Sometimes giving up feels like freedom. But it isn’t.
Category: Uncategorized
A to Z Challenge: J is for Journey
Journey is a very romantic word for going someplace. The word has always sounded to me like it had purpose connected to it – a journey is for a reason and has value at its end. Evan and Claire were quite young and in my charge for a week when their parents were on a vacation. When taking care of children one of my fears has always been that I will run out of things to do to entertain them. And a week is a long time. I decided to whet their curiosity and told them we would be going on a journey one of those days, but I did not tell them where or why (because I hadn’t yet figured that out).
Evan and Claire lived in the small Wisconsin town where I had grown up. I had memories of the places that I had played in and explored as a child that had captivated me – the farm, the backyard woods, the beautiful spring fed Round Lake. The purpose of the journey would be to share the magic of this outdoor wonderland. The challenge of the journey would be to keep it simple enough for a 5 and 8 year old to appreciate without making it too boring or tiring. Clearly food had to be involved.
Keeping our destination a secret, I packed peanut butter, apples, nuts and water for all of us. The children were excited to get into their car seats and head out on the journey. We drove to the countryside and pulled into a field. Just walking through the tall grass in a place they’d never been, carrying their backpacks and provisions, they were full of questions. They looked at bugs and plants and small animals, birds. I made them count how many different sounds they could hear if they listened really hard. The woods were even more magical with the fall colors at their peak. There was a golden glow on the forest floor and in the canopy with leaves falling everywhere. We ran to the places I had built forts and given certain trees names of their own. We climbed and balanced and explored an old machinery graveyard. We ate our snacks nestled in the leaves. I hope the kids had as much fun as I did, visiting my favorite places. There is something very special about revisiting places with a child and seeing them again with fresh eyes, fresh excitement.
We’ve had other journeys since and the name has stuck. They ask me about their journeys and refer to them when we’re talking about times past. I’ll bet someday they will take their own children on journeys. What place could you share with a child on a journey?
A to Z Challenge: I – Images
Images: Colossians 3:10
I think because you think
“My thoughts are higher than your thoughts…”
I reason because you reason
“Come let us reason together…”
I love because you love
“Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends…”
I live because you live
“I am the way, the truth and the life…”
I know because you have known me
“before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely…”
I work because you work
“I have finished the work which you gave me…”
I grieve because you grieved
“Jesus wept.”
I suffer because you suffered
“he learned obedience from what he suffered…”
I know what is beautiful and good because you know
He saw all that he had made and it was very good…”
“…the new self, which is being renewed in the image of its Creator.”
A to Z Challenge: Hair starts with H (so does Hide)
And what do hair and hide have in common? Hide is what you want to do if you have bad hair. Hence, another h word, Hat.
Honestly (another h word) we can’t help but notice a person’s head, the majority of which is covered with hair. Regardless of culture, race, or gender humans have a lot invested in their hair. An African-American friend told me that when they get their hair done, spending considerable time and money on it, they tell even their husbands “don’t touch my hair!” It’s important stuff.
Lately I have been considering retirement and the necessity of cutting back on expenses. We have saved money the last 41 years by the husband enduring having his hair cut by me. He may have gone to a barber one or two times but I can’t remember when. So I am developing the strategy of saving money on my hair cuts by 1) not cutting it or 2) cutting it myself. In the past a good cut by someone I trust has cost me at least $50, so I’m going to save a couple hundred a year even by conservative figuring. Having considered this I approached the scissor moment a couple of times and then chickened out. Even being not too happy with how I look at present is better than having to hide under a hat for six months while a mistake grows out.
This morning, struck with sudden, irrational bravery I started in before I could change my mind. It’s only hair, right? It’s not like I’m deciding to cut off an arm or a couple legs. And I have to learn to do it if I’m going to retire (that might be a bit of an exaggeration). I looked at styles and how-to’s on the internet. If you want to convince yourself that we care about this subject just start looking – I found my target head of hair and a progression of how this person looked, season by season for years of her life.
This cut is not a radical change for me but it is four inches shorter and believe me, there is a trick to cutting something behind you in a mirror. Go ahead, try it.
I Like This Poem
I like many poems, but this poem about poetry explains to me why many people just don’t get it.
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
— Billy Collins, from The Apple That Astonished Paris
C for Cambodia, Asia’s Hope children
Cambodia starts with C It’s not a country we hear very much about. Any time I had heard about it prior to my first visit three years ago was in conjunction with the Vietnam war – Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I’m still not an expert but I know enough to have developed a love for […]
While it is day…
I’ve heard this phrase used in various settings to show that every minute of life is unique. Every opportunity comes once, and there never is another quite like it. And some things must be done while it is day because the night is coming when you won’t be able to do it anymore.
I think along these lines every time I am together with family, as I am now. My parents are with me at my home in Florida and I am very aware of the limited time for the special project I’m working on with my mom. I am finding out who she is in different ways than I have used before. I am interviewing her. I am writing her memories of being a child, a teen, a young married woman. I am realizing that just because I have known her all my life, doesn’t mean that I know her. She had a life before me that figured heavily in the formation of who she is now. As I hear of those years, those events, I see a story that is more compelling and inspiring than I knew. I became a part of that story and I feel a strong connection to it.
