Fearless

I just discovered this little piece I wrote a few years ago but never published.  Interesting to look at it with today's eyes:

The desire to matter. I'm reading the book Fearless by Max Lucado and I have just discovered that one of my greatest fears in life is quite common. I want to make a difference. At my age I am wondering if it is too late, if I passed so many opportunities due to laziness, or busyness or fear that I won't be given any more chances. I got to thinking about that and it occurred to me that this is probably why those of us with older children start getting a bit controlling almost manic in our persuasions for our kids to accomplish something. It's why we take such pride in their achievements. If I haven't made much of a difference to the world in my so-small life maybe I can still count it if one of my kids does something worthy! After all, I had a pretty big hand in making them what they are today.... right?  My kids are mostly grown now. Will I be able claim greatness through one of them?

My first born, CJ, was an amazing child! (chuckle) He crawled at 5 months, walking, running, by 8 monts, an adventurous toddler. He'd probably grow up to be a professional athlete or something. He amazed us by learning to read by watching the words as I read books to him, was reading on his own before kindergarten... a boy genius! He'd probably end up being a scientist or something. In first grade his teacher recommended he be tested for the gifted program because he was so advanced. Wow! He'd probably become a world leader or something. LOL

So it has been with Kev, Zeke and Beau. Each has their own rare and wonderful talents and personalities and dreams. None is a high achiever or ambitious. I suppose that since I was so ready to claim their victories I should also admit that they are what they are in part because we didn't push. We just encouraged them be what they were meant to be. 

Yet, am I not disappointed. CJ is intelligent and can carry out a lively conversation. He's the one who is most willing to come over to help us out and as well as just stop by to visit. He married Ana and she has been a lovely addition to our heavily-testosteroned family. They gave us a grandson, too, in little Blue. I had no idea a grandchild could bring such joy to my heart and my life.

Kev has grown into a man who is kind and thoughtful. He's the romantic, too, and is marrying in April. He loves children and will be an incredible daddy some day.  I am so pleased with how he has turned out.

Zeke is fresh out of college and trying to find that special place where he can serve God. He'd like nothing better than to drop out of society's expectations.  He can be quite inspiring with his genuine love for God, is never preachy and has an ability to understand others' views.

Bo is the one that makes everyone smile.  Even when you don't want to.  He marches to his own drum and his drum is fun. Pretty much raised by his brothers, he got a little piece of the best of each of them. He is care-free (about what you think of him) but is deeply caring (about being a good person).

My sons are all lovely, wonderful, giving, non-ambitious men. They, no doubt, will each make a mark in their world but I can't claim it. I'll have to do that on my own. And it is not too late. God isn't finished with me yet either.

I have a dear friend who is a God-fearing woman.  Dua is one of the few people on this planet with whom I can, and do, have deep and meaningful discussions about God.  She challenges my thinking and I challenge hers.  We both grow from it.  I feel so blessed to have this kind of relationship with her.

There is a thing that she and I haven't agreed on but has made me stop and really think about my own beliefs and why I believe them.  I think this is a good thing to do, don't you?  Dua believes that some of the bad stuff that happens to us, or to our loved ones, is a punishment for our behavior.   She can even give some compelling contemporary examples.

I have never understood the thing about fearing God, although I admit the scriptures are rampant in the Old Testament.  I haven't found anything like that in the new testament though; nothing since Jesus made his ultimate sacrifice for the sins of mankind.  Everything I can find, everything I know, everything inside me, tells me that God Is Love. 

I love my children and I punished them when it was needed.  I learned this early with my first-born, strong-willed child: Spanking doesn't really work in the way we want it to.  It always left me with a sense of frustration and shame that I had resorted to that, usually because I couldn't think of anything better at the time.  I'm pretty sure God can think of something much more affective.  While the swat would stop CJ's behavior it did not prevent it from happening again and it made for lots of anger from both of us and the effect was a power struggle. 

When gentle Kevin came along it was very different.  A light swat on his seat would just about broke his little heart.  He seemed so humiliated and hurt.  I do not believe that God wants to crush our spirit or cause us to shudder at the mention of his name.

Okay, so my point is : God is love.  In fact, I believe that God is love in its purest form.  I am a child of God - meaning: I'm God's and I'm still a child (spiritually-speaking), and have a lot to learn.   He wants to teach me and help me grow and inspire me to be all I can be.  He wants me to "get it" and do all the wonderful things he has planned for me but he knows all of my weaknesses (that go hand-in-hand with my strengths) and is patient with my failures and wanderings and distractions.  He guides me with love, always that pure love that doesn't have to resort to showing me his power because he has no need to prove it.  He is confident enough in his own omnipotence and feels no challenge when we question it. 

