Monday, December 18, 2006
Casket-Sleeping, Elf Costumes and my Granny Gown
OK so I went to this cute little shop in my neck of the woods called “So Cool” which is where my paintings are sold. Yes, I paint. Fun, whimsical art. And while I was there I ran into a neighbor who said she spent two hours reading my journal online b/c she thought it was so funny. And I’m like, well dang! If I had known I was that funny I would have been writing every day! So Mrs. Monk, this one’s for you…and by the way, your new hairdo is fabulous…
So do any of you have issues with getting your husband to do what you want him to do? I’ve been trying to figure out the gift of reverse psychology lately, wondering if I get a little twist on my basic manipulative strategies, maybe my daughter’s nursery will finally get finished. You see, we had the wild notion, don’t ask me why, that our child would stay in our room for the first year b/c she is breastfeeding and you know the whole attachment-parenting thing. Uh. BIG MISTAKE. Hello. Not gonna’. And I begged my husband to help me get the nursery done like my 2nd trimester and here we are, with a six month old, still working on that ding-donged dad-blamed flip-flarned room. Not to mention the fact that I kept the FULL BED for our master bedroom b/c I was so darn STUBBORN, HEAVEN-BENT on keeping this old, rickety 100-year-old antique iron bed, and you know, apparently nobody was FAT back then, because WHO CAN SLEEP IN A FULL BED NOWADAYS WITH A MAN THAT SNORES AND YOUR BABY THAT COMES TO NURSE EVERY TWO COTTON-PICKIN’ HOURS?? It’s like rollin’ over in a casket. Somebody HELP me. I don’t mean to lament, I mean I am seriously grateful for our sweet and humble abode. But come on people, what was I thinking?
In other news…my friend Sally came over this week and took pictures of the baby at our house. What a friend—she traipses down here with all her gear and this time showed up with a doggie-elf costume, and what do you know, it fit Miss Bebe just perfectly. Check her out. Is she not the cutest thing you have ever seen in your life or am I biased?
AND. I bought a granny-gown today. Yep. A granny-gown. I’m talking the full-blown flannel long funky gown with the cotton lace and the whole nine yards. OK, maybe not nine yards, I hope not nine yards. And I’m talkin’ Granny knew what she was doin’ cause I’m as warm as toast. They’re on sale at TJ right now for 16.99 so go on down there cause I’m startin’ a revolution. Before you know it, Granny gowns are going to be the rage and Miss Victoria will be out of business…
Other than that, I’m just enjoying my neighbor’s reindeers and trying to catch up on some housework and reading…. I hope you are all enjoying the traffic and all of the tinsel and the fifteen renditions of Here Comes Santa Claus. I’m thinking about decorating my pink flamengos with Santa hats. What do you think?
So do any of you have issues with getting your husband to do what you want him to do? I’ve been trying to figure out the gift of reverse psychology lately, wondering if I get a little twist on my basic manipulative strategies, maybe my daughter’s nursery will finally get finished. You see, we had the wild notion, don’t ask me why, that our child would stay in our room for the first year b/c she is breastfeeding and you know the whole attachment-parenting thing. Uh. BIG MISTAKE. Hello. Not gonna’. And I begged my husband to help me get the nursery done like my 2nd trimester and here we are, with a six month old, still working on that ding-donged dad-blamed flip-flarned room. Not to mention the fact that I kept the FULL BED for our master bedroom b/c I was so darn STUBBORN, HEAVEN-BENT on keeping this old, rickety 100-year-old antique iron bed, and you know, apparently nobody was FAT back then, because WHO CAN SLEEP IN A FULL BED NOWADAYS WITH A MAN THAT SNORES AND YOUR BABY THAT COMES TO NURSE EVERY TWO COTTON-PICKIN’ HOURS?? It’s like rollin’ over in a casket. Somebody HELP me. I don’t mean to lament, I mean I am seriously grateful for our sweet and humble abode. But come on people, what was I thinking?
In other news…my friend Sally came over this week and took pictures of the baby at our house. What a friend—she traipses down here with all her gear and this time showed up with a doggie-elf costume, and what do you know, it fit Miss Bebe just perfectly. Check her out. Is she not the cutest thing you have ever seen in your life or am I biased?
AND. I bought a granny-gown today. Yep. A granny-gown. I’m talking the full-blown flannel long funky gown with the cotton lace and the whole nine yards. OK, maybe not nine yards, I hope not nine yards. And I’m talkin’ Granny knew what she was doin’ cause I’m as warm as toast. They’re on sale at TJ right now for 16.99 so go on down there cause I’m startin’ a revolution. Before you know it, Granny gowns are going to be the rage and Miss Victoria will be out of business…
Other than that, I’m just enjoying my neighbor’s reindeers and trying to catch up on some housework and reading…. I hope you are all enjoying the traffic and all of the tinsel and the fifteen renditions of Here Comes Santa Claus. I’m thinking about decorating my pink flamengos with Santa hats. What do you think?
Big Girl
I’m a big girl now. All my life I have kind of thought of myself as the “little sister”, the “Oh, would she please grow up” type, but now I am officially a grown-up, and I think I like my new mom shoes. Speaking of shoes, I wore my favorite worn-out garage sale cork sandals to the opening of “How To Eat Fried Worms”, starring Luke Benward, the son of my roommate from college oh-too-many-years ago. He was fantastic, please go see it. My husband took it upon himself to give the boy a standing ovation, the only one to stand up at the end of the movie, he kept clapping incessantly until everybody got the hint. He says because a little voice told him to because he regrets not doing it the last time he heard that little voice at a low budget wedding he attended by some aquaintences of his and he has regret it ever since because nobody stood up for the bride and he wishes now he had and here was his chance to remedy the situation and of course I was thinking, “Ok, so now you decide to lead.”
Bebe is wonderful, except right now she looks like scarface because she keeps scratching herself in the night. I finally got some of those pitiful mittens that make her look like her hands are missing, but it is helping, hopefully, and we are enjoying her coos and goos and her poopy diapers that have changed from pumpkin spice to scary green. This past Sunday she was dedicated at my sweet little church, my little unglamorous 40-person meetin’ house in the middle of entertainmentville. It is such an anomaly because it is the most unprofessional church on the block and I Love It. Grandma Barbara and two other ladies sang “The Old Rugged Cross” beautifully out of tune and I cried with tears of joy. It was almost like I was in Dirtville, Idaho. Praise to whom all blessings flow. Other than that, I am just the passy slave and I have officially lost the battle to Fisher-Price. It seems I spend half my day saying “Where’s the passy? Where’s the passy?” and tripping over bright-colored plastic things I swore I would never let in my house. Well, those days are over.
I’m off to speak/sing for a womens’ retreat this weekend. We’re starting to book me for womens’ retreats and concerts so please spread the word of love and I’ll come out and be a blessing, and be on my best behavior, I promise.
Thank you all for supporting me. I am really glad to be doing this kind of work. It seems it is what I am made for.
Bebe is wonderful, except right now she looks like scarface because she keeps scratching herself in the night. I finally got some of those pitiful mittens that make her look like her hands are missing, but it is helping, hopefully, and we are enjoying her coos and goos and her poopy diapers that have changed from pumpkin spice to scary green. This past Sunday she was dedicated at my sweet little church, my little unglamorous 40-person meetin’ house in the middle of entertainmentville. It is such an anomaly because it is the most unprofessional church on the block and I Love It. Grandma Barbara and two other ladies sang “The Old Rugged Cross” beautifully out of tune and I cried with tears of joy. It was almost like I was in Dirtville, Idaho. Praise to whom all blessings flow. Other than that, I am just the passy slave and I have officially lost the battle to Fisher-Price. It seems I spend half my day saying “Where’s the passy? Where’s the passy?” and tripping over bright-colored plastic things I swore I would never let in my house. Well, those days are over.
I’m off to speak/sing for a womens’ retreat this weekend. We’re starting to book me for womens’ retreats and concerts so please spread the word of love and I’ll come out and be a blessing, and be on my best behavior, I promise.
Thank you all for supporting me. I am really glad to be doing this kind of work. It seems it is what I am made for.
The Valvoline
OK so I got my first public breastfeeding experience at the Valvoline. Yeah, the Valvoline. It was way time to get an oil change, like ten thousand miles, yeah I know it’s better for the engine to do it every three but I honestly hadn’t looked at that little sticker in the upper left hand corner of the windshield in months, not sure how many months, obviously because ten thousand miles went by. Anyways, so it was a million degrees last week here in Tennessee and I was sweating bullets, and my daughter who is now all of four weeks old, was also sweating bullets. She was starting to give me that look like, “I’m getting ready to blow. Feed me now, or I am going to blow.” And God knows I didn’t want her blowing at the Valvoline, plus I’m a pretty nice person and I generally do not condone the starving of children, so I decided to take her inside the little lobby inside the Valvoline, you know with the linoleum flooring, the ugly black and chrome chairs, the funky car magazines and Ellen Degeneres on T.V. So I sit down, and I get out this really handy thingamajig called a BeBeAuLait which is basically a glorified apron that you hang around your neck and it has this underwire contraption at the top so that you can look down and see your child, but no one else can see you. So I get her all comfy and ready to go and this burly, non-shaved, 60-some-odd year old construction worker of a dude decides to start telling me every joke he has ever heard on the planet. And then he decided to rant on about how much he loves children and how I should really enjoy these years because man do they fly by and all about his oldest daughter who is living in South America as a missionary and how she’s not planning on settling down anytime soon, no sir, because she wants to see the world.
And all I could think of was, “Okay, I’m sitting in the Valvoline, my child is slurping like a banshee, and this old guy is trying to pretend he isn’t totally uncomfortable with the fact that there is a small child breastfeeding in his presence, although I am completely covered (to the pride of my Mennonite-at-heart husband) and that he has taken it upon himself at this very moment to pass down all of his various bits and sundries of knowledge and wisdom on this new mother who gives a crap. And at that very moment, on the Ellen Degeneres show appears the something dolls, the voo-doo dolls, the pussy-cat dolls, something vile like that, and out they storm with their thighs and their leather and their pursed lips doin’ the MilliVanilli while they seduce every man in America and about that time the Valvoline boy tells me where the remote is if I would like to change it and I said yes I would and thank God Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was on and the little train was just getting ready to come around the corner. Whoo, saved by the train.
All that to say, motherhood is wonderful. I am fully embracing it and I am taking care of myself in the process, which is nice to admit. My husband is awful helpful and he just got me a double barrel electric on top of all that.
So. I’m not sure where June went. I don’t remember June. June doesn’t remember me. But I’m planning on writing June and asking June how June was because it’s all a blur to me. Other that that, I’m just trying to figure out what day it is, where the passy went, the “passafrasser” my husband calls it, and how to take a bath once a day.
So how are you? Please write and tell me because I am home most days wondering.
Good morning July…
And all I could think of was, “Okay, I’m sitting in the Valvoline, my child is slurping like a banshee, and this old guy is trying to pretend he isn’t totally uncomfortable with the fact that there is a small child breastfeeding in his presence, although I am completely covered (to the pride of my Mennonite-at-heart husband) and that he has taken it upon himself at this very moment to pass down all of his various bits and sundries of knowledge and wisdom on this new mother who gives a crap. And at that very moment, on the Ellen Degeneres show appears the something dolls, the voo-doo dolls, the pussy-cat dolls, something vile like that, and out they storm with their thighs and their leather and their pursed lips doin’ the MilliVanilli while they seduce every man in America and about that time the Valvoline boy tells me where the remote is if I would like to change it and I said yes I would and thank God Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was on and the little train was just getting ready to come around the corner. Whoo, saved by the train.
All that to say, motherhood is wonderful. I am fully embracing it and I am taking care of myself in the process, which is nice to admit. My husband is awful helpful and he just got me a double barrel electric on top of all that.
So. I’m not sure where June went. I don’t remember June. June doesn’t remember me. But I’m planning on writing June and asking June how June was because it’s all a blur to me. Other that that, I’m just trying to figure out what day it is, where the passy went, the “passafrasser” my husband calls it, and how to take a bath once a day.
So how are you? Please write and tell me because I am home most days wondering.
Good morning July…
54 Hour Labor and Not Even an Aspirin People
“I have a whole new appreciation for the cross”…were the first words that came out of my mouth after birthing the most beautiful child in the world, in my eyes of course. My first thoughts as she was lovingly placed on my breast were “Now how did I end up with an African-American child?” That was before my midwife explained to me that her dark purple color and smooshed nose would soon turn pink and perk up in a matter of minutes.
Fifty-four hours is a long time to be in labor. I mean for cryin’ out loud isn’t that like two marathons? I think of Jesus because on his way down Calvary he never asked for an epidural, or valium, or even a shot of tequila for that matter. I’m not sure why I decided to go totally natural, and a home birth at that, other than I really hate hospitals. They need to open those windows and let some of that sick air out and some fresh air in. And come on people can’t we decorate a little? So drab. And I really don’t like being told what to do, like ever, so the thought of having strangers in charge of how I birth my child was kind of out of the question. I guess I’m a little right of center. Or is that left of center.
They say I’ll forget all the pain. I say I don’t forget that easy but man it was worth it. Even if my cankles still haven’t gone away and I feel frumpy and granny-like, kind of like Mama on that show back in the 80’s, what was that show called? You know the one with Carol Burnett and whats-her-name…
This birth has been such a time of healing between my mother and I. We have had more quality time together the past five days than in years combined. Not to mention there’s something pretty intimate about attending someone’s birth, especially the birth of your very own grandchild.
So Rebekah in the Bible was the grandmother of the twelve tribes of Israel. I love that. Well I just love grandmothers in general. I miss mine. She would have loved to sit and rock this wee one.
