydn started reading them in 2011. I was curious about the books that made my son quit grumbling about his 15 minutes of reading per day and start devouring 300 page novels. I figured I would read the first book in the series and then. move on. Instead, I read the first sub-series of 6 books and then read one of the stand alone novels. They are just great books. The ladies who write them go by the name Erin Hunter, and they are both very talented. I cannot tell who wrote which (and that is hard as a writer/editor). Also, I get so into it, I forget they are cats not people. Just, wow.

A favorite line: “You cannot live with a paw in each world.”

Another audio selection that we enjoyed was Scat by Carl Hiaasen. I had never read his work before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised. He crafted a good story, taught my kids a few lessons about judging others and protecting the environment, and made all of us laugh out loud.

A favorite line: “Jimmy Lee Baylis was a wise man, and knew better than to talk back to the man who signed his paycheck.”

I decided to go through some classic kids' lit with my boys, via audio book, last year. We listened to quite a few Jerry Spinelli books. By far, my favorite was Maniac Magee. It brought up some race issues that I was able to talk about with the boys. I love any excuse to show my boys how people are people, regardless of color, and how we should treat others with respect, recognizing that everyone has problems and fears.

A favorite line: “Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain.”

Kate DiCamillo is one of my favorite children's authors. She weaves stories with deep emotion and strong imagery. The boys were instantly interested in this book, The Tiger Rising, because of the tiger. My boys love cats of all sizes. The characters were good, as was the ending. Honestly, it was just an all around good book.

A favorite line: "He made all his feelings go inside the suitcase; he stuffed them in tight and then sat on the suitcase and locked it shut."

I read the first of the Incorrigible books, The Mysterious Howling, because it was really cheap on Kindle. I loved it. Adored it. I want to finish the series, but the other books are not cheap on Kindle and not available at my local library. *sad face* This story was just plain fun, the epitome of a good children's story, and a good children's story is a good story. Period.

A favorite line: “If it were easier to resist, it would not be called Chocolate Cake.”

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry is the first book we listened to that so caught my oldest son's attention that he would ask to sit in the car to keep listening. He has only done that a handful of times (most often during Harry Potter), so it is truly high praise. I did not expect to love the book, but it was outdoorsy so I had hoped the boys would like it. Instead, I found myself profoundly moved by the pure religion of the grandfather and the shepherding imagery that made me think so much of Jesus. Please, read this book.

A favorite line: “A person can live a little bit broken...Most of us do, I guess.”

I blew through The Hunger Games (all three books, actually) in 2011, and I am excited for the movie. I even convinced my Daddy to pick up the first one. Katniss, the girl on fire, is from District 12. District 12 sounds a lot like the world I was born in, Appalachia, a land mined of so much richness and yet still completely beautiful and stronger than most of America can ever hope to be. I love my home, no matter how far away I live. I love it, and I love seeing it conquer all, even in fiction. ;)

A favorite line: “Destroying things is much easier than making them.”

I was absolutely enchanted by Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I borrowed it from one of the teenagers I know, because I had been told it was better in hardcopy. There are lost of intriguing photos included, which Mr. Riggs collects from all over the world. In one sense, this is a classic tale of a boy with secret powers. But, it is also completely original in so many ways. I loved it. I just loved it. There will be another "peculiar children" book, and I plan to read that one as well.

A favorite line: “I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”

I picked up Big Mouth and Ugly Girl on a trip to the public library. I was on a YA kick, as I was most of 2011. I have been writing a lot of fiction, both children's and YA, and it helps to know what is currently selling and what boundaries are being pushed or held to fast. I have read Oats before, and her writing is truly a force to be reckoned with. This book was no different. Not long after reading it, a similar type of outcasting situation happened at a school nearby, and I thought a lot about this book then. I am glad I read it. Very very glad.

A favorite line: "For dress-up I'd put in all my ear studs- nine in each ear. (Not that they matched.) I felt big and clumsy as a horse trapped in a tinsel candy box"

HT

Best Reads of 2011

2012-01-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to borrow a copy of My Reading Life by Pat Conroy from the library (Kindle library loans are a godsend to my bank account). Pat Conroy is my favorite living novelist. I have not read everything he has written, because then I will have read everything he has written. If that makes sense to you, then we are kindred spirits. I also reread Prince of Tides this year. The rhythm of that books moves inside me.

A favorite Line: "The writers who scoff at the idea of primacy of stories either are idiots or cannot write them."

Another of my favorite novelists, Barbara Kingsolver, had a new book out last year. The Lacuna was completely engrossing. Also, in reading it, I learned a ton. I loved that Frida was a real person, and I was able to look up some of her art online. Also, I found the paranoia of the 1960 fascinating. With the recent passing of the NDAA, America is poised to descend into that craziness all over again. Instead of communists, the fear is terrorists.

A favorite line: "My words, me, how could there be any difference?"

I stumbled upon this fun read and am glad I did. Amazon suggested it to me, and they were right on target. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making by Catherynne M Valente was a fantastical romp through brilliant imagination. I have her other stories on my to-read list.

A favorite line: “She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.”

I take part in the Amazon Vine program, so I sometimes get my hand on a really good book before it even hits the shelves. That was the case with The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I absolutely adored every second of the story, and I am sure it will be one of those rare books I reread from time to time. I have also convinced quite a few people to buy their own copies and have seen some of them suggesting it to others. One of our youth guys even did his English project on the book. I missed out on getting to meet Erin when she was in MS on tour, but my sweet husband took my ARC by for her to sign. I just cannot say enough good things about this book. You can read my post on this book by clicking HERE.

A favorite line: “The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.”

1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp was the first book I purchased for my kindle, last year. It was a beautiful read, and it changed my life in a very literal way. I began listing blessings, challenging myself to reach 1000. I am well past 2000 now, and the notebook I list in lies open on the kitchen island. I still hear the word "eucharisteo" in my head all the time. I bought my mother a copy for Mother's Day, last year, and she loved it as well. She said the writing reminded her of me, and that is high praise in my opinion. Actually, I have not read the last few pages of this book. Once I read them, I will have finished reading it, and I don't really want to be finished. There is now a category on this blog called 1000. I list blessings there.

A favorite line: “Just that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.”

Yet another one of my favorite novelists, Jodi Picoult released Sing You Home in 2011, and I was sucked in, as I am with almost all of her books. She does so much research to get things just right, and I appreciate that. I worry a lot about messing up some tiny detail or another when I write, so her skill with legalities amazes me. Not to mention, she has this way of exploring all sides of a story that illustrates the very reason I think novels are so important to our society. When you read a novel, you have the chance to be someone else for a bit. It is okay if you feel or think differently, because it isn't real. But, that's just it, with a good book it IS real. By the end, you have felt and thought things you never would in real life, and you can't unfeel or unthink them. Novels can change how we see other people and the issues that confound and separate us.

A favorite line: "With my eyes closed, with every word a brushstroke, I do the kind of praying people do when they don’t know if there is a God."

During Lent, last year, I read Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus by Ann Spangler. The timing was perfect. As Passover (and Easter) approached, I explored the Jewishness of Jesus. A million little nuggets of truth found their way into my heart, and I began to look at Jesus differently. Always, He has been Savior, Lord, even Friend and Lover, but after that reading, he also became Teacher. Our church book group is reading it this month, and I get to lead the discussion in February. I am excited to see if they love it as much as I did.

A favorite line: "Would it surprise you to learn that the rabbis thought that study, and not prayer, was the highest form of worship? They pointed out that when we pray, we speak to God, but that when we study the Scriptures, God speaks to us."

Sticking to my little crush on Judiasm, I also read Strangers and Neighbors in 2011. It is a slim little book, by Maria Poggi Johnson, that I bought at Annual Conference in 2010. It sat on my To Read shelf for close to a year before I picked it up. The author lived among a group of Orthodox Jews and they all raised their children together. Her insights were refreshing and challenging. I love books that parallel the practices of Christianity with those of Judaism (think Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner), and I also love books where someone learns from another culture. The opening up of minds and hearts to invited in, well, strangers and neighbors... I love it.

A favorite line: "Christianity is built on the foundation of the Jewish covenant, but it is not just slapped on top of it like a trailer home onto a concrete lot."

If you have read here very long, you already know that owls have become a sort of symbol for me. I was attracted to them, originally, a few years ago. I had no real reason for this attraction, but God did. As my obsession grew, I found myself at the Cincinatti Zoo, face to face with Homer the Barred Owl. He was beautiful. I stared into his eyes and fell in love. The trainer surprised me by saying that owls are stupid birds, the hardest of creatures to train. That stuck with me. We call them wise, but they aren't? Then, I picked up Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien for a dollar at BAM (before ours went out of business). I was delighted to learn that owls are not stupid at all. They are hard to train because they have no need for us and see no reason to obey our commands. They are, rather, relational animals. To me, this showed the difference between being a religious drone and being a child of God, head over heels in love with Jesus. Honestly, I could go on forever about the spiritual epiphanies I had while reading Stacey's book. I will spare you, for now.

A favorite line: "Occasionally someone would ask to see "the baby," and when I opened the blanket, would leap back shrieking, "What is that?! A dinosaur?" Apparently, the world is full of educated adults with mortgages and stock portfolios who think people are walking around grocery stores with dinosaurs in their arms."

Finally, there was Little Bee by Chris Cleave. The writing was lyrical and beautiful. The story was shocking and heartbreaking and motivating. It is hard to properly describe this book. I'll just say, you have to read it. The girl on the beach, the missing finger, the scars... it is a story you need to hear.

A favorite line: “We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.”

Stay tuned for my best YA/Kid reads from 2011.

HT

Currently: Turning 30

2012-01-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

Current Books: I am on the last chapter of Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen. I fell in love with her books years ago. Mandy Moore starred in a movie made from two of Sarah's novels, and I love Mandy, so I watched it. That lead me to seek out the books, and I still get excited when I see Sarah has a new book out. I have A Girl Named Disaster waiting on me at the library, and I downloaded a collection of Mercedes Lackey stories. I am reading two volumes of poetry (one by Nikki Giovanni and one by Kay Ryan) and a book of daily Mary-based devotions. I am in Chronicles in my Bible. The boys and I just finished listening to The Giver in the car. A reread for me, but so good.

Current Playlist: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, due to my father. When I listen to new-to-me music, it is usually due to Daddy.

Current Shame Inducing Guilty Pleasure: Gossip Girl. My 8th grade girls watch it and talk about it all the time. So I promised them I would watch too. It really is a teen soap opera and not my usual style at all, but I have gotten sucked in, so I watch.

Current color: Kentucky blue

Current Fetish: Family history. I have been working on a family tree.

Current Food: I am about to make some heavenly mac-n-cheese in the crockpot.

Current Drink: Ice cold milk

Current Favorite Favorite: Snail mail. Email and social media are great things, but nothing beats a handwritten note.

Current Wishlist: There are a couple of CDs I want (Nikki reading her poetry) and I am buying a desk next week. I am looking forward to that.

Current Needs: To relax in my parenting. I am way too tense.

Current Triumphs: I am about halfway through chapter 3 of the current manuscript. I am writing more slowly on this project, but I am making progress.

Current-Bane-of-my-Existence: Mornings. I am having so much trouble waking up lately.

Current Celebrity Crush: I don't think I have one.

