Monday Morning Coffee Chat: And then...

Hello loves.   Help yourself to a hot cup of coffee and have a sit here near the  heater where it's warm and let us begin.

Remember the Spiritual Emphasis services we had a week or so ago at the church we attend?  Well, I made a decision to join the church one night.  I don't know at the moment just what that means to them, but I know what it means to me.  I've been committed to this church for several years now and I'm only confirming what I've been  all along.  

I didn't come to my decision lightly.  I come from a long line of hurts induced by churches and I'm not keen to put myself right in front of another firing squad, but then again, I've learned that the arrows aren't mortally wounding.  They nick the soul and heart and make a bloody mess of things but they don't kill.  What's one more battle scar, anyway?  At this age, there are a few...

And why, you might ask, if I'm so cynical... and I do admittedly sound so... Why, if I feel that way, do I even consider joining another church?   To show that I am committed to a place where I've been fed.  To make a formal declaration of allegiance to a church that seems intent on feeding me solid foods.

I won't go into detail with a litany of hurts rendered me by previous churches or pastors, either one.  It happens.  I know now that men are fallible.  I know now that there is no baptism as real or right as the one that begins with tears streaming down your face and ends with you on your knees before God surrendering all you are into His keeping.   No denomination owns that right of baptism more than the Holy Spirit when He generates that desire deep down inside.  No church will ever open a door to a personal and intimate relationship with God.  Only I can do that.  Only I can welcome Him into my life and allow Him to turn me inside out, sweep me clean and make me new.   No church is ever going to do that.  That's truth.

Over those years behind me,  I've come to know one thing most assuredly: No one can change my relationship with God or with Jesus Christ.  I am saved.  I have been redeemed.  No one, no earthly entity, can ever take that from me.  They may shut the doors and dare me to darken them but they can't stop me from loving God nor stop God from loving me.

I wish I'd known this long ago.  It was something I came to know gradually, in the wake of deep hurt and honest belief that I was doomed and damned because someone else said so, for whatever reason they chose to focus upon at the time.  I am not saying I was innocent as snow and without sin.  I wasn't.  I struggle with sinful things daily.  All of us do if we're alive.  But the third time it happened that I was asked to leave a church... Yes, three times it's happened...  The third time it happened, I understood at last that it wasn't about my relationship with God.  It was about my relationship with them.  That person. That shepherd.  That church or synagogue. 

And yet, in the face of past hurts I choose to belong to a church once more.  I choose to tell others that this is the place where I belong.  I choose to be in community with them.

So that has happened.  

We came into February with cold and rain and a week that was chilly enough to remind us that February is a winter month, even here in the South.   For all of our family birthdays coming along this time of year, February can be bleak and bitter and hard to take even if you do have reason to eat cake once a week or more and have Valentine's chocolates, too.  No sugar rush can make up for what February too often is by it's very nature albeit the shortest month of the year.

And yet it is changeable.  Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting here with the windows open slightly and the afternoon sun pouring across the floor.   I heard the birds chirruping.  Earlier we drove up the dirt road and out to the highway to take off trash.  I heard the peepers in the swampy area along the edges of the road.   I always wonder how they survive these really cold nights when ice forms on the water, but they do and as the sun warms the water they peep loudly all over again.  It is a testament of life that they survive harsh cold and sing about it afterwards.

As we went along the old roadway over to the dumpsters today, I thought how glad I was that the county had closed down the dumpsters nearest our home.  I was aggravated at first.  But I confess that the views along this road, of wide rolling fields of grain and cotton (in season), are so beautiful that I soak in the wealth of nature I can view on this little excursion twice a week.  The ride over to the dumpsters that seemed nearest the house was pleasant but not as much so as this.  I always feel I've been properly out when we take this drive because there is so much to see and changes occur weekly in each season.

John and I had our birthdays last week.  Katie talked to me on Friday night.  She asked me how it felt to be 62?   It seemed a genuine question on her part, one of curiosity about how aging looks from my perspective especially as here lately she's becoming aware that her 20's are quite near an end.  Even if it's another year away, 30 does change your perspective a little bit.   

I thought it over a moment or two and said "It feels all right...I mean, there are days when I physically wouldn't give you two cents for 61, but I remember feeling the same in my 40s and 50s...but mentally and emotionally it doesn't feel old and it doesn't feel like everything is behind me."  I meant it when I said that I felt I was in the autumn of my life.  I don't feel old, not yet and yet I know I'm not the young thing I was once upon a time.    In so many ways there is an enduring calmness about life that overrides the most anxiety ridden moments.  I know things I didn't know before.  That seasons never last, be they seasons of age or drama or spiritual distance.  Seasons always change.   

I truly feel, as I grow older, that I am finally able to come into my true youth, too.  I've always felt such an adult, from the earliest times in memory.  That was partly due to the emotional toll my chaotic and painful childhood took and the responsibilities I had.   But I can say sincerely that I now feel younger in some ways than I ever have and that is no doubt due to releasing burdens I'd brought forward and finally decided I could let go of for good.    Decluttering of the soul and heart is the most beneficial form of housekeeping I can think of.

As I wrote the post on Hazel Dell Brown, it occurred to me that she was one of our original 'Influencers'.  Forget social media!   Mrs. Brown was in 81 big city newspapers and in most women's magazines.   I so enjoyed learning more about her and I was amused at myself for finding that so many of the kitchens I'd pinned were actually her design.  Obviously I was a fan long before I knew I was a fan. 

