"quaint & rustic"

My best friend calls certain things "quaint and rustic" translation: old and crappy.  I few weekends ago on my way to my parents I took time to stop to take a few pictures of some old barns and an old bridge. When I showed them to Christy she smiled and said, "ahhh look, quaint and rustic."  She was quick to say that it had nothing to do with my ability, but that the subjects were "quaint and rustic."  I knew what she meant and smiled.  I tried to explain to her when I see these old barns they remind me of home.  Then she smiled, I knew she understood.

Honestly, they remind me of so much more.  I think about how they were built by hand in a specific place, with a special purpose in mind, a unique design to each one, and covered in a new coat of paint.  As time goes by the purpose may change, the design can be modified, and the paint begins to fade away, yet they stay in the same place.  That is a lot like me.  I was designed and made by God with a special purpose in mind, a unique design, covered in a new coat, and placed in a specific place.  As time goes by, I change my purpose, modify my design, my coat becomes tattered, and yet I stay in the same place. I never move into a higher or closer place in Him. 
I was created to move, to evolve in Him, to become like Him, not to stay in the same place.  I struggle with this daily.  I like staying in my comfort zone.  Don't misunderstand I love visiting new places and seeing new things, but I love home.  What I don't like is change.  I don't handle it well.  I can deal within it, as long as I know it is not permanent.  If it is permanent, then I become very tense, nervous, anxious to the point of being sick.  Sometimes just the thought about changing something can make me physically sick.  It's no different in my spiritual life.  I am comfortable in the place He put me.  I'm like the old barn, I can't move, the thought of it is an impossible one. 
When I begin to think it is impossible He provides a bridge to cross over.  However, on most days I do not have the faith to take the first step.  In my mind it's an old rickety one that looks like it could fall apart at any moment. If it was new and well constructed it wouldn't take any faith at all to walk across it.  However, an old one like the one below takes more faith to cross.  Am I just that comfortable on this side? Or am I to scared of what might be expected of me on the other side?  Or is it that I don't have enough faith to put one foot in front of the other and trust Him that He won't let the bridge collapse? I'm not sure exactly, maybe I am I just not ready yet to cross over.  I have felt like I have lost my faith and trust not in God, but in others.  People promise you so much, yet they deliver very little.  Maybe if I had the ability to cross the bridge I could learn to exercise my faith a little more.  

 

Maybe Christy is right maybe they are just "quaint and rustic" but for me they are comfort and change all in one.

really, i'm fine!

I was recently described by a man as a restaurant that never opens.  The menu is outside the door on display where you can see all there is to offer but no one can order off it.  I'm just for show, so to speak.  At first I didn't know rather to be offended or to say thank you. 
I went with thank you.  That means that I have succeeded in keeping people at an arms length away.  I have locked my heart away so no one can touch it, hurt it, or break it.  Is that wrong?  According to some people it is.  They tend to tell me how I should be or how I should feel, "You need to be more available." or "You need to give him a chance." or my favorite, "Well, give him time, he might grow on you." Grow on me? What like a fungus? Why would I want someone that has "to grow on me"?  Yuck-O!  The last time I let someone near my heart it was treated with such meanness and disregard why would I want to trust another person with it?  Sometimes I think that my married friends want me to get re-married so I can be as miserable as some of them.
Before someone starts to think that I came from a broken unloving home, I didn't.  I have had great examples of love in my live, my grandparents were married until death.  My parents have been married for 45 years and counting.  However, I believe real true love was never meant for me.  Somehow, I didn't get the love gene. I am not an ooey-gooey lovey dovey person.  I have never once imagined sitting on a porch growing old with someone.  I like to keep my guard up.  To be truly in love you can not do that, you have to let the other person in, not just a little but completely. For me it would be as if I was walking around naked. I would be exposed to the entire world (trust me no one wants to see that).  I just do not have the courage or capability to do that.  I don't think I ever had, well maybe once I did. 
The other night I posted, "Why do we tell little girls kissing a frog will turn him into a Prince? Why don't we just tell them the truth, all men are frogs and save them the trouble?" as my status on Facebook.  A few of the male comments I received were, "Boooo" "Tragic!" "Spring is coming and the frogs will be out. Just keep kissing and you will find your prince. I know one is left in this world somewhere."  Then out of no where it hits me they missed it.  They don't get it. I don't want Prince Charming, I don't even want a man, especially one running around on a white horse trying to rescue me. I just want a to be alone for a while.  If a while last 5 weeks, 5 months, or 5 years, it's my business, no one else's.  I'm an adult, I can make my own decisions.  So for now I say this with the nicest, sweetest voice I have, "Please just shut up. I am fine. I like being alone for now.  It's not depression.  I'm not hiding from the world.  I'm not wallowing in cake batter. It's just me being quiet for a while."