Current Indulgence: I am planning a lazy weekend of reading, watching Gossip Girl, and eating.

Current Mood: Tenser than I'd like to be, but mostly good.

Current #1 Blessing: Corey took Haydn with him to Memphis yesterday and I had a day off. I got some writing done and rested.

Current Slang or Saying: "Let it be."

Current Outfit: FUMC sweatshirt, black lounge pants, painted TOMs

Current Link: Teachers Pay Teachers is a hugely helpful resource.

Current Photo:

Turning 30

2012-01-11T16:59:00.000-08:00

On January 27th, I will be turning 30. I wanted to do something really special to celebrate, but my husband has church stuff and my best friend will be birthing her second baby girl. I decided not to wallow. Instead, I will be doing 30 random acts of kindness to kick off my thirties.

If you want to help me celebrate, it's easy. Just do something kind for someone else this month. Here are a few ideas:

Tape change to a vending machine.
Hide one dollar bills in the dollar store toy aisle.
Leave goodies in the mailbox for your mail person.
Pay for the meal of the car behind you in a drive-thru.
Smile at someone.
Compliment a mother's parenting/children in public.
Donate clothes and toys to a charity/thrift store.
Offer to babysit for a frazzled mom.

Can you think of anything else? Be creative!

HT

A Post In Which I Babble

2012-01-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

It is Sunday afternoon. I have been out of sorts since yesterday. I stayed home from church to sleep but ended up awake and cleaning the house. Impossible to sleep with my children at home, trying to tear each other to shreds because one of them looked at the other and that is definitely unacceptable. So, I made them clean their bathroom together and then sent each of them to clean their own rooms. I got out the vacuum. They clean faster when there is the danger of a vacuum sucking up their Legos hovering nearby. You would not believe how many pairs of socks and underwear were hiding under David's bed. Ew. Boys are so gross.

I made dinner and had that in the oven while we all three cleaned. After dinner, I made myself a lovely mug cake and settled in to read. I am enjoying a memoir called Trespassers will be Baptized. The author is a Southern Baptist preacher's daughter from Eastern KY. Being from Eastern KY and having grown up 3 kinds of Baptist, I can relate to the inner-workings of her child mind. And, on the adult side, some aspects of being a preacher's kid are universal to pastor's families within all denominations. At least, my experience says that is true. I'll stick to Methodism and not find out from other experiences. I'd also prefer not to ever compare being a minister's wife to being a doctor's wife or a military wife or any other professional's wife. I have heard comparisons made, and I think I will stick to other's people's experiences on such subjects.

I am making a list of Mary books to read this year. I downloaded a volume of Mary devotionals as well. Each one is really no more than a few lines. Some are thought provoking and some are just words on the page, but I am going to read one each day and leave the meaning up to God. Currently, I am enamored by the imagery of Mary as the Ark of the Covenant. Both she and the ark were holy vessels because they held the presence of God within them. Also, I am thinking of rereading Our Lady of the Lost and Found. I really enjoyed that one.

Haydn and I are getting ready to start a small unit on rocks and minerals. I found some great resources on a site called Teachers Pay Teachers. We are more than halfway through Story of the World Volume I. I love the book, but I am getting tired of Greece. I never thought that would be possible, but it is. Between studying it in history and reading about it in Rick Riordan's books, I am about full-up on all things Greek... except the food. I'll keep the food, thanks. It's too bad my pupil has so many aspie food issues. I would have loved cooking dishes from the many places we study. I suppose I could try desserts. He has much less trouble with new desserts. He even discovered, this Christmas, that he likes baklava as much as I do.

Math-wise, we are adding numbers with 3 digits at home and he has started basic algebra with one of his therapists. I am so head-over-heels grateful for his therapists. You just would not believe it. Therapist A can get him to talk about things he would never share with me and he will actually LISTEN to her advice. Therapist B can make just about any bit of academia make sense to Haydn. He taught him number patterns by using game systems (16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit). We are crazy blessed by the people who help us day to day.

I am doing a massive spring clean. I'm only a few months early. There is just entirely too much stuff in this house: too many books overflowing their shelves, too many half-finished art projects, too many toys, too many papers, too many unsorted notebooks and journals... Too Many seems to have been the theme for 2011. Apparently, it took precedence over peace, and that shall be no more. I have taken a ton of stuff to the big trash can and have boxes and bags of stuff to be donated here there and yonder.

How's that for a post about everything and nothing all at once? (Do you have the time...)

HT

SEBP: December 2011

2012-01-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

It's that time of the month again!

No, not THAT time...

This time...

What was your favorite post on your own blog from the month of December? Why not go share it for the Saturday Evening Blog Post?

My entry: Bullets and Bones

HT

2011 Theme Wrap-Up: Peace

2012-01-06T07:32:00.000-08:00

2011 was the Year of Peace. I have been doing themes since 2005, and the one consistency is this: they never turn out how I plan them to.

When I was given the word peace, I was hoping for a year with less obstacles than prior years. I was hoping for a year where the issues in our lives that cause us pain would be resolved, leaving us in peace. I hoped for those things, yes, but I did not expect them to happen. I have learned that my themes, when they sound good, typically require a lot of bad things to happen, thus teaching me more about the good things I desire. For example, in the Year of Freedom, I was first made very aware of the bondage I was living in. I battled hard and waged a war to win my freedom. I expected similar from a year themed peace. Neither my hope nor my expectation proved to be true.

Over the last year, I learned something about peace. As I think over our first year of homeschool, a long hot summer, the snowy days of 2011's beginning months, doctor's appointments, medication changes for Haydn and myself, TV shows we watched, movies we saw, books I read, babies born to friends and family, I see a trend. What I have learned about peace in 2011 leads directly to my theme for 2012.

Peace is a decision. In each moment, no matter how heartbreaking and dream shattering, I can choose peace. I cannot create the sun, no, but I can seek out her rays and bask in them. When Haydn is in the middle of a full-on Aspie meltdown and David is vying for my attention and the cats are screeching and the dog is circling my feet and yapping, and Corey is in Memphis for school, and I have no one here to rescue me, I can still choose peace. I can choose it, because peace is not something that exists outside of ourselves, outside of God. Peace is the place inside us where God is present, where the Holy Spirit offers counsel, where we can, like Mary, say "Let it be."

I can choose this. I can. I know I can. What I can't seem to master is the how.

HT

James Durbin, An Aspie's Idol

2012-01-05T09:22:00.000-08:00

I am not typically the starstruck kind of girl. Also, until last year, I never watched American Idol, and I have no plans of watching future seasons of the show. However, right as we were accepting a Tourette's diagnosis for my, then, eight year old, a friend called and said, "Have you seen the guy on American Idol? He has Tourette's and Asperger's." I looked at my child who has boycotted children's choir since he was old enough to make his wishes known and was the only second grader not to participate in the school chorus (back in the public school days). I tried to imagine him performing on national television and in front of a live audience. I decided that, whoever this guy was, he must have fought pretty hard to conquer his obstacles and make his dreams happen.

We tuned in. That was our first semester of homeschool. I DVRed American Idol on Weds night, and then Haydn and I watched it together on Thursday morning. On Friday morning, we watched nervously, praying that James would make it another week. When I heard, before we had a chance to watch the episode, that James had been voted off, I sat Haydn down for a talk. Being the mother of an aspie, I know that my son should always be prepared for a disappointment. I could not let him watch without a warning. Haydn decided he would not watch that final episode of James' Idol time. I still have it on our DVR queue, just in case he changes his mind.

I was hopeful that, despite being voted off, James would release an album. He was obviously very talented (there's an understatement), and we had not been the only people upset by his dismissal. Even my husband enjoyed James' performances, which I fast forwarded to for him, because he did not want to watch AI. My husband grew up loving classic rock and some of those bands that scream a lot and give me a headache. It says something when an artist appeals to Corey and I both. We are pretty different. At last, I saw an announcement for Memory of a Beautiful Disaster and started counting down until its release. I ordered it, wrapped it, and placed it under the Christmas tree. I will include a picture of Haydn after he opened the gift. His reaction made me a bit teary-eyed. (And I definitely ripped the CD to my own iTunes account and have also been playing it in the car. It is really good. Go buy it!)

Recently, I started following James on Twitter. I am hoping to get a chance to show him the picture of Haydn holding his CD and tell him what an inspiration he has become for our family. He reminds me so much of my son. I find myself feeling very motherly towards this man I have never even met. So much so that, when I saw he had tied the knot with the lovely Heidi, I called my husband to tell him the news. I considered calling a few other people, but realized quickly how crazy that would be. Who is this person who cares about Hollywood weddings? Not me, surely.

I tweeted a congratulations to James and his new bride. I was stoked (yes, I did just use the word stoked) when she replied. I plan to buy the magazine issue with their wedding pictures, but don't worry too much. I promise not to paste them into the family album. ;)

HT

Sunday Poem: Mary Unmentioned

2012-01-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

God let me kneel
to You as Mary did
in all the years
unmentioned.
Baby Jesus in the manger,
toddler Jesus
greeting magi,
twelve-year-old boy Jesus
teaching in His Father's house.
Then He's grown
and leading other men.

What about seven-year-old-Jesus
asking so many questions
that Mary wants to scream?
What about nine-year-old Jesus
already sure that He
knows everything and what
could His mother possibly
teach the Son of God?
What did she do then?
How did Mary
let it be?

I want to be Mary
interrupted yet again...
Mary tired of scrubbing
and tired of mending and
tired of always being
Mary.

HT

Bullets and Bones

2011-12-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

I am reading The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (about a year after reading the first two books) and I was struck by an image in the beginning.

A girl (Lisbeth Salander) has been shot in the head, but she is still alive. The bullet is lodged in her brain and the surgeon needs to remove it. He realizes quickly that the bullet can be removed with little trouble (relatively speaking). However, all around the entry wound, there are tiny shards of bone embedded in the brain matter. Some of the shards are actually microscopic. He has to remove each of them. One at a time (with the world's smallest pair of tweezers, I'm sure), he extracts each sliver of bone.

Isn't that often the case with life? We reach the end, not because of the bullet, but because of the shards it left it its wake. I am reminded of my aunt who died not from her first bout of cancer and not from her second bout of cancer but from residual damage caused by her cancer treatments. However, in this instance, I am thinking more metaphorically.

Someone says something hurtful to us. They apologize for the words, and we move on, but everything is not okay. In the days and weeks (or even just seconds) after the hurtful thing was spoken, our mind started reeling. It sorted through past issues with the person talking. It pulled up every incident that might be considered the least bit negative. It pulled up positive happenings and washed them over with a coat of distrust. Our minds remember other people who have said similar things about us. Perhaps my mother once complained about the very thing this person is now complaining about.

The word can be taken back, but the entry wound remains. There are tiny shards of history and shattered trust. The hard part isn't forgiving the hasty insult. The hard part is continuing to search out the residual damage and repair it, bit by bit. Years and years may pass and then, out of the blue, another sliver is brought to the surface. It takes a microscope focused directly on our life to find it, but eventually we do find it, and then we must remove it.

Our actions are bullets, and they cause a lot more pain that can ever be accurately measured or atoned for.

Be careful, people. Please, please, please, be careful.

