Red Panties

    Yesterday, as usual, we stopped at the outlet mall in North Bend on our way to Seattle. We do this, in part, to buy clothes, but mostly we are there to buy time until the 5 p.m. Seattle traffic slows down. Wrong expression. Our goal is for the traffic to finally speed up. If we leave Kalispell around 8 and stop for lunch and gas, we wind up hitting Seattle at rush hour. To us small town folks, Seattle traffic is bad enough without adding 5 p.m. to the mayhem. Our favorite store at the outlets is Vanity Fair. Despite the name, it is more a source of Levis than lingerie. All of the jeans I have purchased in the past five years have come from Vanity Fair. Reed particularly likes their heavy Wrangler work shirts. While he selected three of those, I bought jeans, a shirt, and a purse for myself. Vanity Fair always has a rack of good quality panties for $2.47 and I usually buy a pair. Underwear shopping is never my idea of fun, but the $2.47 rack makes it manageable. Even though nobody sees them, which at my age and weight is a very good thing, I try to pick a color that I look good in, or at least feel good about. If I cannot flatter my figure, I can at least have fun with it. So, for the second time in my life, I bought red panties.
     A nice young man rang up my purchases. Guess which item didn't scan? Had to be "man"handled over and over? Eventually had to be hand keyed into the register one scarlet number at a time? The red panties. I was hoping he thought I bought them for someone else, since the image of an overweight, 61 year old grandmother in red panties is a burden even a strong young man should not have to carry. I should have known those rebellious red panties would not be content to rest quietly in my underwear drawer, they would find a way to draw attention to themselves. I have to admit though, they matched nicely with my red face.
    

I Think it Was Because

      It has been a while since I have written a poem, but this one came to me a few days ago and I decided to post it here. It is nothing profound, but those who read my blog have no reason to expect profound.

I Think it Was Because

  I think it was because

I was using what had been

Mom’s sewing machine

on what would have been

her 64^th anniversary,

the day after

what would have been

her 85^th birthday,

  that I found myself crying.

  Suddenly sad

over something so far from sudden,

a leaving so agonizingly slow

I had decades to grieve.

A death, I eventually longed for

and seldom sorrow

until today, nearly five years later,

because I was using

  Mom’s sewing machine.

3/15/18

Leaving Room for God

    In my recent study of Romans 12, I was struck by the phrase, "leave room for God's wrath". I am not feeling particularly wrathful at the moment, but the leader's point that taking vengeance for ourselves means we think God's is not complete enough made me think--do I leave room for God to work? When I decide to be the one to supervise my loved ones' spiritual growth, am I leaving room for what God is trying to do? Do I think the way God is working in their lives is not enough? Not complete enough? Not fast enough? Am I like those people who gather and gawk after an accident, blocking the way of the people who know what to do?
    When Tracy was living with us, we had the opportunity to be the onlookers who bring the warm blanket to keep the injured comfortable until better help arrives, but we had no power to repair the internal damage. That would require skilled help. God's help. The power of addiction is not in the substance, it is in the spirit. So we gave God room to work. The 450 miles between Kalispell and Billings seemed adequate.
    And I am beginning to see what God is doing in his life. Tracy is recognizing the hand of God guiding his circumstances in Billings. He is praying and seeing the answers. When we no longer provided the blanket, he began to see that God was the one looking out for him all along. He thanks us repeatedly for getting him to the place where he can reap the benefits of sobriety and I am glad we were able to help, but the best way we can help now is to continue to stand back and let God do His thing. He has, after all, been pursing prodigals since Eden. Far off to the east, towards Billings, I'm beginning to see Son-light.
    
    
   

God and Gandalf

     I have posted only a few of the messages the Holy Spirit has given me through these months of difficulty with our son. The rest are recorded privately elsewhere for my own remembrance and contemplation, as if they were love letters from the Lord--which they are. Sometimes the words come to me unasked, so foreign and unflinching that I know they are God's and not my own. But there have been other times when I have asked for guidance, then wonder if the words that come into my mind are the Spirit's or mine. But lately, as Reed and I face the possibility of moving, I know exactly where these latest words originate--Gandalf, from "Lord of the Rings".  It is the scene where Gandalf is trying to get Bilbo to show him his mysterious ring, the ring the whole trilogy is about. Gandalf says, "I am not trying to rob you, I'm trying to help you."
     I know there is a a lot of symbolism in "Lord of the Rings", but I am really bad at symbolism. However, I do not need to understand symbolism to know why the Lord is hammering this message into my mind. I have been thinking about moving as if God was trying to rob me of blessings, when in truth I know, even if it is not what I want, He is trying to help me. Why would the God who has disproportionately blessed me all these years, suddenly turn against me? God is no robber and it is slander against His character to think so. It is also hurtful to the One who has so faithfully loved me.
     When our son's addiction and all the accompanying chaos began, I told the Lord I needed him to be as real to me as the things I could see, hear and touch, that I needed specific guidance, and He has been faithful to provide it. But when it came in the form of words, it was a little too real for this Baptist raised, God-only-speaks-through-the-Bible, Christian. When I talked to my pastor about my confusion about whether the words were from the Spirit or my own thoughts, he reminded me that the source was not the measure, the message was. As long as the words aligned with scripture, I should heed them. It doesn't matter if these latest words are God's or Gandalf's, the message is clear--the God who loves me is not trying to hurt me, He is trying to help. This is not the first time God has had to pry my hands off a good thing so he could give me something better, so it is only reasonable to trust Him. Thanks for the reminder, Gandalf.