I have officially “entered the sisterhood” my friend Evangeline tells me. The motherhood tribe of women who can just look at each other a certain way and there is a certain knowing, a bond, an unspoken thing. Glad to have so many sisters.
My husband looks at me different, and he cries when he thinks about what I went through to get this small child here in this world. Thank God we breathed together through the whole thing, and now I have a charm bracelet with a heart that says May 31st, 2006 with Rebekah Lee “BeBe” on the other side, a gift from my better half. Good man. A real good man.
My heart is a bigger container today. So is my cervix but that is a whole other story. For those of you who prayed for me, thank you from the bottom of my heart. In the meantime, I have a little miracle to tend to.
Fifty-four hours is a long time to be in labor. I mean for cryin’ out loud isn’t that like two marathons? I think of Jesus because on his way down Calvary he never asked for an epidural, or valium, or even a shot of tequila for that matter. I’m not sure why I decided to go totally natural, and a home birth at that, other than I really hate hospitals. They need to open those windows and let some of that sick air out and some fresh air in. And come on people can’t we decorate a little? So drab. And I really don’t like being told what to do, like ever, so the thought of having strangers in charge of how I birth my child was kind of out of the question. I guess I’m a little right of center. Or is that left of center.
They say I’ll forget all the pain. I say I don’t forget that easy but man it was worth it. Even if my cankles still haven’t gone away and I feel frumpy and granny-like, kind of like Mama on that show back in the 80’s, what was that show called? You know the one with Carol Burnett and whats-her-name…
This birth has been such a time of healing between my mother and I. We have had more quality time together the past five days than in years combined. Not to mention there’s something pretty intimate about attending someone’s birth, especially the birth of your very own grandchild.
So Rebekah in the Bible was the grandmother of the twelve tribes of Israel. I love that. Well I just love grandmothers in general. I miss mine. She would have loved to sit and rock this wee one.
I have officially “entered the sisterhood” my friend Evangeline tells me. The motherhood tribe of women who can just look at each other a certain way and there is a certain knowing, a bond, an unspoken thing. Glad to have so many sisters.
My husband looks at me different, and he cries when he thinks about what I went through to get this small child here in this world. Thank God we breathed together through the whole thing, and now I have a charm bracelet with a heart that says May 31st, 2006 with Rebekah Lee “BeBe” on the other side, a gift from my better half. Good man. A real good man.
My heart is a bigger container today. So is my cervix but that is a whole other story. For those of you who prayed for me, thank you from the bottom of my heart. In the meantime, I have a little miracle to tend to.
Keeping It Positive
My back hurts. Really bad. I’m due in four weeks. It’s getting’ kinda hard. I made a permanent indention on my side of the bed and when we turned over the mattress, I made another indention. We’re havin’ the baby at home. Yep with a midwife. Ron’s freaking out. He says he’s not, but he is. I know, I’m his wife. We went garage saling and well actually Ron went garage saling when I was out of town and called me to tell me that he found some onesies. I bet the ladies there thought that was hilarious, my husband going through boxes of baby clothes to find the onesies. My father in law is in town. He’s helping around the house. I’m a cleaning fool. Not sure what has come over me but I have completely cleaned out my pantries, laundry room, drawers, desk, under the beds, organized closets, the whole nine yards. I planted a garden with my mom and niece on Tuesday. That was fun. I dug the holes and Mallory planted the plants and when we got tired Mom took over. She’s good at that. I have successfully, so far, prevented Fisher Price from taking over my house. But I will be updating you on that fact, b/c I have a feeling that you become a mom and you just don’t care anymore. I have a baby shower at my house Saturday. My sweet friends are in charge, I’m just hosting the location so I don’t have to haul it all home…I will already be home. You know the whole home thing. That’s where I am most of the time these days, home. Kind of funny because I never wanted to be home much as a kid, but now I have my own house and my own husband and my own car and life and pregnant body and now I want to be home a whole, whole lot. I am eating ice like my life is dependent on it. Midwife says my iron is low. That’s not all that’s low. We won’t go there. My garden makes me happy. We had maids come and clean my house b/c my back can’t take it, and that makes me REAL happy. Thinkin’ about getting one last pregnancy massage before the big day and that makes me happy too. The Japanese people really like my music, they’re buying CD’s left and right, and that makes me happy. We got a new puppy, he’s a golden retriever and he makes me happy too. So we won’t talk about swollen feet and ankles and cankles and butt pain and insomnia and breakouts and moods swings today ok? Let’s just keep it positive. Amen.
Jesus Feet
Today I received a quote from a precious woman who speaks at women’s’ retreats and conferences whom I had the privilege of meeting a month or so ago at an event. I’m putting together promotional materials for my booking person to send out for me to do women’s’ events and she was so kind to send me this.
“Stacy Jagger led me to the feet of Jesus with her own transparent worshipping heart. From the beginning to the end of our retreat it was apparent that Stacy's artistry was intended only to lead us to the true Song of our hearts.”
--Sharon Hersh, speaker, author, counselor
So I started thinking about the feet of Jesus, and just wondering what his feet might have looked like. Were they good feet? Funky feet? Pretty feet? Dirty feet? Did he go barefoot a lot? How many pairs of sandals did he go through while he was here? Did he make his own sandals or did someone make them for him? Did they resemble Berkenstocks in any way? Did any of his toes twist and turn like mine do? Did he ever, ever consider the possibility of a pedicure? Did hair grow on the tops of his feet or just his toes? How many miles a day did he walk? Did he ever have a bunion? Or a wart? Or really bad calluses that peel off after they get all dead and big and yucca? How did he clip his toenails? Did they have clippers back then or did they just rip ‘em off? Any ingrown toenails? Did anybody ever give him a foot massage? Reflexology? Did he sleep with socks? Or did he prefer to sleep with his feet hangin’ out the bottom of the covers? Were his toenails thick? Or thin?
When they say we are now the feet of Jesus and we get to do the things he would have liked to have done had he stayed here on earth for 2000 years, does that mean that all of our funky, pretty, callused feet get to go where He would like us to? Like the prisons? The orphanages? The old folks home? How about our neighbors’ house to mow their lawn when they didn’t ask, or the grocery store to encourage a clerk who is pregnant and tired on her poor little Jesus feet.
When I look at my feet I don’t think of Jesus. But I am starting to wonder if I should. Instead of thinking of what color toenail polish would go well with my sandals this spring, I wonder if I could just forgo the pedicure and take my Jesus feet down to the orphanage that is less than a mile from my house, a house full of young women forgotten, right in my back yard. I wonder if they would like me and if they like to sing. And I wonder by writing this if I am getting myself some accountability of taking my Jesus feet somewhere important, somewhere that will matter, other than under my sheets. Not to put myself under a guilt trip or anything, but I am keenly aware in my 8th month of pregnancy of how self-centered my little Jesus feet have been. Me, me, me I exclaim. But wasn’t it Jesus that said if we lose our life we will find it? Truth is the me me life is boring and unfulfilling and ridiculous. I’m ready to experience something other than my four walls and the paved ditch I drive each day to do the same thing over and over and over again, like a rat in a cage, not realizing all the while that the cage door is open and I am free to peek around the corner and see what else is out there in this great big world. And my sweet little non-pedicured Jesus feet will take me there, if only I will listen and ask for the next right step, and take it.
“Stacy Jagger led me to the feet of Jesus with her own transparent worshipping heart. From the beginning to the end of our retreat it was apparent that Stacy's artistry was intended only to lead us to the true Song of our hearts.”
--Sharon Hersh, speaker, author, counselor
So I started thinking about the feet of Jesus, and just wondering what his feet might have looked like. Were they good feet? Funky feet? Pretty feet? Dirty feet? Did he go barefoot a lot? How many pairs of sandals did he go through while he was here? Did he make his own sandals or did someone make them for him? Did they resemble Berkenstocks in any way? Did any of his toes twist and turn like mine do? Did he ever, ever consider the possibility of a pedicure? Did hair grow on the tops of his feet or just his toes? How many miles a day did he walk? Did he ever have a bunion? Or a wart? Or really bad calluses that peel off after they get all dead and big and yucca? How did he clip his toenails? Did they have clippers back then or did they just rip ‘em off? Any ingrown toenails? Did anybody ever give him a foot massage? Reflexology? Did he sleep with socks? Or did he prefer to sleep with his feet hangin’ out the bottom of the covers? Were his toenails thick? Or thin?
When they say we are now the feet of Jesus and we get to do the things he would have liked to have done had he stayed here on earth for 2000 years, does that mean that all of our funky, pretty, callused feet get to go where He would like us to? Like the prisons? The orphanages? The old folks home? How about our neighbors’ house to mow their lawn when they didn’t ask, or the grocery store to encourage a clerk who is pregnant and tired on her poor little Jesus feet.
When I look at my feet I don’t think of Jesus. But I am starting to wonder if I should. Instead of thinking of what color toenail polish would go well with my sandals this spring, I wonder if I could just forgo the pedicure and take my Jesus feet down to the orphanage that is less than a mile from my house, a house full of young women forgotten, right in my back yard. I wonder if they would like me and if they like to sing. And I wonder by writing this if I am getting myself some accountability of taking my Jesus feet somewhere important, somewhere that will matter, other than under my sheets. Not to put myself under a guilt trip or anything, but I am keenly aware in my 8th month of pregnancy of how self-centered my little Jesus feet have been. Me, me, me I exclaim. But wasn’t it Jesus that said if we lose our life we will find it? Truth is the me me life is boring and unfulfilling and ridiculous. I’m ready to experience something other than my four walls and the paved ditch I drive each day to do the same thing over and over and over again, like a rat in a cage, not realizing all the while that the cage door is open and I am free to peek around the corner and see what else is out there in this great big world. And my sweet little non-pedicured Jesus feet will take me there, if only I will listen and ask for the next right step, and take it.
Just As I Am
There's an old hymn we sing in the deep south to try and get as many people saved on a Sunday morning as possible called “Just As I Am”. I started pondering this hymn’s rich words, although I knew them by heart, chapter and verse, as well as grandma quoted John 3:16.
Just as I am, without one plea,but that thy blood was shed for me,and that thou bidst me come to thee,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
And I begin to realize it is not so hard to believe that the God of the universe loves me enough to want me to come to Him. The hard part all of my life is figuring out who “just as I am” is. Not who I wish I was, used to be, ought to be, could have been. But who I am today. With my big protruding Buddah belly, my swollen ankles, and my scared little heart I sing…
Just as I am, and waiting notto rid my soul of one dark blot,to thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Now I know my soul definitely has a blot on it. I feel the blot as soon as I get out of the bed in the morning. I give my blot over to God or that blot runs and rules my day. It is amazing that when we give our blots over to God he has the ability to cleanse it, like Ajax, one day at a time. And the truth is, we wake up every morning with a new blot that needs some Ajax.
Just as I am, though tossed aboutwith many a conflict, many a doubt,fightings and fears within, without,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Yes I toss myself about. And when I’m still I have the mind of a monkey, going here going there, swinging from tree limb to tree limb trying to make sense of the jungle. And Lord yes I fight with my own self. And who is this Lamb?
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;sight, riches, healing of the mind,yea, all I need in thee to find,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
There is true healing in God’s word and life. None other compares. My mind heals as I renew it day by day.
Just as I am, thou wilt receive,wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;because thy promise I believe,O Lamb of God, I come, I come. I’m feeling better already, aren’t you?
Just as I am, thy love unknownhath broken every barrier down;now, to be thine, yea thine aloneO Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, without one plea,but that thy blood was shed for me,and that thou bidst me come to thee,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
And I begin to realize it is not so hard to believe that the God of the universe loves me enough to want me to come to Him. The hard part all of my life is figuring out who “just as I am” is. Not who I wish I was, used to be, ought to be, could have been. But who I am today. With my big protruding Buddah belly, my swollen ankles, and my scared little heart I sing…
Just as I am, and waiting notto rid my soul of one dark blot,to thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Now I know my soul definitely has a blot on it. I feel the blot as soon as I get out of the bed in the morning. I give my blot over to God or that blot runs and rules my day. It is amazing that when we give our blots over to God he has the ability to cleanse it, like Ajax, one day at a time. And the truth is, we wake up every morning with a new blot that needs some Ajax.
Just as I am, though tossed aboutwith many a conflict, many a doubt,fightings and fears within, without,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Yes I toss myself about. And when I’m still I have the mind of a monkey, going here going there, swinging from tree limb to tree limb trying to make sense of the jungle. And Lord yes I fight with my own self. And who is this Lamb?
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;sight, riches, healing of the mind,yea, all I need in thee to find,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
There is true healing in God’s word and life. None other compares. My mind heals as I renew it day by day.
Just as I am, thou wilt receive,wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;because thy promise I believe,O Lamb of God, I come, I come. I’m feeling better already, aren’t you?
Just as I am, thy love unknownhath broken every barrier down;now, to be thine, yea thine aloneO Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Cankles
OK guys I officially have cankles. That’s where you can’t tell the difference between my calves and my ankles. Some call it normal pregnant swelling, I call it embarrassing. But hey, it could be worse. I’m trying to think of worse at the moment and nothing is coming to mind.
At the moment, I am swept away with the important things in life, like how many cloth diapers I should order, when am I going to register at BabysRUs for a plethora of plastic paraphanalia and whether or not I want my mother at my birth. Sprinkle on a little radio play and wala’ I’m just really having an interesting time.
It’s a beautiful day outside today, my midwife just left my house as she checked my belly growth on my daybed with my cat Tilly purring right beside me. House visits from midwives…a close thing to heaven when you can’t stand doctor's office waiting rooms. I’m taking prenatal yoga, breathing in the life and trying to remain calm that I am about to be a mother. A life changing, life altering, never gonna be the same moment in time and all I can think about is what about this body of mine…will it ever return to normal? Will I ever wear pants that snap again? Or am I destined to a lifetime of stretchy elastic and grandma panties… OK I take that back, I never went for the grandma panties, I’m just permenantly stretching out the ones I’ve had. Enough of the panty talk.