HT

The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil. Proverbs 15:28

Shaped into a Vessel : 2012

2011-12-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

In the first chapter of Luke, Gabriel visits a young Jewish girl named Mary. Mary is engaged to be married and surely knew what awaited her if she turned up pregnant before becoming Joseph's wife. She was not naive in her acceptance of God's will for her. She even argues with the angel a bit, expressing her disbelief that she could possibly conceive a child without involving a man. In the end, Mary says the now famous words, "Let it be" (KJV).

I always think about Mary during Advent. Each year, something new strikes me. In 2003, I was struck by the idea that she could not have possibly known what lay in store for her son. I posted the writing that thought birthed a few days ago, here on my blog. One year, I spent time thinking of real childbirth and how bringing Jesus into this world was a painful experience for His mother. This year, I keep hearing her words, "Let it be."

Months ago, I felt God nudging me toward my theme for 2012. Sometimes, a theme is dropped in my lap and I cannot argue with it. Other times, like this year, the theme begins as a lump of clay on the potter's wheel and I watch, entranced, as it is formed into a word or phrase that I can cling to in the year to come.

The lump of clay was the word "gentleness." That's a fruit of the Spirit I struggle to bear, much as Mary must have struggled to bear Jesus. As the wheel spun, the word became a conviction. I do not have a gentle mouth. I am sharp-tongued and sarcastic. I tend to cling to these characteristics as evidence of superior intellect and the mind of a writer, but they are not helpful when it comes to parenting. I tend to see my children as extensions of myself, so I speak to them as I speak to myself. Instead, I need to speak to them in the same compassionate tone I use with my friends.

As this conviction turned within me, I tried to mold it into a theme, but it didn't work. Nothing felt right. I took my hands out of the clay and let God get back to making art. In other words, I waited. The theme would come and it would fit.

Thinking on Mary again, during a Sunday sermon, my theme came off the wheel, shaped into a vessel fit to carry God's only son...

Mary.

2012 is the year of Mary, the year of "Let it Be."

HT

And I Read: 2011

2011-12-21T14:46:00.000-08:00

In January…

We dove into homeschooling, head first.
I made a timeline to track Haydn's biography reading.
It snowed. A lot.
I fell in love with Instagram.
David and I made a storyboard.

Haydn made cupcakes for my birthday.

And I read…

The Penlopiad by Margaret Atwood

The Memory Bank by Carolyn Coman

Fireflies in December by Jennifer Erin Valent

Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien

Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott

Eragon by Christopher Paolini (audio)

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Charlie Bone and the Time Twister by Jenny Nimmo (audio)

The Singer by Calvin Miller

Taking the Mystery out of Learning Styles by Carolyn Morrison

Strangers and Neighbors by Maria Poggi Johnson

In February…

My birthday Kindle arrived in the mail.

Owl cake pops came from Elizabeth in Seattle

I was addicted to Dead Like Me, thanks to Netflix streaming

We added Play Dough to our reading time and it helped a lot.

The boys and I joined the confirmation group on a visit to the Episcopal church.

I started my 1000 gifts list.

I met Glenis Redmond and enjoyed her poetry.

I started a part-time job at Reed's Gumtree Bookstore.

Joined a wonderful Bible group on Facebook

I attempted C25K... and failed.

And I read…

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis

Blue Bottle Mystery: An Asperger Adventure by Kathy Hoopmann

Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors by Jenny Nimmo (audio)

Romeo and Juliet (Wishbone Classics #3)

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

Charlie Bone and the Hidden King by Jenny Nimmo (audio)

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

In March…

Haydn and I enjoyed painting.

We joined a co-op with other homeschool families.

Corey really pitched in to help with housework even more than usual.

Haydn was diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome.

The boys and I spent a week in SC.

I was able to meet up with Cheri and Misty in Georgia.

I wrote and taught Haiku.

Haydn turned 9.

Haydn began making Paper Cranes for Japan.

And I read…

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan

The Problem with the Puddles by Kate Feiffer (audio)

Eldest by Christopher Paolini (audio)

Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy by Jenny Nimmo )audio)

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry (audio)

Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry (audio)

Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery

123 Magic for Christian Parents by Thomas W. Phelan

In April…

I wrote a poem each day for National Poetry Month.

Found out I didn't place in the essay contest I was so excited to enter.

I spent a ton of time reorganizing shelves at Reed's.

Ben & Jerry's took over my freezer for a bit.

I made cake pops for Olivia's first birthday.

Haydn and I fell for James Durbin.

I spent a few nights at Cat's house. I miss her so much.

We had a semi-seder meal at church.

Shannon and I hauled a ton of water and supplies for Smithville Tornado Relief.

I spent a day doing tornado clean up.

And I read…

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Magic's Promise by Mercedes Lackey

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus by Ann Spangler

Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey

The Heart of Memory by Alison Strobel

Brisingr by Christopher Paolini (audio)

In May…

Two of my youth girls were baptized.

I had blood work done, but it seemed to be only stress making me tired.

We enjoyed a staff cookout.

We were all sad to have Andy reappointed.

I got a Droid phone for Mother's Day.

David wrote me a poem and called me "pretty as a curtain."

Savannah turned 11.

David turned 7.

I attempted life off antidepressants.

We took a family vacation to Washington DC.

I visited the Holocaust museum and will never be the same.

I traveled to Kentucky for my Uncle's funeral.

And I read…

Sex God by Rob Bell

Walking on Broken Glass by Christa Allan

First Boy by Gary D. Schmidt (audio)

Who is my Shelter by Neta Jackson

The Anti-Romantic Child by Priscilla Gilman

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

It Happens Every Spring by Gary Chapman & Catherine Palmer

The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

Churched by Matthew Paul Turner (audio)

The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery (audio)

In June…

I wrote a series of "Who I Am" poems

I got a card in the mail from dear little Olivia.

We attended Annual Conference, and I wrote the theme piece for publication.

I started work on a flower garden.

I missed two many Sunday Services.

We attended a preview service for The Inspiration.

I became addicted to writing sestinas.

And I read…

The Gospel of Ruth by Carolyn Custis James

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (reread)

Beyond Smells and Bells by Mark Galli

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard (audio)

Savannah from Savannah by Denise Hildreth-Jones

Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

In July…

I redid the church office bulletin boards.

I spent a lot of time toying with poetic form.

I scribbled down the prologue for Sanna of Sarai.

The boys each spent 1 week with their grandparents in TN.

Thought a lot about a dear friend who was going through Chemo.

David attended a theater camp.

I seriously contemplated greed and its place in my life.

Mom and Wayne drove down from South Carolina.

And I read…

The Silence Now: New and Uncollected Earlier Poems by May Sarton

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

Maps & Windows: Poems by Jane Cooper

Space Vampire (Choose Your Own Adventure #71) by Edward Packard

The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood

The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo (audio)

Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer (audio)

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Audio) (reread)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (reread)

The Stoning of Soraya M by Freidoune Sahebjam

1984 by George Orwell

In August…

Mom and I went thrift shopping.

I gave my parents the Elvis Tour.

I reached 2000 on my 1000 Gifts list.

My post on forgiveness was featured at The High Calling.

We had a rough start to the homeschool year.

Corey took the boys to a Redbirds' game.

Stephanie told me to ask God for enough grace for the day.

I finished the rough draft of Sanna of Sarai and began editing.

I joined a new journey group at church.

I got a long letter from Rebecca. I always love snail mail.

Haydn and I spent a night in Brandon.

And I read…

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos (audio)

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis (audio)

A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony

Resurrecting Hebrew by Ilan Stavans

Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes by Robin Jones Gunn

Rinkitink in Oz by L. Frank Baum (audio)

Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum (audio)

Summer Breeze by Gary Chapman & Catherine Palmer

The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum (audio)

In September…

I really enjoyed the Bible reading I did for Companions in Christ.

Co-Op started up, with Haydn and I teaching an Origami class.

I had a language epiphany.

I queried a ton of agents.

I got a nibble from an agent in New York.

Haydn suddenly fell in love with reading.

My boys created a homemade zip-line in our trees.

Haydn and I had a come-to-Jesus meeting.

And I read…

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan

Winter Turns to Spring by Gary Chapman & Catherine Palmer

The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum (audio)

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The Heart of Haiku by Jane Hirshfield

Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff

Paper Towns by John Green

God in the Yard by L. L. Barkat

Big Mouth and Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum (audio)

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

Into the Wild by Erin Hunter

In October…

Tried and loved a crockpot dressing recipe, "Thanksgiving Crack."

My baby sister got married.

I got to see Sarah!

I was given 4 tracts in one day.

I started a 3rd notebook of daily blessings.

The Invitation celebrated its third birthday.

Amy's singing inspired me to write.

I switched meds, because the one I was on killed my writing ability.

And I read…

Fire and Ice by Erin Hunter

Forest of Secrets by Erin Hunter

Rising Storm by Erin Hunter

A Dangerous Path by Erin Hunter

Whales on Stilts by M. T. Anderson (audio)

The Darkest Hour by Erin Hunter

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Cracker!: The Best Dog in Vietnam by Cynthia Kadohata (audio)

In November…

Jen invited me for a weekend retreat at the Glen.

I participated in NANOWRIMO.

I thought of John and Billy on All Saints Sunday.

I was driven crazy by the push for a personhood amendment.

I started working on a children's book idea with Amanda K.

Corey was able to attend the National Youthworker Conference.

I cooked an awesome Thanksgiving meal.

And I read…

How to Build a House by Dana Reinhardt (audio)

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (audio)

Firestar's Quest by Erin Hunter

Crash by Jerry Spinelli (audio)

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy

Siblings without Rivalry by Adele Faber

Scat by Carl Hiaasen

In December...

We studied Assyria, Babylon, and Greece.

Corey and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary.

The boys and I read Advent devotions that followed Raigan's sermon series.

I sent my dad 18 birthday cards.

I wrote to Nikki Giovanni and actually got a reply in the mail. *grins*

I started two more novels.

I got my theme for 2012 (will blog about it soon).

I ranted about the AFA's "naughty and nice" list.

Corey took me to see Mission Impossible.

I have been terrified that the NDAA will pass.

And I read...

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J K Rowling

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

Ramona and Beezus by Beverly Cleary

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

Nine Loves

2011-12-15T11:54:00.000-08:00

I am going to skip the generic answers like husband, family, children, God... That's just sort of a given.

1. Peanut butter and chocolate: Dove bars, Reese's cups and pieces, Peanut butter M&Ms, and the list goes on. Actually, a Hershey bar and a jar of peanut butter works just fine.

2. Books: I like soft-covered trade paperbacks, leather bound, hard covers, old library books, brand new signed books, antique first editions, kindle downloads, etc... I like stories. I go through phases of reading certain genres, but the general rule is, if it is a good story, I want to read it. Not just big stories, either. Simple stories that are more about the characters themselves than any specific activities. Love those. Fantasy, Scifi, YA, Middle-Grade, Historical, Memoir... I like good stories told well.

3. Gadgets: I am a pretty simple girl in most things. I don't wear a lot of make-up or require designer jeans. The only jewelry I put on on a regular basis are my wedding rings. My nails are short and usually plain. But, I love gadgets. I had a Nook, sold it and bought a Kindle. I was recently gifted a beautiful Macbook Pro. Her name is Nikki. She and I are tight. Even when I know, 100%, that I do not need any new gadgets, I will still fall in love with one and pine for it.

