When the Walls Came Tumbling Down

 Like almost everyone over the age of 21 I remember this day vividly.  It stuns me to think now that there are kids reaching the age of voting who truly don't give this a passing thought.  It's a page in history books that doesn't affect them today.  Except it isn't just a fact....it affects everything now.

The anniversary of this horror sends me into a depression reminiscent of the one I felt for days, and weeks, and months after these unthinkable events.  My husband would tell you that for a very long time, I cried everyday.  I didn't have to imagine the tragedy, there were unending visual representations of it everywhere.

That was an event that broke me.

It broke me and then rebuilt me.

That was the day that a deep abiding patriotism and love of country and my fellow Americans came shooting forth and it has not abated.  It lit a burning fire inside me that will never be quenched.  There will always be a flag flying on my home....I will always sing the National Anthem and I will always say the pledge of allegiance even if it is only to myself, a ritual I conduct in quiet along with the Lord's Prayer.  It sets the tone of the day for me.

I always loved America.....you could not live in a world with my Daddy if you didn't.  And so for a long time I loved it because Daddy demanded it of  me.  But my broken heart fell in love with my country and its people for my own reasons that day.

The lives lost, senselessly.  The lives given, bravely.  The coming together of  a majority of Americans with a common purpose.  To heal, to grieve, to honor and to protect.  We all felt the darkening foreboding skies of unlenting grief which seemed to never have a end..........but ended in a blaze of white hot anger.

And we acted and we moved as a country, as a people, united.

No one had to call us or draft us or coerce us.  We just did the work.

And we promised.......we would not forget.

But some have.  It is a harsh lesson, a dirty lesson, a cruel lesson and a painful one that some people have wanted to shield their children from.  I get it.  But if  you don't talk to your children and your grandchilren about everything about that day....you do them a disservice.  They deserve to know how it affected YOU.  You still have their ear, you can still bring that day into a lesson for them.  It might not matter now, but the day is coming when they will understand exactly the what, where, who, why and how of your personal interpretation of events on 9-11.

I do not forget.

Centered

 Cross stitching has been the one hobby that I have continued to stay with.  Others come and go and I've actually done many other craft projects that I'm very proud of.  But cross stitching stays.  For me the biggest challenge in beginning a new project is finding the center.  It is crucial for the way I work to find the exact center of my fabric and of my pattern.  Once these are a known factor I start building my piece, stitch by stitch from the center.  The proper name for what I do is "counted" cross stitch because you are transferring a paper pattern's symbols for colors, etc. onto a blank canvas by counting each stitch in order to replicate the picture shown in the pattern.  

There is a spiritual lesson in my craft.

It occurs

Finding center is almost vital in life and all of its activities.

Centrally located - easy to find for everyone.

The game can't start until the center snaps the ball.

The level has the bubble in the center.

But what about us?  Are we centered?

Centered and grounded do not necessarily mean intractable or immovable.  It simply means we have found our emotional and moral center and once those are found we find a peace there.

Being centered is NOT the same as SELF-centeredness.  To be self-centered is to have an overreaching concern with one's self......"self love" (a big buzz word these days).....egotism.  Being self-centered usurps Biblical ccommands to love and care for others, to not pass judgment on others, to bear others' burdens, and to be kind and forgiving.  Self centeredness is directly opposed to the clear command, "No one should seek their own good, but the good of others."

Our dedication to self-love is rebellion against God's authority and is rooted in the fleshly desire to please ourselves more than God.  We supplant God's authority with our own ego.

The past few years have done much to ground me and more importantly to help me find my own center. At my core, I am a decent person who loves hard and forgives easily.  I do have a difficult time forgetting....well, except for this morning when I appeared at the drive through window of Burger King without first having availed myself of their ordering process.  I am not selfish, nor am I guilty of excluding people who have differing ideas and beliefs.

In finding my center, I found myself.  My true and authentic self which as it turns out was the person I always was but kept squashed down under perceived expectations of who and what I should be.  I had lost myself but God knew where I was all along.  And I realize that He was waiting for me to realize that He made a version of me that pleased Him and to try to be anything else would knock me off balance.  Tilting to one side or another long enough makes it very difficult to swing back to center unless you hand the reins to One who loves you best and allow Him to plant your feet firmly on the solid rock that is dead level.

Today, I found God in a cross  It was only a little stitch, but He was waiting there right in the center.