Anyways, I am keeping my mind today on pleasant things, like fresh air, good friends and the fact that I am blessed to have my husband at home working every day where we get to have three meals together and I get to call out his name for rescue every time the computer hates me. I’m planning out my shows and talks for women's groups in the fall…trying to connect with my inner speaker, which has been a challenge. I mean I’m all about speaking, but speaking with a purpose is another thing altogether. Hopefully I’ll get it together and can start touring when the baby is three months.
I trust that your day is going well. Even if it isn’t I hope it all turns around. You can look up at the sky and take a deep breath, thank God for the air and kick up your heels on the side when no one is watching. Turn up the corners of your mouth and say “Hello world”.
My yoga teacher is rubbing off on me. I’m saying things I would have never said before. And I’m keeping my eyes on my own mat. That means I’m not comparing myself to anyone else today. I’m not letting my eyes wander to other people lives and front yards. I’m keeping my eyes on what I can contribute to the world, who I am, who I’m meant to be. I get a lot more energy that way.
At the moment, I am swept away with the important things in life, like how many cloth diapers I should order, when am I going to register at BabysRUs for a plethora of plastic paraphanalia and whether or not I want my mother at my birth. Sprinkle on a little radio play and wala’ I’m just really having an interesting time.
It’s a beautiful day outside today, my midwife just left my house as she checked my belly growth on my daybed with my cat Tilly purring right beside me. House visits from midwives…a close thing to heaven when you can’t stand doctor's office waiting rooms. I’m taking prenatal yoga, breathing in the life and trying to remain calm that I am about to be a mother. A life changing, life altering, never gonna be the same moment in time and all I can think about is what about this body of mine…will it ever return to normal? Will I ever wear pants that snap again? Or am I destined to a lifetime of stretchy elastic and grandma panties… OK I take that back, I never went for the grandma panties, I’m just permenantly stretching out the ones I’ve had. Enough of the panty talk.
Anyways, I am keeping my mind today on pleasant things, like fresh air, good friends and the fact that I am blessed to have my husband at home working every day where we get to have three meals together and I get to call out his name for rescue every time the computer hates me. I’m planning out my shows and talks for women's groups in the fall…trying to connect with my inner speaker, which has been a challenge. I mean I’m all about speaking, but speaking with a purpose is another thing altogether. Hopefully I’ll get it together and can start touring when the baby is three months.
I trust that your day is going well. Even if it isn’t I hope it all turns around. You can look up at the sky and take a deep breath, thank God for the air and kick up your heels on the side when no one is watching. Turn up the corners of your mouth and say “Hello world”.
My yoga teacher is rubbing off on me. I’m saying things I would have never said before. And I’m keeping my eyes on my own mat. That means I’m not comparing myself to anyone else today. I’m not letting my eyes wander to other people lives and front yards. I’m keeping my eyes on what I can contribute to the world, who I am, who I’m meant to be. I get a lot more energy that way.
Jesus, Chucky Cheese, and A Great Moisturizer
Jesus is the most household name I can think of yet he never had a publicist, never had his name in lights, never wrote an autobiography and he never toured the land with a band and a PA system. He didn’t have a non-profit 501c3. He never saved a dime, didn’t have projected goals, well other than one, to die for humanity. His only mission in life was to do the will of his father, to stay in the moment, in the present and walk according to those orders in due time. He was never married, never owned a home, or had to drive in traffic, but I’m convinced if he had he would have been genuinely irritated. He never went to Chucky Cheese or watched television or shouted at a Yankees game, or an Alabama game either for that matter. He was a fairly simple man, with a simple mission. Sent on earth to be the final lamb slaughtered for the shortcomings of our not-so-perfect world, he died willingly, but not without doubts or worries or sadness or despair. He felt all of the feelings we feel, but on a much larger scale, and all at once. When I am feeling lonely, I can remember, he felt lonely too. How would it feel to have all of your friends abandon you at your most needy hour? When I am feeling angry, I get a real kick out of what Jesus’ muscles must have looked like as he turned over the merchants’ tables in the temple with only one hand, kind of like the incredible Hulk before he turned green, a kind and angry way of saying, “Get out. And get out now.” Yeah. When I feel like giving up, I remember Jesus’ last words about the cup being passed from him. When I am living in yesterday or in tomorrow, I remember the magic words “Thy will, not my will be done.” and “Give us this day our DAILY bread”. Not weekly or yearly bread, but bread just for today, that just might have bugs on it tomorrow. When I wake up real early in the morning, when it’s still dark, which is extremely rare, I think, “Yeah, me and Jesus, we’re the only ones up this early. Everybody else must really be slackin’.” When I go to bed at night with my featherbed and feather pillow in my nightgown and my freshly moisturized face in my seventy degrees heated bedroom after taking a long, hot bath, I think…Jesus didn’t even have a place to lay his head and there were no Ramada Inn’s then, and even so, I’m not sure he would have had the seventy bucks. So it’s real concerting when I know that here I have an invisible friend who lived many years ago who apparently and supposedly loves me very much, even though many days I wonder who I am and where I am going and what I am doing. I have this belief, this trust that lives in my chest that everything is going to be alright, even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment. And I can curl up with a book knowing that Jesus loves it when I read and sleep comfortably and when I get angry without hurting anybody and when I feel lonely and tell him all about it. It’s kind of like talking to Oprah, if Oprah could be everywhere at every moment and listen intently to every problem and have much compassion, except much much better and instead it’s a big brother who prays for you all night on his knees and asks his father to give you only good things, even if that good thing is a slap on the behind when you need it. And all of a sudden the whole Jesus thing becomes a little more real, a little more tangible and you think he could actually be just sitting right here beside me, right here in this room, like a shadow. A good shadow and you don’t want the sun to go down because you are afraid it might go away, but even then he doesn’t go away you just can’t see him, can’t touch him, but you can talk to him all you want, as long as it isn’t out loud at a nice restaurant. And I begin to realize that all of my searchings, all of my longings, all of my goals and dreams and desires to fill myself up with importance and success and security, are all swallowed up in this unconditional, long lasting, never ending, overwhelming love that is better than husbandry and the best sex, because he is so there for me, on my side, on my team and expects really nothing in return, unless I just feel like telling someone else about how amazing he is and how he has that much love to give around to everybody here on this big planet earth. And when it’s time to go to sleep I close my eyes in peace knowing there is no calamity that can separate me from this love and that no tragedy can swallow it up. And all night, even if I have a bad dream, the good guys win, even if it’s after I awaken. And I get to start over the next day with new things to talk about, new things to dream, new mistakes to make, with all the grace I need to start over one day at a time with no shame or embarrassment or humiliation. And I think. Wow. Now that’s a good God to make such a nice big brother. And I pat my tummy and wonder if it’s a girl or a boy and hope that I can love that child even one iota of that kind of love, b/c I know if I do that child will have a little better understanding of the love of God the creator of the heavens and the earth and us. And the sun shines a little brighter, and the moon a little glowier, and when I burn the toast it’s really no big deal. And a wave of serenity comes over me, even if just for a little while, and I get to experience something new and tell you all about it.
Soap Box
If I have one more friend call me asking me would I sign up to sell multi-level marketing make up I think I might go nuts. I mean for cryin’ out loud. I sold Mary Kay for one week eleven years ago, when I had just turned twenty and was as naïve as a pink Cadillac and I’ll never forget going to Arkansas to visit my grandparents with my pink totes telling my poor family how I was going to make them feel and look so much younger! My grandpa Carl was losing his mind, literally, he had middle stage Alzheimer’s and Mom and I had the wild notion that we should get Grandpa to do the #3 mask, because he really had some dry skin and needed to moisturize. When it got all dry and crackly, he said “Is it time to take this da__ thing off?” Mom said, “No dad you have to count backwards from 10, real slow like, and when you get to down to zero it will be time.” So we all started counting with him in that slow Arkansas drawl, “Tin, Nan, Ate, Sevin, Six, Fav, Fouer, Tharee, Twoo, Woin.” And there goes my Grandpa whooshing away with his green mud mask and his white ceramic bowl of lukewarm water asking my mom to get that washcloth and get the rest of it off of him. I was convinced I was going to be a millionaire within a matter of weeks, for about three hours, then reality set in that I was going to have to sell enough make up to lease a new car and that was just entirely too much make up for me. So I got burned out in about eight days and put up my pink tote bags for good. Those red-coated, pin wearin’ happy people were getting on my nerves and I never did like their foundation…it’s just too grandma. Now their concealer is GREAT. Really covers up those under eye circles. But I’m just not the Avon, Mary Kay type. Now they say Arbonne is all natural, and it is, and their moisturizer is fabulous because I have dry skin and it’s the best thing I’ve found for dry skin. There are no preservatives, it was made in the Swiss Alps, or Switzerland, or was it Sweden? Oh anyways over there with the clean air people across the ocean. Their cleanser is great, especially the one that has the little granuales in it, which one is that called? But don’t use the clear cleanser because that one has sodium lauryth sulfate in it and that’s what they use to strip garage floors, it really causes drying. Anyways, I haven’t tried their make up but their skin care really is probably the best I have found bar none to the malls. And they really expose how the mall skin care is all marketing and not based on good, quality ingredients. I could get on my soapbox, no pun intended, about all the additives to our stuff we put on our skin and in our bodies in this country. I mean no wonder we’re all sick. Anyways, if you want to buy some fabulous skin care I have three wonderful friends who all sell it and I will be glad to give you their numbers. In the meantime, may you all have a wonderful skin day and be sure to wash your face tonight before you go to bed.
Bujustments
“A merry year is born like the bright berry from the naked thorn” – Harley Coleridge. I have no idea what that means, but I had to find a chipper saying to write on my chalkboard for the new year and this one kind of snuck out on me. It was time to erase since I still had the list of things my family was grateful for for Thanksgiving.
A merry year to you my friends. Like Oprah says, it’s another year to try and get it right. What are you trying to get right this year? Well let me tell you about me.
I’m getting into the yoga thing. Yep. It’s good for me. Ron makes fun of me, but he’s just jealous. He walks around the house saying “Breathe in the life… breathe out the death”. Oh whatever I’ve never even said that. He’s a nut.
And I’m going to have a baby in May. Wow. Now that’s a life change for ya. I’ve been married six and a half years and we ran out of excuses. Two years ago I showed Ron my wall calendar and pointed to September 1st of 2005. I said, “See this honey? See this date? That’s when we’re getting pregnant, whether you like it or not.” He smiled a kind of boyish smile and said, “OK”.
So my conception date was Sept. 1st, 2005. Ron was late for work that day. That’s all I have to say about that.
My midwife has this little wheel thing she uses to tell me when I’m due, but it’s all a little confusing to me, I mean isn’t 40 weeks more than nine months? Anyways, I was never good at math so I’m just taking her word for it.
It’s gone well so far, except for the fact that I was so sick in my second month that I begged my husband to take me out back with his .42. And I have a touch of sciatica. You know, butt pain. Hurts when I sit, hurts when I stand up, but when I’m walking it’s all good. Now I have to go to my chiropractor to get a bujustment.
Anyways, so I hope you have a fabulous beginning of the new year and that you weren’t too hard on yourself with resolutions. I have resoluted to being a little gentler, a little kinder with myself. To change my sheets once a week, be honest with my friends and try and keep in touch with my family a little better. And to learn all about yoga. Breathe in the life… breathe out the death… just kidding.
A merry year to you my friends. Like Oprah says, it’s another year to try and get it right. What are you trying to get right this year? Well let me tell you about me.
I’m getting into the yoga thing. Yep. It’s good for me. Ron makes fun of me, but he’s just jealous. He walks around the house saying “Breathe in the life… breathe out the death”. Oh whatever I’ve never even said that. He’s a nut.
And I’m going to have a baby in May. Wow. Now that’s a life change for ya. I’ve been married six and a half years and we ran out of excuses. Two years ago I showed Ron my wall calendar and pointed to September 1st of 2005. I said, “See this honey? See this date? That’s when we’re getting pregnant, whether you like it or not.” He smiled a kind of boyish smile and said, “OK”.
So my conception date was Sept. 1st, 2005. Ron was late for work that day. That’s all I have to say about that.
My midwife has this little wheel thing she uses to tell me when I’m due, but it’s all a little confusing to me, I mean isn’t 40 weeks more than nine months? Anyways, I was never good at math so I’m just taking her word for it.
It’s gone well so far, except for the fact that I was so sick in my second month that I begged my husband to take me out back with his .42. And I have a touch of sciatica. You know, butt pain. Hurts when I sit, hurts when I stand up, but when I’m walking it’s all good. Now I have to go to my chiropractor to get a bujustment.
Anyways, so I hope you have a fabulous beginning of the new year and that you weren’t too hard on yourself with resolutions. I have resoluted to being a little gentler, a little kinder with myself. To change my sheets once a week, be honest with my friends and try and keep in touch with my family a little better. And to learn all about yoga. Breathe in the life… breathe out the death… just kidding.
Monkdom
Last Christmas, my husband and I decided to get the heck out of dodge and escape the crazy wiles of the red and green season. The thought of being trapped in a parking lot full of flickering lights and silver tinsel and all the happy people was making me sick to my stomach, so I got the wild notion that we could escape to a monastery and experience what they call a 'silent retreat'. That meant my husband and I would stay in separate quarters and be separate from each other, except for meals, so that we could think and write and be.
Being a woman of many words, my talker got trapped inside my head and merrily dislodged herself on pieces of journal paper to help me feel not so alone. This is my unreserved observation of my first experience in a monastery as a woman who has no frame of reference whatsoever for Catholicism, who was raised a grape juice drinking, “Just As I Am” 14th verse singing, here-I-go-down-the-aisle-to-get-saved-again Baptist.
