Hallelujah!

Hallelujah! At 6:00 PM on December 23, I am finally ready for Christmas! All the gifts are bought, wrapped, and under the tree. The cards are sent, the groceries bought, the house cleaned up, and the 7-layer salad is in the fridge for tomorrow's Christmas Eve dinner. The house is aglow with candles and lights. Soon Sean and Misty will be here to spend the night so we can get up early on Christmas Eve morning for our little family gift-giving. I always love it when all my family is together under my roof when I lie down to sleep at night. I've ordered a pizza for tonight and we plan to play Scrabble. Tomorrow after we open gifts, I'll fix waffles for breakfast, a family tradition. Then Misty and I will make casseroles to take to Granny's house. After we eat dinner and open gifts with Doug's family, we'll visit my sister Mary Jane for her Christmas Eve celebration and dessert. On Christmas morning, I'll get up early to do some more cooking, and then we'll head down to Cindy's for my family's Christmas. Weeks worth of preparations will soon culminate in a week of celebration. Doug is off all week, and of course, school is out for me. I always love the week after Christmas better than any week of the year! Finally, I get to relax.

Christmas Memories

Nothing induces nostalgia quite the way Christmas does. As a child, Christmas was my favorite time of the year, as I’m sure it is for most children. This morning I awakened early and lay in bed remembering some of my favorite Christmases. Every Christmas was special, but some stand out more than others – like the year Daddy got the Christmas spirit.

I got my love of Christmas from my mama, who always went over the top in celebration of it. She decorated and baked and played her old Andy Williams and Perry Como LP albums on our record player. (Remember those?) Daddy had two major roles to play each Christmas. One was to chop down a cedar tree from somewhere on the farm or on land he managed as a forester. The other was to pay Santa for all the gifts he brought us. Yes, even when we believed in Santa, Daddy told us he had to pay him for all those toys! He wasn’t about to let some little man in a red suit get all the credit!

Once Daddy had brought the tree in and got it to stand straight in the stand, he would put the large colored lights on it and then sit down in his recliner while Mama and my sisters and I decorated the tree. The lights were hot enough to burn you if you chanced to touch one, so we had to be careful. Cedar limbs aren’t very sturdy, so our decorations had to be lightweight, usually just colored balls and tinsel. One thing we always did, though, was sit down together and string popcorn on black thread to put around the tree. One year we got together small toys and other little household items and spray- painted them to put on the tree.

While all the preparations were going on, Daddy played the scrooge. He loved to Bah, hum-bug and act like he wasn’t the least bit interested in what we were doing. But one year, things were different. Daddy was out marking timber one day when he came upon a bounty of huge, perfectly-formed pine cones littering the forest floor. He was always one to appreciate the beauty of nature, and so he gathered a large sack of cones and brought them home. He was so proud of his find! He painted the pine cones gold and silver and placed them all around the living room. And that was just the start! Soon he was bringing in greenery and stringing up more lights and decorating everything that didn’t move. We loved it! To this day, we refer to it as the year Daddy got the Christmas spirit.

Of course, there were Christmas gifts that I remember to this day. (No Red Rider BB gun, but we did get BB guns one year!) One year Mary Jane and I got new bicycles. It was one of those exceptionally warm Christmases with highs in the 70’s, so we had a wonderful time riding our bikes around the farm and up and down nearby dirt roads. Another year, we got a large Barbie doll house and a little plastic car, a snazzy convertible, for Barbie and Ken to ride around in. I loved my Barbie dolls and played with them until I was almost fourteen. Another memorable gift was the child-size kitchen set Daddy struggled to assemble one year. It was made out of pink cardboard, with a stove that actually lit up when you turned on the burners, and a faucet with running water in the sink. We certainly got our parents’ money’s worth from that gift!

A big surprise one year was a small chord organ. I had always wanted to learn to play the piano, and begged to take lessons, but Daddy had been forced to do so as a child, and had acquired a pure hatred for piano music. No way was he going to allow a piano in his house. I was quite disappointed, but Mama ordered the chord organ from Sears and Roebuck that Christmas. It arrived several weeks early, in two very large boxes, one for the organ and one for the stool that went with it. How could she hide such large gifts? The solution came courtesy of Daddy’s bumper crop of butternut squash. And I do mean bumper! Daddy had been bringing in the huge, orange squash daily and piling them up on the enclosed porch that was at the side of our antebellum house. The porch was where we kept a large chest-type freezer and anything else that needed storing. The squash pile grew higher and wider and soon became a joke. Well, the organ arrived one day while we were at school, so Mama moved all the squash aside, put the organ in its place, and then piled the squash around and on top of it. We never knew it was there!

Remembering the organ reminds me that one of my favorite things about Christmas is the music. I soon learned to play several carols. As I mentioned earlier, the sounds of Perry Como crooning “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and Andy Williams singing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” filled the air whenever daddy was not at home.
( If he was home, a football game was on.) But my favorite music was the music I made with mama and my sisters when we were in the kitchen washing and drying dishes. We would all sing Christmas songs together, and those were some of my happiest childhood moments.

Perhaps one Christmas stands out in my memory more than all the others. That year we had opened gifts, and then Daddy and I went to check on a heifer that was about to give birth. When we got there, we found her in trouble. The calves’ hooves had emerged, but the heifer was apparently in great pain, and never having experienced birthing before, panicked. She was running around in a state of sheer terror. Daddy knew the calf probably wasn’t going to come on its own, so he would have to pull it. That meant getting a very frightened young cow into the corral where he could work on her. Daddy and I both chased her, but she was in no mood to cooperate. Daddy always got angry and upset when a cow was in trouble, and this day was no exception, even if it was Christmas. When her water broke, we knew there wasn’t much time to save the calf. Then, to escape us, she swam across the pond! By the time we finally got her into the corral, she collapsed on her side, and Daddy attached the chains to the calf’s hooves. He pulled so hard and was so agitated, I feared he would have a heart attack. I stood by watching and praying that the calf would live. Finally, the slimy, wet calf flopped out on the ground, looking completely lifeless. Daddy checked for breathing, and when there was none, he started blowing into its nostrils. When that didn’t work, he picked the calf up by its hind feet and shook it with all his might. He dropped it hard on the ground, where it still showed no signs of life. My heart sank. Then, we heard the faintest little “maahhh.” A miracle had occurred! There was life! Daddy and I started laughing and whooping in relief and happiness at what we had just witnessed. Slowly the calf gained strength and finally struggled to get up on its long, spindly legs. We watched quietly. About that time, we heard the honking of geese, and looked up into the blue sky to see a flock flying overheard in perfect V formation. At that moment, I was overcome with the realization of the beauty of that Christmas day. It was one of those magical moments that you can’t produce; it just happens once in a great while. That Christmas probably stands out in my memory more than any other.

I just remembered something else. I was always somewhat artistic, even as a child, and one year I decided to make a nativity scene out of Paper Mache. I spent hours molding newspaper and glue into a small Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus, and then painted them with tempera paint. Finally, I shellacked them for preservation. Then I cut three rectangles from Styrofoam and put them together to create a triangular-shaped stable. I spray-painted it gold. (It was a very “modern” stable.) I made a paper star to hang from the center of the triangle and attached a Christmas light behind it to give light to my scene. I was quite proud of my handiwork, and Mama just loved it. Daddy, however, laughed and referred to the little holy family as the Christmas ghouls! That is what they were called for the next few years, as Mama lovingly got them out and put them on the long counter in the family room, surrounded by greenery. She would always tell Daddy they were her favorite Christmas decoration! After many years, the little figures disintegrated, but I can still see them in my mind to this day.

I guess Christmas is all about memories, and memories are what ground us. The world is too fast, too much, and too overwhelming at times, but at each year’s end, we stop our regular routine and remember. We remember Christmases past, family, and friends, and we remember that God came to be with us in the form of a small baby in a small town called Bethlehem. Merry Christmas.

33 Years

Yesterday was our 33rd anniversary. We had a very pleasant day together, seeing a movie and eating filet mignon at Longhorn’s. Over our sinfully delicious meal, I looked at Doug and asked him, “Can you believe we’ve been married for 33 years?” He said he could, because he can’t really remember much about the time before we were married. I guess that’s true for me, too; it seems like I’ve been married my whole life. Then he asked me if I wanted to go for 33 more years. I did the math and said, “That would make you 87 and me 86 – it’s feasible, so yeah, let’s go for it.” Of course, we have no idea if God will give each of us that many more years on this earth, but if He does, we will spend them together. I can’t imagine anything else. We are two different people and a single, inseparable unit at the same time. There is tremendous comfort in knowing that we will grow old together. I wouldn’t want to face old age alone!

In 33 years we’ve been through a lot – the whole for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, and for better and for worse thing. There have been good years and bad years and a lot of somewhere in-between years. The good years win out. There were times when I didn’t think they would, but they did.

Probably the most difficult year was the first one. We married too young; I was still just nineteen. Both of us were self-centered and immature, with no experience of living on our own and supporting ourselves. We went from single life to married life, from rural life to city life, and childhood to adulthood all at once, and the adjustment was extremely hard. We were trying to work and go to school at the same time. Both of us were under too much stress, and we had terrible fights.

Probably the biggest mistake we made was that we stopped going to church. Our old church seemed too far away, and we were afraid of “big city churches,” so we didn’t look for a new one. We also had no friends. The few high school friends we had kept up with, had moved far away. I had too much pride to talk to my mother about my unhappiness, and my sisters were still too young to understand. I never felt so alone. I had struggled with depression since early adolescence, and now I sank into a major one. I cried, I prayed, I went for long walks by myself, and I even thought of doing myself in. The one thing I could not do was go back home; my parents would never understand. Divorce was unheard of in my family. Besides, I couldn’t admit failure. The shame would have been more than I could bear.

