Holding On

Every time I scroll through my email address book, I run across my dad's name. He has been deceased now since February 16, 2005 - four years. And I still can't bring myself to delete his name from my address book. His name is still in my phone, too, even though I've had several new phones since he passed away. I sync my phone with my computer, so even when I get a new phone, his name goes right in there with all the other names and numbers. Call me weird, but I just like seeing it there.

There have been times when I scrolled to his name, clicked on it and sat there looking at it, telling myself it is silly to keep it, just hit the delete button and it will be gone. But I can never do it. It feels disloyal, somehow. I can't even explain it. It's just a little reminder for me when I see his name and I like that.

My mother died a year after my dad, almost to the day. I kept her name in my address book for a while, but I did delete hers, finally. The difference, I think, is that I was with my mother when she died. I was in the room with her and was there when she took her last breath. I grieved for her, I still miss her; but I came to terms with her death in a way that I never have for my dad.

Daddy was alone when he died. No one was there to hold his hand or kiss his brow when he took those last breaths. I tell myself that he probably preferred it that way, he was a very private man; but I don't believe it. It haunts me that he died alone. And in some unexplainable way, I believe that is why I've never been able to completely say goodbye to him. That's why I keep his name in my email address book, I guess. It's my last connection to him and to delete it would mean letting go of his hand. The hand I never got to hold as he took his final breath.

So, I guess his name will stay. How long it will be there, I don't know. I guess until I figure out how to let go of his hand.

May Doug Rest in Peace

I can't keep quiet any longer. I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I've never been one to shy away from controversy. I am compelled to write about a little-known tragedy of Hurricane Ike. I've held my virtual tongue as long as possible and now the words must come tumbling out. Bear with me as I set the stage.

Anyone who has ever lived in or around the Houston area is familiar with our infamous flying tree roaches. Yes, that's right, I said flying roaches. It's not just a catchy name, either. They actually do fly. My first experience with said flying roaches was over twenty years ago, when we had only been in Houston for a very short time - a few months, at most. Hubby and I had finally wrangled all four of our very rambunctious children into their respective beds and had settled down in the living room to watch the latest episode of Wiseguy. (Great series, especially Season One - Sonny Steelgrave and the Mob - Ray Sharkey and Ken Wahl - man! good stuff! PS Contrary to a popular rumor going around several years ago, Ken Wahl is alive and well, just in case you were wondering) But, I digress.

Hubby and I were snuggled together on our garage-sale purchased couch, with all the lights off, watching Ken Wahl and Ray Sharkey on our Sears 19 inch television. I caught a glimpse of something in my peripheral vision, but was too caught up in Ken Wahl's simmering sexuality to pay much attention, so I ignored it. A few minutes later, a roach roughly the size of my Toyota Tercel clumbsily flew across the room, this time right in front of Ken Wahl in all his 19" glory (Get your minds out of the gutter - I'm talking about the size of the television! Sheesh!) I started ducking and weaving like a crazed woman. "What was that?!" I screamed. Turns out it was my first encounter with a genuine, welcome-to-Houston, flying tree roach.

Flash forward twenty-plus years. Flying roaches have now become just another of life's minor inconveniences after having lived among them all this time. Over time, one learns that they are particularly bad when it rains and how much of a necessity screens are for all windows. Of course, no one in Houston ever raises their windows because it's too damn hot here to have open windows, screens or no screens. With one notable exception - after a hurricane has come through and obliterated the electricity grids so that 90% of the greater Houston area is without power - in the middle of freakin' hot summer when it's boiling hot and the humidity is even worse than its usual 90% because a hurricane has just barrelled through dumping tons of water everywhere.

You may remember that my house was not in the mandatory evacuation zone, but the houses of all three of my children living in this area were indeed in said mandatory evacuation zones. So, everyone was bunched up in my small house like sardines. With no power. With the windows open. With a huge maple tree out front. Screens on all the windows, but not on the doors, which were standing open in a (fruitless) effort to create a draft. Hubby was prepared with two generators, but during the day, he used them to run our two refrigerators and one freezer. At night, we huddled in a couple of rooms and ran window A/C units so we could sleep without the sweltering heat.