4. Kentucky: I was born in Eastern KY, and it is home. It is home, because I can feel it in my blood. When I cross the state line, something inside of me shifts. No matter what I do with this life and where I go, the hollers of Eastern Kentucky are born inside of me just as I was born within them.

5. 90s Pop Music: It takes me back in time, and I am young again.

6. Church Book Group: Once a month, I meet with an amazing group of people from our church. There is so much collective wisdom gathered there, and I get to bask in it for a solid hour. They make me feel special every time I show up. I am blessed to have them.

7. Good conversation: There are some conversations that just flow. No one has to watch their words. A meeting of minds has taken place. I love those conversations.

8. Those Friends: You know what I mean. There are certain friends that just get you. You may talk every day or once a month or not for years and then meet again. It doesn't matter. When you do talk, everything falls into place. No one has to explain back story or worry about offending the other person. You just ARE.

9. Quiet: Yeah, I like quiet. A lot. I love when the house is empty and I have a good book and something yummy to eat. Naps and peace. Love.

Jesus Doesn't Need Walmart to Love Him

2011-12-14T10:19:00.000-08:00

The AFA released their Naughty and Nice list of retailers today. Makes my blood boil. Stores have exactly nothing to do with Advent and the birth of Jesus. They can recognize it or not recognize it. I just don't care. You can tell me Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or just "Goodbye" when I leave your store. So long as I was treated with respect and finished my shopping happily, I just don't care what your religious beliefs are or how you choose to express them.

Remember Herod? Great guy, right? Wrong. See, when the Wise Men arrived, looking for the king that had been born, Herod said, "Hey, this is great. I want to worship Him too. Tell me when you find Him, and I will come right away."

Well, the wise men weren't called wise for nothing. They did not tell Herod where to find Jesus, and he went about killing all the babies in the area in an effort to get rid of this child king and keep power.

Power.

What about today? Who worships Jesus today? Wise men, lowly workers (shepherds), angels of Heaven, you name it. We got them all. What about Herod? Is he still around.

Yes. His name is "Christmas Shopping."

No, really, hear me out. I buy gifts at Christmas, so I am not judging you for doing likewise. I just want to point out something that has never changed, when it comes to celebrating Christ's birth. Herod was there in the beginning, and he is still striving for power today.

What does a retail establishment want from you at Christmas time? Do they want you to tell them about Jesus so they can worship too? No. Of course not. No matter how many times they say Merry Christmas, what they want from you is money (money = power in America). Cold hard cash. Please, don't give that money to the poor. No! Come in here and give it to us. Don't spend more time with your kids. Instead, spend more time shopping for your kids, giving us your money.

Businesses want my money at Christmas time. Some of them get my money and some don't. I don't really care if they claim Jesus or not, because it doesn't change what they want from me or what I want from them (whatever my kid asked for this year). Show me a business that doesn't want money, and I will show you a closed business. I can't blame them for wanting my money. It's how they survive.

What I am saying, in this mess of my ranting, is this: Saying Merry Christmas doesn't make them a Christian establishment and not saying it doesn't make them an evil one. It simply doesn't matter. They want money. If they think saying Merry Christmas will make them more money, they'll say it. If they think NOT saying it will make them more money, they'll quit saying it. What's worse, AFA, not saying Merry Christmas or saying it because you know the Christians will give you more money when you do?

Jesus is not an Ad Campaign for crying out loud! Quit worrying so much about whether your grocery store cashier wishes you a Merry Christmas and worry a bit more about being merry and Christlike yourself.

This post is so all over the place, I must sound like a crazy person. But all the ridiculousness in the name of Jesus that shows up in December makes me a crazy person. Live like Jesus all year long and maybe more people will WANT to celebrate his birth.

Now, to shed these grouchy pants and find the happy ones.

HT

PS Another good point, why say Merry Christmas when it isn't Christmas yet? It is Advent. Christmas begins on the 25 and lasts until Epiphany. For a much calmer take on this issue, visit John Leek.

PPS Love this cartoon by John Ake:

Currently: Advent 2011

2011-12-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

Current Books: I just finished a reread of The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson. That was both for my own pleasure and as research for the latest fiction manuscript. I have paused War and Peace. Basically, the beginning was wonderful, but I got bogged down by battles and soldiers. I'm just not interested enough. *hangs head* I am now reading Sarah Dessen's newest. She is sort of my YA idol. Her stories remind me of the kinds of stories I have in my head, though our writing voices are very different. This one is called What Happened to Goodbye. In the car,t he boys and I have started the first Harry Potter book. It is just as magical the second time around.

Current Playlist: I have been picking this and that from Spotify, mostly gospel Christmas stuff (in an effort to force the spirit upon myself).

Current Shame-Inducing Guilty Pleasure: Baking. For myself. 'nuff said.

Current Colors: Black and gray

Current Fetish: Haitian art. I have been looking at images to get inspiration for a children's book.

Current Food: I just tasted my very first Oreo ball. I am hooked.

Current Drink: Diet Coke. What else?

Current Favorite Favorite: Kindle library loans

Current Wishlist: Ozma tattoo (where), repierce my nose, new clothes, someone to run all of my errands for me, so I can just stay home in my cozy pajamas and be a bum. Yeah, not gonna happen.

Current Needs: Dental work. Always and forever. My goal is to finally sell a novel, this year, and use the advance to fix every tooth in my head and have them whitened and shined. You think I'm joking, but I'm really not.

Current Triumphs: I have finished two novel manuscripts this year and started a third. I also wrote a grown-up short story for the first time in YEARS.

Current Bane-of-my-Existence: My hair. I have been "no poo" for about a month. It looks just as good as it did before the experiment, but no better. So, do I keep it long and continue with the daily ponytails or cut it off short again? Does it even matter? I mean, really... this is the worst part of my life right now? I should be grateful, huh? Ok, maybe it isn't the worst thing in life right now. Maybe it is just easier to fret about the unimportant problem of my hair.

Current Celebrity Crush: Not new, by any means, but I finally wrote to Nikki Giovanni. I have no idea if the letter will even make it to her, or if she will read it, or if she will care, but I can hope, right?

Current Indulgence: Gooey Pumpkin Butter Cake

Current Mood: Is tired a mood? Corey has finals this week, and he's been studying and writing papers and reading in preparation. Add the Christmas season in ministry-land and Haydn's current bad attitude about anything isn't a magic trick, a bit of origami, or a Lego, and you get whatever mood this is.

Current #1 Blessing: All finished with the Christmas shopping, except one more item for the boys and the things I will be making for my mom and sister.

Current Slang or Saying: Oy! is the most uttered word in my vocabulary, lately.

Current Outfit: My big warm brown youth sweatshirt, brown tank, Arizona jeans, painted Toms

Current Link: I have enjoyed going a litter genealogy research.

Current Photo: I really want a print of this: "Madonna of the Orb."

Sunday Poem: How do I Hail Mary

2011-12-11T09:17:00.001-08:00

How do I hail Mary

in the day-to-day struggle

to speak gently and

love fully

with patience quite beyond

my own self?

I pray down grace

for answering

the question of the moment

the child's interruption,

the command to love as He

has loved

with only Mary's words,

Lord, Let it be.

Mary Didn't Know

2011-12-10T15:09:00.001-08:00

Mary

By: Heather Truett - 2003

I don't know what you know. God did send me an angel, and I do know my child is His child, the Messiah, the Son of God. But I know nothing of your Good Friday. I know nothing of that ultimate sacrifice. Right now, with Him growing in my womb, I do not know I'll lose Him.

No one believes my story, and I am mocked. Women glare at me. Men make crude jokes and look me up and down. My stomach gets larger every month. My back hurts, and I am tired. I know about sleepless nights, birth pains and midwives. I know about newborns and motherhood.

I cannot wait to hold Him—my son. I dream of his perfect features: the round eyes and searching mouth. I imagine His tiny fingers curling around my larger ones. One day soon, I will inhale that sweet baby scent and kiss His soft supple skin. I'll dress Him. I'll bathe Him and brag on His every tiny accomplishment. I will hold His hand while He takes His very first steps, and I will repeat to Him, "Say Mama, please, say mama," a million times. I will kiss His boo-boos, wipe his brow when He is sick and dry His tears when another boy teases Him. I will laugh at His boyish antics and beam with pride as He learns the scriptures and helps Joseph in his shop.

I cannot wait to watch Him grow strong and handsome. He'll become a man of God—the Son of God—and I know He'll deliver us. He's been in all our dreams for so very long—the Messiah drawing His sword and conquering those who oppress us. Our King! We will surely cry out "Yaweh," and sing His praises. God's chosen people will take their place, at last. God promised us Salvation through the Messiah, and I know Him.

I don't know about the wooden cross, how the tiny hand gripping mine will one day hold a world of sin and be scarred by a nail. I don't know the side I will caress lovingly is to be pierced by a Roman sword. I don't know that they will beat Him. I can look into His beautiful face without knowing men will spit there, that His eyes will close in pain.

No, I am human. How could I live if I knew? Look at your child now. What if it were your child? Could you live knowing of their torture? Could you give birth and raise your son for slaughter?

Looking back on my son's birth, you ask… "Mary, did you know?" The answer is there before you, in the heart of every mother.

God is merciful.

I do not know.

(((((I always pictured this somehow following a performance of “Mary Did You Know?”)))))

Ten Secrets

2011-12-09T17:48:00.001-08:00

1. I have awful social anxiety. I will talk myself out of attending events I really want to attend, because I make myself sick thinking about them. I just don't know the right things to say and do sometimes.

2. Sometimes, I wonder if Haydn's Asperger's is a compounded version of all my "quirks." I can't stand the sound of someone swallowing loudly, like when he boys are really thirsty and down their water like they've never seen the stuff before. I have a very low tolerance for frustration. I prefer to be alone, nine times out of ten. I have obsessions. When I am overwhelmed, I just shut down. There's more, but that's enough confessing for now.

3. I like writing for kids better than for adults. When I write for adults, I feel like too much is about sex. Grown ups have affairs and sleep around and, even sweet innocent Christian characters think about why they are NOT having sex. I mean, I can write about sex. As a matter of fact, I think I can do a pretty great intimate encounter on paper, but I'd rather write stories. I'd rather catch readers before their minds are boy/girl-crazed.

4. I like being smart. There, I said it. Pride goes before the fall, so I'm sure to do something incredibly stupid tomorrow. As if the incredibly stupid mistakes I made all week weren't enough. Seriously though, I was called a genius by one shrink who tested my IQ, and I love that.

5. I don't enjoy major holidays. There is so much pressure to have family togetherness, and I just end up stressed. Most of that pressure comes from me. This is also true for my birthday. I countdown to my birthday, but it rarely lives up to expectation, with a few exceptions. I mean, do I really expect the entire world to stop and shower me with presents? Yes, judging by the deflated feeling when that very thing doesn't happen, I do.

6. Food is my drug. I feed all of my emotions. I eat ice cream straight from the carton. I bake pans of brownies just for myself. Would I like to be as thin as I was pre-babies? Sure. Do I want a beautiful body more than I want the Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake that just came out of the oven? Nope. Sure don't.

7. I am jealous of the fabulous bloggers who always get a bajillion comments. There, I said it. Not jealous in the "I hate you and want to tear you down for being better than me" kind of way. Just jealous in the, "Why don't people like me as much as they like her?" kind of way. Silly. I know.

8. I haven't finished college. As a matter of fact, I have spent so many years putting off going back that I will have to start completely over.

