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Oh mama, I think this is the sweetest book in the whole world.
That’s what Mary Polly said after she read this book I brought home from the library last week. She took it to school today to share with her teacher and the rest of the class.
Sometimes we find a treasure so dear at the library that we read it over and over and re-check it and feel so sad when we must finally relinquish it back to the library. It grabs our hearts and we just don’t want to let it go. This story is one of those. One that will go on a birthday list.
It is set during slavery and is about a mama who loves her little girl so much that she gives her the chance to be free, even if that opportunity will come at the cost of never seeing her again. The story takes hold of you with surprisingly few words. The beautiful illustrations paint the picture of a time that was so hard that someone might make such a sacrifice. You look back at the pictures again and again, marveling at a mother’s love in the midst of a world of hate. A world gone wrong.
And still going wrong.
How desperately we need saving.
a timely prayer from today’s reading:
Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give me the grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son my Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
from Phyllis Tickle’s Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime
The last two days finally slowed down enough for me to recover a little from spring break. I’ve been catching up on my reading. In between laundry loads. I picked this book up at the library when I went in search of the documentary by the same name. Anna told me I needed to watch it, but I’m reading instead and I guess I’ll pick up the documentary later.
When I finish God Grew Tired of Us, next in the cue is The Devil Came on Horseback. It was right next to this one at the library and is the name of yet another documentary about the Sudan. So strange. I had both of these on my “to watch” list, but didn’t even know they were books first.
So what I’m wondering is how many movies, books, songs, benefits, letters, emails, etc have to exist about the Sudan before it is enough to stop the madness? I guess a whole lot more.
Especially if all I’m going to do about it is sit in my camp chair at chess tournaments and soccer games tomorrow weeping for the Sudanese. Maybe on Monday someone could help me put all that grief to good use. Can we start a Sudan refugee home in Central Arkansas? Help me out people.
What are you reading this weekend?
This picture stopped me in my tracks. I thought it was worth seeing, so I swiped it off my friend, David’s blog. Thoughts?
Mary Polly said she remembers this exact scene being described in the book, Bud, Not Buddy.
I’ve been thnking a lot about our “standard of living” lately. Especially since listening to This American Life’s episode on the banking crisis that explains to normal people like me what in the heck is going on with our banks. It is well worth the listen for this explanation, but also for the poignant reminder that the banks have just given us what we’ve wanted…the American Way baby…
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the introduction to Daisy Bates’ memoir about the Little Rock Nine, which was first published in 1962. In it, she boldly states,
Every American should read this book.
I could not agree more. In fact, I think it is true of both of these books.
And of Arkansans it is doubly true.
And if you are an Arkansan living in Little Rock, well…maybe reading these stories will bring healing.
Healing that clearly has not truly occurred since 1957 as was made evident in the brutally honest look at what public school in greater Little Rock is like 50 years following this harrowing year of integration. Still. Very. Segregated.
I find that the only words I am left with after a day of reading (plus sneezing and coughing) are…
Come, Lord Jesus.
I am participating in this journaling project that I wanted to share with you. You answer one question a week for a year on a small tag, card or medium of your choice and you can make it as pretty as you like. A blogger that I really enjoy reading put it together. So far it has been an easy and even fun way of helping me drag a little positive energy out of my brain that is leaking mostly toxins right about now.
It’s amazing to me that I can eat so right and think so wrong.
But I am practicing restraint.
This morning when a lady I barely know told me how much her son loves Bible Study as we were both picking up our two year olds from the children’s program at BSF, I did not say to this first time mother, Enjoy these precious moments when you are bringing your two year old to Bible Study and picking them up all happy and warm and singing “Glory Hallelujah” together on the way home, because in nine years you will be sitting in an assistant principal’s office crying while he gets suspended.
You see why I might need a good journaling exercise. If you need one too, you can sign up at this darling gal’s website. You can see her amazing journal pictures and artwork, as well as all the other people who are participating. As added motivation to play along, I will tell you that so far all I have used to answer my first questions is a single index card and a black fine pointed sharpie. In other words, it’s kind of plain, but I am letting myself off the hook on the art part. When the flowers start blooming, my cards might get prettier.
…because I don’t know how you’re doing it.
The Chino House dad was away last week, and let me tell you…it was rough. The Saturday he left I was all geared up. I had a stack of books to read and projects I was going to accomplish. I was mentally prepared to actually enjoy Taido’s being away. Less laundry. Simple meals every night. No meetings to prepare for. Just me and the kids, the first week back to school. It was going to be smooth sailing.
The kids were less delusional. PLEASE TAKE US WITH YOU! They begged him not to leave them alone with me. Add insult to injury. He was going to Colorado. To go skiing.