Then one day I made a friend. The professor in one of my classes had just returned an exam to us and made a comment about my grade being the highest one in the class. As we were leaving, a couple of girls made a very snide remark to me, something about me “ruining the curve.” Then this pretty, dark-haired girl walked up, smiled, and said, “Don’t pay any attention to them; they’re just jealous.” She introduced herself as Elizabeth. It turned out we were both catching a bus back to married housing, so we talked long enough to realize we had a lot in common. We were the same age, both newly married and living on campus, both majoring in home economics education, and both of us had grown up on a farm in a family of girls with a very strict father. And both of us were Baptists. She invited me to her church, Prince Avenue Baptist, and she seemed really excited about it. That same week, one of my professors invited us all to come to that same church. (This was an extraordinary thing to happen on the University campus!) I decided God must be trying to tell me something, and besides, I wanted a friend, so I convinced Doug to go to church with me the following Sunday night. I quickly spotted Elizabeth, wearing the green suit she would wear every Sunday for the next year since we were all so poor at the time, and she introduced us to her husband Jim. The four of us soon established a friendship that endures to this day.

We loved the church and its young pastor, Brother Bill. We found out what “preaching the Word” meant, and learned about the “spirit-filled life.” It wasn’t long before we joined the church and started going to a Sunday School class for young married couples, where we made more new friends. Life was certainly looking better. Then we went with a church group to a week-long conference held by a man named Bill Gothard. That week he spoke a great deal about marriage and family, and Doug and I soon realized we had been doing everything all wrong. We were terribly convicted about how selfish we had been. That week was a real turning-point in our marriage. We were no longer alone; we had a church family, friends, and a three-way relationship that included Jesus Christ. We were wise enough to realize we needed all that support, and when we moved with Doug’s job two years later, we quickly found another church home and have been in church ever since.

In the years that followed, there were other hardships. The greatest disappointment of our lives was realizing we could not have children, but later, the happiest moment of our married life was getting the news that we would adopt a son. I struggled with bouts of depression off and on for years; it was my personal demon. Without God, I never would have made it. He, and He alone, kept me sane. True relief finally came with the discovery of Prozac, which I foolishly avoided taking for many years. I finally realized there was no shame in admitting there could be a chemical imbalance in my brain, and that God can use doctors and medicine to answer prayer.

Our early financial struggles finally eased, and we became proud homeowners. God has truly blessed us materially. We’re not rich, never have been, and never will be, but we have also never had to worry about money since we finished school. Doug and I both found rewarding careers. We’ve enjoyed good health for almost all our married life, and so has our son. Sean has grown into a fine young man with a lovely wife of his own. I feel so blessed.

Before we were married, Doug gave me a poster. It had a picture of two chihuahuas holding onto each other. The caption read, “It’s me and you against the world.” I still have that poster somewhere up in the attic. I think it symbolizes our marriage fairly well. It’s still me and Doug, holding on despite all obstacles, and I am so glad I toughed it out during the hard times.

Combat Shopping

Combat Shopping

For as long as I can remember, it has been a tradition that Mama, my two sisters, and I go shopping the day after Thanksgiving. This marathon day used to drive me to distraction. That was in the old days when we all rode to town together. My sisters gave new meaning to “shop till you drop,” and every shopping day left me with throbbing feet and an ill disposition. I also accomplished very little. We never got started as early as I wanted to. Also, this was in the days before cell phones, and so we all had to stay together as much as possible or arrange to meet up (which never worked since someone was always late). Despite our best efforts, we were always losing each other and spent much of our day just trying to find one another. My sisters can go into a store and not come out again until two hours later. This invariably happened right before lunch time. I would get hungry and impatient, and they felt like I was being the bossy big sister. We would finally all go eat at Morrison’s and, while eating, try to figure out who owed who for what that had been bought that morning. (We often buy our own gifts and then let someone else buy them from us!) After refueling, it was back to the mad holiday rush. The lines were extremely long at all the registers because everyone was at the same stores; there weren’t that many options back then. This day would last into the night until I thought I was going to collapse right there in the store. The worst part was, I never finished or even came close to finishing my shopping.

It is so much better now that I drive my own vehicle. I get out early while the real bargains, the door busters, are still in effect. (This year I left the house at 5:30 am.) By the time the rest of the crew meets up with me around about 11:00, I have already done much of my shopping. We eat at Rafferty’s at a decent hour and I always enjoy their salad and delicious potato soup. When I get tired, I go home. Then Doug and I enjoy a big plate of Thanksgiving leftovers, and afterwards I can put my feet up and relax, vegging out in front of the TV. This year’s trip was actually fun! I came home at the end of the day feeling great about how much I had accomplished.

The only bad part is it all seems rather mercenary. I don’t know how to stop Christmas from being so commercialized; I know that isn’t what it’s all about. That is why I like Thanksgiving. That is a day when we are grateful for what we already have instead of thinking about what we want. One thing we have tried to do is go out of our way to give to those in need at Christmas. That makes me feel so much better about the getting part. There are certainly plenty of opportunities to be generous this time of year!

The Saga Continues...

Well, here it is after 4:00 pm, and I am still waiting. The serviceman called over an hour ago to say he was finishing up his other job and would be headed my way soon. I guess he didn’t say how soon. It probably doesn’t matter anyway because right after he called, the cable went out! I called Charter to report it. After the voice mail telling me to press #2 if I wanted to continue in Espanola, a real live person picked up!!! I was so shocked, I was speechless. Finally, I managed to tell her our cable was out. She said the outage had been reported and technicians were enroot to fix the problem. It will be interesting to see how long that trip takes. If Charter is not the worst company I’ve ever done business with, I don’t know what is. I’ll have to post this later because, of course, my Internet is out, too.


4:35 – He just arrived! Finally! He is working on it even though the cable is still out. I sure hope we have a great TV reception tonight when we watch Jericho and Daybreak.

6:35 – Well, it’s not looking too good for TV viewing tonight. The cable man worked for about an hour before Charter called him to cancel the job. They said he couldn’t verify whether his wiring worked or not without cable, so he packed up his tools and left. I called Misty and asked her to record our shows, as it looks like the cable isn’t coming back on tonight. I just love Charter.

The next day: I called Charter to reschedule our appointment, and this time the woman that answered (yes, I got a real live person again) said that she had to talk to Doug if we wanted to put in a work order since his name is the one on the account. I tried to explain that the work order had already been put in and the work had been started and I just needed to reschedule, but she insisted that the work order had been cancelled and would have to be put in all over again. This time I couldn’t even give them the last four digits of Doug’s SS# even if I knew it! The rules change every time I call up there. Anyway, I called Doug and told him he would have to call Charter, and he was not too happy about that. I suspect they have flagged our account and made a note not to deal with me. That would be pretty funny, because my husband has less patience than I have. Anyway, they are now scheduled to come next week.

The following week: Success at last! The cable man ran a line directly from our TV to the cable box outside, and it did increase our signal strength. It had been coming off a splitter. The best part is, I don't have to deal with Charter anymore for a while. Not only that, but the last person I talked to said we could get the Encore and Starz networks free for a full year at no extra cost. No gimmicks, she says. I guess we'll see about that!

Feud

Feud

I know I said my next post would be about Christmas shopping, but first I must relate the latest installment in my on-going feud with Charter Communications. The most recent battle started when we went out and bought ourselves a VERY nice Christmas present - a 50” Sony SXDR 1080p rear projection TV. We had been looking at big-screen TV’s for the past few years and finally decided to bite the bullet and part with some of our hard-earned savings. We read up on them and went from store to store talking to the salesmen, all the while watching the prices drop. I think we got a good deal, since the same TV was advertised for $500 more the next day – in the same store where we bought ours! There really are good bargains for those who brave the crowds the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Anyway, we bought the TV Saturday morning, and were surprised and delighted to learn that Circuit City could deliver it that same day – just in time for the Georgia-Georgia Tech game! We brought the stand home and got it put together about ten minutes before the Circuit City truck arrived. The two men brought the TV in and set it up. I had also called Charter ahead of time to have them add the HD to our package. They said it would be ready when our new TV arrived; all they had to do was enter something into their computer. Well, when the delivery men / installers turned on the tuner, there was no TV signal at all! Not high def or anything else. I got back on the phone with Charter. They kept telling us to do stuff to the cable box, but nothing worked. Finally they said they would send out a guy between 1 and 5 on Monday. So, we had to watch the dawgs beat Tech on the TV in the bedroom. At least we got to see how beautiful the picture looked on DVD’s.

I waited all of Monday afternoon for the repairman to come and called a little before 5:00 to learn that he was running behind but still on his way. He finally got there about 5:30 and took over an hour to get it working. The picture finally came up. The high def channels were awesome, but the lower channels were noticeably fuzzy, not even as good as they had been on our old TV. The repairman finally said the only thing left to do was put new wires in the outlet in the wall, and he wasn’t equipped to do that. So he called and scheduled an appointment for another repairman to come out and do it later. My husband and I both heard him say it would be the next morning between 8 and 10. He left, and we enjoyed watching our high def channels that evening.

The next morning I waited around until noon despite the fact that I needed to do some things at school. When he still had not showed, I called Charter again. I told the customer service representative (CSR from this point on) that I wanted to know if our serviceman was still coming. She asked for the name on our account, which I gave her, and then asked for our address to verify. I gave her that, and then she wanted to know the last four digits of the social security number that was on the account. I told her it was my husband’s number, and he wasn’t there for me to ask him; I just wanted to know if the serviceman was coming. CSR insisted that she had to have the SS#. I explained once more that I could not give it to her since I had not memorized my husband’s social security number, and it really shouldn’t be necessary since all I wanted to know was when the serviceman was coming. CSR responds that she has that information but cannot give it to me without the SS#. I tell her that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. She says that is the policy. I tell her it wasn’t the policy the day before when I called for the same reason. In fact, I say, I have called Charter numerous times due to lapses in their service and the only time I have ever been asked for that info is when I added the high def to the account, which made sense since it involved an increase in the bill. CSR responds that she can’t help it if other people are not following policy, but she cannot give me the information I need. The policy, she says, is to protect me, the customer. PROTECTING ME FROM WHAT? I ask. CSR: It is to protect people from having unauthorized changes to their account. Me: But I’m NOT making changes to the account; I just want to know if our serviceman is coming! CSR stubbornly refuses to use common sense, so I ask for her name. She gives me a name I never heard and can’t understand and so I ask her to spell it. Then I ask her if there is anyone higher up I can speak to. CSR: I’ll be happy to put you in touch with someone who will tell you exactly what I have just told you. Me: Please do.

