Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

“Well, what was all that for?” Ever ask yourself that question? Ever wonder about the purpose behind your circumstances? The final page proofs for Missing Isaac came in the mail recently—the last time I’ll see my book before it goes to press, and the last time I’ll have any control over what happens to it. I guess that has prompted a little soul searching: What was all that for?

I’ve dreamed of having a novel published as along as I can remember. Now that my dream is coming true, I’m pondering the why. Why was that my dream? Lightning could strike, it could sell like crazy, and Dave and I could be off to a beach house. Then again, maybe not. Maybe our financial life won’t change at all. And that’s okay. Because I wasn’t thinking about a beach house when I sat down and started writing. I was just escaping from the havoc that the recession wreaked on my workplace, my home away from home. But the more I wrote, the more my story became not just an escape from the negative but a positive source of joy that I looked forward to every day. The joy was in the telling.

Sometimes, the means is the end, and the purpose of what we’re doing is, at least for now, the experience of doing it. That’s a hard notion for me to accept. I always want to skip ahead to the next chapter and see how it’s all going to turn out. But that just creates a distraction from the here and now, from whatever we’re supposed to be experiencing in the moment and whatever we’re supposed to be learning from it.

I think that has been one of the lessons of returning to Southern Living (in my advanced years). I’m way too old to think about career building or to strategize my five-year plan. I don’t care any more about promotions or the size of my office. I just want to do interesting work in a positive environment (with health insurance). When I first went back, I suffered mightily with anxiety. And my mother kept telling me, “You spent your whole working life there, and now you’ve come back after everything has changed—you’re not going to feel at home overnight. Take it one day at a time.” She was right, of course. And I was still trying to skip ahead to the next chapter.

Here and now. One day at a time. No skipping ahead. Got it.

Sunday Morning Serenity

I can’t tell you how many times recently that one of my female friends has said to me, “I’m beginning to think I’m in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.” They have my complete sympathy because I’ve said it myself.

Why did I come into this room? Where did I leave my car keys? Did I tell you this story already? Have you seen my iPhone? Help me look for my keys . . .

(I don’t think I’ve heard that from any men. Gentlemen, do you get fuzzy brain, too?)

Hoping none of us will actually have to deal with such a painful illness as Alzheimer’s. I’ve watched dear friends take that journey with their parents.

I think we’re most likely just struggling with (cover you ears, ladies) our age and the crazy times we live in. Then again, I remember my maternal grandmother saying that she wished she could quiet her mind at night so she could sleep. Her head was a swirl just like mine.

One of my Facebook friends recently posted something like, “Almost everything that stops working will start working again if you just unplug it for a while—and that includes you.” We all need to stop the swirl and unplug from time to time. I struggle with that. Even on my morning walk today, I realized that I was mentally going over a conversation I had with a freelancer and figuring out how I was going to meet all my deadlines next week. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting outside and breathing the fresh (albeit humid) air.

My cousin posted an animated message about people who say things like “you’re just a mom.” The animation started with a woman calmly walking along, but as one thing after another got thrown at her, she sprouted extra arms like an octopus, each one taking on a new family issue that needed to be handled.

Whether we’re juggling kids, work projects, parents, or bills (maybe all of the above), we all need to give ourselves permission to unplug from time to time. Wishing for you serene, unplugged moments this week.

These things I have spoken unto you,
that in me ye might have peace.
In the world ye shall have tribulation:
but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

John 16:33

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

As I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed last week, I spotted a picture of my friend Jennifer’s little boy reading his New Testament. It reminded me of two things: (1) My own woefully lax Bible scholarship of late. Call me sometime and I’ll give you all my excuses. (2) The Bibles I’ve owned throughout my life.

Remember that song from Vacation Bible School—The B-i-b-l-e, yes that’s the book for me . . .”

My first Bible looked a lot like the one Jennifer’s son was holding. It was a little white New Testament. Then I graduated to a “big Bible.” It was also white, with a zipper around the cover. And it had illustrations. One page had the words “Though your sins be as scarlet.” Next to it was a page that looked like red cellophane, and when you laid the red page over the other one, you could no longer see those scarlet sins—just the words “They shall be as white as snow.” Just like that. Cover your sins in red and they go away.

There was a red NIV Bible, a large black King James, and most recently, a study Bible my parents gave me one Christmas a few years back. I should donate all but one of them to a library, but I can’t seem to do that. They’re like stones marking my journey, and part of me needs to look back on them now and again.

