Do You Want to be a Cat?

  "Do you want to be a cat?"
  "Do I want to be a cat?" I repeated, making sure I had heard correctly.
  "Mmhmm." The seriousness in the olive green eyes of my five year old friend told me that I had.  It wasn't the first time during babysitting that day that I had encountered the delightfulness of the child's "adult ideas"-free mind.  At other points, I had just had to laugh, wishing I could be recording the words and thoughts to share with someone later, (how many times I wished Kyrie was there for me to share a look and a laugh with!) but this was different.  Olive was serious and I needed to give this answer more than a chuckle.
  "Well...." I thought for a moment.  Olive's three year old sister now looked up from the coloring book she was working on.  "No," I said slowly. "I don't think so.  'Cause if I was a cat, I would miss out on knowing alot of the wonderful people I know."
  The answer was good enough for Perky who went back to coloring.  Olive was fine with it, too, it seemed, for she continued candidly, "My brother says I act like a cat..."  We talked for a few more minutes on that subject before moving on, but the idea got me to thinking.  
  I am so thankful that I am not a cat, that I am a human being, that I know that my Creator God planned for me to be a female person and nothing else.  How many dear friends He has given me to enjoy!  How many opportunities I have gotten to have because I can work, and think, and go, and interact!  A cat, or any other animal, has a seriously limited life.  They, of course, are made for man's enjoyment and benefit, but they don’t get to know some of the most enjoyable parts of my life.  I appreciate the fact that our cats have (to some degree) been good at catching rodents.  I enjoyed our dog that ran around, lay on the grass, barked at squirrels, or laughed his great, big, tongue-lolling grin at us.  He didn't provide any huge contribution to our family, but he was fun to have around.  I even liked our Beta fish which did nothing more than swim back and forth in their glass domains and eat and dazzle me with their gorgeous colors and designs.  But to be a person—specifically a person who has purpose based on a relationship with Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Savior of the world!—is to know joy and peace, work and rest, pleasure and even the benefits of sorrow (since sorrow is to drive a person back to reliance on Christ).  It is to have gain and loss, to meet strangers and become friends, to take advantage of family relationships in order to grow in love for each other despite quirks and personalities and talents.  It is to know the highest privilege of the human life: peace with God through realizing one’s sinfulness and Christ’s righteousness, one’s right to punishment and God’s gift of forgiveness through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus. 
  Olive sparked more than she can imagine by her innocent, child-like question and I am grateful.  To my Savior and Lord: I thank You for causing Olive to ask this.  It is wonderful to know You, my Father!  To all my friends and loved ones who mean so much to me because I am a feeling, thinking human, I have to say: I am so thankful for you--and I am so thankful that I am not a cat!

Open Letters to Lydia and Wynneth

Dear Lydia,
  I woke up this morning with your "honey sticks" and hot tea on my mind.  How hospitable you were to the lot of us on Sunday mornings who would file into your home, drink your hot beverages, and discuss the Word of God!  I thought of those tall, Styrofoam cups of hot water steeping one of your gourmet tea bags and your generosity in letting us make ourselves at home in your kitchen, picking out a slender, plastic envelope of tantalizingly-diverse-colored honeys to empty into the hot liquid. 
  How well your kettle worked!  Often I would sit holding my cup, glancing at it between comments around the circle, and watch the steam rise for almost half the class time, only to down the sufficiently-cooled drink as quickly as possible at class's end so as not to be late to church.
  You mean so much to me.  All those mornings spent pouring over the Scriptures as a class, all those weekdays learning from your skilled hands  & knowledgeable words as you imparted to me the ability to play guitar, all those moments holding your babies or playing with them.  
  How I love you!  How I miss you! 
  Today especially.  As we moved in the next dear family it finally felt... final.  They are here to fill the spot you and Bro. Nick left.  They are the ones the Lord has brought us as He wisely and lovingly unfolded the next phase of His plan for you, moving you back to your familiar state, your familiar friends, your familiar family.  
  But, (may I say it?) I take a tearful joy in the fact that we had seemed to become your familiar place.  We were your friends in place of those you had moved from.  We became family when flesh and blood were so many miles away from you.  
  How I love you, my sister!  My eyes are moist with the missing.
  Yes, a new, wonderful family has arrived, but not to replace you.  No, instead they come to be used by the Lord to lead us into a deeper relationship with Him, to teach us things we couldn't have learned from you, to grow and stretch us in ways in which you were not meant coach us.  And His plan, (as hard as it is sometimes in living your absence), is delightful to me!  For He devises with wisdom and I rest in Him with peace knowing that His plan for you is good, His plan for this church, this new family, and even me is good.  He is our dear, loving Father and oh! how wonderful to know He keeps you (there where you are) & me (here where I am).  
  How I love you, my precious sister!  Missing will one day be consumed (delightfully so!) in Heaven when we all get to be together with our Savior forever!