But still I persevered through their bad attitudes. I gave pep talks. We instituted Bible Time, which has been missing from our morning routine all fall since Cole leaves before anyone else is up. We had a family meeting. We rescheduled Bible Time, and we planned to have a good week together. With no dad.
Friends, I am telling you, I set myself up for success this week in every way I know how. I was well stocked with groceries and meal plans. I went to yoga in the rain on Monday and Tuesday. I went to BSF on Wednesday. I got up early and made apple pancakes and blueberry muffins. We started our evening routine early every night so that I wouldn’t feel behind. I made sure we had plenty of time to read Ida B. I stayed on top of the dishes so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed.
But I am here to tell you that despite my very best efforts to keep it all together, when our dad is not at home, all hell can and will break loose. It’s just a matter of when and how. Let’s revisit the last time that Taido left us for an entire week. Oh yes, I was camping in the Pacific Northwest with my mother and four children and we had everything stolen from us! It was like there was a sign on the van that said, No dad in sight. Pick us! Pick us!
In short, here is the list of minor (minor in that no one was starving, dying or in the middle of a war zone) disasters that occurred last week while Taido was skiing in Colorado, which strangely also qualifies for him as working.
Sunday: At elevate, the jr high youth ministry that Taido is not here to oversee, Cole breaks a window in the youth building.
Monday: The bus does not come and get Cole. He runs to a friends’ house in the pouring down rain and bums a ride, not daring to come home and ask me for one when there are three kids still asleep here. Later that day, I forget piano.
Tuesday: Cole forgets his homework. (We got off easy on Tuesday.)
Wednesday: Cole misses recess because he is not wearing a belt, is belittled by a substitute teacher and forgets his homework again. I pick up my van from a shop because I do not want to pay the $864 they want from me in order to fix it. They charge me $84 for the diagnosis. I decide we can live without heat in the van. The weather is getting warmer anyway. That evening I make French onion soup which none of the kids are going to eat, neither my kids nor Cole’s friend, Tony, but I make it anyway as a treat for me because I LOVE it. When I finish making the soup, I ladle the piping hot, cognac-scented brown liquid into a bowl, sit down in a chair to relax and enjoy my soup, only to be pounced on by Simon, who spills my untasted soup all over the insides of my thighs and his hands, burning us both and causing me to stand up shouting and immediately strip down to my underwear in front of not just my children, but also Cole’s friend.
Thursday: Simon covers his face with my lip gloss. (Okay, that could happen any day.) Cole gets a short form for forgetting his homework again.
Friday: I wake up with a splitting headache. At 10am, I get a call from Cole saying that I have to come to the school and talk to the assistant principal because he’s in trouble. I scramble to get Simon settled, and then I go and meet with Cole, the assistant principal and the school counselor. Cole ends up getting on-campus suspension for four days. He has not been in trouble at school all year until yesterday. I break down in the meeting crying and can barely pull myself together enough to collect Cole and leave the building, a building for which I already retain absolutely NO good feelings, per my own horrific year there. At 10pm, Taido sends me a text message that he is on the side of the road somewhere in Colorado with a broken down van. I go bed thinkng…we’re 0 for 2 on vans at the Chino House, and 0 for 1 on the Daddy homecoming that we so desperately need tomorrow.
Taido rolled in around midnight on Saturday night after spending the night in Colorado and getting a fan belt fixed early on Saturday morning. To say that I was a wreck by the time he got home is a severe understatement. However, a good four or five hours alone at the library on Sunday afternoon was a step in the right direction of the restoration of my spiralling soul. And an afternoon at the park with their dad seemed to do the same for everyone else’s.
Sometimes I go to church and I am just there. Some Sundays I soak up little bits and pieces, trying to grasp with my hands the fleeting, holy moments as they pass me by. And then some precious Sunday mornings are so full that I feel like if Jesus gave me the Holy Spirit to drink in a giant soup bowl, I could not be any more filled with His presence. Yesterday was like that. I wanted to run straight home and write about watching the baptisms and singing to the Lord with gladness. I went to teach my sweet little 2 year olds with a tear streaked face. When Mary Polly and her friend complained that a particular testimony was too long, I said (maybe a little too emphatically) that it is beautiful to hear the story of how God has captured someone’s heart and sometimes he chases us for a long time before we listen and we should be willing to sit in church for as long as there are stories to be told of His faithfulness, because what else could possibly be more important! Is your mom crazy, her friend said with her eyes. Oh yes, Mary Polly said back with hers.