The monks sing with long white robes and hoods that fall behind their heads, which is reminiscient of the KKK, but I am in a monestery and I am all too grateful that I am not witnessing a demonstration in Pulaski, Tennessee.
It is in this place that I begin celebrating the gift of life. In deep silence it speaks, and my heart grows louder, and the dirt in my heart rises and I feel my humanity and I sense the need for a savior, to come and save me from myself.
I can see how a monastic retreat from the world could hold one like a little baby, and how the vigils three hours apart could become like regular feedings, much like the breast of a new and loving, experienced mother. And yet the stillness seems to lack humor, or maybe it is buried knee deep underneath layers of readings and liturgy and common prayers. Maybe these men have common inside jokes about Paul or Mary or Peter, or maybe they sew cloaks together and speak about their mothers with great respect and laugh about good times in the kitchen. They say much of life is ninety-nine percent perception and one percent reality, and I cannot help but to wonder what real life is life for a monk. One man has been here over fifty years. When he sings I feel as if I have time traveled to the third century and I am Mary's great-grandaughter in the house of Rome. They all go by father, and I want to know who they father. And if maybe I could sign up for an hour of their time to get fathered. But I'm not sure what they would say to me and I'm afraid I might have to eat a wafer and confess that I haven't been a great daughter. Dad got all the flack.
Christmas Eve service I felt as if I was wading slowly in the pool of long ago. Fransiscan monks began living and working here at the Abbey of Gethsemene in 1841. They are buried out front. And as I hear the words of the fathers, so many fathers here at the abbey, I begin to wonder if there are five fathers, commited real fathers who teach their children virtuous principles and have time to listen to them lament and celebrate and love, in the whole dad-blamed state of Kentucky. It seems a crying shame they are all here locked up in a monastery. And I wonder if maybe they could build an orphanage and an old folks home close by, maybe here on this 1000 acre farm, so that the old ladies can rock babies, the teenagers can have fathers, and they can all have Christmas together. All celebate of course.
The monks speak with gentle authority and sit quietly together with a seeming appreciation for the lack of hindrances around them. Maybe women give them headaches, because at this moment there are three women taking flash photography of these poor monks like it is some Opryland musical revue and they forgot to announce in the beginning that flash photography is strictly prohibited. And then I begin to ponder how I am not exactly sure why the Amish, Mennonites, Huttites, Quakers, Monks, Non-Electrics, Farmers, Homesteaders and such intrigue me so. Maybe it is the staunch smell of modern pop culture that burns my eyes, turns my stomach and sends me restlessly waiting for something other than virtual reality (almost real, but not quite), and the real lives of people I do not know (reality tv) and probably never will. I am drawn to the home churchers, the tv thrower-outers, Little House on the Prarie episodes and Laura Ingalls books of all types, and to men that don't scare me. The ones that look gentle and Jesusy, my husband being one of them.
In Christmas eve mass, I am emotionally unable to participate, as I am not Catholic and just the brick laying and stained glass on this building is enough for me to praise God for the amazingness of the hardworking sweat boys who built structures for God for the purpose of shielding themselves from the world. I don't blame them. It was a pretty good idea if you ask me. Not a bad life, although the cells remind me of what Martha Stewart went through.
The long built in knee pad prayer thingies seem to be teaching me that praying on my knees may not be a bad idea for deflating my ego, as knee praying is a good dose for humility, one of the of the more sought after traits of a good Christian. The only problem is that it makes my fear-filled, prideful heart retreat into the back corner of my left chest cavity and impatiently lurks around the corner waiting for me to please stand up. And as I smell the incense, it reminds me of the bowl-passing pot parties my sister used to have when she drug along her tag along baby sister. I breathe in deeply hoping if I hold it in a while I'll get good and high and the Catholic Bible might actually make sense to me and I'll feel at one with monkdom and start writing genious songs reminiscent of Bob Dillon in the sixties only it will be me in the two thousands and I'll be singing about peace in monkdom.
I feel like a spectator, as there is nothing for me to truly do, and I wonder how this is any different from me sitting in front of a television at home. The repeatedness of these masses drive me absolutely crazy and I feel like Bill Murray in that movie “Groundhog Day” where each morning he repeated the same day until he finally cracked and began making a difference in people's lives, right then and there without question. I guess the difference is that these are real people here, with real lives, that I am real and benefitting from their lives of solitude and greatful I have a place to go to for free, with free meals and free lodging and I suddenly realize it is the dysfunction in my sick brain that would have to find something wrong with it. Their voluntary poverty and absolute simpleness is profound to me and I do not have to question their motives. I am only here to enjoy it.
Staying in a monestery feels somewhat cell like. Only you're not in prison, you didn't do anything wrong and by golly you chose to come here. My small pale room is plain Jane with large icons of Jesus and Mary and Joseph with scary sun disks around the backs of their arty heads and droopy doopy faces that look like they were made in a nineteen eighties college collage art class in "How Depressing Can You Make Jesus". Not to mention that Jesus has enormously long legs and is involuntarily wearing a white mini-skirt like sarong with a rather flashy and fashionable gold lamay belt for his day. And I begin to see why non-Christians are totally weirded out by the whole Christiandom thing. These icons are scary, I've covered mine with two Gap sweatshirts and I took down the cross over my head so that I could think straight. I cannot think straight with a cross hanging over my head, I feel like a nun in training and doesn't the Bible say something about not worshipping graven images? Oh well it's like grandma said, it's either in the Bible or it's an old Kenny Rogers song.
And then there is this smell of holy that embraces my being as soon as I let off the elevator into the 'silence only' zone. I'm not sure if it is unrecirculated air, incense from the cathedral or the many years of silence that is regularly spoken in these hallways and rooms. This smell of holy is unfamiliar to me and I am perplexed as to why I didn't smell this scent in the Baptist Sunday school hallways or the charasmatic cry rooms. Just this one particular monesteric hallway that wiffs of a peculiar sense of holiness. You would think that it would drop me to my knees and I would immediately start singing dominus glorius in excelsis deo in the highest or something. But instead I am just dumbfounded that in all my days I have never smelled this fine tasting scent of holy. It is like a mix of burnt rug, b.o. and grandma's closet with a little hint of some essential oil like a rosemary-dirt combo.
There seems to be some well fed monks here too, as one fringe benefit of becoming a monk seems to be the food. This is a self-proclaimed vegetarian monestery, which is why I was a little confused at lunch when they served ham. (That's pork, as in meat). One older, bald monk had a stack of sliced ham piled eight high and was eating to his heart's merry delight when my mouth dropped in awe and his monk eye caught me glaring at him.
The next day, I decided to be more respectful and do the whole stand up, sit down and also with you thing. After all, this is their religion, their boringness, the least I can do is plot along like a sheep to the slaughter. I got really jealous when I read that non-Catholics are asked not to partake in eucharist (that's communion to the Baptists), because I knew the Catholics drank real red wine, and that I didn't mind a glass for special occasions, and boy was this a special occasion and I wondered if maybe I could help with communion preparation, kind of like grandma did with the ole Welch's grape juice only I might be able to score a bottle of 1989 Yellow Tail Shiroz and have a silent party in my room for the rest of the night, because all this chanting and silence is making me a little loopy headed. But then I remember how bad it makes me feel to drink more than one glass and the smell of holy comes over me again and I talk myself out of the whole thing. Not to mention it would really embarrass my dry, never had a drink, super responsible husband who is married to a somewhat curious and precocious woman who sometimes forgets she is thirty years old and is all grown up now.
In the last night of our stay, I stayed up late pondering what lessons I should be learning from staying four days and three nights deep in the heart of monkdom. In deep contemplation and stillness, my mind's eye recollected the hours I spent staring at miles of glass trees and red birds and wet snow and the four hour talk I had with my sweet husband as we sneakily slipped away into a meditation room to talk and dream of our future. And I began to think...maybe peace is not a place, is not a person, is not a philosophy, but is the still small voice within that says, "You are OK, I am here, I am in your presence, in your midst, you are no accident, there are no accidents, I am loving, I am kind, now go to bed."
Ok just as a disclaimer, I know it sounds like I'm really reaming the Catholics, but really I love them just like everybody else. In fact, we went back to Monkdom this year and really enjoyed ourselves and I was much more relaxed. The icons didn't bother me and I didn't even bring my Gap sweatshirts to cover them. I had a mighty fine time hanging out with the Monks and the quiet people and I met some wonderful seekers who, even though they wear two pound Jesus's on their necks, spoke to my heart like they were Jesus themselves. I was blessed. I would say that I'll be back next year, but I have a baby in my tummy and she/he doesn't like the fudge. Yeh, they make fudge there, from scratch like Great-Grandma, and I'm trying to make myself believe that my kids won't be addicted to chocolate like I've been. I highly recommend this place to anyone out there that needs a real break from modern society. The monks don't bite. The smell of holy is quite refreshing. And you can sleep all you want. For free. It's like a giant Ramada without the televisions and the maids wear long robes and say things like “Peace be with you.” Can't beat that. And there is a movie theatre nearby if you get really stir crazy. Just so you know.
Peace out like a baby Nimrod.
Being a woman of many words, my talker got trapped inside my head and merrily dislodged herself on pieces of journal paper to help me feel not so alone. This is my unreserved observation of my first experience in a monastery as a woman who has no frame of reference whatsoever for Catholicism, who was raised a grape juice drinking, “Just As I Am” 14th verse singing, here-I-go-down-the-aisle-to-get-saved-again Baptist.
The monks sing with long white robes and hoods that fall behind their heads, which is reminiscient of the KKK, but I am in a monestery and I am all too grateful that I am not witnessing a demonstration in Pulaski, Tennessee.
It is in this place that I begin celebrating the gift of life. In deep silence it speaks, and my heart grows louder, and the dirt in my heart rises and I feel my humanity and I sense the need for a savior, to come and save me from myself.
I can see how a monastic retreat from the world could hold one like a little baby, and how the vigils three hours apart could become like regular feedings, much like the breast of a new and loving, experienced mother. And yet the stillness seems to lack humor, or maybe it is buried knee deep underneath layers of readings and liturgy and common prayers. Maybe these men have common inside jokes about Paul or Mary or Peter, or maybe they sew cloaks together and speak about their mothers with great respect and laugh about good times in the kitchen. They say much of life is ninety-nine percent perception and one percent reality, and I cannot help but to wonder what real life is life for a monk. One man has been here over fifty years. When he sings I feel as if I have time traveled to the third century and I am Mary's great-grandaughter in the house of Rome. They all go by father, and I want to know who they father. And if maybe I could sign up for an hour of their time to get fathered. But I'm not sure what they would say to me and I'm afraid I might have to eat a wafer and confess that I haven't been a great daughter. Dad got all the flack.
Christmas Eve service I felt as if I was wading slowly in the pool of long ago. Fransiscan monks began living and working here at the Abbey of Gethsemene in 1841. They are buried out front. And as I hear the words of the fathers, so many fathers here at the abbey, I begin to wonder if there are five fathers, commited real fathers who teach their children virtuous principles and have time to listen to them lament and celebrate and love, in the whole dad-blamed state of Kentucky. It seems a crying shame they are all here locked up in a monastery. And I wonder if maybe they could build an orphanage and an old folks home close by, maybe here on this 1000 acre farm, so that the old ladies can rock babies, the teenagers can have fathers, and they can all have Christmas together. All celebate of course.
The monks speak with gentle authority and sit quietly together with a seeming appreciation for the lack of hindrances around them. Maybe women give them headaches, because at this moment there are three women taking flash photography of these poor monks like it is some Opryland musical revue and they forgot to announce in the beginning that flash photography is strictly prohibited. And then I begin to ponder how I am not exactly sure why the Amish, Mennonites, Huttites, Quakers, Monks, Non-Electrics, Farmers, Homesteaders and such intrigue me so. Maybe it is the staunch smell of modern pop culture that burns my eyes, turns my stomach and sends me restlessly waiting for something other than virtual reality (almost real, but not quite), and the real lives of people I do not know (reality tv) and probably never will. I am drawn to the home churchers, the tv thrower-outers, Little House on the Prarie episodes and Laura Ingalls books of all types, and to men that don't scare me. The ones that look gentle and Jesusy, my husband being one of them.
In Christmas eve mass, I am emotionally unable to participate, as I am not Catholic and just the brick laying and stained glass on this building is enough for me to praise God for the amazingness of the hardworking sweat boys who built structures for God for the purpose of shielding themselves from the world. I don't blame them. It was a pretty good idea if you ask me. Not a bad life, although the cells remind me of what Martha Stewart went through.
The long built in knee pad prayer thingies seem to be teaching me that praying on my knees may not be a bad idea for deflating my ego, as knee praying is a good dose for humility, one of the of the more sought after traits of a good Christian. The only problem is that it makes my fear-filled, prideful heart retreat into the back corner of my left chest cavity and impatiently lurks around the corner waiting for me to please stand up. And as I smell the incense, it reminds me of the bowl-passing pot parties my sister used to have when she drug along her tag along baby sister. I breathe in deeply hoping if I hold it in a while I'll get good and high and the Catholic Bible might actually make sense to me and I'll feel at one with monkdom and start writing genious songs reminiscent of Bob Dillon in the sixties only it will be me in the two thousands and I'll be singing about peace in monkdom.