All of the preceeding fancy talk has been leading up to this. Here is where the tragedy comes in. Are you ready for it? One of my son-in-laws (who shall remain nameless the same way they do rape victims to protect their privacy, okay?) was snoozing away when suddenly he was awakened by the most hideous feeling of something crawling into his ear. My daughter said he jumped up out of bed and started banging on his ear, screaming, "Get out!" When I got up the next morning, my son had a pair of tweezers digging away at NAME WITHHELD's ear, trying to remove the bug, which we all eventually started calling Doug. They had already poured peroxide, alcohol and God-only-knows what else in his ear in an attempt to flush it out, to no avail. My son was able to dislodge a leg or two and remove them, so even though we knew what we were dealing with, it was burrowed far enough down in there that it couldn't be seen by the naked eye.

NAME WITHHELD went to an urgent care clinic when some of them finally opened back up after the hurricane. They tried flushing Doug (the bug) out with gallons of water over a span of an hour and a half until finally my son-in-law was hurting so much from the treatment that he left there with Doug still in residence. After a while, his ear stopped hurting from the treatment at the urgent care clinic and he decided to leave well enough alone, assuming Doug would disintegrate and wash out in the shower over time. Not so. Apparently Doug was quite the burrower. Recently, NAME WITHHELD started having pain in his ear and trouble hearing, so he made an appointment with an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) doctor. This doctor, who was obviously a REAL doctor, as opposed to the doctor at the urgent care clinic, used suction and very long tweezers to finally evict Doug from his cozy home in NAME WITHHELD's ear canal.

So, now Doug is gone, or, as my daughter likes to say, "Doug is not bugging NAME WITHHELD anymore." Except she uses his real name. NAME WITHHELD's, not Doug. We don't know Doug's real name. We only know that he was one of those damnable welcome-to-Houston flying tree roaches. Ewwwwww.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the REST of the story.

A Typical Morning

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2007

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Grandkids!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.........drum roll please......... Everybody listening?.............

Daughter #2 and her hubby are expecting again! Their first child is a mere three months old, so they are still in shock mode, but they're adjusting. So that means that Grandchild #4 is on the way! Woo Hoo!!

In honor of that announcement, I thought I would regale you all with a couple of cute grandchildren stories.

My grandson, Aiden, is 5 years old. In addition to being an absolutely beautiful child (shhhh! he would correct me if he heard that - "Mimi, boys are handsome, not beautiful"), he is extremely bright. Recently, as I was leaving his house, he walked with me out to my truck, asking if I knew what he wanted to be when he grows up. "No," I said, "what do you want to be? I was expecting the typical boy answer of a fireman, a policeman, a super-hero, something along those lines.

"I want to be an entomologist," he said, pronouncing entomologist very precisely and precisely right. That one stopped me in my tracks. I dropped down on one knee to eye-level with him and asked him if he knew what an entomologist does. He looked at me like I had just asked the dumbest question and told me, "It's a person who studies bugs, Mimi." Oh. Well, now I knew because I sure didn't know before he told me. (Seriously, I had to look up how to spell it! Probably could have just asked Aiden!) Meanwhile, his three-year-old sister, Olivia, was running circles around us in the front yard wearing her fairy costume with wings attached, screaming at the top of her lungs, "When I grow up, I want to be a pink Power Ranger!"

Last Sunday after church, Hubby and I went to lunch with Aiden and Olivia and their parents. We were all discussing a house that my two sons and Hubby have been remodeling to "flip." When the house gets to a certain livable condition, my two sons will move in and live there while finishing the work. Apparently, Aiden had been present when my sons were discussing this possibility earlier in the week. He asked if we were talking about the house that Caleb and Eli were going to move in to. His daddy told him that was right, it was that house.

"But, who's the other one who is moving in with them? There's three of them," Aiden wanted to know. We were stumped. His daddy suggested to him maybe he meant Maverick (Eli's Chocolate Lab.) "No," he insisted, "it's another human."

We still don't know who he was talking about, but what a kid! Another human! I love talking to Aiden.

Olivia has her moments too. She and Aiden were in the den one day recently, playing with their toys while Hubby was trying to get some work done (he works at home, remember?) Aiden was running up and down the stairs, Hubby had already spoken to him about it twice, so on the third time, he spoke more sternly and threatened him with serious bodily harm if he didn't stop it. Olivia sidled up to her granddad, and slipping her arm through his, she laid her precious little head on his shoulder. Looking up at him with her big brown eyes, she told him, "Granddad, I love you."

"I love you too, Baby Doll," he said.