I remember childhood Bible drills and Scripture passages we all had to memorize and boys in my Sunday School class who would race to see who could say John 3:16 the fastest. But my first grown-up favorite Scripture was a passage I stumbled onto as a teenager, when I was grappling with moments of doubt and confusion. I’ve come back to it again and again over the years:

Let not your heart be troubled:
ye believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father's house are many mansions:
if it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again, and receive you unto myself;
that where I am, there ye may be also.

John 14:1-3

What’s your sustaining Scripture? Revisit it with a spirit of peace and gratitude this Sunday morning.

[Image by James R. Gray at freerangestock.com]

Sunday Morning Serenity

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably
more than all we ask or imagine,
according to his power that is at work within us,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
throughout all generations,
for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21 (NIV)

I went to Biblegateway.com this morning to look for a completely different Scripture passage, but the one above was their verse of the day. I took that as a sign, a divine “light bulb moment,” if you will. And here’s why.

When I was in college, I used to joke with my friends about the way Mama’s brain worked where I was concerned. If I were five minutes late calling to let her know I had made it safely back to Auburn, she never thought, “I’ll bet traffic was heavy and she’s running a little late.” No. Her mind went in this direction: “She hasn’t called. She’s been hit by a train. Send out a search party.”

You know what’s coming. I’m the exact same way. I have a tendency to expect disaster. This weekend, my laptop completely froze—the laptop I was clinging to because my office computer had already gone haywire. I arrived early for my appointment at the Apple Genius Bar. Why? So I could shop for a new laptop because I was certain mine was a goner. But a kind young man named Parker had me up and running again in about 15 minutes. (Thank you, Parker.) It took the press of a few buttons to fix what I was certain was unsalvageable.

On a much grander scale: I’m researching World War II for a new project, and I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ documentary The War. There’s no way a bunch of untested boys from the Grain Belt, the Bible Belt, and every other corner of America could stand up to battle hardened troops from Europe and Asia. But they did. Or that women who had devoted their lives to making a home, raising children, and cooking three squares a day could build airplanes and pack parachutes. But they did. Or that little kids could help with salvage efforts and make a game of gathering scrap metal for the war machine. But they did.

There’s no way. If those words are swirling in your head—whatever your challenge might be—douse them with the promise of Ephesians. God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.”

Sunday Morning Serenity

I’ve been researching World War II for a new project and ran across two amazing books by the late Eugene B. Sledge, a Mobile native who taught at the University of Montevallo after serving as a marine on the front lines at Peleliu and Okinawa. With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa is a graphic, detailed account of combat in the Pacific, while China Marine recounts Dr. Sledge’s post-war duty in China and the friendship with a local family that helped him transition from fighting for his life almost every day to returning home.

Combat marines weren’t allowed to keep a journal, so he wrote in the margins of a Bible he carried with him onto the battlefield, never recording anything that would give away military strategy but focusing on the daily (and nightly) experience of life in a foxhole—through mud and torrential rain and tropical heat. Many years later, after he married, had a family, and became a college professor, Dr. Sledge turned those notes from his Bible into a narrative, intended only for his family, but his wife encouraged him to get it published.

Some sections of With the Old Breed were too hard for me to even read, and I can’t imagine living through the horrors that Dr. Sledge describes. He says that when he came home, the one thing he never got over, or stopped resenting, was hearing Americans back home complain—that their coffee wasn’t hot enough or the line at the restaurant was too long. He could never reconcile what American soldiers went through to protect the rest of us with what he saw as “whining.” Dr. Sledge himself never stopped feeling grateful for what he considered a tremendous luxury: dry socks.

Duly noted. Quit your whining, Val.

I’ve always wondered how military troops keep from being afraid when they go into battle. Dr. Sledge’s answer: They don’t. He writes of the sheer terror he felt, day and night, sometimes for weeks on end during protracted fighting. Being a good marine, he says, isn’t a matter of being fearless but of finding a way to control your fear, to move forward and do what you have to do despite your fear. For Dr. Sledge, that meant praying on the battlefield and mentally reciting the 23rd Psalm: The Lord is my shepherd . . .

Lesson 2: We shouldn’t feel alone in our fears. Everybody’s afraid at one time or another. But at the same time, we can’t let fear stop us from fulfilling our mission in life, whatever it might be.

This Fourth of July, I’ll be more grateful than ever for the freedom we enjoy and for every service man and woman who is far from home, keeping our home safe.

[Image by Chance Agrella @ freerangestock.com]