9. Connected to number eight, I am pridefully peeved about having to retake Comp 101 when I do return to school. Really? I didn't need Comp 101 the first time I took it. Why do I need it now?

10. Due to an encouraging note from my beautiful friend, Louise, I am going to write a letter to Nikki Giovanni. I have raved about her for years, loved her to the ends of me and back, and I always figure, "Why would a great woman like her care about a silly poet like me?" But, ya know what, everyone likes to know that they have touched someone's life. If my letter makes it to her, she will know how she has shaped mine.

Black Women

2011-12-07T06:30:00.001-08:00

It occurred to me, this morning, that I may have inherited my Dad's gene for loving black women, assuming their is such a thing. At the very least, I inherited his admiration for the strong black woman. Not that white women cannot also be strong and inspiring. They definitely can. I was just telling my friend Angela, very much a white woman, that she is strong and inspiring and I pretty much want to be her when I grow up. There are many women who inspired me, throughout my life. Up until this morning, I had not linked these women together by race at all. But, speaking of the very first black woman (or person for that matter) to impact my life, the chain links suddenly clinked together.

((("Clinked" is an onomatopoeia, and it was this woman who taught me that word)))

First, my son learned the word I just mentioned, onomatopoeia, in his Challenge class. Challenge is as close as the schools here get to the wonderful AAP program from my elementary years. David is in second grade, and I was in second grade when I met Mrs. Holmes and learned that very same word. This morning, I downloaded The Great Gilly Hopkins, because I want to use it for the book club in the kids' book I am writing. It was Mrs. Holmes who first put Gilly in my hands. We had reading groups in her class, and we got to pick books from a long list instead of having to all read the same thing. A book is infinitely more enjoyable when one chooses said book.

Mrs. Holmes was a strong black woman. She used to remove her glasses, when she was angry at one of us. She would hold the frames in one hand and then lean in real close, so we were able to look nowhere but at her. She would say, "Heather Ashley VanHoose, do you see the daggers in my eyes?" She didn't scream the words. No, not Mrs. Holmes. She didn't have to yell. Instead, she spoke in an even granite tone of voice that scared me way more than any other teacher's scream. I remember her throwing a stapler across the room, once, when Daniel Harms had made her angry. She was a hard grader too. I had scored high enough to be in her class, so my intelligence was never in question. Unlike some of my later teachers, she was not going to let me slip by with half an effort just because I was smart. No, because I was smart, she expected more from me. Stories were handed back smeared with red ink. Questions were shot at me like bullets, and I damn well better know the answers.

I loved Mrs. Holmes. She was my teacher from 2nd grade until 5th and I wish I could have sat in her classroom right through my senior year. I know I would have been a better student with her grading me than I was for any other teacher (with a couple of exceptions). Too often, I was allowed to coast through projects and classes on my good name. At the time, I loved it. In hindsight, I am sorry I missed out on so many opportunities to learn and better myself.

When I interviewed for a job at Cokesbury, I met Louise. While I worked as Key Accounts Manager, she and I got to know each other pretty well. By the time I left, I looked to her with the same respect I always gave Mrs. Holmes. Louise had high expectations for me, at my job and in my life, and I want desperately to make her proud, to prove her right about me. With that job years behind me, I still see Louise a few times each year, and we text and talk and email. She is a mentor and a second mother and a sister and the best kind of friend. I have watched Louise speak Jesus over the lives of friends and strangers alike. I have seen her struggle, but I always see her fly free of whatever chains are trying to hold her down. God is alive and well inside Louise Jackson. There are no ifs ands or buts about it.

Most recently, I have met another black woman who is filled with spirit and mirth. Amy Thomas is a friend from FUMC. Her husband is pastoring a church plant instigated by our current congregation. Amy sings. You may recognize her name from the post I made about her, in October. When Amy Sings describes sitting in a worship service where Amy's voice calls down the Savior to stand right there in the room with us. Aside from her singing, Amy has this big beautiful smile. I see her from down a hallway, and I start grinning, stepping a little faster, so happy to see her face. I love how she is with her children, both teenagers (and we all know how much fun parenting teens can be). I love anytime I can make her laugh. I just love Amy.

Even more recently, through our homeschool Co-Op, I've had the pleasure to meet Toni. She is a doula, which is a job that fascinates me. The most amazing experience of my entire life has been watching my niece come into the world. That experience has made me dream of seeing other babies born. It's a miracle, and I happen to crave a world filled with miracles. Toni has these fabulous dreadlocks, and if you know me, you know I have always wanted dreads or braids, despite my poor fine white girl hair. Toni home schools her four children, who are all pretty awesome in their own right, and she is always doing something to help our community. I keep telling her I want to get involved in helping young mothers, and I really need to step it up and do so (Toni, you may need to shove me in headfirst, I tend to procrastinate until it's too late to do something).

When I think about who I want to be as a writer, I often think of Nikki Giovanni and Toni Morrison, the rhythm of Nikki's verse and the pure poetry of Toni's novels and her voice reading those novels. When I need to stand up for myself or my family, I think of these strong black woman, and I am grateful God saw fit to show this little white girl that His spirit resides in all colors and nations and races. His spirit has no prejudice and I will work all my life to see a world that is, no, not colorblind. Who wants a world that sees only gray? I want to live in a world straight out of Martin Luther King Junior's dream. I want to live in a world that not only sees all of the colors but rejoices in the glory that shines from inside them, the Spirit of God who created each one of us and painted us with His rainbow, His promise never to destroy.

HT

Multitudes on Monday - 12/5

2011-12-05T07:20:00.001-08:00

1000 Gifts (2751-2850)

Good worship music

I wrote 3000 words today.

Disc is Mac compatible!!

Stealing bites of hot fudge pie

Tiny keys on silver chains

Gooey pumpkin butter cake for tomorrow

Soul Surfer tee from hubby

Small group girls doing headstands

Less than 7000 words to go

Yummy deviled eggs

A fun day with Savannah

Haydn growing up

Silly David

Kitty asleep behind my head

Watching silly TV shows with Corey

Putt putt place open early

When people share images with me

Go Kart riding

Pink bowls from Leila

Sonic Blasts

Thanksgiving dinner

My lovely husband mowing the lawn

That same wonderful man working so hard to clean and teach the boys to clean this week

Haydn eating the same meal as us

Freshly cleaned bathrooms, thanks to all 3 of my men

Memories made

Writing more than a few thousand words today

Daddy writing a blog and saying he loves me and my children

Afternoon reading Pat Conroy

The way Conroy writes about Thomas Wolfe

Subscribing to Special Offers on my Kindle

40% off educational toy from B&N

Corey's first Christmas happy arriving in the mail

Deviled eggs with supper

Hitch on TV

Funny movies

Curling up in bed at the end of the day

Knowing I can sleep in tomorrow morning

Sleeping under a quilt made by my mama

1000 Gifts app

Birdie above door - makes me think of Mama

WWF games before bed

Scripture printed and displayed

Breakfast cereal

Diary of a Mad Black Woman - always a good movie

Hitting 50,000 words!!

Yard Sale game

War and Peace, free on Kindle

Lazy day after Thanksgiving

Newest Indiana Jones with hubby and kids

Haydn and Hocus cuddling

David and Pocus and a coin on the head

Hubby has Mickey Mouse feet.

Finishing a marvelous book

Haydn's origami

Pocus sleeping on my legs

Cuddling under Corey's AU Snuggie

Moon Pie ice cream

Seeing new skills at work

Revisions underway

Haydn completing his schoolwork with little complaint

Warm cozy sweatshirts

Ordering Christmas gifts online

Free shipping

Sewing book for Leila

Greeting card for Daddy is ready to mail.

Card I designed for Corey arrived

Enjoying War and Peace, thus far

Warriors poster on schoolroom wall

My Bible reading coinciding with Haydn's history lesson

Twelve days of Christmas project

All the supplies needed downstairs

Able to manage the frustration

Paper boomerang makes him smile

Understanding roles in childhood

Colorful ribbon

18 cards for Daddy

Haydn writing paragraphs

Camera on my phone

Family Advent cross

Haydn teaching David to cook a pizza

Being able to remember

Hearing the boys use their words

Advent devotional with kids

Pre-starting the car

Writing with a fountain pen

Stack of cards to mail

"Unto us a child is born, a son is given!"

Making this list by hand again

Nothing broken when the cat jumped on my table

2011 vocal tests printed

Interesting dreams

Email from Daddy, yesterday

Finishing first revision

Meghan offering to proofread

Instagram photos by 7th and 8th grade girls

Christmas parade

Beef float

Ugly Christmas sweater float idea for next year

Mexican for lunch

Summary written

The boys playing outside all day

Sunday Poem: Emmanuel

2011-12-04T17:56:00.001-08:00

Every Advent brings to
Mind an aching love for
Mary, the wish to
Answer my own call, my own
Nativity, to
Understand, to rush in, to
Embrace the plan and say
Let it be, Lord. Let it be.

HT

But Decades Pass

2011-12-01T06:57:00.001-08:00

In our homeschool this week... we have been reading about Assyria and Babylon. Haydn has a great poster, from a book he was given last year, that illustrates warriors from different countries and time periods. It is neat for him to see the people we are talking about, as we progress through history. Also, my personal Bible reading happened to match up to our History chapters this week. I love when that happens.

Places we're going and people we're seeing... We just had a week off for fall break, and the whole family traveled to Alabama to see my stepdaughter for a few hours. It was a wonderful day. She is twelve now and turning into a little lady. This week, Haydn and I had breakfast at Sonic one day, while out running errands, but mostly we've been homebodies.

My favorite thing this week... I love reading The Lost Hero with Haydn. The story is, so far, just as good as Percy Jackson. I enjoy the new characters we are following, and both of us are learning. Also, when Piper spoke French to the North Wind, I was able to read it and translate for Haydn. Having not touched the language since my junior year of high school, I am a wee bit proud of myself.

What's working for us... Well, I am hoping this will work. We are trying something new. I emailed Haydn with links to 3 different kid-science articles. He can pick whichever he wants and read it. I tried to choose topics I thought would interest him, and he loves science in general. However, my son has Asperger's, remember? This is not part of his regular routine. I started simple, just asking him to read an article. No questions after the reading, no tests to take or papers to write. Still, he took one look at the email and threw himself to the floor, crying. I gave him a few minutes and then told him he could read an article or he could spend all day lying on the floor, his decision. He went to the computer and started kicking and banging, so I sent him upstairs to calm down. We will push through. I have to stand my ground and, in a few weeks, reading a weekly science article will be part of his routine. He won't bat an eye at the assignment. I once said that the American church has Asperger's and this is a good example of what what I meant by that. When something new appears, the church digs in its heels and starts making noise. But, decades pass, and the very thing the church fought against becomes the tradition to which it clings (singing hymns, for instance).

I'm reading... Earlier this week, I posted about reading War and Peace. I am 9% into that one, and I sort of expect to finish out the year with Tolstoy. I am about halfway through Siblings Without Rivalry and am experimenting with the methods suggested by the authors. So far, I am seeing small successes, and that is very encouraging. In the car, we are listening to Scat by Carl Hiaasen. I think all of us are enjoying it. In my Bible, I am reading 2 Kings.