"Granddad, you're so handsome," Olivia cooed with her head still resting on his shoulder.

"Well, thank you, Baby Doll. I think you're very beautiful." By this time, Hubby should have known something was up. But he was clueless.

"Granddad?" Lots of batting of the eyes at this point.

"Yes, Baby Doll, what is it?" says clueless Hubby.

"Don't ever talk to Brother like that again." Serious as cancer now, but still with that sweet little munchkin voice.

Hubby thinks he must have misunderstood her, so he asks her to repeat what she just said. She repeats it, doesn't miss a beat. Still thinking he can't be hearing what he is hearing, he has her repeat it a third time. And again she repeats it, with the same sweet conviction as the first two times.

Hubby came wandering into the kitchen shaking his head, still trying not to laugh out loud as he related to me the orders Olivia had just given him.

The girl is a force to be reckoned with, I tell you.

Mercy Came Running

I've been a Christian for a very long time now. I first got saved when I was only 10 years old. I didn't really know what being a Christian meant back then except that I wouldn't go to hell, which I thought was a pretty good deal at the time. I remember leaving church that day and just feeling like I was walking on air. I thought everyone must be able to see how different I was - I was changed! When I went into the church earlier that morning, I was just a plain old sinner and when I came out later, I was a sinner saved by grace. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. But as I walked along behind my mom and dad and little brother to our car and tried to strike up a conversation about this wonderful thing that had happened to me, no one seemed too excited. I was confused, but I didn't ask any questions. I just figured this was one of those things that we didn't talk about - we had a lot of those.

So I tamped down my joy and acted like it was just a regular day, but inside I knew it wasn't. It was a special day. I don't know why my mom and/or dad weren't comfortable talking to me about this great and wondrous thing that had happened to me, but they weren't. My mom downplayed it and my dad just said, "Well, that's good." So I wondered if I made a mistake and was making too big a deal out of it.

Over the years, my parents took us to church sporadically and that flame inside my heart didn't get fed very often. But it never went out. Eventually I grew up and began to find my own way to God. I got married and we picked out a church to call our own. I studied and prayed and found my place in the church. Every time the doors were open, we were there. We were faithful. For years, we were faithful. I thought I understood mercy and grace. I sang about it and taught it and wrote plays about it.

I could never imagine my life outside of God's will and I wondered at people who wandered away from Him. I decided they must have not really known Him if they could leave Him. It made me feel better to think that because if that was the case, then it would never happen to me.

Then one day, I got my heart stepped on one too many times and I walked away. I told God I could get treated like that in the world and that I thought I would just go out in the world where at least I wouldn't be expecting to be treated better. I said, "See ya later, God. I'm going to live in the world." I was the Prodigal Child, walking away from the Loving Father, thinking I knew more than He did. I was angry and hurt and I was through with God. But He wasn't through with me.

For seven long years I kept my back turned to Him. I lived like Hell and every line I crossed made it easier for me to cross the next one. I kept getting further and further away from Him with every step. At times, the thought would cross my mind that I should turn back around and go home to Him. But I would quickly dismiss that thought - I was still too angry and bitter. I ran faster and looked harder for something in the world to make the hurt go away. It never did, it just got worse. I refused to even consider that I was headed in the wrong direction. I came to despise the things I once held so dear. I belittled the faith of others and told myself I had been a fool to believe the things I had once believed. I tried to convince myself that God didn't really care about me or my problems. I rebelled and rebelled again. Still, God wasn't through with me.

My heart grew cold and hard. I believed my anger was justified. I became bolder and bolder in my rebellion. My life was in shambles and I no longer recognized myself. I had become someone completely different. I was a stranger to myself. Still, I wouldn't consider that the reason I was so miserable was because I had wandered into the wilderness and was lost. I wouldn't let myself think that I needed to go home.

All the while, God was holding on to me. He never let go of me. He loved me still, even when I didn't love Him. Gently, gradually, carefully, in His infinite wisdom and patience, in a way that only God can do, He chipped away at my hardened heart and drew me back to Him. I never even knew I wanted to come home until I heard myself saying those words to Him in a church, of all places, somewhere I had said I would never go again. You see, God wasn't through with me.