I'LL be the Judge of That! Oh, AND you!

Self appointed judges of our character.  People who love to point out our short comings, our failures, our inability to please.  An inability to please…..them.

Some of the most judgmental people I have ever seen have the worst character flaws imaginable.  And instead of spending any time in introspective thinking….they lash out delivering their judgement on others around them.  Oddly enough, they are very adept at delivering their judgements, hammering home their point and then………they vaporize before you can react, defend or try to engage in civil discourse.  You see, judgmental people are cowards.  They cannot allow any dissenting voice to penetrate their vile behavior.  Because they know....they know their behavior is wrong but as long as they don't have to hear anyone say so....it never happened.

Judgmental people quite often have a heaping helping of rampant narcissism to go along with their judgements.  They are perfect, they are the smartest, they are the most highly evolved, they have all the answers to all the issues of life and they NEVER make mistakes.  Well....not the mistakes YOU make.....and yours are THE WORST.  Therefore, there is no defense for you.  You are judged….found lacking….and sentenced to whatever punishment they see fit.

Usually the judgement is to remove you from their privileged and holy presence.

Hurt me.

I already have an unhealthy dose of self doubt, guilt, and remorse at times, and quite frankly….your judgement of me is actually quite weak in comparison to the nasty little platter of self loathing that I keep tucked away in emotional Tupperware to be revisited at will.

Could I judge you?  Oh, my dear….yes, yes I could.  Should I judge you?  That bitter little bugger that sits on my left shoulder screams……”DO IT….YOU’LL FEEL BETTER!”  And maybe I would….for a minute.  But then……my better angels will admonish me to rise, to keep silent….and to love…..even you.  And most of all, they counsel for me to let go of you and let God work his work in His time.

At this moment in time I am unchurched.  I am unchurched in a traditional sense.  I have become a person who has found that I want to hear God speak to me without it coming from someone else’s thought process or voice.  I have turned my thinking inward more definitively….I am constantly listening with my heart’s ears.  And, I hear.  And I am often led to The Book by events of the day.  And so, recently, the judgements of others on myself and other people have been playing heavily in real time, here is….and hear what God says to me and to you about judging.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam is in thine own eye?  Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”  Matthew 7: 1-5

It is stunning to me to see the number of every Sunday church attendees that miss this lesson completely.  But, there I go judging.  Sorry.

I love the KJV of the Word – but I will attempt here to make this easier for some to understand.  Don’t judge anyone.  Because when you do, you are going to be judged yourself equally and more.  Stop looking at and pointing out flaws in others and ignoring your own big issues.  You can’t help anyone with their issues, problems or offenses until you deal with your own first.  Your knowledge of people is limited to what they have allowed you to know.  You do not know their big story...your know chapter 2, 5 and 20.  The things that happened in the other chapters are the things they have to manage daily....silently, and alone.

All I know is….I surely don’t want to be judged as harshly as I have judged some people.  I’m trying to stop doing that….how about you? 

We're All Pissed Up In Here

 

Honestly, there are hundreds of things in life to be upset over….maybe more than hundreds.  Everyone with a brain and even some we question have one, have hot button issues that just piss us off.

I do.

Mine may not be as important as yours and they may not even matter in the grand scheme of things, but they are important to me.  The difference in me and you is that I hear you, I hear and see your anger, your tears of frustration, your shrieking and gnashing of teeth and I walk away shaking my head because your anger prevents you from having a coherent conversation.  A conversation that might lead us both to a common ground where a solution might be found.   You hear me, and you are triggered to respond.  You must shout over me, you must call me names, you must show up at things that are important to me and ruin the experience for me…..and if I’m not careful you might hurt me. You do all of this while maintaining your own “victim” status.  You are a victim of everything you don’t understand or you disagree with.  Things I don’t understand or agree with might make my blood boil but I am not victimized by them.

I choose to not characterize myself as a victim.  For you, being a victim is a badge of honor, applauded by like minded other victims.  And, for some people the very fact that others feel victimized by everything is a total and instantaneous turn-off.  It is true that it takes a certain maturity to be able to reason with other people.  For the elderly set, like me, the time for arguing is long past…but I will happily talk calmly and thoughtfully with anyone.  It might interest you to learn that the “older set” has actually been there, fought for, thought through, failed and sometimes triumphed through every single issue you see yourself dealing with today.  We can tell you how great it was to win, but we can also tell you about the down side of winning…..because there always is one.