I'm cooking... I made pizza soup this week, and I am planning some crockpot mac and cheese for today. I cooked a lot for Thanksgiving last week, and we have been eating leftovers. My favorite was the Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake. Heaven on a plate.

I'm grateful for... My husband and I have been married for ten years today. I couldn't ask for a more supportive man.

I'm praying for... divine wisdom in teaching Haydn, the patience to help my boys manage conflict without fighting, and peace in my husband's heart. Also, that the Defense Authorization Act will be reworded before passing. Google it for more information.

A quote to share... “Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.” - Ann Voskamp

HT

The Power of Three: Why I Am Reading War and Peace

2011-11-29T08:39:00.001-08:00

I have this thing about threes. It's a pretty common thing, from what I understand. At least, I know a lot of people who feel the same way I do. If something is brought to my attention three times, from three different people/situations, within a relatively small span of time, I pay attention. Superstitious? Perhaps. However, it hasn't been a harmful one, thus far.

The most recent example would be my current reading material. Growing up, I can remember thinking I would never read War and Peace. As a matter of fact, I had somehow grouped it in with Crime and Punishment and Pride and Prejudice. Apparently, I favored symmetry, even back then. The titles do sound as though they could be a set. I didn't think of them much, until I took a Jane Austen course at AUM. I fell in love with Jane Austen and managed to separate her lovely novel, Pride and Prejudice, from the other two tomes I still vowed to never read.

Then, along came Jenia. I met her at a winter retreat, more than a year ago. We discovered a mutual love of books, and I might have fallen a wee bit in love with her accent. Flash forward to the naming of my Mac; Jenia suggested Natasha or Anna, since my iPod is named Lolita. Make it a Russian theme, ya know. Well, I had to ask, "Who is Natasha?" She informed me that Natasha is a character in War and Peace.

That reminded me of a man in my book group, at church. At our last meeting, he mentioned rereading War and Peace, on a whim. I came home and told Corey, "That's some whim." I am not intimidated by large books. Not at all. I am the same girl who lugged Memoirs of Cleopatra around campus, at AUM, and constantly explained that, no, it was not a text book. I even carted that thing through airports, reading happily. But thousands of pages by a Russian author who also thought up Anna Karenina? I did not like Anna at all.

Two mentions, close together... merely a coincidence, right?

I picked up Pat Conroy's My Reading Life as a library loan on my Kindle. Don't you know, that man dedicated an entire chapter to War and Peace! He raved about the wonders of Tolstoy's mind, the simplicity of his style, the sweeping drama of his world...

I gave in.

I am reading War and Peace, even liking War and Peace, because of the power of three.

Sunday Poem: Insignificant

2011-11-27T13:38:00.001-08:00

Maybe, if Jesus

would choose a town

like Nazareth...

small, unspoken-of,

completely

insignificant...

Maybe,

if Jesus would choose

such a place as

Nazareth,

there is a chance,

a tiny lovely chance,

that He could also choose,

somehow, someway,

to be birthed again

in me.

Friday Felicities: 11/25/11

2011-11-25T13:07:00.001-08:00

Friday Felicities

Thanksgiving leftovers

Not needing to shop on Black Friday

Dad blogging

Boys checking the mail

Clean bathrooms that I didn't have to work for

Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake

Middle School Was Hell. End of Story.

2011-11-23T09:00:00.001-08:00

This morning, I was catching up on posts over at my Dad's blog, and I read this one about what it was like to be the only kid in school with a Jehovah's Witness mother. It was interesting to read for a couple of reasons. One being: I never thought much about my grandmother's religion, and how it shaped my father, until this past year. Another thought: I was teased in school for different reasons, but it made me feel awful, just the same.

I was never one of the popular girls. There's no way around that. But, up until middle school, it was tolerable. Sixth grade foreshadowed my future. My elementary school, along with a handful of other schools, fed into Hopkins Middle. That meant, there was a whole crew of students I did not know. My regular group of friends got split into different "teams" that year, and these other kids were added to the mix. I was what one might call a "late bloomer." I am not sure who decided when "on-time" is, but there you have it. I was behind schedule at twelve years old.

Couples were forming that year. Laura had Daniel's name written inside her hat. Or was it his hat, and she was wearing it? I don't recall the details, just the feeling of being 100% left out. Someone told Lee I had a crush on him, and I was humiliated. I'm not sure why, because the boy knew I'd had a crush on him since we first caught the school bus together at 6 years old. I guess, it wasn't the information shared, but the public nature of the sharing.

Did I mention that I got braces in 6th grade? And my hair was going through this more-oil-than-Iran phase? And I had no iPod ear buds to pop in, essentially silencing the wild world around me?

7th grade was the year I learned to hate myself. Still no "blooming" for this girl. I hid behind books, but I could still hear the taunts. We weren't wealthy, by any stretch of the word, so my clothes and shoes came from WalMart and thrift stores. I have noticed, with the youth I interact with in my current life, these things aren't nearly as big a deal now. Kids are steal mean, but they are mean about different things. At least, the kids I know. It was a fun pastime for the other girls to tell one boy or another I liked him and then laugh when he made grossed-out faces.

Scene:

I am sitting outside of my 7th grade math class, wearing tennis shoes, too-short jeans (my legs decided to bloom before the rest of me), and a leather jacket I'd gotten for Christmas. Those jackets were really in style that year, but my other clothing items ruined the one correct wardrobe choice. Also, I have on patterned sock, and that was apparently a big no-no. Socks should be white. The end. I am reading a book. Who knows what book. I had a great English teacher that year, so I was reading all sorts of things. At this moment, though, my eyes are only pretending to scan the page. I can hear Joey laughing with a group nearby and I already know I am the joke they find so funny. Then, the singing starts. Oh, he is so creative. Everyone loves his song. "Bobos, make your feet feel fine. Bobos, cost a dollar ninety-nine." It is very hard to read with tears blocking your vision.

Scene:

I am sitting in my 8th grade classroom. The subject doesn't matter, because I have become the subject for Randy and Daniel, sitting behind me. Today, they are making up rhymes about how flat my chest is. I am shaking and trying to pretend I don't hear them, but it's no use. I was already a mess before I got to class, thanks to Stephanie, in homeroom, telling me I need to wear make-up because I have no natural beauty. And all that, after a fight with two of my best friends and some guy yelling across the sidewalk to point out my shoes that look like Timberland boots "Tims," but are actually another Walmart purchase.

Scene:

It is warm and I am wearing shorts. A boy points out that my legs look like monkeys. I am aware, thanks, but no amount of begging has yet led Mom to let me shave. I leave my friends and hide in the 6th grade bathroom for the rest of our break period.

I could go on. The memories still twist my gut and make me want to hide in a gray tiled bathroom. Is it any wonder books are my refuge? Not one time has a book called me ugly or made fun of my clothing.

I tried to fix what they said was wrong with me. I did convince Mom to let me shave. I got my Dad to take me shopping for new clothes, each year on my birthday. Dad was more willing to shop at the mall, where I hoped to find the perfect outfit to make me... well.. not popular and well-liked, but invisible. I was shopping for camouflage, a way to blend in and not attract their abusive attention. Once, Dad even drove me to the outlet malls in Myrtle Beach. I purchased my first DKNY product on that trip, and there was a group of ladies in a boutique who dressed me in all sorts of things, because they loved how tiny I was.

In 9th grade, I learned, though. I learned that my clothes were not what attracted their teasing. It was me. Something about me brought out the worst in my classmates. You see, I was wearing a pair of beautiful cream silk pants, from Express. I matched them with a soft black top and black boots. My hair was no longer greasy enough to cook a burger on my head, and the late bloomer had begun to blossom. Still, they teased me mercilessly. They made fun of those pants I bought off the same rack as the jeans they wore. They made fun of my books and my writing and my voice. They called me ugly, pointed out the fact that no one would ever want to date me or kiss me, let alone marry me. I stood by the school bus in my elegant clothing, while my heart cracked and fell apart, landing by my feet.

I did have friends, in high school. Most days, I stuck close to them and could pretend the others didn't exist. Any small kindness was something to cling to... Lee talking to me in gym class, Patrick doodling in my psyche book while we chatted (God bless that boy, he was a hero to me long before he died saving someone else), Lynn holding me while I cried in the girls' smoke-smelling bathroom (and a drunk driver took her too, damn him), Kimmi saying, "Who could not like Heather?" Mr. Martin made me editor of the literary magazine. Mr. Latham read my first class essay and declared, "You must be a poet." Rebekah and Emily asked my opinion on the poems they were writing. Tim made me feel beautiful without asking anything in return. Heather befriended me despite a rough beginning to our relationship. Brian flirted with me...

Brian is a post for another day and time. Let's just say, the fragile girl I was craved the don't-give-a-f@#$ attitude he wore with his baggy pants and chain-wallet.

Even when I began to appear more confident on the outside, I remained raw on the inside. Any criticism could trigger a spiral into self-hate. I couldn't not be a good friend, because I didn't know how. I fought with girlfriends and boyfriends alike. I struggled to believe anyone could love, or even like, me.

The boys and girls I went to school with, many of them from kindergarten through graduation, taught me that I was not good enough. They taught me that I did not deserve respect or kindness. It has taken a long time and a lot of beautiful authentic people to start turning that around for me. Hurt people hurt people, right? It's time for that to change. For me, I want to live out this...

Hurt people help people.

HT

PS As time has passed, I have been blessed to meet again some of the people who hurt me so badly. Many of them have grown into kind and wonderful adults. At long last, I am able to forgive.

The Reading Life

2011-11-19T08:44:00.001-08:00

In my life this week... I have been spacey and stressed out. I am slogging through this section of my book. I was writing to my best friend, and I told her this is the seventh inning stretch for me. I have gotten most of the bones of the story down and and I am hoping for a win. I am tired though, and these last few innings could mean anything. I just need the crowd in the stands to sing a song and cheer me on. I can get to the end, but my brain is pretty much mush in the meantime.

In our homeschool this week... The doors of the living room were all replaced, at last. That meant workers in the house a lot, which kept Haydn distracted. I am okay with that, though, because he was certainly learning. My 9-year-old can re-key a lock, now. How's that for an education?

Places we're going and people we're seeing... We finished up this semester of Co-Op. Haydn and I taught Origami and Haydn took a Basics of Drawing course. We missed the award night, due to some bad behavior on the boys' part, but all-in-all it was a good semester. For our last class meeting, we made Christmas trees from origami paper. Very cute.

Things I'm Working On... A more formal bit of science. I am not worried about it, because Haydn spends almost all of his free time playing with science kits or Legos, so he is learning a lot about experiments and engineering. But, I want to go over some basics with him. Worksheets on human anatomy, the Scientific method, cycles of the moon, Periodic Table... the head knowledge, I guess. I am also working on organization. My kitchen table and shelves are overflowing with homeschool stuff. I need to sort and purge.

I'm reading... Well, in the car, the boys and I are listening to Scat. I have heard good things about the author, and Haydn is really enjoying it, so that's a win. On my Kindle, I am up to 2 Kings in The Message and am loving My Reading Life by Pat Controy.

I'm cooking... I made a popcorn cake this week. Last night, I made no bake cookies (my favorite). I think I will make an oven pancake for lunch today. I have purchased food for Thanksgiving dinner, as well. We'll have a honey-baked ham, candied yams, green bean casserole, rolls, corn bread dressing, gooey pumpkin butter cake, and a hot fudge pie.

