Personal Revival

Many “youth concerts” I have been to, times of worship at DNOW, camps, conferences have historically been times that God has used to correct me and heal my emotions. I didn’t plan on it most of the time. Often I have been surprised by it. So, Friday in the midst of the youth night at Celebrate Freedom I had my own personal revival. Luis Palau spoke and gave an invitation. I used that time for renewal because in the environment, surrounded by the youth my son had come with I felt something was amiss. There was a strong presence of God and He urged me to let go of my bitterness and unforgiveness. This process seems endless to me, but the issues I deal with and have dealt with are huge in human terms. The more He reveals to me, the more I see the impossibility of me humanly forgiving. The Father does not want me to carry this anymore. I know it effects my thought patterns, my view of life, my view of myself and what saw in my quiet time in the midst of the multitude was my distorted view of God. How do you let things go? I decided to believe what the evangelist was saying and praying and on the basis that I am forgiven. I forgive and I offered up all my hurt and pain, the misunderstandings, the hurtful words and let them be taken into the Father’s loving care. I decided to not take them with me when I left.
Then we danced like David did.

Tender Mercies

Sometimes if you are aware of God’s simple nudging you realize you have seen a person for the last time. I think this is a gift, a tender mercy or great compassion. He gives us a nudge to make sure we are right with a person or to allow us a good-bye without regret.


Over in a flash
thunder
The hug good bye


I have been afforded many of these moments in my life. I saw my grandmother West in her room at Good Samaritan in Dayton surrounded by my aunts, uncles and cousins after her stroke. She slept most of the time, but when I went to leave, my Aunt Francis said, "Ruthie, honey, say good-bye, she will know." I was leaving for California the next day. I stood before her and she opened her beautiful blue eyes and in a lucid moment said, “I love you Ruthie.” The whole room filled with tears as I began to cry along with my whole family. “good-bye grandma.” I managed as I turned and walked down the halls.
There is something about the halls of a hospital that allow for death. Like a portal into another world, one can speak of death there and be heard. It is a language understood and held in deep reverence. Do not let the professional manner of the staff fool you. I have agonized in the halls of hospitals as staff as I learned to let people go. Death is real stuff there. I left my presence in the room with my extended family in the realm of memory. This memory though, I knew, was ordain by God and was a precious gift I would treasure as long as I could remember... a lucid moment and her blue eyes.
The morning we left, my ex’s grandmother, the only one on his side whom I still have a real attachment to, after numerous nervous good-byes waved us off. We slowly drove down the tree lined street. She looked so small and frail and alone in her grief over our departure. I was sure I would never see her again in this life.
Lennie Jane West passed sometime in the first few months I live in Southern California. No way to get home, I mourned in solitude with no friend to share it with. I clung to the gift of the good-bye and knew it meant more than a plane ticket... the blue eyes and certainty of her I love you.
Zelma Zechar Ressler passed the night before we could visit her. We had moved to Texas and had gone to Ohio over Labor Day. We stayed a week for a funeral instead. I don’t know why we came so close to miss her, but I saw God’s hand in her passing as reassurance to me that he had taken her home to himself. The gospel was preached at her service and my brother-in-law listened. I watched him from behind. God is good. That was the last time I saw Danny.
I was in Ohio when my father had a heart attack. I went to see Gene and Fern with my best childhood friend. Gene and Fern were my second parents, family to me. As I went to slip out through the garage I glimpsed Gene in his T.V. chair. He looked up and gave me a sheepish grin. I knew.
He passed the following year and I was glad I spent the afternoon on the back porch with the family talking like we always did forever about everything and more.
So you asked, when did I last see Michael? When he hugged me good-bye after I told him I was marrying and leaving for Florida in a month. He hugged me like he meant it. That is how he wanted to leave it. So we did.

