Women's Connection--Final Version

 

   I published a different form of this blog many months ago. This is the final version that I presented this week. Thanks to the guidance of one of my writer friends, it is shorter in many areas and now has an outline, which I needed for clarity to make sense of my own life events. My life story divisions are: Journey to Faith, Journey through Grief.   

My Women’s Connection Testimony

      Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I don’t know if I’m Irish or not, but I’m wearing green earrings so you can’t pinch me. I see a lot of my friends here, thanks for coming, but for anyone who came because you heard they were having lamb, prepare to be disappointed. I’m the Lamb. Prayer: Lord if the story you have written in my life can help someone here with the story you are writing in hers, I pray for your Spirit to use my words. Thank you for letting me honor my son's life and memory today. A writing teacher once told our class not to put on our book bios how many generations our families have lived in Montana because no one outside of Montana cares. But since I am in Montana, I feel free to say that my great grandparents homesteaded in eastern Montana in 1913. Who else here is from Wolf Point? When I was one, my Dad got a job with the Highway Department, now called the DOT, so we moved from Wolf Point and followed his job to a series of small towns in western Montana.

    My younger brother was born in Philipsburg, MT in a small hospital that did not recognize the damage that RH factor had done to his body. RH factor refers to the protein that makes your blood type either positive or negative. When an RH negative woman carries a baby with RH positive blood, the mother's body reacts by forming antibodies that attack the baby. This is more likely if there have been previous children because the antibodies grow stronger with each pregnancy. By the time my brother's health issues were obvious, Roddy had already been damaged by cerebral palsy. He would have hearing and speech problems, mental and physical disabilities all of his life. The doctor said he would not live past seven and, if he did, would be unable to do or understand anything. He recommended putting my brother in an institution before we got too attached. 

     Fortunately, God was not limited by this pathetic prognosis and Roddy is almost 66 years old. Last year I helped him sign up for Medicare and later this week, for Social Security. He graduated from special ed. at Sentinel High School, and worked as a janitor until he retires this month. He still lives in his Missoula home with my now 98 year old Dad and, though Dad is still mostly able to take care of the house and yard, Rod has taken over responsibility for driving. He is a Griz fan, loves all kinds of music and stereo equipment, recently bought a new car, and most importantly, trusted Christ as his Savior as a young boy. I had the privilege of leading him to the Lord. 

    I was six years old when my sister came into the world, two years after Roddy was born. Our Mom developed a psychosis during childbirth that would last the rest of her life. Although she was not diagnosed with schizophrenia until I was 14 and she had, what was then called, a nervous breakdown, I essentially lost my mother when I was six. At that time treatment was basically tranquilizers, which did not do anything for a patient's delusions, hallucinations and paranoia, but made life more peaceful for the rest of the family. I’d like to read you one of the poems that should be on your table now. 

                                                  Beautiful Economy 

On March 25, 1960

 my brother was entering this world

 in a hospital too small to recognize

 the danger he was in.

 A blood disorder had given him

 cerebral palsy.

 He would never hear, speak, learn or move

 the way most people do.

 The damage was irreversible. 

 

On October 8, 1962

 my sister was entering this world

 and my mother was leaving it

 for a world of conspiracies and intrigue.

 For unknown reasons she became

 paranoid schizophrenic.

 She would never reason, feel or function

 the way most people do

 The disease was incurable. 

 

 What kind of God

 would give my father

 a handicapped son

 with a mentally ill mother?

 The kind who knew

 my dad would spend

 most of his life

 alone in his marriage,

 but together with his son.

 Through the long years

 they would always have each other.

 

 Nothing in this world

 is ever wasted

 in the beautiful economy of God.

 

    I don't want to give the wrong impression here, most of my life was quite ordinary. I went to high school, babysat, did chores, and had part time jobs like everyone else. I had a little more responsibility for helping raise my younger siblings than many of my friends, and seldom had anyone come to my house, but most of my life was normal. And the part that was hard--the anger, the sorrow--I stuffed away into a secret place inside.

    Early in their marriage, my Mom converted to a different religious group. Like everything except biblical Christianity, it taught that you must work for your own redemption. My Dad didn’t convert, but my older brother and I were raised in that denomination. Although many schizophrenics' paranoia focuses on the government or law enforcement, my Mom's main delusions centered around her church so, when I was 14, Mom asked me to leave the church. I believed I was in the true church and intended to go back when I left home. But God used that request from my mentally ill mother as a turning point in my spiritual journey.