Destination Weddings

     My son and his wife recently went to Belize for a destination wedding. Between the airfare, accommodations and a resort that charged a fee for everything but the view, they spent $5000. I don't remember even hearing of destination weddings when we married in the 70's. The location was the bride's hometown, usually her home church. Occasionally the wedding might be held in the groom's hometown. Of course, having just been in Bible college, most of our friends were having fairly low budget weddings. But we still had a destination--sex. That was the place we had waited all through our year long engagement, all our lives actually, to get to. When the anticipation on your wedding day is that unexplored three letter country, what sets the moment apart is the sex not the scenery.
    A couple who climbs out of the same bed in the morning to get ready for their wedding day, might need something special to rev up the romance. But when you are giving that once-in-a-lifetime gift to the person you have just committed to spend a lifetime with, you are not looking at the view. Not that a pure wedding night was common practice when we got married, living together was welcomed as if it had just been thought of. I knew couples who stayed pure until the night before their wedding and then "faltered at the finish line." I am not saying that we were not tempted. We had lots of time alone and unsupervised, but what stopped me was knowing that not doing sex God's way might screw up our future sex life. I did not just want our first time to be special, I wanted our future times to be special too.
     For a number of reasons, we had an incredibly low budget, low key wedding. I really did not care about the colors, decorations and ceremony. Several things went wrong on our wedding day: two car accidents, one of them our volunteer photographer, our car broke down, the pastor was almost hit by a falling tree branch. But one thing went right, we did sex God's way, and have been blessed with a sex life without guilt and without shadows of past lovers. We have also been blessed to stay at some beautiful resorts in some desirable destinations both for work and for leisure, for far less than $5000. Our wedding destination was to do it God's way and our final destination is heaven. Outstanding accommodations may get five stars, but heaven's fill the universe.

The Cost of Free and Easy

    I am so glad I was mostly grown up before free love and easy divorce became popular. When I was in seventh grade, there were only two in my class from broken homes. Friends with kids in school now say it is a rarity if even one child's parents are not divorced. Not that I am unthankful for the time in which I live. The higher standard of living. Bigger homes. More cars. Lattes, and the money to afford them. I love easy access to information that cell phones and computers provide. And communication is especially important because so many people no longer have home phones, or homes for that matter because of, what used to be called, free love and easy divorce.  The appeal of sex without strings and marriage without commitment overruled the prophets of the time who warned that the consequences would be women living in poverty raising children with no fathers. What even they did not know was that some of these fatherless boys would grow up to become mass murderers. Easy divorce and free love have broken up the family, which is the second most civilizing influence in the world. The transforming power of Christ is the first. Free love has cost millions of unborn babies their lives and now it is taking the lives of many more innocents through fatherless boys grown into monsters.
     What we call "free" school lunches are actually paid for by the taxpayers. Free community dinners, by donors. Every free service was provided by someone else, even the view. God provided that one. What used to be called free love was really just easy sex and we are paying for that, some, even with their lives. We wanted freedom from moral constraint and, even the mention of, God. But the price of that freedom has been high. I am not sure we can afford any more freedom.

So Long, Sola

     We actually got Sola before Maynard, but we still considered her as our emergency-back-up-cat. Female cats can be standoffish bordering on antisocial. Of course it was hard, even for a cat, to be distant when camped on the foot of our bed. Maynard loves us, Sola let us share her bed. As a bed buddy, Sola was a replacement for Cisco, our poofy-tailed pal who formerly held that position. But Sola didn't have Cisco's joie de vivre nor Maynard's stoner zen. Instead she had a really annoying meow. The pathetic sound she made as a kitten didn't go away, it just got louder. She could ignore us, but we couldn't ignore her high volume howl. Eventually, she didn't want to be ignored and responded with loud purring to two handed petting. Two hands meant there was no possibility of multitasking. That is what all cats secretly want, undivided attention--possibly worship.
     If the fact that Sola had been more demanding lately, indicated a health problem, she was dying her whole life. Alex, who let her out yesterday morning and found her dead in the yard when he came home that afternoon, was upset because he was housesitting for us and because he had known her from the time she was born. Before we even decided to get another cat, I remember Alex watching TV with the kitten snuggling against his leg under a blanket. Sola was the lone offspring of one of the feral cats his family fed. She was the only one in her litter, hence the name. Sola is short for solamente, the Spanish word for only. As her personality developed, we surmised she might have had siblings--but killed them.
     I worried Sola would grow up scraggly like the other feral cats on my sister's property. They were the feline version of dingoes. . Two months later, Tracy brought her home to me for Mother's Day and two months after that, Maynard followed Tracy home from Leisure Island. In a short time we went from hoping Maynard found another home to being willing to fight to the death for him. In Biblical terms, Sola was definitely the less-loved-Leah of the two cats, but cats leave their mark in your life. Sometimes they are claw marks, but you find yourself missing them nonetheless. So long, Sola.