I read in another article that her Interior Design department at Armstrong answered 1000 pieces of mail daily.   She began the service in the 1920's and kept it up all through the next three decades. Mrs.  Brown was acutely  aware that women have always been hungry for beauty in some form in their homes.  I'm sure many 'made do', which Mrs. Brown was all too aware of, too.   She'd grown up in a family that made do with what they could build or make on their own.   So many of her ideas were born of thrift as much as being artistic.  You may have any color scheme you want in a kitchen but to pack as many ideas of a multi-functioning room into a single room as she did...Well she knew how a small home might work and she employed her knowledge for her audience.  

When Katie came out Saturday afternoon, Caleb was fully walking.  Where two weeks ago he might go as many as 7 steps before dropping down to crawl, he was now walking from the kitchen doorway to his toys 20 feet away on the other side of the room.   Mind you, he walks a bit like a sailor who hasn't got his land legs yet, and when he's in a great hurry to do something, he will crawl because he can go more quickly, but it was fascinating to watch him.    He climbed into the cardboard box to play all on his own.  He quickly realized the rungs on the back of the chair blocking his path to the kitchen could be used like a ladder to climb.   I watched as he purposefully turned over John's trash can to stand upon it and inspect what was on the buffet in the dining room.   He is full of curiosity and genuine nosiness and is a joy to watch.  At 15 months, though, he's already shed that baby boy look and taken on the look of  sturdy little boy.  John and I spoke of that change with a little regret.   It's a powerful reminder of how important it is to pay attention during these early years.   They go far too quickly.

Amie contacted me on Friday to share her latest heartache.  Josie had moved out of house.  Mind you Josie is 18, nearing 19 and I don't suppose she's any different than any other girl, anxious now to make adult decisions.    I told Amie, well there's no turning back once she decides she wants to be an adult and there isn't.   From now on, she is making choices that frighten us to death thinking how young she is to be making them...and forgetting that we too were making similar ones when we were 18 and 19.  Indeed, I married at 19 the first time.   I was as innocent of life as they came, for all that things in my childhood home had made me feel old and wise.   I knew what strife and stress looked like and felt like well enough and how to worry over money but what I didn't know about how to manage a budget or love another person or how to parent...Well those things I had to learn and so shall Josie.    Once you turn that corner into making adult choices, there is no return to childhood ever again.  You can move back home, but you are never a child anymore. 

The hardest thing is something John and I have talked about often and Samuel mentioned the other day while he was here.   "I see so many things that scare the life out of me now that I have children...I am constantly telling them not to do this or that and thinking of what might happen to them!"    Same here.  And once you have a child on their own, it's worse.   "Don't love this person, can't you see he/she isn't nearly as mature as you and has no sense of your value?"  "Don't drive out to lonesome places alone, don't you know someone might harm you?"   Don't....It's so hard not to  infuse them with your fear and permanently paralyze them from making any choice or decision of their own.   I experienced this when Amie left home.  I was forever telling her what I feared would happen and one day, I brought myself up short and apologized and told her, "Don't limit your life based on my fears..."  

Well she took me serious.  She moved out and met a man with children and became a full-time step parent to two pre-schoolers at 22.   She moved 2000 miles away from the only home she'd ever known to live in a place and culture that might as well be foreign it was so far from the South where she'd lived all her days.   She's fought battles I've never had to fight and she's survived them all.  But how my heart burned and turned and stopped at times to know where she was and what she was facing.    And how very proud I was to hear the battles she'd gone through on her own without my knowing and survived to tell me the story of her victory!  How humbled I was to hear that I was her inspiration...Me.  Who quaked in fear every time the door closed behind them and came out of my skin each time the phone rang wondering where are they going, will they return, is this the call I've dreaded my whole parenting life?

Yet Amie also spoke something I learned long ago.  "It's almost a relief...with Josie out of the house, I don't know what she's doing, who she's seeing, how long she's been gone  and so I don't worry as much as I do with her here."   I understood that, too.  I once told a dear friend of mine that my single solace with Amie so very far away was that I wasn't as acutely aware of all the struggles she was facing.  I might hear of them here and there but there were many she never deemed necessary to tell me of until long down the road and I'm grateful that I was spared the knowledge of them.   

Oh it's such a difficult thing to let go when you're a parent!  But we must.  We can't hold their hands all the time.   We can't prevent the skinned knee or the heart breaks or the soul lessons.  And what poor parents we'd be if we did!  

I love my children dearly, and for the most part I have  enjoyed them, aside from the usual sorts of things.  But I remember a day when I had to tell each of them when they were in their teens very bluntly, "I'm not here to be your friend or to share your every confidence or tell you how to shirk your responsibilities.  I'm here to  offer you shelter and nourishment, to teach you to  make as informed a decision about matters as you possibly can and to show you how to live life on your own.  It's my job to raise functional responsible adults.   The bonus is that I do this because I love you." 

Well dears, a short chat perhaps but I must end here for now.  The sheets appear to be dry.  They are standing nearly horizontal in the breeze.  Chores await, as always.  I have a list of things I should attend to and another of things I hope I have time to do.   I've  a precious morning alone here to try and use to the best of my ability for puttering about doing homey things.   And these mornings alone are a rare and precious thing these days.   

Thank you for visiting with me today.   Talk to you again soon!