Who knows Your Bank Routing Number

If by fear I write
the rhythm then
is not poem at all
but pen and syntax
carefully thought out
never breathing in and out
and in and out
foot falls
door raps
a cop steps on the front steps
summons justice
my day in court
the broken glass
I still find when
I pack it in and pack it out
Three days wages
two weeks of what
I earn
he won't return
my calls
hems and haws
the phone clicks
time repents
and justice calls

Looking Back

I just wrote my prayer support a letter this morning saying I wasn't going to look back, but by request here are photos from last year. I chose ones I didn't post last year. Tried to find odd ones. Eliminated all that made me look old, fat or ugly. There were a lot where I looked tired. It was stress. I needed to get a job, my one at GNN was winding down to part time, very part time. I had lost child support and I hadn't been paid in three weeks. In the midst of that I took a vacation and then found a job in August, was evicted from the house in September (because my land lord defaulted in his loan.) So I really wasn't stressed yet. I am still moving into my house and I ask myself often... or maybe I should ask, "Can I relax yet?" I think I can a bit and enjoy myself. Life isn't half bad.

Epiphany Squared

She hasn't drawn since she was a young child. She used to draw paper dolls, she just stopped. We decided it was ok to draw the apples blue. She is very young and very brave.

My first attempt. I drew with my mentee.

My second attempt. I drew while I listened to this new girl's story.

My mentee's version. She loves color.

The beauty of art ministry is that it opens doors. The question is will we have the courage to walk through them when they open or will we shut it down. The kids and I mean kids God sends me, need someone. And the fact that I have gone through what I have gone through, does not disqualify me, it qualifies me unless all you care about is appearance. Appearance doesn't heal, it doesn't open doors, it doesn't please God. It isn't real. But it is real sad.

I would rather have a room full of little girls like the one I found today than a room full of respectability.

Thanks but no thanks. You did me favor.

Epiphany Squared

My youngest, no my baby slams
the screen door I love and
heads out to tomorrow .
I am sure.
I glimpse an opening into
something bigger than
what it seems.
He hops into the SUV
with friends and they
head west to the airport and
I retreat into my thoughts and routine
But the wonder of it all lingers.
Something bigger than it seems.

Spread before me
The blues and golds
The linear shapes are told
We create the colors
Of this life, the strife
Corrects us in unexpected ways
She speaks and it seems
Her story overlaid in me
my own
I know of what she speaks
It wounds me
It seems
It calls me to Him
It shows me a plan
That must be
Epiphany again
The something bigger than it seems.
And in the chalk lines we lay down
fill with colors of our lives
tell story of the strife
The whys we felt
We had to leave
The fight we face
Consumed by grace
Her life overlaid in me
And I see again
The why.
Her name is like a flower.

This is the best I can do right now......... I need to talk about this... but I don't know where the words are. She asked me if I was a grandma and then she let her story spill out and it overlaid in mine and I understood it all and why I was there. There has to be a plan and a way to survive. No thrive.

Found this.... what I mean by strife.

[Strindberg's] recovery from this dark night of the soul, under the tender care of his mother-in-law, led to a radical transformation in his personality, his religious beliefs, and his approach to theater. Whereas Strindberg formerly believed, for example, that what passed for love between men and women was strife, a crude Darwinian struggle for supremacy resolved only through the victory of one sex over the other, by the time he writes A Dream Play he has abandoned his Naturalistic strategies and misogynistic dogmas and embraced a kind of rueful asceticism modeled on Eastern religions.

Strindberg's change in mood was further influenced by the dissolution of his third marriage, to the actress Harriet Bosse. Previously inclined, and on the slightest pretext, to accuse his female partners of infidelity, lesbianism, careerism, uncleanliness, sloppy bookkeeping, and trying to emasculate him (his model was Hercules, robbed of his club by Omphale and forced to do female tasks), Strindberg was beginning to concede that he might share some of the blame for the way his relationships had been unraveling. Trapped in a repetition compulsion, he recognized that he was producing the same neurotic patterns over and over again.

from Dreaming a Dream Play
Robert Brustein on Theater. New Republic, 00286583, 01/15/2001, Vol. 224, Issue 3

Now that it is technically Thursday

The Haiku I wrote eating bar-b-que pizza at noon.
Haiku can be one line.
It helps if this form gives the haiku another dimension.
This haiku seemed somehow linear.




moonshadow silently breathing.