Before I had children of my own I remember when my neice screamed at my sister-in-law  "I HATE YOU!" I was shocked and horrified. Di calmly and lovingly wrapped her arms around Jodie and whispered "I know you hate me right now but I still love you."  I think this is what God does with us.  He loves us through it all.

That doesn't mean that he gives us everything we think we want.  It doesn't mean he doesn't let horrible things happen.  I think he even intentionally places roadblocks in our way sometimes to get us where we need to be.  I'm not saying the challenges he gives us don't seem extremely harsh.  I'm just saying his love is perfect and if we lean into it instead of away from it, he will hold us.  He will use whatever is going on to strengthen us or get us to the place we need to be.  That is not a punishment but a consequence.  It might be a consequence of some decision of our own or of someone else or even of society; no matter.  He will love us through it - holding us up if we will let him or standing right by our side if we try to turn away.

Dua is a prayer warrior and loves God with a faith and passion I can only dream about.  She was raised Catholic so she comes from a different perspective of this life-long Methodist.  It doesn't matter to me who is "right".  We all see God from where we are,  It's the only thing we can do.  Some day when we are with God we'll figure it all out until then, I will keep trying to do what God meant me to do, be what God meant for me to be and get closer to him daily.  Because  - God is love - and ♪♫ all ya need is love ♫♪

1 Corinthians 13 (The Message)


The Way of Love

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. ♥

Halloween. I have always loved it but, as the boys outgrew their need for my help with costumes and make-up, I lost interest.

This year, at the last minute, Beau was trying to throw together a costume. He had exactly 10 minutes because he and his girlfriend, Joy, had suddenly decided to attend a friend’s party 4-hours-drive away. (I know.  But this doesn’t even register a blip on your radar if you are 22 years old.)

I dug out Angus’ old cowboy boots from the back of his closet, while Beau scrounged and found a pair of too tight pants and a long-sleeved plaid shirt. I grabbed my long black raincoat and unzipped the liner as he went to the basement searching for an old cowboy hat to cover his shoulder-length hair. A quick hug and he was out the door. He finished off the costume, stopping by a store to buy a little pair of cowboy pistols in holsters. Voila!

I smiled as he pulled out onto the road and remembered a Halloween years ago. I was in fourth grade and my mom was a Room Mother. When I was kid we all had homemade costumes. told my mom I wanted to be an artist for the school Halloween party and away she went. She sewed and gathered until I was a hip artist wearing a smock, black tights and a French beret, carrying a paint-filled pallet and a paintbrush. This must’ve been the 1960’s version of an artist (according to mom) and I was very cool.

When it was party time we grabbed our bags full of costumes giggling as we went to change. A few minutes later my mom came in and told me to hand over my tights and my beret, “Someone has come without a costume” was all she said.

We gathered back in the classroom and I noticed the timid new kid had on my tights and beret and someone else’s tight black shirt. He had a nice black goatee painted on his chin – a Beatnik. So cool! And the fun and games began!

I don’t remember much about the kid; he was gone again before the end of the year. I didn’t give much thought to the kind of life a nine-year-old boy who didn’t even have a Halloween costume must have led.

I wonder, now, if he was well-loved...  I wonder if he remembers the nice lady who gave him a fun Halloween and a day of hope...  I wonder if anyone ever admits to having been a Beatnik...

Our dog is a Black Lab who lived with my niece and her two other, all very fat and spoiled, indoor dogs.  I told my sis if I adopted Sabrena that she would not be spoiled here.  She would live outside, sleep in the old tack room, romp the woods and and live the life of a country dog. 

She did nothing but howl outside the windows the first two days she was here.  In the middle of the night I'd yell out the bedroom window for her to shut up and she would... for about ten minutes.  It was sometimes a full out wolf-type howl and other times it was pitiful wailing and sometimes a soft mourn-filled wimpering howl.  She finally gave up when she realized I meant business. I'd go out and rub and praise her anytime she wasn't howling, which was seldom. I'm sure the neighbors loved us.

She got over it and learned to adjust.  We've had her a couple of years now and she is a good dog.  Pretty smart, stays real close to home, and very friendly.

We have had 3 weeks of unusually cold weather with lots of snow that doesn't melt.  That doen't happen around here.  We get snow.  It's pretty for a day or two then turns to slush.  But this!  Snow then snow then more snow and winds and drifts and dangerously cold temps over and over!

So, of course, we've been letting Brena in the house at night and even in the day when it is "dangerously cold".  Does she slip in and quietly lay on the blanket I've laid out for her?  No, no.  She tromps right for the bedrooms and jumps up on a bed!  We heat with wood, so can't really close the bedroom doors at night or we'll freeze.  The boys are tolerant but don't like a heavy lump on their legs.  Zeke took a photo of her sleeping under the covers on Bo's bed with her head right on his pillow!  He thougth it was hilarious.  Last night I woke to heavy panting in my ear, sat up and screamed.  She busted down the stairs so fast it took me a second to realize what had happened.  Was she patiently waiting by the side of the bed for me to invite her up?