    Away from the teachings of my church, I began to create my own god in the cafeteria style that is still so popular today. I incorporated evolution, of course, ancient aliens were popular at the time, as was something about the lost continent of Mu, although I can't remember anything about it. But a create-your-own-god is not like a build-a-bear workshop, there is nothing tangible to hold onto when you are finished.

    Meanwhile my older brother, Clell, had been invited by one of the dorkiest boys in high school to some teen Bible studies. My brother, in turn, started inviting me to their once a month parties. Since I had no social life and went to a high school where all parties and most dates involved drinking, a Christian youth group seemed like a safe alternative. Eventually I felt guilty for attending the parties but not the actual Bible studies, so I started going to those too. We were studying the gospel of John. It was in John that I found out there is nothing we can do to work our way to heaven. Jesus was asked that very question by the religious leaders of his time—What can I do to work the works of God? Jesus said, the work of God is to believe in the one He has sent. We do not have a works problem, we have a sin problem, and the penalty for sin is death. Jesus came to pay for our sins by dying on the cross. His Son was God’s love gift to us, the only work we need to do, is to accept that gift. By God's grace, when there was a conflict between what the Bible said and what my former church taught, I believed the Bible. After all, one of the tenets of that faith stated that we believed the Bible was the Word of God. But we didn't study it, certainly not in the main service, and just a few scattered stories from the Bible in Sunday school. 

     Eventually I started attending Sunday morning service, not just youth group. But something happened that forced me to look deeper at what I believed. When my friend Donna and I were both 15 years old, Donna died of hepatitis. Suddenly, death did not just come for old people, it had come for Donna, it could come for me. I needed to know if what I had been learning in the Bible was true. I knew I needed to trust Christ as my Savior, but I did not want to let Him control my life. I wanted the steering wheel. My whole childhood had been driven by my Mom's mental illness. I wanted to control my adult life. Being a teenager, I didn't realize that we never get to hold life's steering wheel.

    Unfortunately for me, the church I attended was one of those that gave an altar call every Sunday, asking those who needed to receive Christ to come forward. I remember week after week, standing for the last song, convicted, resisting, gripping the pew in front of me until my knuckles turned white, but I did not go forward. And the conviction didn't end when I went home. The Holy Spirit is very good at his job and there, alone in my room, trying to go to sleep, He would remind me that I needed to trust Jesus, that the alternative was hell. Still I fought for control. I knew that if I asked the Savior who had suffered and given his life for me, to save my soul, the only right response would be for me to give that life back to him, but I didn't want to. I wrestled with the Holy Spirit for a year. Do I look that stubborn?

     Finally in October 1972, in what was probably the worst prayer for salvation ever spoken, I told Jesus He could save me if He wanted to, but not to expect anything from me. It did not feel like a great spiritual victory, it felt like utter defeat. I could not resist the Spirit's conviction any longer. I surrendered. The next night I prayed a more submissive prayer, but the deed was already done. Lousy prayer, lousy attitude and all, Jesus had saved me that night. The Holy Spirit, who had for so long pounded on my heart from the outside, now assured me from the inside, that I belonged to Him. I’m so thankful for the dorky kid that invited my brother to the teen Bible studies, that taught me the book of John, who led me to the One I had unknowingly been looking for all my life—Jesus.

     I don't want to yada, yada, yada over the next part of my life, but I am 69 years old and only have 25 minutes to speak. So briefly, I lived at home and attended U of M my freshman year because I had so many scholarships, I got money back at the end of registration. It was better than high school, nobody cared about what you wore, if you were rich, pretty or popular. I no longer felt like a guppy swimming in a piranha tank, but in many ways, nobody cared at all. Where I really wanted to go was Western Baptist Bible College, now called Corban, in Salem, OR. And my sophomore year, much to my Dad's objections, I transferred there. It was there I met my husband Reed. In the odd ways of God, Reed had also grown up in Missoula, went to the only other high school, and my little church was actually a split off of his, but we had never met. It was not love at first sight, or even 20th sight, but there is something irresistible about a man who keeps loving you in spite of yourself. We got engaged at 19, married at 20, and moved to Helena, MT where I put Reed through Vo-Tech aircraft mechanic school and have lived off that investment for almost 49 years.