Momentarily another woman comes on the phone and asks me how I am doing. “Not too well right now, since I can’t get an answer to a simple question.” She says, “Were you wanting to know if the serviceman is coming today?” “YES!” She looks it up and says that he was scheduled to come the NEXT day between 8 and 10. I told her that was not what the previous repairman had told us, but OK, just so I know when he is coming. Then I asked her why the other CSR could not tell me that. “She must not have understood,” she replies. “That is what I kept trying to tell her.”

So here it is the next day – it’s 12:56 and I’m still waiting.

Thanksgiving

The holidays are upon us now, beginning with Thanksgiving this past Thursday and ending with New Year's Day. Of course, Christmas is the highlight of the season, and it has always been my favorite time of the year - until a few years ago. Now I would have to say that Thanksgiving Day is my very favorite holiday. One obvious reason is all the yummy food we eat WAY too much of! Eating good food is truly one of life's greatest pleasures, especially when you feel too old to do much else! Another reason is that all the family is together, but that is true at Christmas and Easter as well. It is great that we have a day set aside once a year to really think about all the things we have to be thankful for, and that is a lot, even if the world does seem crazy at times. But the one thing that really makes Thanksgiving win out over Christmas is .... NO GIFTS! No gifts translates into no stress. And you don't have to decorate nearly as much either. Everybody just cooks a few dishes, gets together to eat, and then lies around miserably full watching football the rest of the day while looking through all the sales papers - until they fall asleep. Perfect.

This Thanksgiving was a beautiful day with temperatures nearly 70 degrees. Doug fried a turkey, and his family all came for dinner. I made a seven-layer salad, sweet potato souffle, and corn. Kathleen brought dressing, biscuits, and gravy. Katie made a sweet potato pie and a pecan pie and her cranberry congealed salad. Misty brought mashed potatoes. I also made a pumpkin cake dessert that we just love. Adrienne was with us and so was Jamie, Sean's old housemate. After we ate and rested a while, we went for a walk in the neighborhood. It was great being outdoors. When all Doug's family left, I went down to see my folks at my sister's house and ate cheesecake down there. I don't think I will get on the scales for a few days!

It was a perfect Thanksgiving, and now the Christmas season is officially begun. The next day I went on my annual shopping trip with my mom and sisters. My next post will have more about that tradition.

It was a perfect Thanksgiving, and now the Christmas season is officially begun. The next day I went on my annual shopping trip with my mom and sisters. My next post will have more about that tradition.

The other day I saw a plaque that was entitled “The Four Stages of Christmas” It went like this:

1. You believe in Santa Claus.
2. You don’t believe in Santa Claus.
3. You ARE Santa Claus.
4. You look like Santa Claus.

I’m afraid we aren’t far from the last stage! We’ve gotten a pretty good start on the pot bellies and our hair is nearly white.

I really enjoyed all the hustle and bustle of Christmas when Sean was little. There is something magical about seeing Christmas through the eyes of a child. It was fun to make it special for him. We always went to a Christmas tree farm and let him help pick out the perfect tree for his Daddy to saw down. Then we brought it home in Doug’s old pick-up truck and put it up in the living room. I loved the way the smell filled the whole house. For years, we decorated the tree with colored lights and our bread dough ornaments I had made the first year Doug and I were married. I rolled out the dough, cut them out with Christmas cookie cutters, punched a hole in the tops, and then baked them in a slow oven until they were as hard as rocks. When they cooled, I had fun painting them and coating them with shellac to preserve them. Those ornaments lasted for many years until they finally just deteriorated into nothing but crumbs. Other things we used to put on our tree were strings of real popcorn and candy canes. It made a great tree for children.

Another thing I used to enjoy doing at Christmas was singing in the choir. Our church had an annual Singing Christmas Tree, a really big production, and I was in it for several years. It was lots of work, but music is one of my favorite parts of Christmas, and the program at church was what Christmas is really all about. I’ll never forget the year we sang about the Light of Christmas while everyone in the church lighted the candle of the person next to them. It was the most beautiful sight when all the candles were glowing in the darkness.

Another highlight of Christmas was our annual Christmas party with our friends. Most of our kids were getting older when we started doing this, and all of them would come. We had lots of food and played games and took pictures every year. When we first started doing it, we went caroling in our neighborhood, but after a while everyone seemed to lose interest in doing that. I was sorry they did. Anyway, our party became a real tradition. But then the kids grew up, got married, and started having kids of their own. Finally, our families were just too big for our little house, and I gave up having the party.

About the time Sean became a teenager, Christmas got a lot less fun. He became too “cool” to go look for a tree, so we made life easier and less messy by buying a nice artificial tree. I was teaching full time and found that teaching plus shopping plus decorating plus parties equaled STRESS. Singing in the tree became a thing of the past; it was just more than I could handle.

We are on our third artificial tree now, and I am still looking for potpourri or a candle that will make out house smell the way the real one did. I decided to ditch the homey, children’s tree and go for a more formal look with all white lights and gold ribbons. The ornaments are all deep red, gold, crystal, or ivory colored. On top of the tree is a huge bow created by the florist. It really does make a beautiful tree. Our latest tree is pre-lit, making it a cinch to put up.

Our decorations have increased in number and become more elaborate over the years. We now have two lighted, animated reindeer in the front yard, a tree in the garden, lights on all the shrubs in front of the house, wreaths on all the windows, and a single candle in each window. Of course, there is a BIG wreath on the door with a spotlight on it and the mailbox is decorated as well. That is just the outside. Inside I have poinsettias everywhere – on the tree, the mantle, and real ones in a pot next to the fireplace. There is greenery on the big mirror and over the front door. I just bought a new arrangement for the sofa table, and I have a lovely poinsettia centerpiece for the dining-room table. I also set up a winter scene with my Department 56 houses I’ve collected. The kitchen is full of snowmen, and even the bathrooms are decorated. I used to put a separate tree in the bedroom and a small one out on the porch. It finally got to the point that it took me nearly a week to decorate and three days to take it all down and store it away. What started out as fun has become a whole lot of work! (I must admit that I still enjoy it some.) I did give up the decorations in the bedroom and porch. There really is such a thing as too much!

Now that I am working only part-time, Christmas is starting to get fun again. It was great having Misty be part of our celebrations the last two years, and I am looking forward to having grandchildren and seeing it all through the eyes of a child once again.

Reunion

Today is a beautiful fall day. I sat outside on the deck eating a bowl of cereal for lunch, and while I was sitting there, three biplanes flew overhead in a triangle formation. You don’t see that everyday! We just got back from a four-day weekend, and it was good to walk through the yard and garden to check everything out and see what needs to be done. Most of the day has been spent unpacking and putting things away and washing clothes.

We had our first annual family reunion this weekend. It was tons of work, but everyone had a blast! I really want to do it again next year. We all went to the mountains where we stayed in Daddy’s two houses. Since Daddy had only one sister, and Mama was an only child, our family is really pretty small, so there were only 18 of us. That was enough to have a real party but not so many as to be unmanageable. Besides my parents and us, there were my two sisters and their families, Sean and Misty, my cousin Dave and his wife Janice and one grandchild, and my other cousin Deb and her husband Rick. My sister’s son Blake also brought his girlfriend. (A very serious girlfriend.) In addition to the people, there were four dogs running around. We had not seen Deb and Rick in seven years, so it really was good to get together with them. Deb is a real hoot, and always keeps us all laughing.

Since I work only part time and Mama isn’t able to do much, a lot of the getting ready fell on me. Doug and I went up a day ahead to clean house and make up the beds. Daddy was working feverously to finish up the basement bedroom for Sean and Misty, so Doug spent most of his time helping him put in doors.

My sisters and I planned the meals and brought most of the food. Daddy grilled hamburgers one night and pork chops another. One morning we all went out to eat at a breakfast buffet. In three days we devoured a carrot cake, two sour cream coffee cakes, a cheesecake, banana nut bread, and an oreo cookie dessert. And that’s just the sweet stuff! There was also lots of ham, hotdogs, bean soup, egg casseroles, pastries, pork and beans, slaw, and salad. We ate so much that I won’t get on the scales for a couple of days!

We were never bored. We all huddled around a card table putting a puzzle together the first afternoon. We also played games – Scrabble (I won!), Phase 10, Monopoly, and Sequence. On Sunday we went to a festival at the folk art school. We watched Georgia lose to Tennessee (sigh) one night and rented the movie RV on pay-per-view the other. We laughed ourselves silly.

The weather was beautiful. No one got hurt or sick, unlike a long ago Christmas vacation that involved three trips to the hospital! The only negative was the four hours I spent thinking my son wasn’t coming because he got most of the way up there before having to turn around and go back to lock up his workplace. That, and Georgia losing. But as Kevin said, in the overall scheme of things, his life wasn’t going to be affected one bit by a football game! And Sean got there and had a good time. We all did.

It felt really good to be surrounded by family for a whole weekend. I was reminded of how important family really is. Friends come and go over the course of a lifetime, but your family will always be there for you. There is a bond between members of a family that can’t be seen, but is definitely felt by all. Every family needs to get away from their everyday cares and just enjoy being together once and a while. This whole reunion was Daddy’s idea, and I sure am glad he had it.

After the cousins left yesterday, we started cleaning up, and that was another big job. Doug and I were the last to leave after spending the day washing sheets and towels, and cleaning the floors and bathrooms. We got home around supper time last night, exhausted, but feeling good about the way it all went. I would say our first annual family reunion was a huge success!

Worry

Worry

I am a worrier and have been for as long as I can remember. I don’t know if it is a deeply ingrained habit learned through childhood experiences, or part of my genetic makeup. I suspect it’s both. As I child I worried obsessively about making mistakes, whether at home or at school. I would worry about whether or not I had hurt someone’s feelings, or worry that I might have left the gate open and therefore let the cows get out. Or maybe I forgot and left the faucet running when I gave the animals their water. I worried that I would die in my sleep without having said my prayers, or that something would happen to my parents or their marriage. I worried about going to hell. As a teenager, I worried that people didn’t like me. You name it, I worried about it.