To my younger and highly passionate friends I would like to say “talk to people about why they feel the way they feel”, “be prepared to back up your own opinions with actual facts because they will have facts in abundance about their stance on an issue.”  Reason with each other.  And if you want them to show up for you………..show up for them.

For sure, the day will come when  you will truly understand us and chances are you will actually hold some of our own ideals as your own.  We really aren’t that different….we simply come at things from a different perspective built with the building blocks of experience and knowledge.  At 20 I was sure I knew everything and I knew better.  At 72, I realize that at 20 I knew nothing except my passion and my rage and my high flown ideals.  When we can put feelings on the back burner and put rational discourse out in front - great things can happen.

From the generation who gave you great music....Peace Out!

 

EBB & FLOW

 The seasons change.  The clocks wind back and forth.  The things that bloom and grow do so according to their time and place.

There is an ebb and flow in time and tide.

Life is a constantly changing, circular motion until it stops.

One of the things that keeps life going on is the work of ordinary people, living ordinary lives, doing ordinary work.

Just regular.

Increasingly, it seems that our culture is becoming one of extremes where a very small percentage of the population is holding sway on the world at large.  They seem bigger than they are and more than they are because they are so strident in their behavior.

I've noticed a growing distinction within the group.  They view themselves as one of two things...A) Heroic or B) Victims.

Exactly when did it fall out of favor to just be a regular person trying hard.....failing some, succeeding more and happy in the exercise of being a part of the human race as a whole?

Deciding you are a victim will run you straight into a box canyon from which there is no escape.  The more you feel victimized, the more you allow yourself to be so.  It is a mindset that is poison to free thinking and personal responsibility and it will kill your desire to ever be anything else.  Because let's face it, there is all kinds of help and pretty words for victims offered by people who don't give two flying figs about you as a person.

I rarely see a true victim ever paint themselves with that brush.  I know some people who could easily succumb to victimhood of their situation but they do not.  They choose to persevere, they choose to be more than their circumstance, they endure.  

Heroes.

First of all, I've come to hate that word.  We have neutralized it down to water by hanging it on every body who simply did the right thing every day by going to work, living their lives, taking care of their families.  I will accept some of them were indeed brave....but heroic....I'm not so sure.  Words of power lose their force when they are over used.  When everything is heroic....nothing really is.  When everything is AMAZING...not much really applies.  And, when everyone and everything is racist, homophobic, xenophobic, anti-female, blah, blah, blah.....somewhere there is someone that is going to lose a true and righteous fight who has truly suffered from those situations.

I've also known some true heroes in my life (they didn't wear capes or have super powers.)   Some of them sacrificed themselves for a country and people only to be spat on and maligned for what they were willing to give.  Everyday heroes have a talent for "seeing" other people in their moments of unrest and giving of themselves all  they could.  They don't leap from buildings, or fly through the air.  My heroes are hand holders, people with wise words and open hearts.  They are givers, not takers.  They are listeners, not talkers.  They are lovers, not haters.

If whatever group you classify yourself with does not subscribe to giving, listening and loving....you are in the wrong group.  If your first response to someone with an opinion different from your own is to label them with words designed to sting....you are not being open to anyone.  If you cannot step away from your own feelings of misuse and hurt little feelers, you will never ever be the person we are called upon to be.  And if you simply cannot see, recognize or care about the "stuff" other people have gone through...there will always be that hard little black knot of spite inside you.

If you view the entire world through a lens of your own distinction you will never learn anything.  Learning and listening doesn't mean you must embrace a different ideology it merely enhances your own knowledge that might serve you well on down the road.

There is freedom and peace in forgiveness.  I hear people say everyday "I can forgive them but I will never forget."  So, really.....have you really been in a place of genuine forgiveness?  Or are you simply checking a box thinking that is going to get you through to the other side?

Where will we all be on that glorious day with the Lord weighs our lives in the balance?  What if HE were to look at us and say "Meh, I forgive you but I will never forget and because I cannot forget, you will forever be outside my fellowship."  Wow!

Because life is the ultimate ebb and flow we will all have moments of great joy and devastating pain.  Just because you don't know about it doesn't mean that every single person you encounter isn't struggling with something that seems insurmountable.  And, I cannot say this enough.....people process things differently.  Grief is experienced differently, rejection takes many forms, anger can be paralyzing for some and so can love.  Every human being is dealing with a problem and it might be something that you could help with if you stepped outside your own righteousness and simply said "come here with me....join us...be part of us....we love you and we've missed you."  Now that just might classify you as an honest to goodness modern day H E R O.