    We moved to Denver so Reed could get aircraft experience and I could finish college, but became trapped there by the job scarcity of the recession. When we finally got so sick of the traffic, pollution and crime, that we were ready to take off for Montana without jobs, the company let Reed transfer to their Billings facility. Our favorite souvenir of our four years in Denver is our daughter, Britten. In Billings we had just bought our first home and I was seven months pregnant with our son Will, when the company Reed worked for went bankrupt. The other mechanics found jobs that paid as much or better than they earned before. Reed did not. We had no insurance for the coming baby. We were broke and afraid we would lose the house. In case He had forgotten, I kept reminding the Lord that WE WERE THE CHRISTIANS! Why was he blessing these other people? That experience is what I came to call, God's Providential Leading Brilliantly Disguised as Disaster. The Lord knew that where we really wanted to live was western Montana, near our families, and He used all those seeming catastrophes to loosen our grip on our life in Billings so we would be willing to move to Kalispell when a job opened here.

     Our son Tracy was born here. When he was one year old, I was at a Bible study for young moms and felt the Lord telling me He was going to do something different in my life. I thought perhaps he would call us to the mission field. What actually happened was 3 1/2 years of depression. I had reached the point where not only could I not stuff one more thing into my secret place inside, the door had popped open and everything was spilling out. I do not have time here to do justice to that part of my life today, and I do not want to minimize the depression any of you may be facing, so briefly, I fought suicidal feelings with logic and willpower for a whole year. It was one time being that stubborn helped me. I prayed, of course, sang worship songs, but the Lord's plan was not to end my struggle, but for me to walk through the pain into wholeness. That was the something new He had promised. The main encouragement I want to give you is—God is real. God is good. Hang on until life is good again, too.

     Eventually I could pray without feeling like my prayers were hitting the ceiling, go to church and Bible study without feeling like a failure, read my Bible, understand it, and believe it again. Feel all my feelings instead of banishing the hard ones to my secret place. I could enjoy my life again. My children grew up. My daughter met a godly young man at a Bible College in Bozeman, got married and only 14 years later, gave me my first granddaughter, Brie. When the baby was a just a couple months old, my son-in-law transferred from an engineering firm in Helena to the Kalispell branch. They bought a home minutes away from ours and had a second daughter in 2020. My oldest son, Will, who I thought might grow up to be a hunting outfitter, or a hermit, decided to become a nurse. He met his wife Emily at nursing college in Helena. There is an amazing story about that, but I don’t have time to share that here either. To my delight they live in Kalispell also, brought another granddaughter into our lives in 2019 and, as of December 2024, a grandson.

    Tracy, our youngest son, began to doubt his faith in his teens and struggled so much at Christian school that, much to the school's relief, I home schooled him the last three years. But his secret struggle was with alcohol and drug addiction. Things eventually spiraled out of control so much that he was willing to come home to get sober and, when that was not enough, to go to rehab at Rimrock in Billings. Something so remarkable happened on that trip, I want to share it briefly here. By that low point in his life, Tracy doubted everything about his previous faith in Christ. Somewhere between Townsend and Toston, we pulled over on the shoulder of the road so our very anxious son could pace and smoke. He said, "I will never believe in God because I can't see Him and He can't see me." I prayed for the Lord to show Trace that He is real and He is good. At that very moment a car pulled up behind ours on the highway. The driver said he was on his way to a meeting in Helena when God told him to turn around and go talk to us. He encouraged Tracy and prayed for us. Tracy said, "I will never doubt God again because of what He did for me today." God is real. God is good. I want you to know that, too.

    That does not mean his path to sobriety was easy. I even prayed for a time that God would make Trace physically unable to drink alcohol. After he had gall stone removal and, while recovering from that, surgery to remove a tumor on his adrenal gland, I mercifully retracted my prayer. It happened gradually, but we finally got our sober, dependable son back. He was already a skilled auto mechanic, but after helping Reed at the airport, decided to go to the same school his dad graduated from, now called Helena College of Technology and become an aircraft mechanic. Let me read you a text he sent after his birthday in 2021:  Thank you for dinner and my card. I am glad that you can be proud to tell people how I'm doing again and I do work very hard to be a good man now, but I couldn't have done any of that without you guys to help me out. Thank you for helping me to pick my life back up and to be able to go to college and do this. He was near the end of his training there, six weeks from graduating, when a fellow student found him dead in his RV. Fentanyl poisoning. Everyone who knew him was shocked. He had not used drugs in six years. But even in all my brokenness, God was real, God was good. 