I'm grateful for... safety when we're driving. A teenager was killed in a car accident this weekend. It seems there is always someone dying or being hurt in a wreck. I cannot help but be grateful every time I get out of my parked car in one piece.

I'm praying for... a good visit with Savannah on Tuesday, a week of rest, my boys to quit fighting all the time.

A quote to share...

"the poets never shout at you when you pass them by. Theirs is a seductive, meditative art. They hand you a file to cut your way out from any prison of misrule." -Pat Conroy

and

"[The poets] also poke you in the eye with a sharp stick and dare you to open them and shed your illusions. Poets are the concience of the world and like most concience shoved into a dark corner and ignored." -My Daddy

Friday Felicities - 11.18.11

2011-11-18T20:10:00.001-08:00

No-Bake chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies
Purring kitties
Pat Conroy's latest memoir on the Kindle
Kindle library loans
Watching a DVR Parenthood marathon
Dad saying my story sounds good
Knowing hubby will be able to worship this weekend
My brown owl tee

Tiny Prints Photo Contest

2011-11-16T16:07:00.001-08:00

If you want a chance to win some great free cards from Tiny Prints (I have ordered from them multiple times and am always 100% satisfied with my purchases), go enter their contest. I know some of you have some really adorable babies and kids, so go show them off.

Enter via Facebook or their website.

Categories include:

· Cutest Baby (From ages of 0-24 months)

· Cutest Kid (From ages of 25 months - 10 years old)

· Cutest Family

· Cutest Couple

· Cutest Pet & Owner

I am about to enter myself. :)

Heather

Graves

2011-11-16T10:47:00.001-08:00

I feel too young

to have so many graves

where friends used to be.

Multitudes on Monday - Nanofied

2011-11-14T08:31:00.001-08:00

1000 Gifts (2701-2750)

Pinterest board for my novel

Lovely Christmas cards arrived.

Mapping "Magnolia Park"

Sketch apps on Mac

Naming the Mac after Nikki Giovanni

Past the 17,000 word mark today

Word count widget added to blog

David's kangaroo story

Spider idea for paragraphs

LaVonna offering help

Laughing over "egg in face" with Melissa

Tomorrow is 11/11/11.

Jen's compliment on my poetry

My husband respects my time-needs.

Corey made a 95 on his Methodism midterm.

Tiny Prints catalogue

Tiny Prints notecards

Breezy weather

Giggling at the cat in the washing machine

Cookies and cream bar

Owl book idea

Curtains hung

Corey using my poem

Well-known music guys following me on Twitter

Finishing laundry

Corey compliments my cooking.

Honey hair rinse

Youth logo on sweatshirt

I hit 20,000 words today.

New format works better, flows more smoothly.

New Spinelli audio book in the car

Hubby getting treated to lunch

Recordable storybooks

Aerosmith in the morning

Hair smells like honey and cinnamon

Oven pancake prep

Rereading and thinking, "not so bad"

Dessert in the crock pot

Chicken and mayo sandwich

Many DVRed episodes of Parenthood await.

Finishing up laundry while watching TV

Painkillers for my teeth

Afternoon of Harry Potter

Whatever's-in-the-Pantry soup

Another 1000 words

Dishwasher running

Polishing off 2000 words

Someone thinking of me

Corey cuddling one of our cats

Hugs from Nancy

Chatting with Susan at The Invitation

Remembering whose I am

Sunday Poem: I Can't Imagine Turning

2011-11-13T13:29:00.001-08:00

I can't imagine turning

to walk away, my back

blocking out His light,

my hands, shoving off His wisdom.

I wouldn't even make it

ten feet on my walk

without this Savior, this man

who has stood right here beside me

all the way.

Instead, when the pain descends,

I cling to Him much tighter.

I hold out my arms

and cry for Him to take me

with Him, one more step,

to Him one more moment,

alongside Him one more mile.

I don't know what's going to happen

on this, another need

for tomorrow.

But I do know the kind of darkness

that descends when you're alone,

and I'd rather have Christ's light

that clarifies the edges of our pain

that hurt alone and never

see His face.

Never Passed a Year: Billy & Harriet

2011-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

I remember listening

to the Beacons sing

"Excuses,"

and how I'd laugh

with innocent delight.

I remember

pink notebook paper

inside my Trapper Keeper.

From childhood

through adolescence,

on into adulthood,

there's never passed a year

without Billy and

Harriet

and the gratitude toward God

for His people in my life.

Thank you.

Photo by Katie, who also shot my sister's wedding and is simply amazing. Check her out here: Katherine Dixon Photography and Design.

26: The Blog I Have Been Holding Back

2011-11-09T07:05:00.000-08:00

If you knew me in high school, you would be shocked to find out I was not 100% for Initiative 26, here in Mississippi. I used to be one of those loud-mouthed Pro-Lifers who had more passion than compassion. That was before I really dug into my faith and sought out the truth in Jesus' teachings. I preferred the God who simply agreed with me and helped me seem more right about the things I was certain I was right about anyway. I had basically created God in my image.

I just painted myself as a really bad person, but I wasn't. I was confused about a lot, but I did love people. The manner I went about that loving, however, has changed dramatically since my teen years. I experienced some "hitting bottom" situations of my own. I felt the sneers behind my back and even some to my face. I stumbled, searching for acceptance, into the Methodist denomination, while simultaneously fighting the pull to go there. I learned to trust Jesus to take care of me. I discovered a hunger to know more about Him and to be closer to Him, to really explore the Bible and find out what it says instead of what people always told me it says. I wanted to read whole chapters instead of verses out of context. The last 10 years have been eye-opening, humbling, and also completely amazing.

All that to say, I am still very much Pro-Life, but I was also not a fan of the push to declare personhood in the state of Mississippi. I have two basic reasons:

1. It is a badly written initiative.
2. It is Pharisaical.

I won't go into a lot of detail about the first reason. I think plenty of people have written about that issue. We live in a sue-happy country, and I do not doubt many money-hungry people and their ambulance chasing lawyers would have a hey day with the loopholes that could be found in that piece of legislature. Those who supported 26 seem to have way more confidence in the sanity of Mississippi's general populace than I do. My husband and I have our own legal situation that is ruled by one party's checking account, as far as we can tell, so I find it hard to believe it would not be so in many cases triggered by something like 26. If you want to end abortion in our state, start small. Pick one detail and work to change it. For instance, let's do something about websites like this one: RU486 Without a Prescription. Or, my personal favorite, why the hell is the Morning After Pill sold over the counter? If you were raped, please go to the hospital. Pregnancy may be the least of your worries. If you are using it for birth control, that is just lazy. That's like letting my dog in the house with fleas once a week and then calling pest control to get rid of them. It makes much more sense to give the dog a flea bath. This is a tangent though, so let's move on.

Pharisaical is my favorite word lately. It sums up my feelings on 26 quite nicely. When you read the gospels, you learn a lot about what Jesus taught. There are a lot of interesting characters to love and hate in the New Testament. And, of course, there are the Pharisees, who everyone loves to hate. Jesus had a big problem with those guys for the same reason I have a big problem with many (note, I said many, not all) 26 supporters. How much money has poured into the campaign for "personhood?" (A friend said it best, "How arrogant of humanity to think we can decide when life begins.") How many hours have they spent putting up signs, writing articles, buying ads? Now, what if those same people poured that money into crisis pregnancy centers? What if they spent that much time and effort volunteering at those same centers? Can you imagine if each 26 supporter truly loved and accepted all "persons" regardless of race, socio-economic standing, language, nationality, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, etc...

The Pharisees were the keepers of the law, and they knew the rules backwards and forwards. But, look at how they reacted when Jesus healed on the Sabbath. They could not see past the law to the person. Funny that this whole deal was about declaring a fetus a person (which I have no problem with; any woman who has had a miscarriage can tell you that child was already a person and already important), but so many pro-life advocates have no love for the person whose body this tiny person is inside.

I cannot imagine a situation where I would choose an abortion, but I can put myself in the shoes of another and understand what a hard decision that is. My great grandmother aborted her own child. The desperation this speaks of is boundless. A woman who is seeking an abortion is not a statistic. She is a child crying by the roadside, reaching out one trembling hand to touch the Saviour's robe. In the eternally-cheesy but also quite convicting phrase from an old cloth bracelet: What would Jesus do? Would he love that woman, or would he scream at her? Shove signs in her face? Throw fake blood on her clothes? Would Jesus sit comfortably in His home with a "Vote Yes to 26" sign in His front yard or would He get off his rear and spend His minutes and his heart in such a way that one person might meet Him and choose life? Not just life for their child but life for themselves, the abundant life promised in scripture.

For me, it's the latter. I have spent time at Parkgate Pregnancy Center, here in Tupelo, and I have seen the good work being done there. What I appreciate most about that clinic is the way they treat the women who seek them out. They never belittle them or judge them. If the woman chooses to have an abortion, they will check on her, keep up with her, help her with counseling through the aftermath. Their goal is true healing. They cannot save every baby, but they can love every mother that walks through their doors.

If you are a friend of mine, and you choose to have an abortion, you can call me. I will go with you. I will pray all the way through that you change your mind, but I will stand beside you and hold your hand, because no one should suffer that alone. And, when the pain comes later, when you need someone to turn to who can help with the healing without judging you, I want you to know I can be that person. Not because I think abortion is good, or even acceptable, but because I know you are good, and you are acceptable. God made you, and He will not abandon His children, even when they grieve and disappoint Him. How dare I ask less of myself?

HT

Multitudes on Monday - 11.7.11

2011-11-07T22:39:00.000-08:00

1000 Gifts (2601 - 2700)

Cat checking out my bag of supplies
Collaging
Verses about beauty
Seeing Mikah's name on my calendar
Praying in the name of Jesus
Innocence
Freckles
Morning naps to restart the day
Sweet cornbread, still hot from the oven
Best Buy guy in shiny happy suit
Pre-approved
Mac ordered
No interest
Paying in cash
Haydn's patience while running errands
Accommodating pharmacists
Nanowrimo starts today!
Finding friends doing Nanowrimo
Vote will be over soon
Decal shopping
B and G's mugs look AWESOME!
Trick or treating with neighbors
Boys excited about candy
1,188 words written this morning
Haydn excited to find new book at the library
Maniac Magee on audio
Parcels gone for delivery
Stephanie Shepherd's pretty writing
Pink Pink Pink
Hard Rock sweatshirt from Vegas
Plans for a short road trip today
Hit 4,000 words on Day 2
Science experiment at bedtime
Watermelon bubblegum
Wonderful time in journey group last night
Simple Sheehan appointment
Packed to go
Eking out 75 more words
Clicking "update word count"
Finally got last bit put away
Stopping to write a poem
Sleeping in a loft full of books
Claw foot tub
Rainshower
Writing in the "writer's cabin"
Yellow fall leaves
Laughing with other women
Delicious food
Trying new things
Raggedy Anne an Andy
Devin sleeping on the window seat
Handmade quilts in abundance
Wood with character
"The Secret Life of Trees"
Solar power
White chocolate mousse
Giggly girls in my car
Remembering Christmas list excitement
Already light outside
A new week lies open ahead of us.
Warm inviting snuggly bed
When people like my poetry
Whole service of bluegrass music
Remembering, fondly, those who have passed
Not being afraid of superstitions
Good-morning kitty greetings
Able to see Hubby before bed
Sunday night talks with Rosemary
Meeting Becky, Glenda, and Ann-Blair
Morning lunch-making routine
Sunday full of poems
Cinnamon bagel and cream cheese
Dry erase boards
Dry erase markers
Found map
Lesson plans two weeks out
Index cards organized
More Israel next week (History)
Vocabulary lists complete
New root words not he board
Benjamin dancing with excitement
Eliza's birthday coming up
The sound of a text notification
Breaking the 10,000 word mark
Snatching moments to scribble down paragraphs
Breaking 11,000
Only one day behind now
Night Circus was a Nano novel
Hearing Haydn laugh at the funny part of a book
2 History chapters per week, easy now
Yummy leftovers heating up
10 free Christmas cards
Corey's sister. I just love her.
Eggs for supper
Both coats back here
Mac is in!
Emailing myself files
New poems to post
Reorganizing simple things

HT

Uncle John

2011-11-07T09:19:00.000-08:00

My Uncle John was a small dark man.

