Humpty Dumpty

I've decided that there are two types of people in the world and you'll know which type you are simply by answering the question "when you are going to the basement because a storm is coming what do you  take with you or what would you have taken with you if you could have?"  Not considering the third answer of "I'm not thinking about taking anything but me and my family" for the sake of this particular blog, the other two answers are going to be something like "wallet, cell phone, check book, car keys" or "photographs and heirlooms".

My husband is of the "wallet, cell phone" ilk while I fall firmly into the "photographs and heirlooms" category.  So many many people lost everything in the devastating tornadoes across the Southeast this week, none hit harder than our own state.  Whole communities vanished in to thin air like a wave that washes up on the sand only to ebb back into itself and the sea.  The tales of destruction and survival are incredible.   The pictures on television remind me of a sci fi movie where the BOMB has been dropped and civilization as we know it has ceased to exist. I half keep expecting giant ants or spiders to come crawling across the TV screen, impervious to man's guns or rockets and looking to make a meal off the first living creature that falls in its path when they show parts of Tuscaloosa that used to be and is no more.  Now please don't hear me and think that I am trying to make light of the devastation for that is not my intent.  All I am saying is that unless you actually go through what those poor people did in places like Pratt City, Tuscaloosa, Cordova and Cullman I just don't think we who are safe in our own well-shingled houses with electricity and hot water could ever truly grasp what it means to lose every physical possession that one owns.  And I hope to God that I don't ever truly understand.

Hence, the thoughts about what I would take with me to the relative safety of my basement, or even further underground, to our downstairs bathroom, if I only had a few moments to gather up that which I didn't want to lose to the claws of a tornado.  When it passed over Trussville this past Wednesday and we were spared I took nothing with me except for 8 of our neighbors who had no basement to run to.  It was only later that Larry shared with me about taking his wallet, cell phone, etc... and I shared that I had thought about taking pictures downstairs with me but that was all, just a thought.  I can replace a wallet, a cell phone, car keys, the roof to my house, a car, a check book.  Even those who lost these things will eventually do the same.  However, it is for their photographs for which I grieve for them the most.  Those cherished little momentos that mean absolutely nothing to most anyone else, but the very world to some mother, some daddy, some grandparent.  My heart breaks for them now even though most probably haven't even had something as mundane as a photograph cross their mind while they are in the fight of their life just trying to get a roof over their head.  But I've been thinking about it for them and it makes me so sad because this is a loss that no All State or State Farm can replace.

If I was a magician I would snap my fingers and begin photographing every child who was affected by this terrible storm and begin a new collection of pictures for the families who have none.  Children have relatively short attention spans and someone with a camera would produce smiles that would never detect the hurts and shock from the past Wednesday.  If I was a magician I would produce photos to make any mother proud.  Unfortunately I'm no magician and it would take a thousand photographers with a thousand cameras to get the job done. But maybe I can help one. Or maybe even two.  I know that this is such a small small thing in the grand scheme of things but they say that it takes a village to raise a child and right now the village has gone the way of Humpty Dumpty.  If I could help to spackle over just one of Humpty Dumpty's broken parts...could I make some mother smile again?

Where's Jesus?

If you know me well you've already heard this before and if you know me less then you'll be educated.  I do not care for holidays.

While Mother's day is the "holiday" for which I hone my sharpest darts (this blog will come later with much spit and vinegar) with Christmas following a close second I suppose that Easter will slide in to third safely.  These "holidays" are little more than man-made efforts to get me to buy greeting cards, flowers, gifts that I can't afford and marshmallows that have been shaped in to everything but the Mona Lisa.  I guess the Easter season has my motor running faster than Steppenwolf's  and I'm having to look in the mirror to see my own guilty face staring back because I've got a huge shopping bag full of everything for Easter that is not Jesus.  I've got chocolate rabbits and chocolate footballs and marshmallow peeps and stuff from Bath and Body Works for my daughter-in-law's basket.  I've got skittles and starbursts for the boys and a chocolate covered something or other for Larry.  I've got a little scented candle and some lip gloss for my mother (actually it was a buy one get one free at B&BW so mother is going to be the recipient of the free part along with some little snicker bars and bright pink peeps.)   I've got plastic eggs that look like little animals from Noah's ark so do I get points for that? Of course not. I've got Reece's Pieces in a plastic  bag that's shaped like a big carrot; I'm not sure who will get those yet.  I've got everything but Jesus in the basket.

Have you ever stopped to wonder what Jesus must think about us when He looks down at His creation and all he sees is us standing 10-deep in line at Walmart with our pre-lit Christmas trees and tinsel and stuffed bunnies and plastic baskets so that we can celebrate HIS BIRTH AND RESURRECTION? Have you taken a look around when you are trying to decide if you want milk chocolate or dark to see if there was virtually any sign of why we are celebrating?  I know that some stores will throw Him a sop by having a token Nativity scene or two squeezed in between the Disney stockings and dancing Santas but at Easter you are not even going to find a token in your major stores; although I will have to say that at the dollar store I saw chocolate praying hands...I even bought two of them  but when you think about it even that carries the scent of clever marketing to get my dollar.  Chocolate praying hands?  I've even seen chocolate crosses and that just about takes me to a level of hypocracy that I am not comfortable with.  The Jesus that I know did not die to be commemorated with a chocolate cross.  We have sanitized these so-called "holidays" until they are so far from the truth that if we were to discover a civilization in the deepest, darkest jungles of somewhere, anywhere, that had never heard of Christmas and Easter, and we brought them to America during one of those two shopping seasons do you think they would have even the remotest clue as to why all this "stuff" was displayed like carnival fare in the windows of our shopping establishments?  Sometimes I think that we have gotten so far away from what Christmas and Easter actually mean that even WE can't distinguish truth from fantasy.