    His grace was evident even in the way we found out about Tracy's death. Our son-in-law happened to have meetings in Helena at that time and our daughter happened to have invited us for dinner that night. Luke got to Tracy's RV after the first responders, so he didn't have to be the one to find the body. He called our daughter with the news and she told us, so we did not have to find out from some unknown officer looking through contacts on his phone. Throughout Covid protocols I wrote this reference on my mask Ps.139:16 "...all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." I had believed that for many years, but when my son died at age 34, I had to take that truth deep into my heart. Although it is never God's will for a person to use drugs, March 22, 2022 was the time God had chosen for Tracy to go home to heaven. God also provided a special comfort for me that first dreaded Mother’s Day, but I don’t have time to share that story today.

   Two years after Tracy died, our daughter got a call from the Helena prosecutor's office. She was considered a material witness in Tracy's case since she, through late nights going through her brother's computer and phone, unlocked the evidence that convicted the dealer. There are many places in Montana where law enforcement is not even investigating fentanyl deaths, but the Lewis and Clark County prosecutor took the case seriously. We agreed with her suggestion to ask for a sentence of 40 years for the dealer, Neil. His public defender asked for 20 with 15 suspended. But Neil had received many such sentences in the past and always went back to selling drugs. To his credit, he did not fight the charges even though he knew, from decades spent in the legal system, pleading not guilty would have dragged out the case and given him a couple more years with his family before going to prison. His only statement in court was not in his own defense, but an apology to us. This was after sentencing, when it would do him no good. 

    I wondered if I would be able to forgive him. I did not even know what that would feel like. But a month before the sentencing, at our church Good Friday service, hearing again about all Christ had suffered to provide forgiveness for me, God gave me enough love for the dealer to forgive him. Now I knew what forgiveness feels like. It feels like love for the person who wronged you. Neil was sentenced to 38 years. We were glad. He had been selling drugs in the Helena area for about that long. Although Tracy would have been ashamed to have died from drugs, I think he would be glad to know his death kept a man who had been dealing drugs for decades, off the streets of Helena for decades. I think he would have been willing to die a humiliating death in order to save others from dying.

   Writing has long been my coping mechanism, so I poured out my pain in poetry and in my grief journal. Those two eventually became this book, Lament of the Lamb. I give it to people in loss, especially an unexpected loss, to encourage others in grief to trust God and so bring spiritual fruit from our son's death. And I gave my book to the dealer in hope he could know, not only my forgiveness, but God's. I pray for salvation for Neil and his family. 

   After creating the first book on Kindle Direct Publishing, I decided to compile decade’s worth of poems and several years of my blog, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Humility into these other four books. I had come to realize even my most ardent fan would not be willing to comb through my computer to look for my poems after I am gone, and the books are much easier to foist off on my children. So although I cannot force them on you, I have brought the books with me, along with the "Heaven" booklets we give out in Tracy's memory. Tracy was very good about opening doors for others, now he lives in heaven, and if there is anyone here who needs to come to Jesus, let his story, and mine, open that door for you today. I would like to read you one final poem. 

                                            Because of Christ

We once were enemies--God and I.

  Though, I kind of liked knowing he was around

  in case I needed him to handle

  something I could not manage on my own.

  In that case, I might ask him.

  But I worried he might ask 

  something of me in return.

  And that would not do.

  I had plans for my life

  and strength of my own to carry them through.

  Or so I thought. 

 

And now we are friends--God and I

  sitting at the same table.

  Not that I did anything to earn an invitation,

  He invited me, must have been a hundred times.

  Until, out of excuses, I finally came.

  His strength, I found, was not so much

  in those grand interventions I planned to ask for,

  but in the small, daily graces

  I hadn't even noticed 

  until we changed from enemies to friends.

  Because of Christ.  