Today I worry mostly about the people I care about the most – my husband, my son and daughter-in-law, and my aging parents. I want to know that my husband will always be there for me and love me even when I’m old. I want my son and his wife to have a long and happy marriage. I worry about whether they know enough about life’s pitfalls to make wise choices. I worry that they might get in financial trouble like so many young couples do today. I wonder if I can bear watching them go through the hurts and disappointments that are a part of every life. I worry about my son’s desire to get a motorcycle.

I worry about the health and safety of my parents living two and a half hours away. I wonder if I should be doing more for them. They want us to move up there when my husband becomes eligible for retirement in a couple of years, and I worry about whether or not such a move would be wise and if we would be happy there. I worry about what will happen if something happens to Daddy and I am left as the executor of his estate. Will I be able to handle it? Can my sisters and I agree on what should be done? And what about Mama?

I worry about retirement and having enough income when the time comes. I worry about whether or not I do enough to serve God.

Over the years, many people have tried various ways to help me with this problem. Well-meaning Christians have told me that worry is a sin because it is a failure to trust God. I would continue to worry, only then I felt guilty on top of being worried, and worried that my faith was not strong enough. My husband often dismisses my worries as “silly.” That makes me feel lonely and misunderstood – and like there’s something wrong with me, which I guess there is. Other members of my family have teased me about being a worrier – not helpful at all.

A friend of mine will sometimes make a “W” with his fingers when I say something about my concerns. I don’t know how helpful that is. On the one hand, I feel like he’s making fun of me and not taking my concerns seriously enough. On the other hand, it is a reminder that I do tend to worry too much and should stop and realize that I’m doing it again.

Probably my mother used to help me more than anyone else could. She always listened and took me seriously. She showed compassion, knowing that my worries, imagined or not, caused real pain for me. After hearing me out, she would always help me to see the bright side of any situation and show me a more positive way of looking at my life. She reminded me of all I had to be thankful for. I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through my teen years without her. She was the one person I could talk to about my darkest thoughts. I guess being a worrier herself, she understood.

Sadly, I have a hard time talking to my mother about such things today. She is hard of hearing and gets things confused, forgetting what I’ve already told her. Besides, she has enough concerns with her health problems. Thankfully, I have a dear friend that now serves as a very good listener and encourager.

Most people consider me a fairly intelligent person, and I often try to reason with myself when I get consumed with worry. I tell myself it is a huge waste of time and energy. Chances are good that what I am worried about will never happen. In that case, I would have made myself miserable for nothing. And if it does happen, I can worry about it when the time comes. Worrying about tomorrow steals today’s joy. I tell myself that right now, this minute, as far as I know, things are good. So why not be happy and enjoy the moment? I try to ignore the little voice in my head that’s saying, “But what if there are things you don’t know about?”

What I always do when I find myself unable to shake a worry or fear is pray. When I lie down at night, my brain goes into overtime, thinking of every negative possibility. That is when I start praying. I visualize walking down the aisle of the church, carrying my worries like bundles and laying them on the altar. Then I say, “Lord, here, you take these; I can’t carry them any longer.” Then I turn and walk back down the aisle, empty-handed. I often fall asleep at night while praying this way.

Quite honestly, I give God all the credit for the fact that I am still here and reasonably sane after fifty-some years. I can’t imagine going through the ups and downs of life without Him. For me, going to church on Sundays is necessary for my mental and emotional health.

As the cliché goes, there are two kinds of people in this world – those who worry and those who don’t. The two do not understand each other at all.

I often think that people who don’t worry are simply lacking imagination. There’s nothing wrong with my imagination! At night, I will sometimes imagine something happening to someone I love. As my dog neared the end of his life, I imagined taking him to the vet to have him put to sleep. The whole scenario played out in my head just like a movie, in Technicolor with Dolby surround sound. The scenery, the script, it was all there. So vivid was my imagination that before long, real tears were streaming down my face. How sick is that? Eventually I would stop and say to myself, “This is stupid! I’m crying over something that hasn’t even happened yet!” Then with great effort, I would turn off the movie and shake myself out of the gloom I had created. That’s just one example. My movie library is well-stocked.

To be honest, I sometimes think that people don’t worry simply because they are either ignorant about the state of the world we live in, or they don’t care. Yesterday, after solving the world’s problems with my friend over lunch, she said, “Do you ever wonder how so many people just go through life never giving much thought to any of this stuff?” Yes, I do wonder. I read a lot, and, frankly, if some people knew the things I know, they would be worried. I guess other people know, but they are able to just “forget.” And truly, some people really don’t care. The world can be going to hell in a hand basket; it’s not their problem.

No doubt, some people never worry because they are unwilling to face reality. They tell themselves that everything is going to turn out ok even when they make choices that are leading to nothing but trouble.

I have a sneaky suspicion, however, that many people don’t worry because they are mentally and emotionally healthier than I am. They are strong enough to control their own thoughts. They realize that even if the world is a mess, there’s not much they can do about it – so why worry?

Clearly some people are stronger in their faith than I am. They don’t need to be reminded that no matter what happens, God is in control. They have peace amidst the storm.

It goes both ways. Non-worriers don’t understand worriers, either. People who seldom worry about anything think the rest of us are just “nuts” and being around us is a real downer. It’s funny that people have compassion for those who are in physical pain, but feel like the worrier’s pain is “all in his head” and therefore isn’t real. Their solution to our problem is to just snap out of it. They don’t understand that we would give anything if we could. We are who we are, and we can’t be anyone else.

Therefore, I dedicate this post to the non-worriers among us, in hopes that they might, at last, understand.

Losing Stuff

Losing Stuff

September 12, 2006

Somewhere in this house is a small picture that is very important to me, but right now, I can’t find it. It’s got to be here, unless, God forbid, I accidentally threw it away. I have looked in all the logical places, to no avail. My frustration level is at an all-time high, because it was just a few weeks ago that I ran across the picture and set it aside to do something special with it. And now I have no idea where it is. I do things like that all the time, especially since turning fifty, and I am thoroughly disgusted with myself.

What is so special about this picture? It is a picture of me, taken about twenty years ago, on a boat in New York Harbor. Directly behind me, are the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We, America, lost the actual buildings five years ago, and now I’ve lost them again in my picture.

Losing stuff. That is what this five-year anniversary of September 11th is all about. As Americans, we still feel a profound sense of sadness over all that was lost that infamous day.
I still cannot believe those two iconic buildings are gone, along with the lives of all those people who worked inside them. When I see present-day pictures of the New York skyline, my mind mentally fills in the gap with images of those two towers standing proudly and so prominently over America’s largest city, just as the memorial lights do on the anniversary of the tragedy, shining high up into the night. The World Trade Center was symbolic, standing for American enterprise, prosperity, and opportunity. And that is why it was attacked.

We lost so much on that day – our innocence, our illusion of safety, our sense of security.
How painful it was to realize that we Americans are not universally loved and respected, that there are those who hate us and everything we stand for.

We lost heroes on that day - the passengers on Flight 93 who were determined that no other innocents would be killed, and the firemen who didn’t even think about rushing into the burning buildings to save lives. Then there were the lesser known heroes, the moms and dads that just went to work every dayto take care of their families.

We continue to lose. In the five years since the attack, it seems we’ve lost even more respect from other nations. And we’ve lost soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ve lost the unity that was our only comfort in the dark days following the attack, the feeling that had members of Congress joining together to sing “God Bless America” on the steps of the United States Capitol. We’ve lost some of our liberty to move about freely because of security concerns. Those same concerns have also led to a necessary loss of privacy. The money lost in waging this war on terrorism is beyond our comprehension. Many are beginning to feel that we are losing the war itself.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, our world changed. The world we grew up in, the world that we knew, was suddenly gone, and we can never get it back. That is what we lost. I guess my picture is a pretty small thing compared to that, but even so, I really, really want it back.

Books continued

Books continued….(Please read the previous post first!)

I’ve never been to Europe. It’s on my list of things I want to do before I die. Sometimes I’m envious of the many young people in my classes who have already experienced traveling to other countries numerous times. But I have gone to those places through the books I’ve read. Books are also the closest thing we have to a working time machine. As I’ve already mentioned, I am fascinated with the Civil War, and when I read novels set in that era, I am transported back to another time and place. I truly feel like I’m there. One evening I was totally absorbed in the awesome conclusion of Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels when the phone rang. It was a woman calling from St. Jude’s Hospital. I had agreed to solicit funds for them, and she needed some information. My mind resisted being jerked back to the present, and I couldn’t even remember my address! I was on a battlefield in 1863, and the little town of Bogart did not yet exist.

Some of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met were characters in books. Who can ever forget Atticus Finch or Scarlet O’Hara? Or Amy, Jo, Meg, and Beth? One summer, I read all the books in the Anne of Green Gables series. I remember it as one of my best summers ever. Anne became as real to me as any person I ever met. I know a book is good when I am sad to finish it and miss the people I came to know through its pages.

Biographies have helped me come to know Jackie Kennedy, Robert E. Lee, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. Reading the letters they wrote and the speeches they made is the closest I can come to actually sitting down and talking to these great men and women of history.

I love books with beautiful language. I think of Cold Mountain and Peace Like a River. The latter was the first and perhaps all-time favorite of my book club. Another well-written and favorite book is Kite Runner. Some authors have a real gift for using words that makes prose sound like poetry.

Being southern, I love southern literature. Cold Sassy Tree would rank up there as one of my favorite books of all time. It was set right here in Georgia, just a few miles up the road from where I live. Jan Karon’s Mitford Series books are set in Blowing Rock, NC, and I’ve enjoyed every one of them. Eugenia Price wrote wonderful books about long-ago life on the Golden Isles of Georgia’s coast. I met Terry Kay, writer of To Do Dance with the White Dog, at our local Barnes and Noble and found him friendly and very likable. He lives in our area.


These days, I probably read more nonfiction than fiction. I’m always reading things that relate to the classes I teach, or I read about education in general. I’ve especially enjoyed Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and books by Thomas Sowell. James McPherson probably wrote the best single volume on the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom, and I plowed through it one summer. It wasn’t the easiest reading, but I truly enjoyed it and learned a great deal. I also learned much about America’s history from This Rebellious House by Keillor.