anger, hurt, and flying

Recently I have had an opportunity to exercise my restraint of anger.  Sadly, I feel I am losing the battle.  The last few weeks I've been so filled with anger and hurt that I can't  seem to think about anything else.  So much that it is interfering with my dreams.  Everyday this week and last when I wake up my jaw is in pain from clinching it all night.  I dream of how I can get my revenge.  This is not me or is it?  Deep down am I really an angry, hurt, bitter divorced woman?  The sad thing is that it's not Kevin that has made me so angry.  It was "the boy," Jack. 
"The Boy" who said all the right things, the one who did all the little things, the one who said he loved me, the one that said he wanted to share my life, and who would fight for me. In reality he was the one who lied, who cheated, who used me for the most of 2010, and who is now getting married. 
We have been broke up less than a month!  Seriously, how can this be happening?  What is wrong with me?  I feel so stupid.  I put myself out there and got hurt again this time the only difference was that it didn't take Jack 13 years to do it.  He manged to break me much sooner.  Why do some people think they can treat others so badly?  It's just bad manners.  When I told Kyler that we had broken up, he asked why, I told him, his answer was so profound, "Well, that's what you get for dating a guy from Texas."  That should have been the first red flag.  Yet I fell for his promises; hook, line, and sinker.  What an idiot I am?
Anyone who knows me knows that I don't read much, I don't have the patients for it.  At about the same time as my life was falling apart a friend gave me The Shack that he had downloaded on CD.  He told me to put them in the car and when I go home to listen to it.  Recently, I made a trip home and I started listening to the soft voice that was filling my car.  It was so intriguing that I found myself driving the long way just so I could have a little extra time to absorb the words being read to me, to my heart.  There have been several lines that have touched me, but one that has stuck with me has been, "Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person's throat." The problem is that I can't let go of his throat yet.  I just want to keep hanging on to it, squeezing it ever so slightly. I can't help it.  He deliberately and methodically hurt me. 
I know that I shouldn't feel this way.  I should just let it go. I shouldn't want someone like that.  The truth is I don't want him.  I'm just wondering who do you trust?  Jack is supposedly a Christian, a man of God, a man who had scriptures tattooed on his arms, a man who would quote the bible in English, Hebrew, and Greek, a man who prayed with such closeness and tenderness that I would sometimes tear up, it was so touching.  If you can't trust someone like him then, who? 

I feel so unloved, a more true statement would be "I feel so unloveable."  William P. Young (The Shack) wrote, "You [humans]... were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around... Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wing and removing its ability to fly... A bird is not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by the intentions I [God] have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image. Love is NOT the limitation; love is the flying. I AM love. "   When will I fly again?  I'm tired of falling out of the nest.

to my parents...45 years and counting

You know you have great parents when your adult friends ask you, "Do you think your parents will adopt me, because they are way better than mine?" (I have always said that I have the best parents in the world.) Last night we celebrated my parents 45th wedding anniversary. By the request of one, I have posted the words that I shared with those at dinner last night.