  God is real. God is good. If you would like to trust in Him today, pray with me as I lead in this prayer of salvation . . .

The Wife's Prayer

     The Red Green Show is a comedy series we love about a lodge full of redneck Canadians. Though it has been off the air for decades, it now has its own dedicated channel on our Roku TV. At the end of the program, the men of Possum Lodge recite The Man's Prayer:

I am a man

but I can change, 

if I have to,

I guess.

 

     Sounds about right. Reed even adapted it for his phone message, I am a mechanic, but I can change . . . So I decided it was about time to come up with a prayer for women, particularly wives:

 

I am a wife

what I want can wait,

if it has to,

I guess. 

 

    Though I did not write it until today, I have been living this prayer for almost 49 years. And this next one came up when my husband started hinting about oatmeal raisin cookies while we still have two other kinds of homemade cookies in the kitchen.

 

I am your wife

what you want can wait,

till I'm ready,

I guess. 

 

     There are many differences between men and women for which I am infinitely thankful, but there are some things we have in common, such as frustration that we cannot change each other and reluctance to change ourselves. The prayers are a reminder of the differences that, strangely enough, we have in common.

Prisoners of Hope

    The title above is a phrase from Zechariah 9:12. I have been pondering it ever since it came up in last week's Bible study. The words were too beautiful not to make into a poem (in Hebrew, it already is), but I needed to know what it meant first. After consulting several commentaries and praying for guidance, I found myself thinking about a Longfellow poem I have shared here before, "The Children's Hour," in which the author compared his daughters climbing onto his chair as an appealing assault on his castle. The last verses are so beautiful I memorized them, and I wondered if the Lord was bringing it to my mind to help me understand the phrase "prisoners of hope."

  

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

because you have scaled my wall,

such an old mustache as I am

is not a match for you all.

 

I have you fast in my fortress,

and will not let you depart,

but put you down into the dungeons

in the round tower of my heart.

 

And there I will keep you forever

yes, forever and a day,

till the walls shall crumble to ruin

and moulder in dust away!  

 

   Longfellow's fortress and dungeon symbolize the place he keeps precious memories of his daughters. Not all prisons are places of punishment, they can also be places of protection. Though I refer to prison in a negative sense earlier in the poem, in my final stanza, I decided to stay in the context of Zechariah 9 and relate prison to the fortress the Lord is urging his people to return to in verse 12. And I made hope reflect the coming king prophesied in verse 9.

 

Prisoners of Hope

 

Prisoners were we in Babylon

far from our home, our freedom gone. 

Seven long decades we have been

exiled there because of sin. 

 

Prisoners are we, though now returned

to Jerusalem's splendor--ravaged, burned,

 temple destroyed, and walls are gone,

our days spent barely holding on. 

 

Enemies mocked and wrote to bring,

libelous charges to our king,

as if those scoffers could not tell

we had no power to rebel.

 

Prisoners are we of our despair

yet in Jerusalem's disrepair,

a prophet proclaims Israel's coming

lowly, victorious, Savior King.

 

Our land is overrun with men

who mock our God and scorn his plan,

but our fortress is this prophecy.

Prisoners of glorious hope are we.

 

(Zech. 9:12) 

 

3/1/26 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Bridal Shower Barrage

 

    I was recently asked to speak at a bridal shower for a young woman from our church who is getting married next month. Which was a minor miracle in itself, I am not exactly an in demand speaker, but mostly I said yes because I feel like I know her pretty well, and also know a fair bit about her fiance. I am going to change their names in this blog, since they are the innocent victims of my brain's barrage. I decided to look through my 15 years of blogs to find something profound to share about marriage. Didn’t find anything--except this story about our first date, since our recent Valentine’s day marks 50 years since that event. 

   I had gone out with Reed once before, but that was a casual, “My church is having a taco night for college age tonight, wanna come? As a broke college student, I would go anywhere for free food. But a Bible college Valentine banquet is a really awkward first date. The speaker was addressing couples in love. The message was about not sacrificing the 99% of the things you like about your boyfriend/girlfriend for the 1% you don’t. I only knew about 1% of Reed at that point and I wasn’t sure how I felt about even that. As it turned out, Reed was the first of four guys that invited me to that same banquet. For an unpopular girl who never dated in high school (not that I wanted to, dating in my high school was synonymous with getting drunk), getting asked out by four guys was a Vatican worthy miracle. So I couldn’t help but wonder throughout the awkward evening in my borrowed dress, if I shouldn’t have taken one of the other offers.