Philip Yancey is my favorite writer of Christian books. I can identify with him. He doesn’t try to dodge the hard questions or give pat answers, and has on occasion struggled with doubt. Other Christian authors I enjoy are C.S. Lewis, Francine Rivers, Os Guiness, and Charles Colson.

I’ve never really understood people who don’t like to read, but I have some theories as to why they don’t. I believe some of them are simply lacking in imagination. When they read, all they see are words on a page. No movie runs through their head. The people and places don’t become real to them. Of course, some people don’t read because they never learned how to read – at least not well. Other people, I’m sure, have just never found the right books. My husband was like that. Once he got into the suspense-thriller genre, he was hooked.

I believe some people learned to hate reading in school, where they were forced to read books that bored them to tears, or were too difficult for them to understand. Many well-meaning English teachers have done a terrible disservice to their poorer students by making reading a chore to be endured rather than a pleasure to be enjoyed.

I also think that reading is seen as too passive an activity by people who are very action oriented. Or maybe it is too solitary for the extremely extroverted. My son would probably fit into these last two categories. He proved the experts wrong who say you will teach a child to love reading if you read to them enough when they are young!

Someone once said that the man who doesn’t read is no better off than the man who can’t. How true! And how sad – such a person just does not know what he is missing!

Books

Yesterday in my government class, I read an excerpt from Lord of the Flies and then discussed the lesson it teaches us about anarchy. Like many people, I was forced to read the book in high school. It occurred to me how amazing it is that I still remember the book and its message so well some thirty-five years later!

Then last night I went to my monthly book club meeting. I started the club about four years ago. Members have come and gone, but at its core are about six middle-age ladies who share a deep love and appreciation of books. This month’s book was set in Israel. Of course, Israel has been very much in the news of late, and so the meeting became a discussion of Israeli history as it relates to current world events. I realized we were only able to discuss these things intelligently because we read so widely. I am currently reading Thomas Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem, and another lady just finished Unveiling Islam. The two of us had much to contribute to the conversation.

I have always loved books. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother reading to me from the pages of my Childcraft Encyclopedia. I’ve had that set of books as long as I can remember, and its red volumes still sit in their place of honor on my living room book shelf I’ve taken good care of them, so I could probably get real money for them on eBay, but I know I’ll never part with them. Those books kindled my childhood imagination with their nursery rhymes and stories of distant times and faraway places. I learned life lessons and much about human nature from the fables in one volume. A volume filled with animal stories and facts inspired my lifelong love of animals. I still remember a picture of Crater Lake in a more advanced volume, and I was so excited to actually go there last year largely because of it. Another picture of a car driving through a tunnel in a giant redwood created my as-yet-unrealized dream of seeing those magnificent trees. I hope that one day, I’ll read to my grandchild from those treasured books.

My parents encouraged my love for reading and made sure that books were always available. My mother enrolled me in a book-of-the-month club, and I looked for each book to come in the mail with great anticipation. I read all the Newberry and Caldecott awards books thanks to the club. I still remember reading A Wrinkle in Time and The Witch of Blackbird Pond. My favorite school activity was “going to the library,” and I probably read most of the books in it. In the summer, the library came to me. We lived out in the country and seldom went into town, but the library sent the book mobile out to us. It was a small library on wheels that parked right in our yard. I looked forward to its arrival more than I did that of the Watson man, who sold candy out of the back of his station wagon. I would stay in the book mobile as long as they would let me and always checked out the maximum number of books allowed. Of course, I read them all long before it returned.

When my grandmother came to live with us, she would sometimes chide me for always having “my nose stuck in a book.” I guess she worried about my social development. Or maybe she just wanted my attention. Anyway, books were my friends. Books allowed me to travel in a way that real life did not. Books taught me about life.

In the fifth grade, I read Misty of Chincoteague and fell in love with horses. I read every book about horses I could get my hands on. I drew horses, I dreamed about horses, and even started writing my own book about horses. Living on a farm, we did, in fact, have horses. That interest finally faded, but then I got into mysteries and devoured the entire Nancy Drew series. When I was twelve, I read Gone with the Wind. Thus began my lifelong fascination with the Civil War. In high school, I was assigned to write a term paper on Adolph Hitler, and so I read The Third Reich. As I read about the horrors of the Holocaust, I learned about the evil that man is capable of, and I learned how easily people can be led astray by a madman.

Once an aunt came to visit my family, and, knowing I loved to read, she brought me a stack of books she had found while cleaning out the house of another relative who had died. She didn’t realize, and my mother never knew, that the books included some detective novels with some pretty steamy romance and rather explicit sexuality. I got a different kind of education – and guilty pleasure – from reading those books!

Other books have had a more postitive impact on my life. The Bible is at the top of that list as I’m sure it is for most practicing Christians. As a young teenager I was greatly influenced by Catherine Marshall’s Christy. The story of the young girl going to teach and witness to the poor Appalachian people instilled in me the desire to “make a difference” in the lives of others, and probably had much to do with me becoming a teacher. More recently, Newt Gingrich’s book, To Renew America, inspired me to teach history just as he did.

Other books that had an impact were Little Women, Animal Farm, Wuthering Heights, War and Remembrance, Exodus, and so many more. Neville’s On the Beach gave me my first glimpse of the Apocalypse. 1984 taught me and countless others to fear Big Brother.

to be continued…

First Day of School

The kids came back to school yesterday, and things went smoothly. I was glad to see them. Being around them keeps me young, except for the times they do or say things that make me realize they live in a different world that I don' know, don't understand, and don't really want to be a part of. Then the generation gap looms huge, but nothing like that happened yesterday. It was fun getting them to talk about their feelings concerning their senior year of high school. I think they're a good bunch of kids, but there are so many of them - 30, to be exact, and that makes them the largest class I've ever had. We were really packed into the room with all their backpacks covering the floor.

I had them fill out a questionnaire, and was heartened to learn that almost all of them attend church weekly. It's good to know that I can handle difficulties from a spiritual basis knowing that they will understand.

The worst part of the day was the heat. At 9:45, the room was already HOT! By the time class ended at 11:20, we were all sweating. For some reason, the air conditioning just does not reach that upstairs room. I felt like the students were very attentive considering how miserably hot they were.

I did not finish everything I had planned to do. The principal and senior counselor came in to talk to them and took up quite a bit of time. I took a lot of time myself to talk about my expectations and theirs for this class. I really wanted to set the mood for the year on the first day. As I said, these are good kids, but they have been together for years and are just too familiar with each other and the school. That translates into them feeling free to socialize at all times, and I wanted them to understand that I could not allow that during class. Meeting only twice a week, there just won't be time for it.

I didn't get to the Powerpoint presentation I had made on an introduction to government, but I did set it up with my laptop and the digital projector, and it worked! I'll use it on Thursday.

All in all, it felt good to be back in the classroom. I guess teaching is in my blood and always will be.

Religious Culture Shock

This weekend was like none that I have ever experienced. Doug and I spent seven hours sitting in Full Gospel church services, complete with tongue-speaking, healing (at least they prayed for it), and people falling out in the floor. An old Southern Baptist gal like me was pretty much out of my comfort zone! Last night we sat through four solid hours of preaching, praying, and singing, without a single break. As for the music, I thought our church had lively music, but we never get going like those folks did! And it was LOUD. I have to admit, though, I did enjoy the singing and Phil Driscoll blowing the shofar.

Normally, Doug and I would not go to this type of church, but Doug’s attendance was pretty much required, and I went along with him. The federal agency that Doug works for had financed the facilities for their ministry which provides food to people in need. This was done through one of President Bush’s faith-based initiatives. The services this weekend were in celebration of the grand opening of their new facilities. This is a very large ministry which shall go unnamed in this post, because while I do not agree with some of their thinking, I have the greatest respect for the ministry and the people who operate it, and I would not want anyone to think that I am denigrating them in any way. Anyway, Doug and other government officials were invited to attend the grand opening, and Doug was even on the program to say a few words last night.

The first night we attended a barbeque before the services. The food was great, and after we ate, we went outside to release hundreds of helium balloons with the name of the organization and information attached. While standing in the parking lot, tons of paper confetti in the shape of gold and white doves was shot off from on top of the roof, and it floated down all around us. The children were having a ball gathering up handfuls of confetti and throwing it on their parents.

Afterwards, we gathered in the auditorium and saw a video about the history of the ministry. Many accolades and standing ovations were given to those responsible for starting it all. Then the preaching started. I’ll say one thing for those folks; they can talk! They don’t need any notes, and they talk ninety miles a minute, nonstop, without having to think for a minute what to say next. There were many preachers there from all over the country, both male and female. In fact, I guess this was the first time I ever sat under the preaching of a woman! Many of these pastors were asked to come say a few words or offer a prayer. Here is a true thing – if ever one of these preachers gets hold of a microphone, he or she is incapable of NOT preaching a sermon! No one seemed mindful of the time or how many others were waiting for their turn on the program. A husband and wife preaching team were the keynote speakers for the night. He spoke first, and I really liked him and what he had to say. He talked a lot about unity among Christians of different denominations. I’ll say more about that later. Then his wife got up to talk – and talk, and talk, and talk. Her sermon turned into a healing service. She basically said that it is never God’s will for anyone to be sick or suffer pain, which I think is a ridiculous assertion that flies in the face of reality and scientific fact. If that were true, how would anyone ever die? Then she had people come down front, and she laid hands on them and commanded that cancers and other disease come out. Some of these folks then swooned and fell to the floor where deacons were waiting to catch them. Occasionally she would look up and begin speaking in tongues, but it seemed deliberate and did not strike me as a genuine, spontaneous manifestation of the Holy Spirit. There was no interpretation as Paul commanded in the New Testament. Finally, the healing part of the service ended, and the best part of the evening took place. Jackie Valesquez, a well-known Christian artist, sang and gave her testimony. She was awesome. Then, after three hours, the service ended, and we went home for the night.

Last night, Doug spoke briefly near the beginning of the program and did very well. Many people spoke during the course of the evening, but one of the best was Dodie Olsteen, mother of the famous Joel Osteen of Houston , Texas. She was a delightful lady who gave an amazing testimony of God’s miraculously healing her of liver cancer over twenty-five years ago. She also asked people to come down front so she could pray for their healing. While I still have problems with the way it was done, I could not help but think … If I had gotten a bad report from the biopsy I had a week ago, would I have gone down front and asked her to pray for me? I might have.