I'm pretty sure that when we get to Heaven that there won't be any holidays celebrated, or, at least there won't be any dancing Santas or marshmallow peeps.  Sorry to disappoint you peep lovers but I just don't think they're going to make the cut at the table of plenty.  There will be a celebration all right, but it will be focused on Him alone, with none of the human trappings of plastic and goo that we have allowed our own personal Jesus to become buried in.  I'm sorry if this wasn't the Easter message that you would have expected in my blog--don't read it on Mother's Day unless you want your ears to sizzle.  I don't even want to think about it right now, that holiday just makes my pressure go up like a Roman candle.

Have a blessed Easter!  He is indeed risen and He loves you very much! (and yes, we will be eating peeps tomorrow...)

Bloom Where You are Planted

Driving past St Vincent's East one day last week I happened to notice a tall stand of cedar trees off on the right side of the road.  Doing a quick count I think there must have been five or six of them and you could tell that they had all been planted at the same time.  It looked like they had been placed there as a cover for some flaw in the landscape and were doing their job well.  However, one of them on the far end was as dead as a rock concert featuring chamber musicians and then one in the middle was about "half" dead.  As I passed on by I immediately began wondering what made the one die and another one trying to follow close behind.  I figure they'd been there for close to twenty years by now, probably put there when they built the hospital.  And they would have all received the same kind of care or lack of it, the same amount of rain and sun, the very same soil, the very same everything.  Yet, something, at some point, happened to make one of those trees die and another one to begin following in its own path of destruction.

Of course, being a person who is always looking for the "more" in something, more of an explanation than what I've been given (not quite to the level of those pesky White House reporters who pepper the president with their endless staccato of question marks but more closely to Alton Brown on "Good Eats") I began thinking about how those trees were such a telling commentary on our own personal existence today.  Like when Jesus spoke in easy-to-understand parables to the people who crossed His path such as the one about the farmer who planted the seeds and how they fared depending on where they landed (some dying immediately, some living but at the first sign of bad weather dying on the vine while some flourished) I think that we humans are basically no different, in this way, from those cedar trees or seeds.

If my purpose for being put here in the grand scheme of things is to be like one of those cedar trees and serve as a covering for some flaw in the landscape then so be it, God had that plan down pat for me before I even born (breech but that's another blog for another day.)  I know He wants us to be faithful and to bloom  no matter whether we're a cedar tree or a giant redwood sequoia right where we are...to bloom where we are planted.

Larry and Will's Excellent Adventure

Larry and Will were fortunate enough to be able to go to the practice round on Tuesday in Augusta at The Masters.  It really takes a lot to excite my husband but this was on "par" with a chocoholic being given the keys to the city in Hershey, Pennsylvania and being told to stay awhile.  He loves golf and has always wanted to make the pilgrimage to Augusta to the most famous golf course and tournament of all.  (I guess this is no different than the time that I went to Memphis  so that I could see Graceland; I mean I think it's a law or something that if you go to Memphis you've got to see Graceland at least once.)

The Masters was everything that Larry had hoped it would be.  He was able to see some of the top players in the world on a day when they could be more relaxed since they were only practicing and they played more to the crowd than they will as the week progresses.  Will took some beautiful pictures of the landscape and I'm sure they don't even do it justice.  It almost doesn't even look real; it kind of reminds me of the "Disney effect" that you get when you walk through The Magic Kingdom for the first time.

I think it's positively wonderful when people that you care for are able to cross something off their bucket list as having been done and at the same time making a memory with someone they love that will last long after the list gets tossed aside and forgotten.  Memories and pictures...some of my favorite things.

What's on your bucket list?

LuLu and Shady, Part Deux

• I cannot take credit for the follow posts via Facebook from my brother.  He is closer to the source than I am to the  "Cirque de Sha-Lu"" than I am.  Until LuLu's frenetic flock of Tasmanian devils depart on the 4th of April no one is safe.  America,  put up your china and nail down your furniture.
  
  "While enjoying a meal this evening at Cracker Barrell, Shady informed LuLu in between bites of his open face roast beef platter that "she" was just about "in trouble" with him. Lulu sneaked off to the local casino with her visiting nephew presumably to teach him the evils of gambling....didn't return until 1:30am to Shady's dismay. All of this being said while Shady's scratching off the last number of a losing lotto card and complaining that they must have changed cooks, cause the food just ain't as good as it used to be. Fine dining at its best".....Bro

  
  

  
  
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  "I knew it was only a matter of time...seems twin #1 cut it a little too close while racing through the house and caught a corner with the side of his head...yep you said it...emergency room for stitches....after it was all over and back at home, Shady complained 'my whole day was wasted and I ain't taking nobody else to the emergency room' "...Bro

  
  

  
  

  I have a feeling that it will be a cold day in, well, let's just say that it's going to be a cold day on the "great gray greasy mighty Limpopo" before Shady lets LuLu extend the right hand of hospitable friendship to any relatives from across the big pond to visit again.  It may take months for his blood pressure to crawl out of stroke level.