  But there is something irresistible about someone who keeps on loving you in spite of your response, in spite of yourself. We got engaged June 25, 1976, despite a proposal about as romantic as the taco night invitation. We were in his apartment after dinner when he said,

    “I wanna marry you.”

     I said,”I wanna marry you, too.”

    “Will you?" (That was the trick question I was unprepared for!)

     Long pause . . . gulp . . . "Yes"?

  Not only did he not get down on one knee, he didn’t even get up off the couch. One year, to the day from that romantic milestone, we got married. But I don’t want to dim the enthusiasm for your upcoming wedding day with the story of everything that went wrong on ours. That is a fractured fairytale for another time.

  And since there was no profound marriage advice in my blog, I thought I would share with the bride to be some of the things I wish I’d known earlier in my marriage: 

My husband can’t read my mind.

   If Reed was capable of reading my mind, he would not have given me a cheese platter as the first Valentine’s gift of our married lives. I like cheese, but it felt more like an employee of the month reward than a romantic gesture. After we had children, I was a stay at home mom, so my main contribution to family finances was to save us money, not earn it. Part of that savings was by providing meals at home but—3 times a day, every day, even for someone like me who enjoys cooking, gets tiring. Sometimes I wanted to go out for dinner or for Reed to pick up a pizza or burgers on the way home. But I felt guilty about the expense, so I wanted him to suggest it. Somehow my brainwaves could not transmit that message 14 miles to the airport where he worked. Even when he called and asked “What’s for dinner?” and I said ,”I don’t know” he could not pick up on my thought transmissions. After hearing this advice several years into our marriage, at someone else’s bridal shower, I gave up the minding reading act and just told him when I wanted restaurant food. He was happy to do so, always had been, I just needed to say it. 

I am not my husband’s Holy Spirit.

   When our kids are little, we parents are the ones who help them apply Bible truth to their lives. Until they know the Lord and understand how to listen to the Spirit, we play the role as the spirit in their lives. But because of that, ans a desire to be helpful, and a sinful desire to tell people what to do, that can overflow into trying to be Holy Spirit Junior in our husband’s lives. I’m sure the day I learned in Bible study that that was not my role in Reed’s life was one of his happiest days in our marriage. Although I do need frequent reminders from the real Holy Spirit, that he knows how to guide my husband better than I do.

Embrace the differences.

   Men are different from women and those differences should be celebrated—especially by the women. One of those differences is spitting. You will not find a group of women standing around visiting and have one suddenly turn around and hawk a loogie on the ground. That is a guy thing. I spent some time contemplating why men spit. They produce more saliva than women but their bodies are equipped to handle the load. I concluded that the main reason men spit is because they can. But another thing that comes out of men’s mouths is words. They do  not have as many words to spit out of their system as women do. "Anna", I know enough about you and your fiance to know you have a different amount of words inside you that need to come out. That is something you’ll need to figure out together. Both words and silence can be too much of a good thing. And Anna, even after decades of marriage, you will sometimes turn to that person you know and love more than anyone on earth and say, “Why on earth did you even think that?” The answer, because he’s a man, that’s why. 

Timing is everything.

    If the Lord blesses you with children, you will find them to be the most angelic, adorable sinners you can imagine. There is a tendency, after a long day supervising small sinners, for a wife to want to hand at least one of them to her husband as he walks in the door and say “Take this child!” Whether he has had a great day at work or a terrible day, this is not an appropriate way to say, Welcome home! If you know you need to discuss something which may be difficult (for instance, putting that child up for adoption) just kidding. But seriously, save some discussions for after a good meal when he is relaxed and satisfied. You may have had all day to work out the perfect wording, but it will not matter if your husband is not ready to listen. To discuss something on which you are likely to disagree, save it for after "dessert" when hopefully both of you are relaxed and satisfied.

   You and "John" have gone into this relationship as God has directed and we, your church family, have great hopes for where He will lead you in the future. I would like to close with a poem I wrote for my Valentine a few years ago. May God bless you both with long years together holding hands.