A kindly older man named Len Mink sang and spoke, and I really liked him. All the people who spoke were talented speakers. One of the most impressive parts of the evening was when they showed a video of John Olsteen preaching. He is the father of Joel and is no longer living. Wow! He was an amazing preacher! His widow and daughter were watching from the seats in front of me, and I saw them crying.

Finally, an old man came up to give the closing prayer, but not until he, of course, preached a sermon. He spoke about helping the poor and finding our ministry. Once he stopped talking and seemed to stare right at me for the longest. When I told Doug later that I was pretty uncomfortable when he did that, Doug laughed and said, “He’s eighty-years-old; he was probably trying to remember what he was doing!” He finished his prayer and we left at 11:00 pm. There was much that was good about the evening, but my legs and back ached from sitting so long, and I was really sleepy.

So here is the bottom line: These are good people who are doing far more than I’ve ever done to help others. I don’t agree with their doctrine, but I admire them for what they do. I respect their sincerity and their obvious love of the Lord. They are full of joy, so they must be doing something right – many things, actually. They are meeting both physical and spiritual needs of people who find hope and love in their church. I say more power to them!

On the other hand, if they were the only representatives of Christianity, I know many people who would never come close enough to them or their church to ever see God. I'm thinking of people who feel God’s presence best in a quiet, more formal style of worship. Or people who are far more intellectual than emotional. That is why, I think, we have different denominations, because we are not all alike. We come to God with different personalities and different needs. One style of worship may be uplifting to me while it turns another person off cold. Our God is a great God who is able to reach out to all His people in many different ways!

Going Back

Going Back

This was written on August 7th, but not published until later due to computer problems.

I’m going back to Westminster today, with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am excited, the way I’ve always been excited at the start of a new school year. One advantage teachers have over people in other occupations is that each fall we get a clean slate, a new class, and a chance to do it all better than we did the year before. I have often felt sorry for all the workers who just keep going in the same old routine for years on end with no fresh starts.

I’m looking forward to being with people more. I know I will enjoy the kids; they are so full of life and funny and sweet even though they can frustrate me to death at times. The people I work with are some of the best people God created. I’ve never experienced the “office politics” that plaque so many workers.

I couldn’t ask for a better schedule – just two mornings a week. I’m teaching my favorite class, which is government and economics, and that is the only class I have to keep up with.

I will finally have a little money to call my own again. I have definitely missed that! It won’t be much, but at least there will be some money in my pocket when I walk into a store or a restaurant, and I won’t feel guilty about spending it.

On the other hand, I have truly enjoyed having this time at home. As I have already explained in other posts, it seems providential that I was home this year in particular. I loved being able to do things that I otherwise would not have been able to do, or would have done under great stress. I have loved having the freedom of planning my own days, and I dread losing even a little of that freedom. I have experienced less stress this year than I ever have before, and it scares me to think of adding some back into my life. It was great not having to grade papers or think about lesson plans when I was at home, but now I will be doing that again, though on a smaller scale.

The worse part of going back, however, is that I do so with a slight sense of failure. I left teaching a year ago thinking that I was ready for a change in my life. I wanted to find something new to do, but I wasn’t sure what it would be. I hoped a year would be long enough for me to find it. I guess I’ve floundered some this past year, dabbling in many things but not focusing on any one activity. It’s not that I’ve lacked ideas. I came back from helping my parents all excited about becoming a professional organizer. I just didn’t know how to start. The same is true with the idea of interior decorating. I really don’t have the confidence to promote myself or take the risk of failing. I love artistic endeavors better than anything, but I’m not talented enough for painting to ever be more than a hobby. I realized that making crafts en masse to sell would quickly cease to be fun or creative. I love to write, but don’t really know where to go with that either. So I have ideas, but lack the know-how, energy, or confidence to make anything happen. Now I’m going back to what I know and what I do best. I haven’t given up entirely. This schedule should still leave time to explore other options if I choose to do so. Well, its time to get ready for work!

Low-cal Sweets

I almost forgot about the low-cal sweets! There are ways to diet and still have some treats. One of my favorites is a chocolate ice-cream peanut butter dish. I get the Smart Ones giant ice cream bars (chocolate) and nuke one in the microwave for ten seconds. Then I scrape it off the stick and mix it with two tablespoons of peanut butter. I top it off with fat-free Cool Whip. This is delicious!

Other great desserts are the Smart Ones chocolate fudge cakes found in the freezer section of the grocery store. These are great comfort food if you heat them in the microwave on a cold winter day. Other Smart Ones desserts are good as well. Smart Ones is the brand name of Weight Watcher’s goods. Weight Watchers also makes a very good cookies-and-cream ice cream bar.

Fat-free chocolate pudding and fruit flavored yogurts are good treats for dieters. I love to mix vanilla yogurt, chopped apple, and any granola-type cereal for either breakfast or dessert. The Great Grains cereals are especially good for that.

Oatmeal is a good treat if made with Splenda, and you can add powdered cocoa to make it chocolatey. A chocolate fudge Pop-tart is also a good afternoon treat. (Can you guess I like chocolate?) The little Dove Promises are delicious bites of dark chocolate and only count as two Weight Watchers points.

You can make great smoothies with low-fat yogurt, fruit, Splenda, and ice. Edys and Breyers both make double-churned light ice creams that are as good as the regular.

I enjoy a recipe I got off the Weight Watchers web site. Take two small flour tortillas. Place one in a small nonstick skillet. Sprinkle miniature chocolate chips over the tortilla and sprinkle that with a small amount of sugar and cinnamon. Top with the remaining tortilla and cook until the chocolate has melted and the tortillas are lightly browned, turning once. Remove from the heat and sprinkle the outside with powdered sugar. Yummy!

An easy and low-cal cobbler can be made by mixing a can of no-sugar-added fruit such as peaches, including the syrup, with a pack of instant oatmeal, the low calorie kind. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes and top with light ice cream.

Baked apples make a good dessert, especially with Cool Whip or ice cream on top.

By satisfying my sweet tooth with these ideas, I am able to stick to my diet better. I do need to step up the exercise a little to compensate for them, however.

Bon appetit!

Fire in the Mountains

We have always spent the Fourth of July at home, unlike most Americans who take to the road that week. But this year, we decided to join them. We went to my parents’ home in the mountains of North Carolina for the week. Daddy has a beautiful piece of land on the side of a mountain with two houses on it. From the deck of either house, you can see an awesome, panoramic view of the mountains.

There was only one house when my parents sold the farm, retired, and moved up there about seven years ago. Daddy built the other house just last year, at the age of 72! He and a neighbor did almost all the work themselves. It is just up the hill from the first house. It’s smaller, but has the advantage of being completely handicapped accessible, which is necessary for my mother. She has an increasingly difficult time getting around due to a bad back, bad knees, and bad feet. We all fear that it won’t be long until she is confined to a wheelchair.

The new house has a guest room where Doug and I have stayed before, but this time we wanted to stay in the old house. (“Old” is about ten years.) There is a reason why we wanted to do that. Doug will be eligible to retire in two years, and my parents would like nothing better than for us to move up there. Since we love our current home so much and have friends here, a good church, and a son and daughter-in-law nearby, we have mixed feelings about the idea of leaving it all behind and making a major life change at our age. Also, while Doug will be eligible to retire, he can continue working and add two percent to his retirement income for each additional year he works. He had planned to work at least five additional years which would have paid off our house.

On the other hand, my parents are starting to need us. The place where they live is beautiful. There are lots of good places to eat nearby and good neighbors around them. Mama and Daddy attend a church that they really love, and we would probably enjoy it as well. Because we would be living in a resort area, I feel sure that our friends would come visit us. The house up there is big enough to accommodate several guests at once. I know Sean would come, because he loves it up there and loves to go trout fishing. Doug could supplement his retirement check by finding work up there, and if we sold our current home, we could pay off our debt and invest the equity we have in it. Daddy would let us live in the house up there for just the cost of utilities and insurance, so we wouldn’t have a house payment. The mountain home would eventually become ours.

We have two years to decide, and a lot can happen in two years. We will just have to decide when it gets closer to the time.

Now, back to our trip. We wanted to stay in the old house to get a “taste” of what it would be like to live up there. One immediate perk was the temperature, which was about ten degrees cooler than it was down here last week. We enjoyed the time there, especially the time when Sean and Misty came up. We had bought some groceries and I cooked breakfast and a few other meals. Two meals we ate with my mom. Other times, we went out to eat. We also put together a 1000 piece puzzle and spent lots of time reading and just resting. One day I took Misty to the lake. She lay on a float reading her book while I sat under a big shade tree and read mine. It was a very pleasant day.
We wanted to see fireworks on the Fourth, and there was a beautiful display right on the lake. However, Sean and Misty had to go home that day, so Misty found out about another display on the 3rd in a little town called McCaysville, which was about an hour away. I rode with them over to this town in the Blue Ridge area, which was more hilly than mountainous. We got there early enough to explore antique shops, art shops, and general stores. The small town was overflowing with people who had turned out for the big fireworks show. The Blue Ridge Mountain train brought a whole load of people. We ate at a good and very crowded Mexican restaurant, and while we sat at our table by the window, a huge storm blew in. It poured rain for quite some time. There was lots of wind, thunder, and lightening, and we wondered if the fireworks would be cancelled. (There was plenty of nature’s fireworks, however.) Needless to say, we took our time eating, and the rain had finally tapered off to just a drizzle by the time we left. We found a place on the sidewalk to watch the fireworks being fired from on top of Tater Hill. While waiting for the show to begin, we enjoyed people watching. McCaysville certainly has its share of rednecks! They were cruising around town in their pick-up trucks with Confederate flags flying, and we occasionally heard the sound of Dixie playing from their truck horns. Young mountain boys rode by in their old beat-up cars with the windows rolled down so you could hear the loud beat of rap music coming from their radios. The rap music seemed out of place, somehow, and Sean said they were confused!

We really didn’t know if the fireworks show would be worth the trip over there or not, but it definitely was! It lasted about 25 minutes and was quite beautiful. Afterwards, we walked hurriedly back to our car. Local people were firing off smaller explosives all over town, people were rushing all around us, and the train whistle was blowing. It reminded me of the song – “The night they burned old Dixie down.”