I feel like a spectator, as there is nothing for me to truly do, and I wonder how this is any different from me sitting in front of a television at home. The repeatedness of these masses drive me absolutely crazy and I feel like Bill Murray in that movie “Groundhog Day” where each morning he repeated the same day until he finally cracked and began making a difference in people's lives, right then and there without question. I guess the difference is that these are real people here, with real lives, that I am real and benefitting from their lives of solitude and greatful I have a place to go to for free, with free meals and free lodging and I suddenly realize it is the dysfunction in my sick brain that would have to find something wrong with it. Their voluntary poverty and absolute simpleness is profound to me and I do not have to question their motives. I am only here to enjoy it.
Staying in a monestery feels somewhat cell like. Only you're not in prison, you didn't do anything wrong and by golly you chose to come here. My small pale room is plain Jane with large icons of Jesus and Mary and Joseph with scary sun disks around the backs of their arty heads and droopy doopy faces that look like they were made in a nineteen eighties college collage art class in "How Depressing Can You Make Jesus". Not to mention that Jesus has enormously long legs and is involuntarily wearing a white mini-skirt like sarong with a rather flashy and fashionable gold lamay belt for his day. And I begin to see why non-Christians are totally weirded out by the whole Christiandom thing. These icons are scary, I've covered mine with two Gap sweatshirts and I took down the cross over my head so that I could think straight. I cannot think straight with a cross hanging over my head, I feel like a nun in training and doesn't the Bible say something about not worshipping graven images? Oh well it's like grandma said, it's either in the Bible or it's an old Kenny Rogers song.
And then there is this smell of holy that embraces my being as soon as I let off the elevator into the 'silence only' zone. I'm not sure if it is unrecirculated air, incense from the cathedral or the many years of silence that is regularly spoken in these hallways and rooms. This smell of holy is unfamiliar to me and I am perplexed as to why I didn't smell this scent in the Baptist Sunday school hallways or the charasmatic cry rooms. Just this one particular monesteric hallway that wiffs of a peculiar sense of holiness. You would think that it would drop me to my knees and I would immediately start singing dominus glorius in excelsis deo in the highest or something. But instead I am just dumbfounded that in all my days I have never smelled this fine tasting scent of holy. It is like a mix of burnt rug, b.o. and grandma's closet with a little hint of some essential oil like a rosemary-dirt combo.
There seems to be some well fed monks here too, as one fringe benefit of becoming a monk seems to be the food. This is a self-proclaimed vegetarian monestery, which is why I was a little confused at lunch when they served ham. (That's pork, as in meat). One older, bald monk had a stack of sliced ham piled eight high and was eating to his heart's merry delight when my mouth dropped in awe and his monk eye caught me glaring at him.
The next day, I decided to be more respectful and do the whole stand up, sit down and also with you thing. After all, this is their religion, their boringness, the least I can do is plot along like a sheep to the slaughter. I got really jealous when I read that non-Catholics are asked not to partake in eucharist (that's communion to the Baptists), because I knew the Catholics drank real red wine, and that I didn't mind a glass for special occasions, and boy was this a special occasion and I wondered if maybe I could help with communion preparation, kind of like grandma did with the ole Welch's grape juice only I might be able to score a bottle of 1989 Yellow Tail Shiroz and have a silent party in my room for the rest of the night, because all this chanting and silence is making me a little loopy headed. But then I remember how bad it makes me feel to drink more than one glass and the smell of holy comes over me again and I talk myself out of the whole thing. Not to mention it would really embarrass my dry, never had a drink, super responsible husband who is married to a somewhat curious and precocious woman who sometimes forgets she is thirty years old and is all grown up now.
In the last night of our stay, I stayed up late pondering what lessons I should be learning from staying four days and three nights deep in the heart of monkdom. In deep contemplation and stillness, my mind's eye recollected the hours I spent staring at miles of glass trees and red birds and wet snow and the four hour talk I had with my sweet husband as we sneakily slipped away into a meditation room to talk and dream of our future. And I began to think...maybe peace is not a place, is not a person, is not a philosophy, but is the still small voice within that says, "You are OK, I am here, I am in your presence, in your midst, you are no accident, there are no accidents, I am loving, I am kind, now go to bed."
Ok just as a disclaimer, I know it sounds like I'm really reaming the Catholics, but really I love them just like everybody else. In fact, we went back to Monkdom this year and really enjoyed ourselves and I was much more relaxed. The icons didn't bother me and I didn't even bring my Gap sweatshirts to cover them. I had a mighty fine time hanging out with the Monks and the quiet people and I met some wonderful seekers who, even though they wear two pound Jesus's on their necks, spoke to my heart like they were Jesus themselves. I was blessed. I would say that I'll be back next year, but I have a baby in my tummy and she/he doesn't like the fudge. Yeh, they make fudge there, from scratch like Great-Grandma, and I'm trying to make myself believe that my kids won't be addicted to chocolate like I've been. I highly recommend this place to anyone out there that needs a real break from modern society. The monks don't bite. The smell of holy is quite refreshing. And you can sleep all you want. For free. It's like a giant Ramada without the televisions and the maids wear long robes and say things like “Peace be with you.” Can't beat that. And there is a movie theatre nearby if you get really stir crazy. Just so you know.
Peace out like a baby Nimrod.
Diary of a Morning
I’ve never been a morning person. I love the sunset, the quiet, the beauty of the stillness and the fact that no one seems to be awake, but four in the morning just seems like an ungodly time of the day that only Jesus and Mary ever even saw, and mothers who are breastfeeding or comforting their colicky one.
It is so rare that I am awake this early that it makes me as uncomfortable as a mouse and I genuinely do not know what to do with myself. I start to feel like Rain Man and shuffle around repeating lines from old movies and I wonder if I could watch the Newlywed Game with celebrities like the short “whatchyou talkin’ bout Willis” Gary Coleman and Tootee from The Facts of Life, but the tv is in there with Ronnie baby and he is a goner.
The thought occurs to me that I could be really time aware and go for a run or a walk or something. But that feels so military, so die hard, so disciplined that it almost makes me sick. There seems to be this little man in my brain that is totally resistant to health. This little man that says, ‘oh no you will feel much better and live much longer if you drink a few pots of coffee, eat a few dunkin’ doughnuts and lay on the couch for several hours reading about healthiness with your feet propped way up.”
The holy people pray at this time in the morning. I’m not feeling particularly holy, but I think I will say a prayer for my family and friends at this holy hour. Oh God above, I pray you give my family and friends the knowledge of your will and give them the power to carry that out just for today. Amen. Done.
Ok moving right along. It’s four thirty one. I’m not exactly sure what anyone does at four thirty one in the morning when it is ten degrees outside and you are not hungry, the thought of exercising gives you hives and you gave up watching anything but ‘Little House’ for lent, but I think I will just sit here and stare a while.
later
I was so bored I wrote a poem for my sheepdog Max that I am sure will be in college poetry classes one day when I am dead. It will be a multiple choice test and the answer will be c.
mornings in dawn the sun awakes
I am afraid and you are lying there in beauty
kissing me in long strokes
paw of love over me
smelling like a sun scorched land waterless
and I am bidding you a bath
but you say, ruff, I don’t think so
Four forty eight and the thought occurs to me that I am terribly uncomfortable with silence, and an empty belly. It is a void I do not know what to do with. Solitude, yes. I like solitude. It is the silence that kills me, especially when I am surrounded by people in houses all around me and there is no movement, such stillness. In the country, there is a terrible amount of noise. Coonhounds and dogs barking, crickets chirping, leaves rustling, Ron snoring, little crackles and such. It’s this suburban stillness that is getting to me. I hear the computer breathing and the heater eminating, but other than that, nothing. No life, no nothing. This house is locked shut and no life can get in. I think I need a ferret or some house plants or something. Ahh. That’s why people get ferrets and houseplants.
Five oh two and my empty belly is calling for dessert. Something to entertain, something good and sweet. Too bad all I have is pure natural unadulterated cane juice powder, a fifty gallon bucket of whole red wheat and a few organic grain fed eggs. Too much trouble to make dessert at this hour and unfortunately I stopped buying processed junk for my own sanity. But man it would cure my lonliness right now in suburban dull land.
Five fourteen. Oh my good heavens does time go by as slow as molasses this early in the morning. I’m feeling awful sleepy. I think I’ll go back to bed. Maybe I’ll try this again another day.
It is so rare that I am awake this early that it makes me as uncomfortable as a mouse and I genuinely do not know what to do with myself. I start to feel like Rain Man and shuffle around repeating lines from old movies and I wonder if I could watch the Newlywed Game with celebrities like the short “whatchyou talkin’ bout Willis” Gary Coleman and Tootee from The Facts of Life, but the tv is in there with Ronnie baby and he is a goner.
The thought occurs to me that I could be really time aware and go for a run or a walk or something. But that feels so military, so die hard, so disciplined that it almost makes me sick. There seems to be this little man in my brain that is totally resistant to health. This little man that says, ‘oh no you will feel much better and live much longer if you drink a few pots of coffee, eat a few dunkin’ doughnuts and lay on the couch for several hours reading about healthiness with your feet propped way up.”
The holy people pray at this time in the morning. I’m not feeling particularly holy, but I think I will say a prayer for my family and friends at this holy hour. Oh God above, I pray you give my family and friends the knowledge of your will and give them the power to carry that out just for today. Amen. Done.
Ok moving right along. It’s four thirty one. I’m not exactly sure what anyone does at four thirty one in the morning when it is ten degrees outside and you are not hungry, the thought of exercising gives you hives and you gave up watching anything but ‘Little House’ for lent, but I think I will just sit here and stare a while.
later
I was so bored I wrote a poem for my sheepdog Max that I am sure will be in college poetry classes one day when I am dead. It will be a multiple choice test and the answer will be c.
mornings in dawn the sun awakes
I am afraid and you are lying there in beauty
kissing me in long strokes
paw of love over me
smelling like a sun scorched land waterless
and I am bidding you a bath
but you say, ruff, I don’t think so
Four forty eight and the thought occurs to me that I am terribly uncomfortable with silence, and an empty belly. It is a void I do not know what to do with. Solitude, yes. I like solitude. It is the silence that kills me, especially when I am surrounded by people in houses all around me and there is no movement, such stillness. In the country, there is a terrible amount of noise. Coonhounds and dogs barking, crickets chirping, leaves rustling, Ron snoring, little crackles and such. It’s this suburban stillness that is getting to me. I hear the computer breathing and the heater eminating, but other than that, nothing. No life, no nothing. This house is locked shut and no life can get in. I think I need a ferret or some house plants or something. Ahh. That’s why people get ferrets and houseplants.
Five oh two and my empty belly is calling for dessert. Something to entertain, something good and sweet. Too bad all I have is pure natural unadulterated cane juice powder, a fifty gallon bucket of whole red wheat and a few organic grain fed eggs. Too much trouble to make dessert at this hour and unfortunately I stopped buying processed junk for my own sanity. But man it would cure my lonliness right now in suburban dull land.
Five fourteen. Oh my good heavens does time go by as slow as molasses this early in the morning. I’m feeling awful sleepy. I think I’ll go back to bed. Maybe I’ll try this again another day.
So Nashville
Ron took me to the Grand Ole Opry, the mother church of country music tonight and my brain automatically started fantasizing about how skinny I would look if my five foot four frame got stretched out to six foot two like country diva Terri Clark’s kick butt self. Then when Lorrie Morgan started singing with her mouth open real wide I started wondering if her dentist ever had to remove any big nasty gold fillings and what if she got a gold front tooth with an ‘L’ engraved on it and started rapping with Snoop Dog, kind of like a Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock duo. And then I wondered how many days a week she gets to go to the Hendersonville spa she promotes in the Nashville Scene with only her robe on and how many times she gets a mud wrap and a paraffin facial and a full body salt scrub and falls asleep in Chinese meditation land on comfy three thousand dollar sheets laying inside a leafy garden with a brook running through the middle.
Then I started to think, I really did grow up in this hick filled, goo goo sellin’, honky tonk big small town. Seems like my whole life I have been trying to get out of here and everybody else seems to be moving mountains to arrive. I do love Minnie Pearl though. I know she is dead but man do I love her. How-dee!
Then this little Ricky Shroeder looking dude that looked like a substitute teacher from Topeka, Kansas, came out and sang a few heart wrenching ballads and the crowd went wild. The gal next to me raised her hands and started doing spirit fingers and I started remembering how cute Ricky Shroeder was and how I really hoped I had a little boy that cute and endearing one day and how I won’t let him get involved in boxing.
Then this really old dude named Jim Ed Brown entered stage right and I started to think how this would really remind me of my dad if he was dead, but he’s not dead. There is something about those old Jim Reeves sounding voices that make me think of dad and his guitar and his old Red Sovine records and his storytelling and his hot sauce and how he would fart in the kitchen right at the most opportune moments when one of my friends and I would be playing Mrs. Pac Man in the living room on my Atari 1800.
Rhonda Vincent, the queen of bluegrass, sang a super speed version of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and tears started hotting up behind my eyes and I started thinking about my dad and when he took me up to Dolly’s house up on top of a big ole mountain in Townsend, Tennessee because he knew I loved her music as much as the ice cream at Bobbie’s Double Dip on Charlotte Avenue. I listened to that “I Will Always Love You” record with Dolly and her red bandana head and bandana blouse on the floor of our River Plantation condo in Bellevue, right across from the miles of cow and corn fields that now holds a huge shopping center that has now unfortunately contracted the deserted mall disease. At five years old I was swept away into Dolly’s life and soul and escaped to a world of Holly Hobby record player bliss when I didn’t know yet there was something to escape from. Who would have ever known I would live in a cabin so similar to hers twenty four years later trying to find my roots and simple things and a chance get that family feeling and a coat of many colors, not made from rags, but from conversations with my husband and with dreams of what life ought to be like. I have always been a dreamer and an idealist of sorts trying to live in yesterday and in tomorrow. It is just recently I have been learning the art of living in today, in this moment, in today’s skin. At the moment, the Rhonda Vincent band is playing a song as fast as an old Charlie Chaplan movie on speed and I think I’ll go home and write an album full of old country songs that make me think about the Shiloh trip Daddy took me on when all I did was complain when he was just trying to teach me a little history and where we have come from. Songs that remind me of the Jim Reeves statue Daddy took me to go see. He never told me Jim Reeves was his hero, but somehow sitting in that old church downtown makes me know. After all most of the songs Daddy sung for me on my guitar were old Jim Reeves songs and Jim Reeves stories about how he used to record unreleased songs for his wife in place of life insurance, because apparently they didn’t have any. Songs that remind me of the farm where my Daddy took me to see where his parents lived in a tent before building their first house and having their first baby and the tree where Daddy sh-- on his big brother’s head after waiting all day for him to stand underneath the limb without noticing his bare behind squatting like a zoo monkey.