 

  Holding Hands
 

 We still hold hands,
but they are old hands
with age spots, crepey skin,
yet warm enough.

Those early years
short on money
long on kids, holding jobs,
just holding on.

And later on
our children have grown
our savings too, leisure time,
enjoying life.

 Decades ago
I knew this day would come,
growing old, side by side,
still holding hands.

 

 2/10/16

 

 

The Connie Codes

    There are many famous codes in history:  The Code of Hammurabi, Morse code, that Navajo code like in the movie "Windtalkers", The DaVinci Code. Admittedly, that last one is a novel, but the one in Windtalker's was real. Then there are the household codes we use to keep our children and dogs from knowing what we're talking about. We spell things out or use alternate words like r-i-d-e or call it excursion to keep the dogs from going crazy with anticipation, i-c-e  c-r-e-a-m or frozen dairy product with children for the same reason. I could have used Spanish words so my children wouldn't understand, but then neither would my husband.

   However, having picky eaters forced me to create a visual code for food. Grilled cheese sandwiches became a Saturday lunch staple when the kids were home, but our daughter only liked Velveeta cheese, the boys and I liked cheddar, Reed preferred grilled peanut butter and jelly. The code went like this: the Velveeta sandwiches were cut in half diagonally, cheddar was sliced in half vertically, peanut butter horizontally. That way no one had to touch the sandwiches they didn't want, much less pull them apart to see what kind they were. 

   That brings me to the celery code. Before they discovered only little kids and uncool adults eat raisins, the preferred method of eating celery at our house was ants on a log style with peanut butter and raisins. But what kind of peanut butter? Reed was, and is, a Jif crunchy gourmand. The kids were fine with non-Jif, as long as it was creamy. I think of peanut butter more like a cooking ingredient than an actual food, so am content with most store brands as long as they are not natural (oily), or low sugar (disgusting). The celery code was all about the ants. Pieces with crunchy peanut butter had three raisins, creamy pieces had two. I have a special serving dish I use for this that keeps the celery at an angle so the ants can't swap logs with other ants. 

    Since Reed and I are not trying to be too cool to eat raisins, or too cool to do anything for that matter, we still use the celery code to this day. Although it will never be used in school cafeterias where fear of raisins is rampant (kids would rather eat ants), someday my system may become as well known as the "quantum cryptography" code no one has heard of. 

    Now that both our kids and ability to sleep well have long since left our home, we find it necessary to make a new code. Although my sleep is much improved since my shoulder replacement, it is normal for both of us to wake up multiple times during the night. Besides visiting the bathroom, we often let the dogs out for a mid-night potty break. The problem is, we do not wake up at the same time so there has been no way to know if the dogs need to go outside or have just come in from outside. We needed a code. Not a note that we would require glasses and light to read. And not where we would have to wake up enough to leave the bedroom to find it. The one sure stop on our late night wake up calls is the bathroom, so we needed a symbol we could leave in the bathroom to indicate we let the dogs out. We settled on the baby wipes we keep in the bathroom for makeup removal and . . . other things. If we let the dogs out, we move the baby wipes from the back of the toilet to between our sinks. That way we have wiped out the need to wake a sleeping spouse to ask them.

    We will probably need more codes in the future like--you need a toothpick, let someone else talk, turn on your hearing aid, etc. But I am confident that if the years to come hold more confusion, I can get cracking on another Connie code to clear it up.

      

 

Most Exalted Evil Master

    My favorite C.S. Lewis book is "The Screwtape Letters", in which the demon Screwtape is advising his nephew Wormwood in the art of tempting believers in Christ into sin or, at least, apathy. In that vein, though not with Lewis' talent, I have created a series of emails from a demon in charge of child sacrifice to his boss, Satan. 

Email:

From:  Mmolechson@satansrealm.gov/deptofinhumanservices 

To: Dragon@darkworld.gov                                                                                                     

 Most Exalted Evil Master,                                                                       312 A.D          

   Please forgive my use of the human designation of the year, I know you have plans to change it in the future to remove any acknowledgment of the life of Christ, but for now it is convenient. As the demon you have appointed in charge of child sacrifice I thought I should give a status report. Just as you planned, through many different religions, rulers, and mortal realms, child sacrifice numbers have remained steady. My current concern is that in Rome, where you have had so much freedom to further your agenda, Emperor Constantine appears to have converted to Christianity. Even in my department, I have heard reports that your deputies assigned to Rome believe he might make Christianity its official religion. Christian teachings always interfere with your master plan and this could have a detrimental effect on the number of babies sacrificed to idols. The timing is also a problem, because the Roman Empire itself is in decline. Is there a plan to assist my department in case of this contingency?