The next night we went to see the fireworks on the lake. We sat on the dam, and out on the lake were hundreds of boats with their lights on. It was a beautiful sight. A local band played, and there was food to eat as well. Little children ran about with their light toys, creating streaks of color. Middle-age children were playing with sparklers, and teenagers were setting off Roman candles and other explosives all around the shoreline. An earlier rain had cooled the air enough that I was actually wishing I had a sweater on the Fourth of July! The fireworks were lovely, but the most awesome part was the sound. It echoed off the mountains surrounding the lake and sounded like the volley of opposing armies. I imagined that it must have sounded like it did on Civil War battlefields.

This was the best Fourth ever.

Sweet Things

Sweet Things

On our recent trip to Savannah, we ate at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House. Uncle Bubba is the brother of the well-known Paula Dean of The Lady and Sons Restaurant. She even has her own show on the Food Network. I wanted to eat at her restaurant, but Doug didn’t want to wait in line and pay good money for “just plain country cooking.” So we compromised and went to Uncle Bubba’s. I highly recommend it. The corn muffins with honey butter were a great appetizer. We ordered the seafood platter. Everything was perfectly battered and fried to a nice golden brown. The slaw and tartar sauce were great, too. For dessert, I ordered the key lime pie, which competes with coconut cream for my favorite kind of pie. Well, this was the best key lime pie I ever put in my mouth! It was creamy with just the right degree of tartness, and it was cooked in a graham cracker crust with almonds. I enjoyed every last bite as I slowly savored each one. Then I got to thinking about other sweet things I love. (Unfortunately, I have a sweet tooth that just won’t quit and is the downfall of every diet I attempt.) So here is a rundown of my favorite desserts and treats.

While in Savannah, I had to have a praline, well, actually two pralines. They make chocolate ones now, and I couldn’t decide between that and the original.

A local restaurant called the Barbeque Shack has the best banana pudding, second only to my mother-in-law’s. She is one of the best cooks I’ve ever met, and I also love her German Chocolate cake, lemon meringue pie, peach cobbler, and sweet potato pie. Oh, and her pecan pie is yummy, too. I love banana pudding hot or cold, as long as it is the real, homemade-from-scratch kind.

Rafferty’s has an apple crisp dessert that is wonderful on a cold winter’s day. The Cheesecake Factory makes a chocolate mousse cheesecake that is sold at our local Barnes and Noble, and it is to die for. Probably my favorite restaurant dessert is tiramisu, which I love at either Olive Garden, Macaroni Grill, or Carraba’s.

I love strawberries, and the best strawberry shortcake I ever had was at a Calhoun’s Restaurant, which specializes in barbeque ribs. (They were great, too!) The homemade shortcake was covered with lots of strawberries and whipped cream and was enough for four people to share.

Anyone living in this area knows about Cecilia’s cakes. While many of them are too rich for my taste, I absolutely love her Bailey’s Irish Cream chocolate cake.

My sister makes a chocolate dream pie that all of us like. My other sister makes her mother-in-law’s cheesecake which we eat with strawberries. My mom bakes a sour cream coffee cake that we often eat for breakfast during the holidays. My own specialty is a strawberry-banana pudding trifle that is a wonderful spring or summertime dessert.
The traditional birthday cake for my sisters and I is an icebox cake. The recipe was my grandmother’s. It consists of an angel food cake sliced into layers separated by a fluffy chocolate filling. Then the whole thing is covered in whipped cream. After it sits in the fridge for a couple of days, it is out-of-this-world good.

I happen to believe I have the best recipe for carrot cake, and I don’t give it out. It is a favorite at Thanksgiving. At Christmas, I have made delicious rum balls, coconut-orange balls, and homemade chocolate-covered cherries that are filled with a sweet ground pecan paste surrounding the cherry.

Almost nothing beats homemade chocolate chip cookies warm out of the oven with a glass of cold milk. Molten chocolate cake topped with ice cream is also great.

Speaking of ice cream, Eddy’s light slow-churned ice cream is so rich and creamy, it’s hard to believe it is low in calories and fat. Starbucks makes a mocha ice cream that is definitely NOT low in calories, but it is a real treat. On hot summer days, it sure is good to make our own ice cream with fresh Georgia peaches. Plain ole vanilla ice cream is delicious topped with hot fudge sauce.

I love the Dairy Queen. My favorite treat there is the Mocha Moolatte. Also good is the old standard dipped ice cream cone. The blizzards are delicious; I love the Georgia Mud Fudge and the banana pudding ones the best.

Arby’s has their Jamocha shake, which I just love, and Mel’s Diner makes a wonderful strawberry-banana shake. Even Chik-Fil-A has started selling really good milkshakes.

Anything chocolate is good. I love those chocolate oranges you see in the stores at Christmas. The rest of the year, we buy Dove’s Promises, individually wrapped pieces of dark chocolate, my favorite kind.

I’m not that big on candy, but I do love Peanut M&M’s. They’re great at the movie theatre or on the road.

Of course, none of these things do much for my waistline. In my next post, I’ll write about the lower calorie sweets I enjoy when trying to lose weight.

What is boredom?

Retired people tend to fall into one of two categories. Some are bored to death and drive their spouses crazy by intruding on their lives every waking moment. Others wonder how they ever had time to work. I fall into the second group.

I really don’t understand why anyone would be bored; in fact, I agree with the old adage that the only people who are bored are boring people! There are exceptions to that, I suppose. I think of the infirmed who are physically unable to do anything, or the poor soul stuck in a boring job for eight hours a day. ( The last time I remember being bored, I was working as a cashier in a discount store. I was required to do nothing but stand at the cash register waiting for customers who were few and far between. I remember counting the holes in the ceiling panels just to have something to do!) Anyone who has control over their use of time simply shouldn’t be bored. There are too many good books to be read, to many places to explore, too many subjects to learn, to ever be bored.

Having said quite often that the word ‘bored” is not in my vocabulary, I decided to look it up in the dictionary. Here is how Webster defines the word bore: to weary by being dull, uninteresting, or monotonous. Boredom is then defined as the condition of being bored. To me, the world is such a diverse and fascinating place, that one should never have to look far to find something to do that is not “dull, uninteresting, or monotonous.”

It is interesting to hear the responses of people when they learn that I am retired at a relatively early age. The most frequent remark is “It must be nice!” To that, I smile and say, “It is.” Some people will say, “I could never do that. I couldn’t stand sitting at home all day.” I used to get defensive at that remark - it seemed to imply that that is what I must be doing, and therefore I must be lazy. I would then launch into a long recital of all my many activities to prove otherwise. Then I realized I really didn’t need to defend myself. I had made my choice after much thought and prayer and was happy with it, and it really didn’t matter what anyone else thought about it. Now I tell people that if sitting around the house all day is what THEY would do, then they really shouldn’t retire! They would be bored.

My problem is actually the opposite of boredom. There are too many things I want to do. It’s been a year now, since I left teaching, and my greatest disappointment is that I haven’t accomplished near as much as I thought I would in that time. I guess I thought that if I wasn’t working, there would be time to do everything I had always wanted to do. I’m slowly beginning to realize that there isn’t enough time in a whole life to do all I want to do. That is a painful realization, but an important one. It means I must really think about my time and how I use it. In other words, prioritize. Worst of all, it means giving up some of my dreams.

Here is a list of some of the things I hoped to do (not in any particular order):

have a beautiful yard
grow a vegetable garden
spend more time with family, friends, and neighbors
have more time for spiritual growth (prayer and Bible study)
become more involved at church
do some volunteer work
relearn the guitar
take up painting again
read my stack of unread books
cook good, nutritious meals
keep up with the laundry
keep the house looking good enough inside that I would welcome drop-ins
scrapbook my extensive collection of photos
learn how to use my photo editing software
learn more about the computer and organize its files
completely organize the whole house, including the garage and shed
stamp greeting cards
make a stained-glass painting for the screened-in porch
paint a faux window for the screened-in porch
other home improvement projects
sell stuff on eBay
make crafts to sell
possibly start my own professional organizer business
take better care of my health
exercise
write
travel; go with Doug on business trips

There, that is all I can think of for now, though I’m sure I forgot a few things. Now it’s report card time. How have I done so far?

The yard looks great, if I do say so myself, but it has worked me to death and taken far more of my precious time than I anticipated it would. Still, I have enjoyed it.

We’re already eating squash, zucchini, and cucumbers from the garden and the tomatoes are getting ripe.

I have spent more time with family, and that has been good. I would really like for my sisters and families to come for Sunday dinner once a month, but we all stay so busy! I would also like to go to Mama’s on a more regular basis. I still don’t see my friends as much as I would like, but at least I am relaxed when I do see them. I had lunch with two good friends this week, but I would like to have lunch with someone EVERY week.

As far as church is concerned, we still don’t go to Sunday School because Doug doesn’t really want to. But we are involved in a small group, and now we are starting this Angel Food Ministries in our church, and Doug is in charge of that. I will be helping him.

Prayer and Bible reading have been inconsistent to say the least, but I’ve done better than in the past.

I haven’t done any volunteer work. Nor have I picked up my guitar. I did take painting lessons and have one painting to show for it. It is basically finished and I have a frame for it, but I keep thinking I need to fix a few things and haven’t gotten around to doing that so it still sits on its easel.

I’ve been reading, but the stack remains high. I’ve had time to try some new recipes and enjoy cooking again. Laundry doesn’t pile up quite as bad as it once did, and the house is presentable most of the time, though there is still some deep cleaning that needs to be done.

I’ve spent much of the past few weeks scrapbooking the wedding pictures and learning to use the photo editing program in the process. It is almost finished. I also want to make a Christmas scrapbook, a 2005 scrapbook, and a “friends” scrapbook.

My computer is still bogged down and disorganized and I haven’t learned yet how to prevent that.

The home organization is a work in progress. The stained glass project, the faux window, greeting cards, and other projects are still just dreams. I sold my first item on eBay at a rather disappointing price and haven’t yet tried to sell anything else. I haven’t sold any crafts and can’t get up the courage to try starting a business.