I wish you all joy, love, contentment, peace and fulfillment...and on the days they are not present, I wish you strength.  And, know this.......if I know you, I love you and I want you to take comfort in it.  But, most of all....God loves you....He loves the Victims, the Heroes AND the Regulars all the same.  It is God that makes the EBB and FLOW and so we must embrace it all.

MOM

 My mother.  I spent a lifetime thinking I would never be a card carrying member of the Children Without Mothers club.  

The idea of her being mortal lurked somewhere very deeply hidden in my being, but the eventuality was not prepared for.

How can you?  How can you allow yourself to believe that the person that carried you inside their own body and brought you forth in pain could ever NOT continue to be present in your life?

Sometimes, it happens slowly.  We barely see it coming.  It's like that first gray hair that wasn't there yesterday, but today....there it is.  And tomorrow it brings friends until it overwhelms what was with what is.

Sometimes it hits us like a freight train and we are smashed flat by the realization that there is no changing anything, no fixing anything.  No time to say all the things we thought we had years, months.....even days to say.  And we think to ourselves..."please God, give me one more day to right any wrongs, express the unexpressed (because after all....she's your mom....she should know.")

But, would another day make a difference?  Really?  I'm betting it wouldn't because there would be a part of us that was thinking "after lunch", "later today"....."before she goes to bed."  Because one thing is for sure a mother will lose herself waiting for phone calls, visits, words of love and affirmation.  She will wait.  And she will understand.  She understands you're busy, you're tired, you have other obligations, you're having a bad day......she understands all of that because she has lived those times as well.

And guess what?  Most of those times were because of you, her child.  But she would never say so.  She would simply wait and then be revived with a singing heart with the simplest of gestures to express you acknowledge her and her worth and value to  you.

Everyone grieves the loss of their mother in very individual and personal ways.  That grief is built by the relationship (or lack of one) that we share with the one who gave us life.

Being a mother myself, I have come to realize that the best way I can honor my mom and still grieve her loss is by coming to terms with myself as a daughter and a mother.

I am inherently flawed and yet miraculously perfected by my faith in God.

I would love to the person that others write soaring tributes to about my virtue as a mother.  Those will not happen because I have made boatloads of mistakes with the people I love the most.  And I know they recognize it and that's okay.  I know this in the same way I now can see the person behind the curtain that was my mom.

She was forged in the fire of her childhood and to her credit, she overcame a lot.  She was not effusively affectionate with me but she told other people glowing things about me.  She was quick to point out shortcomings and while they stung and I was not happy about it, she was always on point and when I was over my "pissy feelings" about it, I saw the wisdom in her words.  And, I also saw and felt the love it must have taken for her to do something she knew would make me angry.

She was brave enough to face my wrath.  She was the person who taught me that you can love someone with everything you are but not be accepting of everything they are.  Love simply equated only equates to Love.  Love does not mean acceptance.  The same way acceptance does not equate to love.  

I may accept the behavior of my neighbor but I do not love him (except in the manner God instructs us all to love one another).

My mom had her demons, she had her disappointments, she had unfulfilled expectations, she had secrets.  My mom was human being who was navigating life with her tool box.  She came from dirt poor but she carried herself like a queen.  She laughed easily and she was quick to anger too.  She was generous with her things.  By living life the way she did she left the world with one biological child that is a competent person.  She made it clear to me that when I left home, she would always listen but she would not be a place I could run to and hide.

I had to face the things I caused and figure out how to fix them.  Her voice still rings in my memory when I would call her crying about a problem......"you'll figure it out...you always do."

And you know.....I think that might be the best gift she ever gave me was me knowing she felt like I could handle anything.

I wasn't ready to lose her, it happened oddly and suddenly and it crushed me.  I retreated into myself taking all my unresolved feelings and holding them closely.  So closely, I allowed very few people to penetrate the sorrow.  For almost 6 years, I reveled in my misery and when I was done, there were less people in my corner.  I understand.  Until you feel it, you can't understand it and you can't tolerate it.

But, I came out of a place of brokenness finding the shattered pieces had welded together so tightly I am stronger and better for the process.

If you no longer have your mom...know this....she still hears you.  Because the cells that formed you remain in you....listening.