And now, I am finally beginning to understand mercy and grace. After all these years, after seven years wandering around in the desert, after wallowing in a cesspool of my own sin to the point that I believed I couldn't come back even if I wanted to, I find myself enveloped in God's mercy and grace. I finally see that there is nothing I could do to earn it, nothing I could do to lose it. His mercy and grace do not now, nor have they ever, depended on me. God's mercy and grace are gifts I don't deserve and treasures I could never earn. Even when I was in the cesspool, His mercy and grace covered me.

"Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there." Psalm 139:7-8

There's a song that says it so beautifully. The words are:

Mercy came running, like a prisoner set free
Past all my failures, to the point of my need
When the sin that I carried was all I could see
When I could not reach mercy,
Mercy came running to me.

God on a Stick

I wonder why it is that we always think we know better than God? Maybe you're not that way, but I know I am. There's an old (and odd) saying about "thinking we have God on a stick." I always thought of it as meaning we think we have God stuck on to the end of a stick and we wave Him around like some magic wand. Like we sprinkle a little "God dust" here and a lot of it over there. I never thought of myself as being guilty of that, always someone else. Isn't that always the case, we can so clearly see the faults in others and we are blind to our own? I had a friend who used to say that we treat God like a slot-machine. We expect to put our money (our time, our prayer, our talents, you fill in the blank with whatever fits) in the slot and pull the God handle and we get our prize - sometimes we hit the jackpot and sometimes we don't get anything. I certainly never saw myself as having that attitude. A slot-machine God, please, I would never think that way. Not me!Then there was the teaching that made the rounds for quite some time that we should pray "directed" prayers. We were taught that we needed to pray specifically - in effect, telling God exactly what we needed or what should happen. I have to confess that, being the control freak I am, I bought right into that one. My prayers became more like a grocery list or a honey-do list than anything else. I put a lot of thought into how to pray and what to ask for, never realizing that I was reasoning with my finite mind and leaving absolutely no room for God's sovereignty.You can get by with those distorted views of prayer when life is not giving you anything too tough. However, when the bottom falls out and your life is turned completely upside down, you can wave your God-wand around, put your money in and pull the handle on the God slot-machine and pray all the directed prayers you want, but none of those things are going to get you anywhere except discouraged. Having been through an absolutely hellish time in my life for the last several years, I tried all those things. None of them made even the slightest bit of difference in the cataclysmic events that swirled around without mercy. Not that I could tell, anyway. So I decided that it was all a crock. God must not really care about us. I still believed in His existence and that He could, indeed, perform miracles; you know, heal the sick, set the captives free, make blind eyes see. But I didn't believe anymore that he cared about me personally and I was mad about that. I was mad at Him. I thought I had been sold a bill of goods and I was not happy about that. My vision of God got smaller and smaller until He was ultimately just a tiny dot on the horizon of my life. I was pouting. If He wasn't going to play the game my way - the way I had Him figured out - then I wasn't going to play at all. I pouted for a long time, too. I can be very determined at times. Seven years, but who's counting, right?There were times during that seven years when I would throw out a test line to see how God was going to behave - times when I was either desperate or just thought "well, maybe..." In His mercy and grace, God never gave me what I deserved, which would have been a swift pop in the back of the head. He just kept being God and I just kept being mad at Him. Somehow, I came to believe that if He had just done things my way, the way I prayed, then my family wouldn’t be going through everything that happened. I wanted Him to come around to my way of thinking. We’re talking the height of arrogance here, folks! Still, He didn’t slap me in the back of the head and tell me, “Hey, is your name God?”
That’s the thing about God. He doesn’t react the way we do. He doesn’t think the way we do. He doesn’t see things the way we do. He is God, after all. Somehow, my view of Him had become very pedestrian and ironically, I was mad at Him for being who I THOUGHT He was. Very twisted thinking, I know, but that’s where I was at the time.
Have I mentioned that I can be extremely stubborn? Oh yeah, the seven years thing. That was definitely me being stubborn. All the while that I was being so arrogant and so stubborn, God was quietly working, doing things His way (without any help from me, can you even imagine?) and bringing me and my family through the raging storms intact. Not only intact, but better and stronger. He didn’t do it the way I would have done it, or the way I prayed it would happen, but He did it the way that worked. The God way.
I still don’t understand a lot of the things that happened or why they happened they way they did. It certainly wasn’t the way I would have worked things. But I am trying to remember these things – my name’s not God, His thoughts are higher than my thoughts and His ways aren’t my ways. I’m trying to keep it simple.