Dear Wynneth,
  Hello, my new, dear friend!  Your move today was filled with answers to prayers!  Just having you in the neighborhood means our Gracious Lord did not overlook our plea for a youth pastor and his wife! How sweet our Savior is!
  Added to that, His protection on the road as you were stalled at a wreck (I am so grateful that you were not part of it!), and His holding back the rain as your belongings were trekked inside your new residence.  More blessings come to mind as I think, with humble thankfulness, that you and Bro. Herald were willing to accept the position that included such a small house.  
  How it blesses my heart to see your relationship with each other!  Even though you were dog-tired, you both exhibited such a cheerfulness and respect & love for each other that blessed my heart!  
  Your five children delight me, even though I have only met three of them.  I look forward, the Lord willing, to becoming very fine friends with them!    
  How sweet to hold little Ike, to look down into
his handsome, olive-skinned face, to relish his deep-brown eyes.  He is a gift from our Father and I my heart bursts to see the love that our He has in placing outcasts into love-inspired families.
  You've moved away from things dear and familiar, from places, from family, from friends.  I hope that we can be to you new friends (not replacements), and additional family members to add to your "clan". 
  Your heart blesses mine. I appreciated hearing about your quiet time with the Lord, your sweet, childlike prayers as your petitioned our Father about keeping Ike should you & Bro. Herald come to fill our youth pastor & family position.  I loved hearing that your oldest three have come to put their trust in Jesus Christ Who died on the cross and rose again so that sinners like me could be made right with Himself!
    You are dear and I already love you!  You come to fill a gap.  I do not want to place expectations on you that you function, speak, act, etc., like our dear former youth pastor's wife.  You are unique and precious and, with the Lord's help, I will grow to learn you and work with you and build you up and learn from you.
  I am so thankful that the Lord saw fit to bring you to us and I have been praying that we would be mutual blessings the one to the other.  
  I bless His Name that He takes such great care of us as He sees right to take our other family for special service elsewhere and to bring you here for the special service He has for you in this place.  I know that all things work together for His great purpose and I am super-excited to see what He will do in the days ahead! 

   Love to you both,
          ~"Trissy"