Breathing is a measure of time
a moonshadow is ethereal and as transient as a breath
you really have to stop and watch
maybe see for the first time

not rushing

Little Plastic Red Gas Cans

People really do mess with my mind. I mean 4 realz. So after a hard day at work, I mean hard day.... I wanted to shoot the phone. I did threaten to and my boss shut my door and put me in time out. LOL.

I was interrupted a million times a million = a million squared which cannot, I repeat cannot be a rational number. You have to make it one to work with it, quiz me. I digress.........

I was interrupted from my scientific experiment in InDesign and the database merge. Almost a nerd. I no lie merged the excel file converted to a .cvs and created, I repeat, created 6,664 InDesign pages with one piece of data on each page. The LARGEST Home Owners Association Directory in history... so if you live in Canyon Creek I apologize, it is huge. I sent the files to my tech support person to figure out. He did the SAME thing last year before he figured it out. It is probably a simple setting. Go figure.

I get home and I sleep. See it restores my soul and makes it so I can study BEGINNING ALGEBRA (I am proud) and maybe write a how to article about cloth tissue holders. Don't mess with me you will get one as a stocking stuffer. (I opened your AMERICAN EAGLE playing cards for a photo shoot, sorry, but for a good cause.)

So I sleep and the phone rings......... it is Scott. He hesitates, did he wreck my bike again? No it needs a new WHEEL. He is OOG. That is out of gas at Walmart near the house.

I pull my sad body out of bed and take the Little Red Plastic Gas Can and help him out. (I am sending him to Chaipas with the man who collects Little Red Plastic Gas Cans and I wonder what other bad habits will he come back with?) GEE. Did we just hear about Little Red Plastic Gas Cans Collections in the sermon?

I think Scott is messing with me. But he was really out of gas at Walmart. So I went and helped and did not get mad, because Scott and I have an open honest relationship. And I had to pick up a few items I forgot when I shopped last week. :)

Raising Boys on My Own

Each pregnancy I thought I would have a daughter. Having grown up in a house full of sisters, that was something I could understand. When the second son arrived I realized my fate was to be the mother of boys and I relaxed knowing that with my adventurous nature God knew what he was doing and I was perfectly suited for the task. So I went at it like I do all things overachieving, trying to be the best that I could at the task set before me.
I like to hike, ride bike and I am an artist. That alone takes me out of the world of the girly girl and puts me into the strange category. I would rather canoe up the Rio Grande for an afternoon than shop in Manhattan, although I would try it if the offer ever came up. I would rather conquer the North rim of the Grand Canyon on a mule than take a Caribbean cruise although I love the ocean, it is in my blood. Let’s camp in the Keys somewhere and snorkel instead and eat at the bar that Hemmingway frequented. I don’t need linen and lace when there is an adventuring waiting for me.
So sons provide that adventure I have needed. Because I don’t really believe in fate, it is providence, provision.
Parks and the pools played a big part of the summer agenda for the boys. We frequented them regularly taking their friends or meeting them there. There was little league and soccer which I think I enjoyed more than they did. I was on the floor building legos and tents in the living room and bedrooms were a regular affair. My soul needs to wade in a creek or explore the tidal pools at Laguna Beach or see where this road will take us through the canyon. All this is stored in my heart and mind and although the last few years have been hard I am not going to let the enemy steal it.

Last summer when I couldn’t really afford it Scott and I headed for the coast, south of Galveston where we asked, where does this road lead as the sunsets over the intercoastal high way and we discovered the light of the refinery and took photographs of each discovery. We ate on the waterfront and talked a blue streak about all that was lost. Then we handed to Houston for a concert and I was abandoned to friends and spent the evening in a hotel alone having danced the delicate dance with my son that lies between child and manhood.

I am glad I danced.