I remember him with a mustache

and a trucker's hat,

still in work clothes

from the dusty day

closing up behind him.

He smiled, and he winked

with glinting eyes,

mischief making him

chuckle.

A hard-working, family feeding,

Jesus singing, one-woman loving,

big heart beating, good food eating,

little niece teasing,

beautiful souled

and never forgotten,

gone onto glory,

true-lived kind of man.

He was the kind of man who,

called to mind today

by bluegrass music on my church's stage,

still contains God's love for me

in the smile on his lips

and the strength in his hands.

Sunday Poem: Bluegrass

2011-11-06T10:03:00.000-08:00

When the guitar begins

and the fiddle joins in,

the beat of my heart

triples.

The twang of a voice

grown amid the blue

grass of some Kentucky field

shakes my body and starts

my soul to quiver.

Suddenly I am

in another place,

a place where Mama sings

like a bluebird on a window sill

and my Uncle John is still alive,

clapping with his calloused hands.

Preacher's Native skin

is nut brown and warm

with life.

My heartbeat is the rhythm,

and rapid tears baptize my cheeks.

Oh, sweet friends on that stage,

how did you know the note to play,

the note that calls down fire

of Holy Spirit falling

through the hours and the miles

that separate?

How can I stand here in Tupelo

and also, somehow,

hold my mother's hand at Pilgrim's Way

and hug my Aunt Rosemary

as they lay her husband down?

The creek that runs through woods,

underneath a slatted bridge,

runs like tears from all the corners

of the earth,

and the music you are playing is the music I'll be hearing

when my Jesus finally calls me home.

On this, All Saints Sunday, may you remember the souls you lost this year and know that they have simply steered their ships over our horizon. On the other side, so many were waiting, and they cheered to see our loved ones' sails.

Saturday Evening Blog Post

2011-11-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

It's that time again! What was your favorite post from your own blog this past October? I had trouble choosing. But, I think I am going with Advice for the Newly Married. It is a post dedicated to my baby sister. Click on over to Elizabeth Esther's blog to join in the sharing.

Happy Reading!

Traveling Home from the Glen

2011-11-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

We took an unexpected left

And called its name adventure.

At the crest of the hill

I looked down past her car

On into heaven.

The leaves whipped through her wheels

And danced toward me on the narrow road,

Flying God's grace over my pointed hood

And slipping away.

The shoulders on each side

Wore golden yellow velvet

On dark earth skinned arms.

My stomach spun from turning

In the dizzy dance

Of God-dazzled delighting

Joy at the way my heart could

Beat beat beat

Pause

Beat beat beat

Pause

To swallow up these visions -

The reality of this existence,

How this nature-bound Utopia

Has been here all along.

In every moment of my life, as I

Am breathing my way through

One more suburban daytime,

These trees are alive and reaching

To this dome of sky,

Their leafy skirts swishing

As they dance,

And I am blessed by the knowledge

That I can close my eyes now

And see

God's grace again.

Multitudes on Monday - Halloween Edition

2011-10-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

1000 Gifts (2551 - 2600)

Haydn saying he is doing better because he is "relaxing."

Feeling super-über productive today

Word play is fun.

Haydn giggling at himself

3 Amazon trade-ins today

Enjoying a cookie break

Hackey-sack owl

Mail happies

First ordered Christmas gift arrived

Leftover lasagna for dinner

I can write poetry again.

The missing piece just came to me!

Teeny tiny paper crane on the island

3 Dorothys

Wearing ruby slippers

Remembering old smiles

Erin Webb brought to mind

Blue gingham shirt/blouse

Virginia Woolf's diary awaits me.

Pharmacist greets me by name.

Thinking up good comebacks.

Papa John's

Sweet girls with pretty curls

Cinnapie

Pinterest on an iPad

Pretty clean kitchen

Day with Ashley

Nail stickers

"That's what my mom said."

Lacey look

Reeses pumpkins

Our silly cats

Saturday breakfast yum

Ice cold milk

Brownie in a mug with peanut butter chips

Boys playing outside all day

Warriors book borrowed on Kindle

Balloons and hallelujahs

Amy Thomas

The Inspiration at The Invitation

Warm brown sweatshirt

His mercies are new every morning.

Shipley's donuts

My Sunday cup of coffee

Vanilla creamers

Sound of puppy nails on tile

Clinking of kitty collars

Nail compliments

Hubby offering to pick up lunch

Bible verses on note cards in purple ink

Sunday Poem: When Amy Sings

2011-10-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

When Amy sings

I get Holy Ghost bumps.

Jesus shivers through me,

pricking each nerve,

pulling tears into my eyes.

Closing up my throat and

lifting up my arms like they are

connected to strong puppet strings,

there's Amy's voice crying out -

the master of my soul

as God is made known

in the true-felt song

that is, when Amy sings,

so much more

than a song.

Words on screens,

images of knees bowed down,

timing the beats just right,

transitions...

No, it's more,

it's more it's more it's more

than singing

when it's Amy

singing.

Amy is praying. Amy is begging.

Amy is using her voice

to hit her knees this Sunday morning.

Oh, how my spirit responds, jumps up to praise,

bows down

to worship,

aches for the hollow inside

to fill up with Jesus.

And today, I am grateful

for the fire-rains-down

presence

in this church

when Amy sings.

Sunday Poem: Balloons and Hallelujahs

2011-10-30T06:42:00.001-07:00

We've got balloons and hallelujahs

On this Invitation morning.

Sunbursts on screens

And voices raised

Higher than balloons,

Singing hallelujahs.

Welcome

To this sacred space

Where joy abounds

And Christ is praised

With pumpkins and balloons

And soul-sung hallelujahs.

When the Poet is Sane

2011-10-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

When the poet is sane,

She writes.

She likes to write

While staying hidden

In cubby holes with red carpet,

Where the sound of ancient walls

Breathe out their sanctification,

Breathe in the words

She offers them.

When the poet is sane,

She walks labyrinths in the dirt

And grass and Earth

Makes way for her feet

To dance there.

She throws her hands into the air,

Tilts back her lovely neck

And praises inspiration

Until her soul just sings

With all the joy in it.

When the poet goes crazy,

When the pills don't work or she doesn't want

To swallow them,

She writes.

She sends her pen flying fast

Over paper that tries but does not

Soak up all the ink she's bleeding.

She hides behind her words,

Breathing them into her brain,

Breathing them out through the pain,

Frantic to make them...

When the poet loses sense

Of her actual reality,

She runs through mazes,

Twisting the labyrinth in

On herself,

Pushing against the rock walls

That confine her brain.

The vines twist around her white neck,

Seething with poison and inspiring

With rank serpent's breath,

Aspiring only

To drown her.

When the poet is sane,

She writes and she walks.

When the poet goes crazy,

She writes and she runs.

You can look into her eyes

And never know the difference.

At one of our poetry parties, hosted by TweetSpeak Poetry, I won a subscription to Every Day Poems, and I have been blessed by the daily verses. I tend to return again and again to my old favorites, so I am stretched by reading many I have never read before. One in particular caught in my throat and inspired this poem. The poem is "When Our Women Go Crazy" by Julia Kasdorf. I hope to read more by her. I love when some else's words make my own start churning.

Enjoy!

On Notebook #3

2011-10-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

I already typed this up. I did so on Monday, for my usual Multitudes on Monday post. However, the list got eaten by cyberspace and I could not recover it. I was a wee bit frustrated and am just now getting around to re-typing it all. So, without further ado...

1000 Gifts (2451 - 2550)

Sharing my gifts
Our church book group
Children behaving in childcare
Soft light gray shirt
Sharing in the Kindle love
Barnes & Noble bag
Educator's discount on Warriors books
My kids sharing my love for books
Adding Latin root words to our studies
When Haydn is very polite
Haydn mixing up "adulthood" & "adultery"
Benjamin lying on his side in the sun
Homeschool outside
Lying on a blanket in the yard
Filling this second notebook with thanksgiving
Planning ahead
Mikah
Upbeat song stuck in my head
Orange paper flower
Freshly vacuumed car interior
Pocus on his back while I rub his belly
Help from friends
Haydn lets me read to him.
Haydn's perfect origami flowers
"A Good Man-darin is Hard to Find"
Prophetic dreaming
Vicki G
Rollerskating in my dream
Looking back and seeing how far we've come
Normal routine
Early morning David confusion
Pocus kneading me with his paws
Dr. Sheehan commenting on Haydn's happiness
Friends' help with animals
Really good shows
David said my dress is pretty.
Back to routine without issue
Surprise free offer
Card from Vicki G
Mail from Bella
Protein bar for free
Haydn laughing at Percy never gets old.
Haydn completed 6th Warriors book.
Whales on Stilts via audio
Wedding photos
Books from Dad
A week of Eliza-cuddles
Sanity-saving phone calls from Leila
Sweet email from Cat
Whole Saturday with Sara and Josh
Long visit with Rebecca
Bella's drawing of me
People that just "get" me
Corey's reassurances
Speechless
Seeing God use people
Being woo-ed by God
Haydn helping me (a lot) without complaint
Seeing pink polka dots
My husband - always
Hearing Olivia over the phone
Cat said I am wonderful.
Carpool convos with Leila
Happy pink surprises
No need for numbing
Sweetest note from Corey
World's best rejection letter
Showers of encouragement
Louise's love and trust
Leila is making something for me.
Sweetest card ever.
Curling up by David
Sweet return to my journey group
Warm under the sheet and quilt
Katie took beautiful pictures.
Spelling test app
Cozy in my pink sweater
Warm socks
Cute Halloween card for Savannah
Homecoming parade with family
Chatting with Dawn on Co-Op days
Seeing Rosemary at the parade
Rosemary got a promotion. :)
Sharing the idea of listing gifts
Feeling beautiful
Bags to donate
Cool facts app
Baking with 7th grade girls
Instagram photo of hands in dough
Smart cover
Letter from Bella in orange envelope
Mashed candy for cookies
Note from Gavin
Note from Rebecca in Halloween card
Writing letters on notebook paper
Neat handwriting
Feeling a project was successful
Everything back in its place
Munchies
Haydn doing better at writing work

HT

Sunday Poem: 900 Channels

2011-10-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

My brain is a television

that plays

900 channels

All. Day. Long.

Do I keep hold

of my remote

or do I surrender

the illusion

of my control?