Christmas Ramblings

   "I'll get all the ingredients together and then when Kyrie gets in, we can stir it up together."
   My Mother began rummaging in her deep chest freezer for the candied fruit stored there.  Even though I can barely make heads or tails of it sometimes, she usually has the deep freeze all figured out in her mind. She has a system, she knows where things are in her realms, not just in her food storage, but in her desk and dresser drawers, her closet, and the under-bed storage containers.  "A place for everything and everything in its place" my Grandfather used to say.  I guess she got it from him.  It was passed down to Kyrie, too.  If I ask to borrow anything from her, be it shirt or stapler, she can tell me exactly where whatever it is should be.  "Top right-hand drawer in my desk on the left-hand side at the back" she might say and there it will be.  She has the gift of organization, definitely.  I guess that's why she's such a great secretary at Victory Road Academy. 
  So Mother gathered the ingredients.  The night before she had searched through her recipes for just the right one: The Grandmother's special fruitcake recipe.  You may laugh.  You're welcome to.  Maybe your encounters with fruitcake have been less than pleasant.  Perhaps you have always thought that fruitcake was no more than a joke, a gift you give to those you want to prank.  Not so with our family.  Oh my! this is the best fruitcake ever.  I can't give you the recipe (top secret, you understand), but I will say it doesn't have a drop of alcohol in it and it does have an ingredient that causes me to feel curiously smug: a cup of decaf coffee! :)  Yep, my Grandmother's fruitcake is the best.  Last year we didn't make it.  There were several things that we didn't do last year without our dear Grandmother, but this year making fruitcake was on our list of "musts". 
   So Kyrie came in and in just two or so hours, we had the cakes slid in the oven.  Okay, it shouldn't really take that long, but we weren't in any hurry and, too, after a year of not making it, we had to be refreshed on just how to do it.  But after all the prep time and all the baking time, the results were well worth it!!
    Fruitcak-ing isn't the only thing we've "been into".  We got the decorations put up the day after Thanksgiving.  (If you haven't seen this video, you really should!  Ky and I found it hilarious and so relatable!)  We've spent time watching movies as a family and playing some games.  Tonight, though, I found myself sitting with my family and wanting to find something fascinating to look at as I surfed the internet.  My thoughts were distracted by the recent holiday outfit updates one trendy mom has posted on her pulled-together blog.  She's so perfect.  So pretty.  So stylish.  Another "cyber sister" and her life floated through my thoughts.  Her family is gorgeous.  She is sweet and gentle, honest, and humble.  Her photography is excellent and her blog posts leave me gazing and longing.... and discontented.  "When I marry...."  or "When I have my own home..."  These are the thoughts that march unchecked across the terrain of my brain.  Wait a Minute!!  Who said you could get in here?!  I closed the lid of my computer and looked around our living room.  Dad had headed to bed by this time, but I had gotten to play three games of Mancala with him.  Mother sat beside me looking at her computer and Kyrie was brushing her teeth in the bathroom just down the hall.  I began to express appreciation for the things I could see around me.  Although I felt kinda crazy doing it, I needed to do it.  Not just for me, but maybe for my family, too.  "Don't say what you don't like," Kyrie had said once. "Talk about what you love."  I don't think the saying was necessarily original with her, but it was so true and I, who have a tendency to be negative at times, have tried to implement it as I think to do so.
   "I love our floor rug.  It is so pretty.  That was so sweet of Aunt Edna to get it for us."  My eyes moved to our furniture set.  "We've got a nice mission-style coffee table."  I lit on the items collected on the shiny glass surface Kyrie had bought for Mother ten years ago.  Mother had so wanted something to protect the top of her spiffy coffee table and Kyrie with her huge, generous heart had bought it for her.   "I like the Christmas magazines Kyrie put out for us to enjoy.  They're so Christmas-ey."  Kyrie poked her head out.  "What did you say?"  I repeated myself.  "Oh," she smiled that cute, pleased grin of hers. 
    "I like the pinecones," I continued. "They're so simple and decorative.  I like my metal bell and its cheery 'ring-tone."  I laughed.  "I like our ornaments and our variegated lights.  I like our garland.  I like our Purple Angel.  She's so regal and elegant."  This little crepe lady has adorned our bookcase at Christmastime for years.  Purple's not really a Christmas color, but Kyrie and I love her and pull her out each year to join our assortment of mix-matched, sentiment-filled conglomeration of Christmas decorations.  "I love our Christmas card from the Steiners.  It's so retro and Christmas-cheery."  Mother hadn't really said anything yet, but she smiled and nodded intermittently as she researched better quilting methods.  Kyrie hadn't seen the Steiner's card and now arose to inspect the card.  "Ooh!" (Obviously she liked it, too.) 
   "I like our straw paper garland on the rafia/twine.  It's so simple and special."  
   Suddenly my home was wonderful.  It had been all along, but I had been so caught up in someone else's life, in those who have "perfect existences" (when I know better; they really don't have flawless lives).  I hadn't taken time to consider all the special parts about my own.  I have so much to be grateful for, to thank my Heavenly Father for, and yet I had focused on what others have that I don't.  How sad.  How shameful that it was so easy to do.
  I started reading Corrie ten Boom's Tramp for the Lord (with Jamie Buckingham) tonight.  Her dependence upon the Lord is so convicting to read.  I fear all I have being stripped away: my family, friends, health, any attractiveness I might have, anything I have "going for me".  But doesn't that indicate that I'm leaning on them instead of the One Who gave them to me?  And if He should take them away, which He has the right to do if He so chose, what would my reaction be?  Would I be drawn to Him because of that pain or would I shrivel up like a plant with too little soil?  This Christmas I have so much to learn, not only in culinary skills, but in my relationship with the Lord Jesus.  Is He enough for me?  Yes, Christ is Enough.  He is More Than Enough,... but do I know it?