A couple of weeks ago we sang these words at BSF. They are from a hymn that is not even my favorite, but I guess after singing it over and over I finally noticed these phrases hidden in this one verse of this hymn, and I have sort of grabbed onto them. Writing them down. Singing them. Saying them to hurting friends.
Set up thy throne
That earth’s despairs may cease
Beneath the shadow
Of its healing peace
I love every single phrase. I have been asking God to set up His throne. I have been hoping for earth’s despairs…broken relationships, suffering children, violence…to cease. I want to crawl underneath His throne and feel its healing peace, its shadow all around me. I have come back to these words every time I have heard a sad story in the last couple of weeks, and they have been solace. And on Baptism Sunday, for a few minutes, as I looked around the room and saw families gathered to watch one person declare their heart for God or an aunt, standing with arms lifted in gratitude for the answered prayer of a sweet niece’s faith, I remembered the words Set up thy throne, and I felt that I was seeing it. His kingdom coming.
I wanted to come right home and write about it. But then I went to see The Secret Life of Bees. I cried for the entire movie, just like I did when I read the book. I had to take off my glasses because they don’t have windshield wipers. I wanted to reach out and hug all the people on the screen. I wanted to transport myself to that porch. To build a wailing wall. I cried and cried and cried. I was so glad I went with friends.
And instead of coming home and writing as planned, I walked into my house, very slowly. I ate a bowl of 44-clove garlic soup, drank a cup of honey vanilla chamomile tea and crawled into bed. At 8:30. I highly recommend the soup. And the movie.
Oh, and baptism. So glad she wrote about it last year, so I could just go on to bed last night.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
In general I have not been that mom who couldn’t stand it when her kid moved on from a stage in life. Not that there is anything wrong with that mom. In fact at times I have thought that there must be something wrong with me because I am walking away from the first day of kindergarten or some other major milestone without crying. But I have tried to just celebrate whatever stage we are in. I loved my babies as babies, but I don’t still wish they were babies. I embraced having three toddlers at home when Cole, Mary Polly and Ben were all under five. I also embraced napping on the couch and never showering along with it. But I appreciated that we didn’t have places we had to be at certain times. And that I pretty much had complete control over their choice of friends. And for that matter, their choice of everything. Then Cole started kindergarten, and I was excited that we were done being all at home and had entered a new era. Elementary school. It seemed like every year after that I had another child starting kindergarten. And even last week when I walked Ben to second grade, I thought Oh my goodness, it will be just a minute before I am walking Simon to a classroom.
But this year there has been a little kink in my plan to always embrace the next stage of my children’s lives. One of them finally reached a stage that I just wasn’t excited about. As I’ve already mentioned, Cole started middle school last week. He is actually going to the same building every day that I went to for my first year of junior high. He’s playing the trumpet. I played the trumpet. It’s his first year to have a locker. I still cry when I think about trying to remember my locker combination.
We took Cole and picked him up the first few days of middle school, but now he’s riding the bus. Which is better, because I don’t have to break out in hives when I drive down there and remember my middle school days. Last spring we went down there for orientation and I was walking the halls with Cole and I said, Yep, Cole, right there. There’s the spot where Mama had her very first nervous breakdown. That’s right. That desk there in what was then Mrs. Moore’s class. And Cole looked at me with an expression that clearly did not mean, I feel you mom. I’m just so sorry. Mrs. Moore did not understand the plight of an eleven year old girl who is being made fun of daily by that boy right there across from her. Otherwise she would have used her almighty powers to move him to the other side of the room.
When I say I was being made fun of, I do not mean the kind where people say to you, Oh he is just flirting with you. I know about the kind of teasing that is really just flirting. That’s what he did to OTHER girls. But me. I was made fun of like mocked, made the butt of all jokes and made to look like the complete idiot that of course I already believed I was because I could not EVER EVER get my locker open on the first try. Or manage to get to class with everything I needed. Or come up with a science project that would please the likes of Mrs. Moore. Usually I could get all the way home before I would go inside and cry. I would take deep breaths as I walked the slow road from the bus stop to my house, and up the stairs to my blessed bed with the Holly Hobbie bedspread. You can make it. I would tell myself. But one day, I couldn’t make it. I didn’t even make it out of third period. I actually hyperventilated I cried so hard. Which finally made people take notice of the fact that I was being HOUNDED by a MEAN boy for all of science class. And here’s the thing about middle school. You don’t ever want anyone to take notice. Your parents, yes. And your close friends, maybe, if you have any. But not the rest of the world. To the rest of the world, I was just trying to be invisible. So, yes, the mean boy got in trouble. It was a long time ago so he even got spanked. Which I NEVER LIVED DOWN. Mrs. Moore finally moved him, disdainfully. And I spent the rest of the year trying harder and harder to disappear into the nonexistent spaces between the lockers. Seriously.