I have been taking better care of my health and exercising, and I feel much better because of it. A definite success. Thank goodness for jazzercise!

We have traveled more, and I’ve enjoyed going with Doug on his trips.

My only writing has been this blog which I do when I can’t sleep. It really is a great creative outlet.

So, looking back over the past year, I give myself a “B.” I still don’t have a plan for getting things done; I just plan one day or week at a time. The problem with doing that is feeling so unfocused. I really need to set goals and make long-term plans for achieving them.

One thing for sure – I am definitely not bored!

Tough lesson

I guess lessons learned the hard way or the ones learned best. I just spent thirty minutes composing a blog and them clicked "publish post." Well, the blog failed to publish, probably because of a poor Internet connection, and now I've lost it. I don't see a way to navigate back to it and can't find it anywhere. Here is what I have learned - always save my blog as a draft BEFORE I attempt to publish it. Since it is now 1:30 am, I don't think I will stay up to rewrite my post, even though I thought it was a good one!

A Plague of Frogs?

This morning I was rushing around frantically trying to get ready for the members of my book club to arrive. I hurried into the hall bathroom to clean the sink and commode. When I lifted the lid of the toilet, there inside the bowl was a good-sized frog! It scared the living daylights out of me! My first instinct was to flush it away so that is what I TRIED to do. However, the frog hung on for dear life and managed to escape the sucking whirlpool. He was a rather grotesque-looking frog, not cute at all, but I felt a little guilty for trying to flush him, and since he fought so valiantly, I decided to spare his life. Grabbing some paper towels, I fished him out of the toilet and took him outside and released him. All day I have wondered how he got in there. Had he been living in the sewer? Is that why he looked like some kind of mutant frog? And if a frog could get in there, maybe a snake could, too. What a horrible thought that is! Are there lots more frogs where that one came from? I haven't been holding any Hebrew slaves, so I hope there isn't going to be a plague of frogs. No one else I know ever had this happen to them. Oh, well.

Book club was fun, as usual. Only five of us showed up, but we enjoyed eating breakfast and talking for two hours. I'm really quite pleased that we have managed to keep this going about three years now. My ideas are seldom that successful long-term.

The wedding scrapbook is coming along nicely. It really is fun to work on. I need to go buy a few more supplies for it tomorrow. Yesterday was a nice day. I took my in-laws shopping at an outlet mall. The weather was beautiful, and we had a pretty good time together. The day before I went to jazzercise, ate lunch downtown with Doug, and we both went to a training meeting for a new ministry we are starting in our church. It was a busy day. Monday was all yard work. That evening we got to play, however, because Sean got us tickets to a Georgia baseball game. It was a great evening for baseball with a gentle breeze blowing. Our seats were behind home plate, and best of all, we won to go on to the super regional playoff.

Sunday we went to church and afterwards had lunch with a couple in our small group. We rested that afternoon and went back to church that evening so Doug could introduce the new ministry to the church body. I was proud of him. He made an excellent presentation. He has had a busy week starting his new position at work.

My principal told me today that I definitely will be teaching one class next year that only meets twice a week. That way I will make a little money but still enjoy being mostly retired. That will probably be a good compromise for me. The class is Government and Economics which has been really interesting to teach in the past.

Well, this was a boring post, but I'm not feeling very philosophical tonight!

Reflections on war

Memorial Day is all about remembering America's wars, and this year we are very consious of our current conflict in Iraq. Today's headline tells the story - "Relentless violence in Iraq leads to the weekend deaths of 54." That included an American soldier and two American journalists. The key word in that headline is "relentless." There just does not appear to be any end in sight.

I voted for Bush twice and think he is a good man, but I am beginning to question the wisdom of getting us involved in this war. Actually, I had a lot of misgivings about it before it ever started. Being a history teacher, I think I HAVE learned the lessons of history, and I could easily see this becoming another Vietnam, and now it appears those fears were well-founded. The men and boys in my school were all for the war, but I thought they sounded like they were getting ready for a Friday night football game. They were excited and ready to kick-butt. That's the funny thing about war - it IS exciting. Yet war means death is about to occur on a large scale. A lot of sons, brothers, husbands and sweethearts are going to go over there and never come back. In light of that fact, you would think we'd go to war with an overwhelming sense of dread. Historically, that has not been the case. Southern boys rode off with wild cheers of excitement at the start of the Civil War, and young men eagerly lined up to volunteer after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I can still remember the excitement we all felt when news came to us at church one Wednesday night that the U.S. was at war. That was the FIRST Gulf war.

People seem to forget that the novelty of war quickly wears off, and is followed by months and often years of daily casualty counts. The American public gets tired of the bad news and the drain on the economy. Soon they want out, but getting out is not nearly as easy as getting in, and is not always advisable.

There are two big questions concerning this war. The first is whether or not we ever should have become involved in the first place. The other is, what should we do now that we are heavily invested in this war? The answer to the first question does not necessarily lead to the answer to the second.

So, we went to war because of the belief that Sadaam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Having such weapons in the hands of a mad dictator is a scarey propostion, especially when that dictator makes no secret of his hatred for America. Besides that, this was a Muslim country within firing range of Israel. Of course, any overt use of such weapons on the part of Sadaam would have been suicidal since we could have easily turned all that sand into glass, but we live in the age of terroism. Countries no longer have to act overtly; they can fight their wars incognito. If, in fact, Sadaam had had weapons of mass destruction, the war might have been necessary. Of course, no weapons were ever found. That does not prove he never had them. He certainly had plenty of warning and plenty of time to destroy them, hide them in the sands of the dessert, or ship them off to Syria. But the fact remains, we found no weapons. I was afraid that would happen, and Bush would end up looking like a fool. Everyone believed the weapons were there, but all the responsibility has fallen on Bush.

I still don't know about the wisdom of a premptive strike without solid proof of those weapons. I only got on board after hearing Colin Powell's presentation to the UN. He was very convincing. Now, of course, he is gone. There is speculation that he felt he had been duped by the CIA and used by the President.

When no weapons were found, I comforted myself with the idea that we had removed an evil dictator who terrorized his own people. Now those same people are terrorized by daily car bombs going off in the streets of their cities. Civil War could break out at any time if it hasn't already done so. Are they really better off? I don't know. Even the Iraqi people can't agree on that.

Did we act correctly by going to war? Santayana said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. There is truth in that statement, but it's not that simple. For one thing, how do we know which lessons of history apply to the current situation? Concerning Iraq, should we have applied the lessons learned from WWII or those learned from Vietnam? In hindsight, we now know that the world stood by far too long while Nazi Germany carried out acts of atrocity against the Jews and others within her borders. Removing Hitler was the only moral thing to do. We also learned that evil and madness cannot be appeased. Such lessons would lead one to conclude that removing Sadaam was also right. Removing a dictator that delighted in feeding his enemies to a meat grinding machine does seem like the moral thing to do.

But then we have to ask if we really want to be the world's policeman. After all, there are other evil dictators and there is great cruelty taking place all over the world. Are we morally obligated to intervene in all these situations? Would that even be possible? Even the resources of the United States are limited. What would God have us do?

Considering how dangerous the world is today, the case could be made that we SHOULD become the world's policeman. We are the only country rich and powerful enough to do it - maybe an American Empire isn't such a bad idea. But we could only do it through overwhelming force, and we would have to run these wayward countries our way, which means we would be in charge. In other words, bring back the Age of Imperialism. Perhaps we, and the unstable nations we would take over would be better off. However, such an undertaking would be extremely costly, so we would need to benefit economically from these countries much as the British once benefitted from her colonies. The occupied nation would enjoy an improved standard of living. It wouldn't be long, however, before there would be cries of exploitation. Then of course, it would be necessary to put down rebellions ever so often, since nations don't really appreciate being run by other nations even if they can't do it themselves. Now that I think about it, the British no longer have their colonies - guess that didn't work out so well. That lesson from history tends to favor minding our own business.

Now let's move on to the lessons learned from Vietnam. I lived during this conflict, and here is what I learned from it. 1. Don't go to war to save a country where half the people don't want to be saved. You won't know who your enemies are. 2. Don't go to war unless you are going to fight to win. Use overwhelming force and get 'er done. 3. A democratic society cannot win a war that the people do not support. 4. Americans do not have the staying power for long, drawn-out conflicts. 5. If you don't win, things will end up worse than they were before you started.

I don't even need to point out the relevance of these lessons to our current conflict. So, knowing what I know now, I lean towards thinking we should not have become involved in the first place. I may even go out and buy the Dixie Chick's latest album.

But we are involved, and the second question is, what should we do now? Colin Powell warned that "if we broke it, we would own it," and that pretty much sums up our current position. If we pull out now, the country will almost certainly devolve into civil war. That could destablize the entire Middle East, the source of much of the world's and our oil supply - not a pretty picture. Entering into the equation is the belief that now Iran, Iraq's neighbor and longtime enemy, is working on their own nuclear program. Things could really get ugly. Besides, if America bails out now, we will lose whatever credibility we have left in the world, and over two thousand soldiers will have died in vain.

But here's the sad reality. Sooner or later, we probably will pull out. The whole democracy thing will come into play. Bush's popularity ratings are steadily declining and antiwar sentiment is growing. Americans will vote for the Democrats who will bring the soldiers home. The question is, how many more thousands of soldiers will die before that happens?

We made a huge committment to the people of Iraq. If we don't honor it, no one should ever believe in us again. So what do we do? Here's an idea. Let the people of Iraq be the ones to release us from the committment. Have a nation-wide referendum on whether or not they want the Americans to stay or leave. (American soldiers would provide unprecedented security for the elections.) If they vote for us to stay, we are honor-bound to be there for however long it takes to bring stability to their government. If they vote for us to leave, we can do so in semi-good conscience, leaving them to their own devices and allowing them to live with the consequences, whatever they may be. Of course, if things get really out of hand and the stability of the region is threatened, we might have to come back, but hopefully we would do so with the support of the rest of the world. It's not a perfect solution, but we all know there is no perfect solution. This is a mess.

Since I have absolutely no say in what happens and little means of influencing what happens, this exercise is probably a waste of time, but it feels good to think it through on paper. Maybe I'll write my congressmen a letter.