"It's easy for me to understand love at first a sight, but how do you explain love after two people have been looking at each other for years? My parents have spent the last forty-five years looking at one another. Everyone here has been a witness to their union. I have had a VIP Pass for most of it. Trust me the view wasn't always pretty, but it was always entertaining. Together they have survived a draft notice, a tour of duty, pregnancy, child birth, trips to the ER, surgeries, go cart wrecks, slumber parties, girl scout meetings, two teenagers, traffic tickets, broken hearts, school board meetings, job changes, death, menopause, home re-models and shop buildings, the birth of a grandson, and countless cars, dogs, cats, birthdays, Christmas's, and other holidays. During it all they have stayed in love.

From my front row seat I have noticed a few things:

Daddy will eat anything cooked in an Easy Bake Oven, if his daughter bakes it for him.
Mom will let you sit on the counter and listen to you talk about nothing for a very long time.
Mom knows exactly how long to wait after dad sneezes before she says "bless you.”
When dad goes to his shop to "tinker" she gets the first aid kit ready. Trust me there have been a lot of band-aids over the years and one skin graph.
I’ve never seen dad do a load of laundry or the dishes, but I’ve also never seen mom change the oil in a car.
Daddy knows exactly how to push Mom's buttons, just to see the twinkle in her eye.
He knows that she will interrupt him at least once while he's telling a story, usually twice and yet he keeps on talking.
After living in the same house for 33 years Daddy still has to ask where the bowls are. I’m pretty sure the only thing he knows how to use in the kitchen is the coffee pot and the microwave. He says he can turn on the stove to pre-heat it for breakfast, but I’ve never seen him do it. Don’t even ask him about the dishwasher, washing machine, or the dryer.
She knows she will have to wake him up in his recliner to tell him to go to bed.
They have learned to deal not only with their compatibility, but also with their incompatibility.
They laugh together, they’ve cried together, and more importantly they know when to leave each other alone.
They know that the better sometimes comes after the worse.
They both know how and when to say "I'm sorry."

The sentence "I love you," isn't just something they mumble at bedtime. It is what they do every day; with an act of service, in a look, in a kind or annoying word, or sometimes in a gift. Tonight we are here to celebrate their love, the trust they have in each other, the partnership they have formed, the tolerance they have for one another, and the tenacity it takes to stay to together for 45 years.

There is a line in the movie The Princess Bride that says, “This is true love… you think this happens every day?” Well, I know first hand that it doesn't. Let me close by saying thank you for teaching all us here the true meanings of devotion, love, and commitment. I love you."

can't keep a good women down

Sitting in ICU Room #4 I watch a son caress the leg of his mother while she feeds herself banana pudding. They sit and discuss the doctors prognosis and his suggestions for her treatment. With wires and tubes attached to her and machines beeping, I watched the two of them speak with such love and kindness. In one small blink of an eye the son became the parent and the mother became the one in need of her child's advice. He assured his mother that he would take care of everything and not to worry. As he spoke her eye's began to tear up, I realized that the tears weren't really tears, just pride spilling out. She was trying to hide her nervousness with certainty. However, the tone in her voice would crack, she would try to laugh, smile, and hope her son didn't hear the small whimper in her light, sweet Texas draw. I've heard that the women from Texas are made up of grit, stubbornness, determination, vinegar, and sugar. Even in her current fragile condition those traits are easy to see in this Texas lady.
As she lay in the hospital bed recovering from a light stroke, a staph infection, triple bypass surgery, and a mechanical valve replacement she asks me, "Do you like to dance." I answered her with, "I try." The twinkle in her eye quickly returned along with her smile and said, "We'll all go as soon as I get out of this place." I took that as a sign that her strength and spunk never left.
She was moved to the rehab center this week, where her toughness will be put to the test. She has a long road ahead of her, but I have no doubt that it won't be long before this five foot two, go-gettin, gun packin, cross wearin, truth tellin, car burnin, lead-foot drivin, grandma will be back to her old tricks.