So when Cole and I got home from his orientation, he told his dad that I was completely crazy and could his dad please take him to all of the rest of his middle school events instead of mom. And when we filled Taido in, he said with TOTAL nonchalance, That’s funny. When I was in 7th grade, I got spanked for making fun of a girl until she cried. And I have to tell you that I lost just a little bit of respect for him right then and there. Respect he will not regain until he finds that poor girl and apologizes. Which he cannot do, because he doesn’t remember her name. They never do.
The good news is that I don’t think that Cole is going to repeat my middle school experience. And I know this not just because he is a boy. I know it because on the first day of school I picked him up and when he got in the car he was chewing on something. So I said, hey, what’s in your mouth? to which he replied, my locker combination.
And because he is the kind of boy who would actually EAT the only piece of paper he has with that sacred information on it, I had to give him a lecture right then and there about NEVER making fun of girls.
i realized today as i was sitting by the lake that most days i am wearing three different scripture references right next to my skin. i went down to the lake to catch my breath and just enjoy a moment of quiet between the events of the day. i was holding my necklace and meditating on the scripture it represents and my mind wandered to this idea of actually carrying scripture around all the time to remind me of the truths i so desperately need to refer. then it sort of just came to me that i had three represented right there with me.
it’s not a new idea. moses commands the people of israel in deuteronomy to do this.
place these words on your hearts.
get them deep inside you.
tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder.
teach them to your children.
talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street;
talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night.
deuteronomy 11:18-19 the message
so here are my three daily reminders, constantly present with me, of God’s precious word.
first, my wedding ring:
it’s actually in greek, because my brilliant husband was studying greek in seminary when we got married.
it’s the phrase: as unto the Lord from ephesians 5. tai’s wedding band (also in greek) says as Christ loved from the same passage. both short phrases are the essence of longer thoughts about how husbands and wives are meant to love one another. the dance, the give and take of submission and sacrifice. i love to glance down at my wedding ring and remember both truths. and that it takes both. sometimes one of us is fulfilling the promise better than the other, but over 13 years of marriage, there have been some glorious moments where grace rained down and we were both in step with these ideas and it just works.
the second scripture reference is engraved on the inside of a james avery ring that i bought four of when three girls that i had been meeting with for a while were all graduating from college. we had studied revelation together that year and each of us had been impacted by the first five verses of chapter two. we all took away the idea that we are to remember our first love, jesus. we each spent time nourishing that thought and trying to reach back to the moment in time when we had first become acquainted with jesus and were completely enamored with him, reading the first four books of the new testament, just to read again of his compassion, his teaching, his unorthodox way of approaching life. we began to say to one another…remember your first love. i still hold those three darling gals in my heart. and even though we none of us live in the same state (or even country in one case), when i glance at my ring finger on my right hand i pray that each of them are remembering their earliest, most passionate feelings for jesus. and i tell myself again to remember.
and the last piece of jewelry has on it my most favorite verse in the whole bible. i put it on everything from my 30th birthday contemplative retreat, an event i have mentioned before on this blog. i was studying isaiah when i moved to arkansas and this verse served as the inspiration for our new house. i painted our living room blood red, much to the displeasure of everyone involved, most especially my grandfather who still comments on how oppressive it was. the room no longer exists because we later took a wall down and repainted, but for our first several years here, our living room was red and our bedroom was (and is) bright white. my favorite verse was manifested on the walls of my house to remind me over and over again that though my sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow. i don’t believe that God means for me to walk around laden with guilt and overwhelmed by my sin. but my disposition has always been guilty. i blame my parents for naming me alison, which means truth. i have never been able to lie well. just this week my dad told me that i still don’t have a poker face. my roommate in college said if she had to describe me with only one word, it would be convicted. and while conviction of heart can be a beautiful act of spirit within me, its counterpart…my hyperactive guilt gland can be an ugly stick with which i beat myself. so somewhere in a bout of guilt and shame and sadness, i latched onto this verse.
what is sweet to me is that because of my birthday (and my crazy paint job), people who are close to me remember that this verse is special to me. my aunt made me a beautiful planter for my 30th birthday with this verse etched onto it. and this year, i was delighted when whitney gave me a necklace for my birthday with isaiah 1:18 on it. it hangs around my neck most days now and i refer to it as often as i do to either of my rings. remembering that i am forgiven for all those things i did a long time ago. and for those words i said yesterday. and even for the unkind thoughts i had this morning. confessed. covered. clean. white as snow.
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