All the rhinestones at the Grand Ole Opry must make Porter Wagner awful proud. Is he dead yet? Seems like most of these artist could be dead or are on their way to being dead. Just sitting in these pews makes me want to go home and make a pan of black skillet Martha White cornbread and a pot of beans with a ham hock in it and enter a 4-H beans and cornbread contest. And Marty Stuart’s rockabilly self makes me want to dance with a beer in one hand and the Bible in the other. I think he invented bed head.
After waiting all night I got to hear my favorite of all acts, The Sweet Harmony Traveling group that consisted of all my musical influences. Emmylou Harris, who I get to stare at when I see her at the Green Hills Wild Oats drinking coffee and driving off in her topless jeep driving in the rain. Patti Griffin, whoo God broke the mold when he installed that voice. Gillian Welch, who reminds me of Popeye’s wife Olive Oil, except she can sing cowgirl songs like nobody’s business. And Buddy Miller, who makes me wonder if my toilet needs plumbing. He sings like an undiscovered plumber, except he is discovered, or rather he discovered himself.
Then I started to think, I really did grow up in this hick filled, goo goo sellin’, honky tonk big small town. Seems like my whole life I have been trying to get out of here and everybody else seems to be moving mountains to arrive. I do love Minnie Pearl though. I know she is dead but man do I love her. How-dee!
Then this little Ricky Shroeder looking dude that looked like a substitute teacher from Topeka, Kansas, came out and sang a few heart wrenching ballads and the crowd went wild. The gal next to me raised her hands and started doing spirit fingers and I started remembering how cute Ricky Shroeder was and how I really hoped I had a little boy that cute and endearing one day and how I won’t let him get involved in boxing.
Then this really old dude named Jim Ed Brown entered stage right and I started to think how this would really remind me of my dad if he was dead, but he’s not dead. There is something about those old Jim Reeves sounding voices that make me think of dad and his guitar and his old Red Sovine records and his storytelling and his hot sauce and how he would fart in the kitchen right at the most opportune moments when one of my friends and I would be playing Mrs. Pac Man in the living room on my Atari 1800.
Rhonda Vincent, the queen of bluegrass, sang a super speed version of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and tears started hotting up behind my eyes and I started thinking about my dad and when he took me up to Dolly’s house up on top of a big ole mountain in Townsend, Tennessee because he knew I loved her music as much as the ice cream at Bobbie’s Double Dip on Charlotte Avenue. I listened to that “I Will Always Love You” record with Dolly and her red bandana head and bandana blouse on the floor of our River Plantation condo in Bellevue, right across from the miles of cow and corn fields that now holds a huge shopping center that has now unfortunately contracted the deserted mall disease. At five years old I was swept away into Dolly’s life and soul and escaped to a world of Holly Hobby record player bliss when I didn’t know yet there was something to escape from. Who would have ever known I would live in a cabin so similar to hers twenty four years later trying to find my roots and simple things and a chance get that family feeling and a coat of many colors, not made from rags, but from conversations with my husband and with dreams of what life ought to be like. I have always been a dreamer and an idealist of sorts trying to live in yesterday and in tomorrow. It is just recently I have been learning the art of living in today, in this moment, in today’s skin. At the moment, the Rhonda Vincent band is playing a song as fast as an old Charlie Chaplan movie on speed and I think I’ll go home and write an album full of old country songs that make me think about the Shiloh trip Daddy took me on when all I did was complain when he was just trying to teach me a little history and where we have come from. Songs that remind me of the Jim Reeves statue Daddy took me to go see. He never told me Jim Reeves was his hero, but somehow sitting in that old church downtown makes me know. After all most of the songs Daddy sung for me on my guitar were old Jim Reeves songs and Jim Reeves stories about how he used to record unreleased songs for his wife in place of life insurance, because apparently they didn’t have any. Songs that remind me of the farm where my Daddy took me to see where his parents lived in a tent before building their first house and having their first baby and the tree where Daddy sh-- on his big brother’s head after waiting all day for him to stand underneath the limb without noticing his bare behind squatting like a zoo monkey.
All the rhinestones at the Grand Ole Opry must make Porter Wagner awful proud. Is he dead yet? Seems like most of these artist could be dead or are on their way to being dead. Just sitting in these pews makes me want to go home and make a pan of black skillet Martha White cornbread and a pot of beans with a ham hock in it and enter a 4-H beans and cornbread contest. And Marty Stuart’s rockabilly self makes me want to dance with a beer in one hand and the Bible in the other. I think he invented bed head.
After waiting all night I got to hear my favorite of all acts, The Sweet Harmony Traveling group that consisted of all my musical influences. Emmylou Harris, who I get to stare at when I see her at the Green Hills Wild Oats drinking coffee and driving off in her topless jeep driving in the rain. Patti Griffin, whoo God broke the mold when he installed that voice. Gillian Welch, who reminds me of Popeye’s wife Olive Oil, except she can sing cowgirl songs like nobody’s business. And Buddy Miller, who makes me wonder if my toilet needs plumbing. He sings like an undiscovered plumber, except he is discovered, or rather he discovered himself.
Land of Lala
Twenty-five years ago in the heart of Tennessee I escaped into the Land of Lala in my very own corner near Momma's kitchen. With a plastic flip-top Holly Hobby record player and my favorite Dolly Parton Butterfly album, I sang my heart out with a red-tipped xylophone mallet as a microphone proudly wearing one of Momma's old bras stuffed to double D.
All these years later and I still sing to that old record, although life now is reality, my record player is on sale at a five and dime somewhere in Alabama and my brassieres as Daddy called them never made it past a B.
Seems like music is in my bones. I have tried to escape it, but I keep coming back to my hometown Nashville full of memories bittersweet as I try to put my heart on paper and now on a recording I call my own. Maybe in the Land of Lala there will be a five-year-old girl in a corner near Momma's kitchen with a xylophone mallet microphone singing her heart out.
I sure hope so.
All these years later and I still sing to that old record, although life now is reality, my record player is on sale at a five and dime somewhere in Alabama and my brassieres as Daddy called them never made it past a B.
Seems like music is in my bones. I have tried to escape it, but I keep coming back to my hometown Nashville full of memories bittersweet as I try to put my heart on paper and now on a recording I call my own. Maybe in the Land of Lala there will be a five-year-old girl in a corner near Momma's kitchen with a xylophone mallet microphone singing her heart out.
I sure hope so.
Perfectionist
It took me five years, seven months, and two and a half days to figure out I married a perfectionist. Never mind that I studied the basic temperaments, knew I was a sanguine, or an otter, or an ESFP or whatever. Knew I was a total right-brained, creative, free spirited, "Oh would she please grow up" type. I knew I was bound for a lifetime of childlikeness, which is not to be confused with childishness because I make my bed now. Knew that my husband was my incontestable, undeniable polar opposite.
During one of our premarital sessions, I looked our counselor square in the eye and asked, "Do you really think we'll make it?" She replied with four little words that made me real glad we didn't just hop in the car on a whim and do a drive-in ceremony at the nearest get-married-for-forty-bucks Pigeon Forge wedding chapel. "Marriage is the cross," she said.
Oh, well now you tell me. Forty-eight weeks at eighty dollars a pop, and now you tell me "marriage is the cross." I didn't ask for any more information. I didn't quite know what that meant then, and I'm not sure if I know now, but at the time those four little words sobered me up like a crack addict on a four-day tour of Israel with Joyce Meyer.
Being married to a left-brained, charts and graphs, recipe to the 't' man of my dreams who orders his number two pencils from a special pencil company in California and reads manuals to everything, and I mean everything, including my Singer sewing machine from cover to cover, can make a girl grow a second head. My one head says, "Oh, Honey, I love you. You are wonderful. . . . You read manuals, you change the oil in my car, you show me how to work the computer, and you have a map and directions to every city known to man. . . ." My other head says, "Oh, God, I am locked in a prison of letter dotting and special pencils and long explanations of exactly why T-shirts should be folded without the crease going down the middle."
Manuals to me are an excuse for entertainment for some sick brain-o-maniac somewhere in Japan who has a little too much time on his hands, and whose sole purpose in life is to make me feel stupid. To my husband, manuals are the key to all knowledge and must be mastered with great skill and read slowly like a C. S. Lewis novella.
Before meeting my husband, I never dreamed what my future husband would be like. I assumed that one day it would just come and bite me in the butt like a giant horsefly on a hot summer day. And it did. And I know God loves me enough to give me what I need and that we balance each other out and opposites attract and all that horse malarkey. But that doesn't make it any easier. I guess it is just God's sick way of making me realize that without His help I would be swimming in a pool of "I can't get my husband to do what I want him to do" brain sludge for the rest of my natural born life.
Not that we argue or anything. For a while even I was under the perfectionist spell, and I actually started to think we were both pretty close to perfect. This is mind-blowing given the fact that I have been hyper-aware all my life of my utter lack of perfection, that perfection is nowhere on my list of positive character qualities, nor is it anywhere to be found on my rather short resume.
In the beginning of our beautiful life together, I was determined to rise above the adversity I found in our oppositeness. So I chameleoned, and I Mennonited myself. I wore really long dresses and no make-up, and I even learned to bake a perfect loaf of freshly ground perfectly sliced whole wheat bread from scratch. And let me tell you, that was one very long three-day sacrifice of praise.
These days, I'm learning to embrace our differences and the fact that some days I feel like waking up, stretching long, putting on a long dress and red lipstick, and jumping straight out the window. But then I remember there is no controlling it. When I feel like taking a two-person bicycle ride on a sunny day in Georgia, he is locked up in the rules and regulations of traveling with a two person bicycle on the back of my 1992 convertible Volkswagen Cabriolet. When I feel like going to a Bonnie Raitt concert in downtown Chicago, he is stuck in his Greek concordance trying to figure out the genealogy of Israel and where they migrated after Christ ascended. Finding common ground is like finding the Holy Grail in a sweat suit.
On my best day, which is not today, I am grateful my man takes care of me. I'm glad I get to paint and play while he works his little perfectionist-workaholic- get-up-at-the-crack-of-rooster-ain’t-got-no-time-for-fun-‘cause-the- man’s-gotta-work-bound-up-little-self off. I wish I could say something really spiritual and holy and wonderful like, “I deeply appreciate my man’s differences today, because God in all of his creativity and holiness saw fit that I, a woman in need, needed a man to help straighten me out and give me a good taste of stale crackers. Now I know how it feels to really thirst for the good living water of God.” And then I could stabber on about how God is quenching my thirst because of these stale, dried up crackers I’ve been eating for the past five years, as the prime time of my life is slip sliding away.
‘Cause I’m getting old. I’m thirty. And a life full of "let’s act grown up ‘cause we’re grown-ups now" seems like a sentence of never-ending grown up-ness, and I just want to jump in an old Cindy Lauper record, dye my hair red, shave one side, wear a polka dotted dress, and sing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” so loud and off key that the neighbors wake up demanding we have a party right then and there while my husband is inside quietly reading his Greek interlinear Bible, drinking distilled water and green magma, and talking about the importance of pH balancing.
Now I know he loves me when I’m hormonal, loves me when I have zits, loves me in the morning when I’m all swollen and incoherent, loves me when I’m crabby, and loves me when I change my mind every second. I know he loves me when I’m inconsolable and when I am hard to live with. I know he gives me space, stays with me after I’ve hurt, never yells or calls me names, and never expects me to be something I can’t be. I know he wakes me up in the morning real softly and tickles my arm and speaks in a sweet voice: “Honey…it’s time to get up.”
“Five more minutes,” I’ll say.
Five minutes later.
“Honey. . . . It's time to get up.”
“Just . . . just five more minutes,” I’ll say and roll over.
He comes back in five minutes. Exactly five minutes.
“I brought you some water,” he’ll say.
I start to get that lovin’ feelin’, so I sit up and drink the water and thank God no one flicked the light on and off one hundred and eighty-five times and yelled, “Get up! We’re late!” And no one sang any real cheesy opera morning song to me about how it’s morning and the birds are chirping and the sun is shining. And no one opened my blinds without my permission or started stomping on the floor or turned the hair dryer on high or even turned the radio on with Metallica singing “Unforgiven.” Ahh. . . . This is a piece of heaven.
I guess I don’t have it so bad. After all, when I open my dictionary to look up a word and come across one like nice or considerate or kind-hearted, I am amazed my husband’s eighth grade class picture isn’t next to the pronunciation key to give non-readers a clue.
And I remember how a friend of mine told me once that we cannot be intimate unless we at some point hurt each other. And we eventually will. And I remember how some will choose to leave, some will choose to stay, and the ones that realize this key to intimacy and hurdle through it are all the better for it after the dust settles and the words stop shooting.