If you still have your mom.....she wants to hear you.  Don't wait....don't think that you have unlimited tomorrows.  She is waiting....and she will wait forever.

Mom, I love you and I miss you everyday.  I still would like to talk to you and try to make you laugh with stupid jokes you never remembered and would laugh at every time.  But, you are here....living and breathing inside me making me tougher, making me stronger, making me better.  I hope you are proud.

FORGOTTEN

My knowledge of my Uncle Doyle was sparse. I remembered him but a little. He was 19 when I was born and already headed to a life as a Marine. Therefore my awareness of him came from the few times he came home on leave (I vaguely remember a dashing white blond slender man in a uniform.) Then, he was home for good and I remember a vacation with my mom, my uncle and his oldest son, Sammy to Carlsbad Caverns. And then, I remember whispered arguments between my parents and my mother crying. Those arguments were about money. Money my Uncle Doyle was asking for, money we didn't have, but money mom sent anyway. I remember envelopes showing up with peace signs drawn on the outside and letters inside speaking of mystical things that confused and terrified my mother.

And then, I remember being 19 and newly married and receiving a phone call from my mother telling me her brother was dead. He died in Hawaii....he took his own life. And then I watched my mother agonize over the fact that someone so precious to her could no longer come home and I watched her battle guilt over not doing more to help him, to save him. And finally, we just stopped talking about him.

Now, I have come to learn that Doyle was one of the thousands of Marines that were trapped at the Chosin Reservoir. Not being a lover of military history I had never heard of this place before and maybe some of you haven't either. I would encourage you to do a little reading on it. My knowledge now has flipped the script for me where my uncle is concerned. He was a honest to goodness, bonafide hero. Following is text from a letter he wrote home to his parents and his sister Rosie (my mom was no longer living at home at this point). I hope you will forgive the length - I hope you read it all....every word. The date of the letter is December 11.

"Dearest Mother, Daddy and Rosie: Just a few lines to let you know I am OK. I feel years older since the last time I wrote. I've never felt so bad in all my life. I have done things and seen things done that I didn't think human beings could possibly do. I suppose you've heard about my division being trapped for several days. You remember Jackson, the guy I wrote about - well, the first day we jumped into combat he was killed. All the guys I came over with have been killed or wounded except 4 guys and myself. I have thanked God a thousand times for sparing me. The guys that were wounded had to walk and fight when they could hardly stand up. I have never seen so much suffering. Jackson and I made a deal we would go see each other's folks if either of us got killed. So when I get home, I will go talk to his family. I don't know what to say. I suppose the war department will list him as MIA because he was left on a mountain. It was impossible to get him out...but I know he was dead. I only hope God will find a place in heaven for him, he was the best buddy I ever had. The enemy were thick as flies when they attacked that night, sneaking up on us hollering "we are coming to bury you Marines" but we took care of more of them than they did us. All the way out of that valley they were piled up like cord wood. It's a relief to get back where there is no shooting. We are boarding a ship in the morning and I don't know where we are going. I don't think we will be going back into a combat zone - we don't have the men or equipment for that now. I will write again when we settle. I don't have my little pup (Sheba) anymore, she got lost somewhere - I didn't have much time to take care of her anyway. I hope everyone is well, tell everyone hello. I love you all very much. - Doyle"

As I sit here today I am humbled in my knowledge that my Uncle must have experienced hell on earth and was left with the memories burning in his dreams and lurking in his consciousness every single moment of his life. He witnessed his "family" dying one by one and lived with that grief and the guilt of his own survival. He was thrown back into a life where those closest to him didn't and couldn't understand his pain. And, I'm guessing his only solace was in self medicating in the hopes of forgetting for even a moment. As I have dealt with my own issues of knowing that for much of my life I had hard feelings over the pain his life inflicted on my mother, I am ashamed. I wish I had known these facts sooner and better so I could have given my mother and my aunt Rosie a peace and sense of pride in their brother. I could have erased the pain of his actual death and the circumstances surrounding it. My husband told me this and I believe it is the truest thing about my uncle I will ever know. "Your uncle didn't die here, he died in Korea with his brothers."

Doyle Julian Jones - Cpl USMC - one of the Chosin Few and no longer forgotten - now remembered with pride and a grateful heart.

Doyle. I vow to tell your story to anyone who will listen, I will show your pictures and each time, I will swell with pride.