When the sun is out and it is above 10° I've been putting her out, she is a Lab.  Don't they swim to retrieve ducks in frigid lakes?  She has reverted to her old self by now and sits on the deck and howls, peeking in with those pitifully sad eyes.

I think about the nice pile of straw and pine duff, so soft, she has out there in the tack house.  With double walls and a windbreak, too.  It can't be that cold in there.  The there's the old chicken coop which also has nice soft bedding and the playhouse out there has a carpeted floor.  But she would prefer to sit on the deck, in the wind and the cold and lament her miserable fate.

I think sometimes we are like that.  We have a pretty good life and all that we need but we start looking in the windows of people who have a more comfortable set up and suddenly our life doesn't seem so good anymore.  We want more.  Maybe we want someone to give it to us or maybe we will do whatever we can to get it, including knocking over a couple of folks who are standing in the door.

I'm thinking that true happiness is being statisfied with life right here, right now.  That doesn't mean that I we shouldn't strive to be better or not accept a bigger and better thing when it comes our way... but just appreciate what is.  Look at what we do have.

Blessings!

Why I love working in a Middle School:

I am weaving through the
mass of kids in the 7th grade hall. They are
loud and rowdy and mostly
oblivious to everything around them. I have
one hand on the stair rail when I hear a
lone male voice behind me begin to sing
off key.

Six steps up the stairs and two more voices have
softly joined in. Before I reach the landing there is a
chorus below me singing out the
Taylor Swift song. Only in a small town
middle school will one witness, in the midst of
hormones and chaos, breakouts of joyous
spontaneous singing.

I've been accused of being an idealist so many times.  It's always used in a derogatory manner which puzzles me.  So I looked up the word to make sure it meant what I thought it meant.

i⋅de⋅al⋅ist

  [ahy-dee-uh-list] 

–noun

1.	a person who cherishes or pursues high or noble principles, purposes, goals, etc.

2.	a visionary or impractical person.

3.	a person who represents things as they might or should be rather than as they are.

4.	a writer or artist who treats subjects imaginatively.

5.	a person who accepts the doctrines of idealism. What's so wrong with that?  -to believe that people can change?  that there is hope for the future?  that life is good and should be treasured?  Guilty.

No, we did not forget to pay our phone bill.

Living out in the country has many benefits but the availability of access to high-speed internet is not among them. We could get it with satellite but our satellite service is none to dependable either so we've trudged along... soooo slooow! It has been a great source of frustration.

We recently went to mobile broadband for our internet service and it's working out great. The boys can use it for their laptops or we can plug it in to our dinosaur-of-a-computer for wireless internet service. It's quicker, too, but then... what isn't quicker than dial-up?! The cost is about what we were paying for our internet server before we switched, so by giving up our land line we will actually save money, too.

So... we think we have outgrown our land line and have had it disconnected. We were paying extra for the Kansas City line and also fees for long distance even though we never, ever used our land line for long distance calling. We really didn't use it much for anything except the internet... so now it's GONE. Feels weird not having a "real" phone but I'm told that is the trend and you know we are so very trendy. Now we just all have our own cell phones; five of them!

I admit I am "stupid about cell phones" as Beau says. I hardly ever use it and it is not usually charged because it goes dead between uses. I mostly forget I even have it except when Angus calls to ask where I am or Beau calls to tell me he'll be out late. Quite unlike the boys... who sleep with theirs cells on their pillows! Anyway, I'll try to change my casual habits and become just as cell phone-dependent as the rest of the gang.

One more change ~ When we first switched I sent everyone our new email address at Yahoo but CJ pointed out to us that if we use our Gmail account, they have a "pop server" available for free and we can just keep using Microsoft Outlook Express with it. Huh? We didn't have to transfer any addresses or anything; use the same address book, same set up. Just a different pop server!

Okay, I don't understand it either but it works. We don't have to go to the website and log in to get mail. It does it automatically whenever we are connected.

I am learning so much! I've been kicked right into the tech~generation!

I have not left the face of the planet, at least not bodily. Lots of everyday craziness... jumping back into my job after loafing all summer, Beau's senior year soccer season, an opportunity to change positions at work and training my replacement while trying to get everything done that I normally do. Anyway, I never thought I would say this but, as we head into the Christmas season, things are winding DOWN for me and I am looking forward to Christmas just like when the boys were little!

Oh, yeah, and got the news that I am going to become a granny in May!!!