Loved Ones

     He doesn't worship him.  He just loved him. And now he misses him.  Twenty-seven plus years and he's still so close to my Daddy's heart, sometimes Dad tears up when he mentions him.  My Grandpa, a man I never got to meet.
    "I wish you could have known him," Dad'll say, his mouth quirking at the corners a little, eyes getting a bit red.  My Dad, the strong, the affectionate, the hard-working, showing emotion at the memory and the missing of a man I never knew, a man who impacted his life in more ways than I'll ever understand.
                                                                                --------
     Interesting how someone can be here one moment and unattainably gone the next.  This truth has struck me so strongly with the passing of both my maternal grandparents within 10 months.  
     Meemaw (that's what we called my grandmother) was so full of life, so animated, so not old, even after 85 years of life.  She was the primary caregiver to my grandfather, (Peepaw), her husband of over 65 years.  I thought of her as the strong one of the two of them.  She washed clothes, fixed meals, got Peepaw up in the mornings, did the shopping, drove them to church.  She had a passion for the Bible, the things of the Lord, and for seeing people come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior.  She was a tech-y: she learned the computer in her 50's or 60's, got a cellphone, a kindle, an ipad.  And then, just before we celebrated my grandfather's 90th birthday, just before all the family came in and all the celebration commenced, Meemaw started feeling bad.  She wasn't one to run to the doctor for "just anything," but finally she went.
    I remember standing in the dining room hearing the report like it was moments ago:  "Meemaw has cancer."
   No, not Meemaw.  Surely not.  And then with the next breath, as my brain reeled with the news, my head started pounding, Will everyone I love get cancer?  It wasn't a new thought.  Mother's eldest brother had, then her eldest sister was diagnosed with it.  Thankfully, Mother's sister was surviving, but now Meemaw...  I was in shock.
     When the day of Peepaw's party arrived, Meemaw was still in the hospital.  Peepaw had rarely been without his life-companion, his bride.  He didn't talk much, but while she was away, he said quietly one afternoon, "I miss Mama."  (His name for Meemaw ever since they had had children.)
      It went so fast.  She was diagnosed in mid-March and gone by July 1.  I was in denial practically throughout it all.  Everyone else would tear up or cry occasionally.  There will be plenty of time for that after she's gone, I would think. I won't cry now, I'll just live this moment while she's here.
       But then she was gone and all the family left and the house got quiet and there was no Meemaw  sitting in the overstuffed orange recliner.  No Meemaw to hear scuff-scuffing through the house, hurrying on her way to put on lunch or a load of wash.  And I couldn't cry.  I tried.  I wished and longed to cry, but no tears came.  I had numbed myself for so long that nothing would happen when I had the opportunity, when things were right, when no family was around to see me red-faced and blurry-eyed.
      We plugged along, finding "a new normal".  Fall came and I enrolled in college again.  Mother stayed with Peepaw, working hard caring for him; Daddy and Kyrie were at their jobs, working hard in their respective fields.   We fell into something of a routine.  Breakfast with it's pertenences, lunchtime, naptime, various medical and home-aid workers rotating in and out in the mornings and afternoons, supper time, time in the evenings to sit as a fivesome where we had been a sixsome.
      I grew to love my grandpa more in the months that followed my grandmother's passing than I probably ever had.  I'd hold his hand at mealtime prayers, I'd scoot his food around on his plate closer to him, I'd give him his vitamins and pills, I'd help him into his wheelchair, I'd comb his hair, I'd work on his supper, I'd take off his veteran's braces at night, I'd warm the heating bags for his cold feet, I'd kiss his wrinkled forehead, push his covers up around his chin, and tell him I loved him.  That I will never regret: that I realized that I should tell him that I loved him, and I began to tell him more often.
      And then, one day I came in from school and my Mother said something was not right, that Peepaw seemed to have had a stroke.  And in half a month, with him getting better, (I thought), and then worse, he had left us, too.
      I let myself cry as I saw his decline.  I didn't want a repeat of what I had done, my impassiveness, with my precious grandmother.  I missed him, even as he was still with us, and I let myself cry.  The day he passed away, his favorite day of the week: Sunday, just hours before he left us, I leaned my head toward his resting there on his pillow.  He was at his own house; they had issued the bed for convenience of care.  I hugged his wooly head and cried.  I was quiet; he couldn't hear me, but I'm sure he felt my shaking.   How can I let you go? my thoughts sobbed.  But I would have been selfish to keep him.  What a fight he had fought for the Lord!  What an example he had been to his friends, his neighbors, his cousins, his siblings, his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren!  What a testimony for righteousness, what a faithful man to follow!  How can we go on without you?  How can we let you go?  But I was wrong.  The same Lord that led him when he was orphaned at 13 years of age, the same God Who had protected him as a 19 year old in the foxholes and hedgerows of countries at war with one another, the same God Who had lead him to Bible college where he met Meemaw, Who had given him seven beautiful children, Who had taken a small-town, country boy to the capital city of Brazil and made him His missionary, a pastor and preacher for Jesus Christ, He Who had never--not once!--failed  my precious grandparents was the God Who was vastly able and Who is vastly able to help us and carry us on. 
     And so, we hold on to the memories of those we loved who have passed from this life--and we press on, that we might be faithful followers of our Lord Jesus Christ Who has loved us and forgiven us of our sins as He did for them.