 

Malacious Molechson 

 

Reply:

 

   As you know well, I have prepared many alternate schemes. My agents infiltrated our enemy's church from the beginning, and will use the establishment of Christianity as Rome's official religion to further assert my influence. When the church becomes a path to political power and wealth, men allied with me will hold its highest offices. And, since our enemy plans to replace the Roman kingdom soon anyway, I will accept a decrease in your quota as long as you maintain human sacrifice levels in the less "civilized" cultures where I still hold sway.

 

MEEM

Most Exalted Evil Master,                                                                           1850 

 

   Your plan to replace child sacrifice with abortion is going very well. Mortal mothers are less willing to kill a baby after it is born than when the process is sight unseen. The delusion that the unborn child is not really alive until the mother can feel movement, what they call the "quickening," is well accepted. Besides, when contraception is not reliable, available, and in some jurisdictions even legal, abortion becomes by default not murder, but birth control. Up until this time, abortion has mostly been the purview of midwives and sellers of folk remedies, but doctors in the newly formed medical associations now feel they should control our business and have begun to spread the long suppressed truth that life begins at conception. Even worse, some do gooders, in the name of women's rights, claim it is abusive for husbands, lovers, pimps, etc. to make women abort babies against their will. Business has been very good, but I'm afraid there may be a downturn.

 

MMolechson 

 

Reply:

 

   Do not doubt me, my simple servant, focus on the end game! In the context of my long term plan to separate mortals from their Maker, these setbacks to my agenda are temporary and unimportant. Humans are not wise enough to remember, much less learn from, their past. I do not even need to create new lies, I just reword and recycle my age old ones.

 

MEEM   

 

Most Exalted Evil Master                                                                       1973

 

   Congratulations on your great victory in the Roe vs. Wade decision! Your brilliant strategy of removing prayer, and every vestige of Christian values from public schools has paved the way for this success. I expect many years of exceeding our previous quotas. But I am concerned that improvements in medical technology may make it possible to see the development of their infants from shortly after conception. This may dispel the illusion that aborted babies are just blobs of tissue. If human mothers can view their unborn children, they may decide not to sacrifice them.

 

MMolechson 

 

Reply:

 

    I have, of course, already anticipated this. Medical science cannot stand up to a simple human slogan. For now, my puppet, Planned Parenthood, is promoting the slogan, "Every child a wanted child."  When that one weakens because so many couples want to adopt those children, I will inspire them to make one about a woman's right to control her own body. After all, viewing other humans as property worked well to justify slavery for a long time. 

 

MEEM  

 

Most Exalted Evil Master                                                                            2022

 

    I am devastated at the news that Roe vs. Wade was overturned. I was sure you had enough operatives in the Supreme Court to continue the ruse that the U.S. Constitution upholds the right to abortion. Some states have already made abortion less accessible. Without support from upper management I cannot meet my expected death quotas.

 

MMolechson 

 

Reply:

 

    Do not underestimate me! My agenda is advancing as planned. During the years in which abortion was enshrined  as a right (their terminology reveals the success of my worship campaign, though I prefer they call it a rite), human life was so devalued that mass shootings of school children, coworkers, and random people in public venues are common occurrences. Many mortals are unable to tell the difference between my terrorists and their victims. And my "hate speech" propaganda campaign has convinced many that people who disagree with them deserve to die. My delusion that humans can determine for themselves what is right and wrong, true and false, has dominated man's thinking since Eden. I am not concerned about this small setback, many mortals still proclaim my abortion distortion propaganda as true. Where killing the most innocent of beings is considered acceptable, death reigns. I reign and remain-- 

 

Most Exalted Evil Master

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

    

Deceived Stupidity

    I admit the ongoing Anti-Ice protests tempt me to despair at the deceived stupidity of so many of my fellow citizens. But if I let that persuade me that God has lost control of his planet, my country, or even just Minneapolis, then I am part of the deceived stupidity.