As mom and I sit and talk there are times when the details of the story aren’t clear any more and we wish for someone else who might have been there. My mom has a brother who came down to visit us one day. He was closer to her in age than her other siblings and he knew many of her stories, having lived them with her. His perspective was different and added extra color and depth to the family narrative. Another of her brothers passed away a week ago and I can’t help but wonder what he would have added. Did anyone ask him to tell about his life? Did he leave any of those details for others to know?
Our experiences make us who we are. There are reasons we think the way we do and react to life in certain characteristic ways. Many times I have had friends or acquaintances who I considered to be difficult people, until I heard their story. I’ve known some very remarkable people and wondered where they got their courage or their ambition, until I heard their story. Knowing the story is so helpful in loving and having compassion on others. The stories need to be told if we are to become peacemakers, helpers of each other.
Do you have a living parent that you think you know? Or a husband/wife? Or even a child? As we look at life’s experiences through our own mental window, it is possible to entirely miss what is happening in someone else’s inner world. Don’t be too sure you know them. Don’t think it doesn’t matter. Don’t be slow to ask. Do it while it is day.
The Hill
There is a hill. On a farm in Wisconsin.
At one time there was only one tree on the hill, an old white pine that stood guard alongside a lane that connected the fields. It was tall and imposing, standing out on the landscape as one looked north from the farmhouse to the horizon. I grew up looking at that tree, running to it for thinking time, listening to the constant, soft brush of wind through the pine needles. I would have liked to have climbed up in it but there were no branches I could reach. It was a refuge.
One year there were cows in the field. My father had sold his milk cows but had a herd of young cattle that was like a band of unruly teenagers. They would run the fence line looking for a place to go under, over or through the barbed wire. They had a great deal of energy and, something that most people don’t realize about cows, they had a crazy curiosity. Anything unusual within their sight would start them on an approach path, faster and faster until they were running in a stampede, a kind of mob mentality as I remember it.
I was visiting the tree one day when the cows were in that field. They saw me on the hill and came rushing up to investigate. Cows in a large group are intimidating. They’re big, heavy animals and they mill around, eyes wide and hot, moist breath sniffing at the object of their curiosity, all the time ready to bolt if startled. I flattened myself against it’s trunk and the tree and I were engulfed in the herd.
It turned into a magical moment. As long as I was still the cows took turns pointing their wet noses at me and milling back into the group. I was the vulnerable one with only the tree at my back for protection. They were the free and dominant ones. Eventually they were satisfied and trotted off in a different direction. I still felt the awe and wonder of it as I watched them take off. I feel it again as I remember.
The tree was hit by lightning a few years later during a storm. Its twisted, split and broken frame lay on the hill for several years before it rotted away.
Now, there is just a hill.
Taking Things Back (How to Spend Twice as Much Time Learning Anything)
I’ve been in computer class for the last week. I need to know about computers because I’ve come to depend on them for paying bills, keeping in touch with everyone, expressing myself to the world, finding out how to get places, … way too many things. I tried to get along without one last week when my Dell darling started freezing at the worst possible moments. It was hard, and I relented and took it to the computer doctor. It was suffering from hard drive failure – not completely dead yet, but time to call hospice.
Shall I buy a new hard drive? Shall I get a tablet? Shall I get another small laptop? I asked (begged) for advice from all three experts in my family and then went impulsive instead and bought a tablet at a big box store. After all, I had to check my bank balance and there’s no way to do it without some kind of computer, right?
After a couple days of frustration and a learning curve which was curving completely in the wrong direction, I called the computer doctor again.
“So what operating system does it have?” he asked.
“I think it’s SOS, stupid operating system. It doesn’t have any of the buttons I’m used to seeing/”
“Well, what kind of tablet do you have?”
“It’s the same kind as my phone. I got it so they would sync. But where are all my email addresses?”
“You have an android. Your Windows contacts won’t sync.”
My computer vocabulary was already stretched to the max. Everything after that sounded like blah, blah, blah… but the bottom line advice was “take it back”.
I’m starting to see a common thread in my buying habits. I need something. I don’t know much about the thing I need. I get tired of trying to figure out the best buy and just go buy something (usually something cheap). And then I learn that I shouldn’t have bought that thing and I take it back. It’s a way of learning.
The bike I bought at the pawn shop had a gear lever which I discovered later had no cable attached (what?! no Bluetooth gear shift?)
The used car I bought had unexpected surprises (only one key!?!! and a new one costs $500?!)
After two trips to the computer doctor, four trips to the stores and about six hours of tearing my hair out, I know a little more about computers today, and obviously I’m back typing in words on my newest purchase. We’ll see if I got the right thing this time. I’m just asking, isn’t there a better way to learn? Maybe not.
P.S. The computer doctor told me that I was not the most tech ignorant person he had run into. Just thought I’d mention that.
I think this is true.
“There is no such thing as an ordinary human. ”
I heard it today but can’t remember who to credit it to, sorry. It’s really one of the points I want to make. We might do ordinary things, say ordinary things, act in ordinary ways but we are all pretty special creations. Don’t undervalue yourself. Your value is not in your job, your relationships, your wealth or your power, all of which will come to an end and disappoint. Your value is given to you by your creator, whose image you bear. You are his crown jewel of creation. He values you. I believe it.