I remember how we have already hurt each other, and I start wondering on the Richter Scale of intimacy where exactly we are. And I wonder if all those times we've sat down and told each other we were sorry and forgave each other for our mistakes that day and hugged and made up and kissed up have made our marriage all the better. And I wonder if maybe we can make it to seventy something and be real old together like our friends the Brown’s. And I wonder if, like them, we can be on a country music video as the old couple who walk down the road holding hands, staring into each others faces, looking back and forth so we don’t get run over or anything. And I wonder if maybe we will laugh about our early years and tell other young couples that it really is okay to be so different. And I wonder if maybe then I will appreciate that my husband loves charts and graphs, follows recipes to the ‘t’, reads manuals, and tucks his pajama shirt in his pajama pants real tight so the spiders can’t get down there. And I wonder if maybe then I will love how he wakes up real early every morning to read his Greek interlinear Bible, and how he studies things like the fiery Gehenna and the resurrection and where the Israelites migrated after Christ ascended and the good news that we get this free gift of coming up out of the grave, because Jesus did it, and he showed us what it will be like, kind of so we won’t feel so scared. And I wonder if then I’ll appreciate how he tells me his favorite Bible stories at the breakfast table with Bible characters and rivers and stuff being oranges and bananas and granola with milk, and how he makes sure I turn off the stove. And I wonder if then I’ll love him just where he is, and not expect one more thing, and be so satisfied that the God of the Universe saw fit that I needed a man like this to help me see that he is a creative God who makes all kinds of people that aren’t just like me. And I wonder if maybe he’ll feel loved and think, Wow. . . . What a great wife I have. . . . and rub my feet for the eight millionth time right before I lull to sleep. And I wonder if maybe then I’ll love him more than life and breath, and maybe we’ll die together holding hands like in that movie The Notebook.
And then I start to think that maybe God in all of his God-ness and bigness and everything can help me just to love him like that now. Today. If that is even possible. Maybe God can give me the willingness to love him like I’m an eighty year old shriveled up prune of a mess, only I’m just thirty, and we haven’t even had a child yet, and we have our whole lives ahead of us. And I think of how grateful I am that somebody in the family likes physics and math and charts and graphs and all that heady stuff. And then I close my eyes and thank God for all of the wonderful blessings, and I tell Him how I am glad he puts up with me and teaches me how to live and how to love and doesn’t leave me stuck. And I start to see how perfect the plan is after all.
During one of our premarital sessions, I looked our counselor square in the eye and asked, "Do you really think we'll make it?" She replied with four little words that made me real glad we didn't just hop in the car on a whim and do a drive-in ceremony at the nearest get-married-for-forty-bucks Pigeon Forge wedding chapel. "Marriage is the cross," she said.
Oh, well now you tell me. Forty-eight weeks at eighty dollars a pop, and now you tell me "marriage is the cross." I didn't ask for any more information. I didn't quite know what that meant then, and I'm not sure if I know now, but at the time those four little words sobered me up like a crack addict on a four-day tour of Israel with Joyce Meyer.
Being married to a left-brained, charts and graphs, recipe to the 't' man of my dreams who orders his number two pencils from a special pencil company in California and reads manuals to everything, and I mean everything, including my Singer sewing machine from cover to cover, can make a girl grow a second head. My one head says, "Oh, Honey, I love you. You are wonderful. . . . You read manuals, you change the oil in my car, you show me how to work the computer, and you have a map and directions to every city known to man. . . ." My other head says, "Oh, God, I am locked in a prison of letter dotting and special pencils and long explanations of exactly why T-shirts should be folded without the crease going down the middle."
Manuals to me are an excuse for entertainment for some sick brain-o-maniac somewhere in Japan who has a little too much time on his hands, and whose sole purpose in life is to make me feel stupid. To my husband, manuals are the key to all knowledge and must be mastered with great skill and read slowly like a C. S. Lewis novella.
Before meeting my husband, I never dreamed what my future husband would be like. I assumed that one day it would just come and bite me in the butt like a giant horsefly on a hot summer day. And it did. And I know God loves me enough to give me what I need and that we balance each other out and opposites attract and all that horse malarkey. But that doesn't make it any easier. I guess it is just God's sick way of making me realize that without His help I would be swimming in a pool of "I can't get my husband to do what I want him to do" brain sludge for the rest of my natural born life.
Not that we argue or anything. For a while even I was under the perfectionist spell, and I actually started to think we were both pretty close to perfect. This is mind-blowing given the fact that I have been hyper-aware all my life of my utter lack of perfection, that perfection is nowhere on my list of positive character qualities, nor is it anywhere to be found on my rather short resume.
In the beginning of our beautiful life together, I was determined to rise above the adversity I found in our oppositeness. So I chameleoned, and I Mennonited myself. I wore really long dresses and no make-up, and I even learned to bake a perfect loaf of freshly ground perfectly sliced whole wheat bread from scratch. And let me tell you, that was one very long three-day sacrifice of praise.
These days, I'm learning to embrace our differences and the fact that some days I feel like waking up, stretching long, putting on a long dress and red lipstick, and jumping straight out the window. But then I remember there is no controlling it. When I feel like taking a two-person bicycle ride on a sunny day in Georgia, he is locked up in the rules and regulations of traveling with a two person bicycle on the back of my 1992 convertible Volkswagen Cabriolet. When I feel like going to a Bonnie Raitt concert in downtown Chicago, he is stuck in his Greek concordance trying to figure out the genealogy of Israel and where they migrated after Christ ascended. Finding common ground is like finding the Holy Grail in a sweat suit.
On my best day, which is not today, I am grateful my man takes care of me. I'm glad I get to paint and play while he works his little perfectionist-workaholic- get-up-at-the-crack-of-rooster-ain’t-got-no-time-for-fun-‘cause-the- man’s-gotta-work-bound-up-little-self off. I wish I could say something really spiritual and holy and wonderful like, “I deeply appreciate my man’s differences today, because God in all of his creativity and holiness saw fit that I, a woman in need, needed a man to help straighten me out and give me a good taste of stale crackers. Now I know how it feels to really thirst for the good living water of God.” And then I could stabber on about how God is quenching my thirst because of these stale, dried up crackers I’ve been eating for the past five years, as the prime time of my life is slip sliding away.
‘Cause I’m getting old. I’m thirty. And a life full of "let’s act grown up ‘cause we’re grown-ups now" seems like a sentence of never-ending grown up-ness, and I just want to jump in an old Cindy Lauper record, dye my hair red, shave one side, wear a polka dotted dress, and sing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” so loud and off key that the neighbors wake up demanding we have a party right then and there while my husband is inside quietly reading his Greek interlinear Bible, drinking distilled water and green magma, and talking about the importance of pH balancing.
Now I know he loves me when I’m hormonal, loves me when I have zits, loves me in the morning when I’m all swollen and incoherent, loves me when I’m crabby, and loves me when I change my mind every second. I know he loves me when I’m inconsolable and when I am hard to live with. I know he gives me space, stays with me after I’ve hurt, never yells or calls me names, and never expects me to be something I can’t be. I know he wakes me up in the morning real softly and tickles my arm and speaks in a sweet voice: “Honey…it’s time to get up.”
“Five more minutes,” I’ll say.
Five minutes later.
“Honey. . . . It's time to get up.”
“Just . . . just five more minutes,” I’ll say and roll over.
He comes back in five minutes. Exactly five minutes.
“I brought you some water,” he’ll say.
I start to get that lovin’ feelin’, so I sit up and drink the water and thank God no one flicked the light on and off one hundred and eighty-five times and yelled, “Get up! We’re late!” And no one sang any real cheesy opera morning song to me about how it’s morning and the birds are chirping and the sun is shining. And no one opened my blinds without my permission or started stomping on the floor or turned the hair dryer on high or even turned the radio on with Metallica singing “Unforgiven.” Ahh. . . . This is a piece of heaven.
I guess I don’t have it so bad. After all, when I open my dictionary to look up a word and come across one like nice or considerate or kind-hearted, I am amazed my husband’s eighth grade class picture isn’t next to the pronunciation key to give non-readers a clue.
And I remember how a friend of mine told me once that we cannot be intimate unless we at some point hurt each other. And we eventually will. And I remember how some will choose to leave, some will choose to stay, and the ones that realize this key to intimacy and hurdle through it are all the better for it after the dust settles and the words stop shooting.
I remember how we have already hurt each other, and I start wondering on the Richter Scale of intimacy where exactly we are. And I wonder if all those times we've sat down and told each other we were sorry and forgave each other for our mistakes that day and hugged and made up and kissed up have made our marriage all the better. And I wonder if maybe we can make it to seventy something and be real old together like our friends the Brown’s. And I wonder if, like them, we can be on a country music video as the old couple who walk down the road holding hands, staring into each others faces, looking back and forth so we don’t get run over or anything. And I wonder if maybe we will laugh about our early years and tell other young couples that it really is okay to be so different. And I wonder if maybe then I will appreciate that my husband loves charts and graphs, follows recipes to the ‘t’, reads manuals, and tucks his pajama shirt in his pajama pants real tight so the spiders can’t get down there. And I wonder if maybe then I will love how he wakes up real early every morning to read his Greek interlinear Bible, and how he studies things like the fiery Gehenna and the resurrection and where the Israelites migrated after Christ ascended and the good news that we get this free gift of coming up out of the grave, because Jesus did it, and he showed us what it will be like, kind of so we won’t feel so scared. And I wonder if then I’ll appreciate how he tells me his favorite Bible stories at the breakfast table with Bible characters and rivers and stuff being oranges and bananas and granola with milk, and how he makes sure I turn off the stove. And I wonder if then I’ll love him just where he is, and not expect one more thing, and be so satisfied that the God of the Universe saw fit that I needed a man like this to help me see that he is a creative God who makes all kinds of people that aren’t just like me. And I wonder if maybe he’ll feel loved and think, Wow. . . . What a great wife I have. . . . and rub my feet for the eight millionth time right before I lull to sleep. And I wonder if maybe then I’ll love him more than life and breath, and maybe we’ll die together holding hands like in that movie The Notebook.
And then I start to think that maybe God in all of his God-ness and bigness and everything can help me just to love him like that now. Today. If that is even possible. Maybe God can give me the willingness to love him like I’m an eighty year old shriveled up prune of a mess, only I’m just thirty, and we haven’t even had a child yet, and we have our whole lives ahead of us. And I think of how grateful I am that somebody in the family likes physics and math and charts and graphs and all that heady stuff. And then I close my eyes and thank God for all of the wonderful blessings, and I tell Him how I am glad he puts up with me and teaches me how to live and how to love and doesn’t leave me stuck. And I start to see how perfect the plan is after all.
The Simple Life
The Simple Life
In February of 2003, my husband and I were sick and tired paying rent for our house we called the money pit because the owners were friends of ours and jumped ship during Y2K to live in a bamboo hut in the rainforest of the island of Dominique to eat bananas and avocados wild and bath in natural springs. We took responsibility for all the repairs, which we now coin “stupid tax”, but Ron is quite a handyman and we enjoyed playing house, but nevertheless it was still a money pit and it was time to get the heck out of dodge before we completely renovated a house that wasn’t even ours. After three years, we were ready for a break. After all, I didn’t get the adventure I was banking on after college because I married Mr. I’m going to be a producer in Nashville one day and settled down right after college, which my mother is eternally grateful for because she is convinced I would have ended up in some third world country promoting world peace with some terminal Africa illness that I got from wading in some dirty water or eating a meal that wasn’t properly cooked. So we started visiting this old 1850’s cabin about a hour south of Nashville that had no electricity or running water, and one morning I got the bright idea that I thought I could live out there. Ron thought I was smoking crack. My friend Annie says I am high maintenance but think I am low maintenance which she says is the worst and the best kind, but I was serious just no one believed me at first.
I sent Ron out there to the cabin one weekend to have a getaway all by his lonesome because I thought he needed to get away from work and his workaholic self and that dad-blamed basement he got lost in for hours on end coming up looking like he had been hypnotized by genie. So four days in the wilderness and he came back looking like a little boy. His eyes were bright and shiny, smile on his face like he had a father/son retreat with God himself. It was such a contrast to the man I lived with on a daily basis that I was willing to pack up my hair dryer, curling iron, coffee maker, toaster, every little electric thing you can think of, put it in storage and have an adventure with the simple life. After all, I had always been intrigued by the Mennonites that we visited to get cheap vegetables, and we had friends that lived in a Mennonite community who were all familied-out and loving and everything. I never thought I would want to do that myself, but I was sick of bills and my overworked husband and was ready to try something new. We had nothing to lose, everything to gain, and my spontaneous self was dying to get some fresh air and a change of scenery.
I got real spiritual about the whole thing and for a while thought I just might give up electricity for good and join the Amish circus. It didn’t take me long to find out that they have problems of their own and that there isn’t a perfect family or community on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, we are all human stuck in our humanity and have a tendency to make a mess out of life regardless where we are unless we get plugged into a power greater than our finite pea-brained selves.
So here are some of my journal entries, some lessons I learned and some wisdom I picked up along the way.
March 22, 2003
So we are living without electricity. Wow. I guess it sounds crazy, but so far we are loving every minute of it. Peaceful and quiet. There is nothing to agitate, no hum of a refrigerator, no cars driving by, no traffic, no cell phones, no home phones, no television, no computers, no electric appliances, no washer and dryer. I am twenty eight years old and in an age of climbing corporate ladders, industrial and technological booms and the entertainment media gone wild, I have found myself drawn to the slow, the simple and the serene. I’m like an old granny trapped in a body less than half her age.
And I seem to have a desire deep in my soul to create a haven, a safe place for my heart to be at peace, to enjoy the earth and animals, to learn to speak softly and kindly (which can be a challenge for me), to sleep soundly, to wake with the sunrise and fall asleep with the sunset, to not be rushed along with the rush, but to be still, to walk in the cool of the day with a feeling that God is near and is all around us. And to listen to that little voice inside me that longs to teach me good things.
I have a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunity to live here, to be writing by candlelight as I hear the crickets chirp, the dogs bark, the chickens cluck, the owls hoo. I hear the silence, I hear myself breathe, I hear myself think, and I have the opportunity to let myself just be, just live, minute by minute, hour by hour. I wonder if I’ll get really bored. But for now, I am choosing to believe that today truly is the first day of the rest of my life. No yesterdays, no tomorrows. Just today, my day in the woods. Too bad Laura Ingalls isn’t here to show me the ropes.
March 23, 2003
We rested this morning. They say that is what would make us healthier and happier, to actually fully rest one day each week. I have tried that, but even if my body rests, my brain is on overcharge. Today my mind seems at peace and isn’t worried about tomorrow or the hereafter.
It is hard to rest a whole day though. There is so much to do here, so much to be accomplished. Hopefully, one day, I will be able to rest a whole day without feeling the least bit guilty.
Life goes by so slow out here at the cabin. A whole day feels like a whole day, like it should I suppose. After a few days of detox, I don’t seem to miss city life at all- all the people, the traffic, the advertisements, the hustle and bustle. It feels like the quality of my life has already increased since we moved here. I am not tempted near as much by the ways of the world, keeping up with mainstream media, the latest trends, what’s hot and what’s not. I have time to live, to be with my husband, to let time go by purposefully. And it is the simple things in my day that I remember and feel important to me—walking my animals in the woods, going to the creek, sipping hot tea by the wood burning stove, lighting my many candles and oil lamps as the sun goes to sleep, lying in the bed reading quietly while my husband studies his greek interlinear. I am grateful for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the life of those who lived before me. I think I might actually prefer it.
April 7, 2003
Life at the cabin is sweet. A roaring fire. Homemade meals from the woodstove. A husband who loves this kind of life, the simple, the sweet, the untampered. Yesterday was our first whole day of rest at the cabin. So much had to be done when we moved here that it has been kind of a whirlwind. New roof. Moving furniture. Building shelves. Staining floors. Staining shelves. Hanging curtains. Decorating. Making walkways with flat stones to the cabin and to the outhouse. Unpacking. Getting settled.
I can’t say we are entirely settled yet, but we are close. I still have a long list of things to accomplish, but then again, I’ve always had long lists of never ending chores.
God is all around me. He is in the trees. He is in the wind. He is in the eyes of my beloved husband. He is in the sky, in the stars, in the stillness. He is in death, he is in life.
Our cat died two nights ago. He ate a mouse that had been poisoned with rat poison. We have cried and cried. We buried him near the garden. It seemed so unfair. Such a beautiful and sweet animal who loved life, loved the sunshine, loved his big dog Max (our English sheepdog). They played incessantly together and slept together a lot, especially when it was cold outside. He hardly ever meowed, just one little meow if he saw me in the evenings- we had a little ritual, where I would bring him in the house, put him on my lap and love on him, pet him, talk to him, oh for about fifteen or twenty minutes, then he would be ready to go back outside in the wild. He spent his days looking for mice, sleeping in trees, playing with the dogs…he thought he was a dog I guess-he was practically raised by one. I miss him. I miss my Thomas. Life just isn’t fair. Ron said right after he died he saw a yellow Hummer, his favorite car in the whole wide world that he has been wanting for years and years, drive by. He thought to himself, “If someone offered me that Hummer right now, or my cat back, I just want my cat back.” You know, some animals we had had (well we have had twelve dogs since we got married four years ago because we always seem to have people dump their animals at our house and we just feed all of them), I haven’t really gotten attached to, and then one comes along where there is just a special bond that you don’t really know how to explain. I really loved Thomas and it was so hard putting him in the ground. Max really didn’t understand. I think he is depressed though.
We’re getting two girl cats next time. They don’t get into so much trouble. But they will never take Thomas’s place.
One thing I have noticed about cabin life is that this life is not conducive to us leaving. Farming and cabin life really go together. We wish we could have horses, farm animals and such, but we drive to town every day for school and work. Animals need someone there it seems, more than just food and water and a place to sleep.
My dream career is to be a recording artist, writer and speaker, and working with young women as a mentor/coach. The cabin encourages me to look forward to my future life as a mother, homemaker and teacher of my own children. I will be thirty years old in fourteen months and I wonder, “What has my life been about? What will my life say to my children? What do I want for my next thirty years?”
I want a loving and strong family life more than anything else in this world. Yes I want to sing and teach, but that really does not compare to the satisfaction of living day to day life with a family you love and belong to and are needed by. Thank you God for this experience here. I pray my days matter in your eyes.
April 10, 2003
I am lying on my featherbed by the wood burning fire in our bedroom, sipping tea and writing in my journal by candlelight. I am warm although it is quite cold outside. I feel so taken care of here, like I have this great big Father in the heavens whose purpose in life is to take care of me.
I am content. I am joyful inside that I have the opportunity to experience this free and abundant life. I feel grateful today for my patient husband who loves me well, for this cabin that has renewed my childhood dreams, and for my prayers that have come to fruition. I am grateful for experiencing a glimpse of the simplicity of pioneer life, even though we are commuter pioneers!
Slowly but surely, we are feeling more at peace as we have bailed out of life in the fast lane. We left the rat race for the most part, and are learning to enjoy and love and live life on life’s terms one day at a time. I am feeling alive, finally.
In February of 2003, my husband and I were sick and tired paying rent for our house we called the money pit because the owners were friends of ours and jumped ship during Y2K to live in a bamboo hut in the rainforest of the island of Dominique to eat bananas and avocados wild and bath in natural springs. We took responsibility for all the repairs, which we now coin “stupid tax”, but Ron is quite a handyman and we enjoyed playing house, but nevertheless it was still a money pit and it was time to get the heck out of dodge before we completely renovated a house that wasn’t even ours. After three years, we were ready for a break. After all, I didn’t get the adventure I was banking on after college because I married Mr. I’m going to be a producer in Nashville one day and settled down right after college, which my mother is eternally grateful for because she is convinced I would have ended up in some third world country promoting world peace with some terminal Africa illness that I got from wading in some dirty water or eating a meal that wasn’t properly cooked. So we started visiting this old 1850’s cabin about a hour south of Nashville that had no electricity or running water, and one morning I got the bright idea that I thought I could live out there. Ron thought I was smoking crack. My friend Annie says I am high maintenance but think I am low maintenance which she says is the worst and the best kind, but I was serious just no one believed me at first.
I sent Ron out there to the cabin one weekend to have a getaway all by his lonesome because I thought he needed to get away from work and his workaholic self and that dad-blamed basement he got lost in for hours on end coming up looking like he had been hypnotized by genie. So four days in the wilderness and he came back looking like a little boy. His eyes were bright and shiny, smile on his face like he had a father/son retreat with God himself. It was such a contrast to the man I lived with on a daily basis that I was willing to pack up my hair dryer, curling iron, coffee maker, toaster, every little electric thing you can think of, put it in storage and have an adventure with the simple life. After all, I had always been intrigued by the Mennonites that we visited to get cheap vegetables, and we had friends that lived in a Mennonite community who were all familied-out and loving and everything. I never thought I would want to do that myself, but I was sick of bills and my overworked husband and was ready to try something new. We had nothing to lose, everything to gain, and my spontaneous self was dying to get some fresh air and a change of scenery.
I got real spiritual about the whole thing and for a while thought I just might give up electricity for good and join the Amish circus. It didn’t take me long to find out that they have problems of their own and that there isn’t a perfect family or community on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, we are all human stuck in our humanity and have a tendency to make a mess out of life regardless where we are unless we get plugged into a power greater than our finite pea-brained selves.
So here are some of my journal entries, some lessons I learned and some wisdom I picked up along the way.
March 22, 2003
So we are living without electricity. Wow. I guess it sounds crazy, but so far we are loving every minute of it. Peaceful and quiet. There is nothing to agitate, no hum of a refrigerator, no cars driving by, no traffic, no cell phones, no home phones, no television, no computers, no electric appliances, no washer and dryer. I am twenty eight years old and in an age of climbing corporate ladders, industrial and technological booms and the entertainment media gone wild, I have found myself drawn to the slow, the simple and the serene. I’m like an old granny trapped in a body less than half her age.
And I seem to have a desire deep in my soul to create a haven, a safe place for my heart to be at peace, to enjoy the earth and animals, to learn to speak softly and kindly (which can be a challenge for me), to sleep soundly, to wake with the sunrise and fall asleep with the sunset, to not be rushed along with the rush, but to be still, to walk in the cool of the day with a feeling that God is near and is all around us. And to listen to that little voice inside me that longs to teach me good things.
I have a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunity to live here, to be writing by candlelight as I hear the crickets chirp, the dogs bark, the chickens cluck, the owls hoo. I hear the silence, I hear myself breathe, I hear myself think, and I have the opportunity to let myself just be, just live, minute by minute, hour by hour. I wonder if I’ll get really bored. But for now, I am choosing to believe that today truly is the first day of the rest of my life. No yesterdays, no tomorrows. Just today, my day in the woods. Too bad Laura Ingalls isn’t here to show me the ropes.
March 23, 2003
We rested this morning. They say that is what would make us healthier and happier, to actually fully rest one day each week. I have tried that, but even if my body rests, my brain is on overcharge. Today my mind seems at peace and isn’t worried about tomorrow or the hereafter.
It is hard to rest a whole day though. There is so much to do here, so much to be accomplished. Hopefully, one day, I will be able to rest a whole day without feeling the least bit guilty.
Life goes by so slow out here at the cabin. A whole day feels like a whole day, like it should I suppose. After a few days of detox, I don’t seem to miss city life at all- all the people, the traffic, the advertisements, the hustle and bustle. It feels like the quality of my life has already increased since we moved here. I am not tempted near as much by the ways of the world, keeping up with mainstream media, the latest trends, what’s hot and what’s not. I have time to live, to be with my husband, to let time go by purposefully. And it is the simple things in my day that I remember and feel important to me—walking my animals in the woods, going to the creek, sipping hot tea by the wood burning stove, lighting my many candles and oil lamps as the sun goes to sleep, lying in the bed reading quietly while my husband studies his greek interlinear. I am grateful for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the life of those who lived before me. I think I might actually prefer it.
April 7, 2003
Life at the cabin is sweet. A roaring fire. Homemade meals from the woodstove. A husband who loves this kind of life, the simple, the sweet, the untampered. Yesterday was our first whole day of rest at the cabin. So much had to be done when we moved here that it has been kind of a whirlwind. New roof. Moving furniture. Building shelves. Staining floors. Staining shelves. Hanging curtains. Decorating. Making walkways with flat stones to the cabin and to the outhouse. Unpacking. Getting settled.
I can’t say we are entirely settled yet, but we are close. I still have a long list of things to accomplish, but then again, I’ve always had long lists of never ending chores.
God is all around me. He is in the trees. He is in the wind. He is in the eyes of my beloved husband. He is in the sky, in the stars, in the stillness. He is in death, he is in life.
Our cat died two nights ago. He ate a mouse that had been poisoned with rat poison. We have cried and cried. We buried him near the garden. It seemed so unfair. Such a beautiful and sweet animal who loved life, loved the sunshine, loved his big dog Max (our English sheepdog). They played incessantly together and slept together a lot, especially when it was cold outside. He hardly ever meowed, just one little meow if he saw me in the evenings- we had a little ritual, where I would bring him in the house, put him on my lap and love on him, pet him, talk to him, oh for about fifteen or twenty minutes, then he would be ready to go back outside in the wild. He spent his days looking for mice, sleeping in trees, playing with the dogs…he thought he was a dog I guess-he was practically raised by one. I miss him. I miss my Thomas. Life just isn’t fair. Ron said right after he died he saw a yellow Hummer, his favorite car in the whole wide world that he has been wanting for years and years, drive by. He thought to himself, “If someone offered me that Hummer right now, or my cat back, I just want my cat back.” You know, some animals we had had (well we have had twelve dogs since we got married four years ago because we always seem to have people dump their animals at our house and we just feed all of them), I haven’t really gotten attached to, and then one comes along where there is just a special bond that you don’t really know how to explain. I really loved Thomas and it was so hard putting him in the ground. Max really didn’t understand. I think he is depressed though.
We’re getting two girl cats next time. They don’t get into so much trouble. But they will never take Thomas’s place.
One thing I have noticed about cabin life is that this life is not conducive to us leaving. Farming and cabin life really go together. We wish we could have horses, farm animals and such, but we drive to town every day for school and work. Animals need someone there it seems, more than just food and water and a place to sleep.
My dream career is to be a recording artist, writer and speaker, and working with young women as a mentor/coach. The cabin encourages me to look forward to my future life as a mother, homemaker and teacher of my own children. I will be thirty years old in fourteen months and I wonder, “What has my life been about? What will my life say to my children? What do I want for my next thirty years?”
I want a loving and strong family life more than anything else in this world. Yes I want to sing and teach, but that really does not compare to the satisfaction of living day to day life with a family you love and belong to and are needed by. Thank you God for this experience here. I pray my days matter in your eyes.
April 10, 2003
I am lying on my featherbed by the wood burning fire in our bedroom, sipping tea and writing in my journal by candlelight. I am warm although it is quite cold outside. I feel so taken care of here, like I have this great big Father in the heavens whose purpose in life is to take care of me.
I am content. I am joyful inside that I have the opportunity to experience this free and abundant life. I feel grateful today for my patient husband who loves me well, for this cabin that has renewed my childhood dreams, and for my prayers that have come to fruition. I am grateful for experiencing a glimpse of the simplicity of pioneer life, even though we are commuter pioneers!
Slowly but surely, we are feeling more at peace as we have bailed out of life in the fast lane. We left the rat race for the most part, and are learning to enjoy and love and live life on life’s terms one day at a time. I am feeling alive, finally.
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