Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

[Image by Eric Yuen at Freerangestock.com]

I was struggling with what I should write this morning, but then just before daylight, it started to rain, and the sound of raindrops sprinkling the leaves made me stop thinking altogether and just listen.

I’ve always found nature to be a fine companion. Dave would laugh REALLY loud to hear me say that because he constantly tells me I don’t get outside enough. (He doesn’t know how much time I spend writing with the Story Shack doors wide open—my version of “outside” when I’ve got deadlines.)

When I was a kid, there was a big fallen tree at the edge of a cotton field behind my parents’ house. It was just below a little rise in the field, so you couldn’t see it from the house, which made it seem private. I called it my thinking tree and would climb up on the trunk to reflect on whatever life crises I had at 12 or so. There was something about the scent of that red dirt and the sound of a breeze stirring the hedgerow that made me feel like everything would work out somehow.

Back then, I loved to watch the sky turn purple and feel the big wind when a thunderstorm blew in. I still do, though I have a healthier respect for what weather can do now.

When it started to rain this morning, I remembered a song our choir used to sing. It’s by Hillsong: Holy Spirit, rain down, rain down; let Your power fall, let Your voice be heard, come and change our lives as we stand on Your Word.

Note to self regarding prayer life: Stop thinking and just listen. Let the Voice be heard.

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

[Holly image by Tomas Adomaitis @ Freerangestock.com]

This morning, as I did my best to follow setup instructions so an electronic gizmo would actually work out of the gift box, as I mentally calculated what time I need to be at the church fellowship and worked backward to the time my casserole needs to go in the oven and my hair needs to be dry . . . this thought ran through my head:  I’m too busy with Christmas to think about it.

That’s when I decided it was time to put everything down and head for the Story Shack. The grits casserole can wait. The hair can be “Suzied up,” as Mama says, if I don’t have time to do anything with it. For now, I’m listening to the rain and enjoying the string lights in my picture window.

And I’m remembering a Christmas years ago when I asked my Aunt Patsy if she could help me find “that Christmas Scripture about Jesus being called the Prince of Peace.” I thought she might have to look for it. Aunt Patsy didn’t have to look for anything in the Bible. She knew it too well and immediately pointed me to Isaiah:

For unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given:
and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God,
The everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6

I don’t know why, but I always seem to linger on “Prince of Peace.” Maybe that’s because I feel like humans have managed to turn a celebration of the Prince of Peace into something decidedly un-peaceful, with jam-packed calendars and to-do lists and a million trips to Publix and Winn Dixie. I don’t say this from a peaceful pedestal, looking down on all you busy people:) I’m the world’s worst at Christmas overload.

But it’s so important to stop, to reflect, to feel. To experience the peace of Christmas, which comes from God’s gift of love and grace and forgiveness. In his book The Reason For God, Tim Keller writes: “The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me.”

Christmas is the beginning of the end—an end to our fear of death and the tribulations of the world. And it’s the beginning of true peace.

Peace, love, and the light of Christ to you this Sunday morning.

The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace; 
Where there is hatred, let me sow love; 
Where there is injury, pardon; 
Where there is doubt, faith; 
Where there is despair, hope; 
Where there is darkness, light; 
And where there is sadness, joy. 

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console; 
To be understood, as to understand; 
To be loved, as to love; 
For it is in giving that we receive, 
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, 
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. 
Amen.

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

This is one of those mornings I wish I could hold onto. It’s quiet and cold and foggy outside, but the Story Shack is toasty warm. Before the overcast sky brightened up enough to show the neighborhood, I could see Christmas lights twinkling from the house across the street but not much else. Windchimes hanging from a metal peacock on the Story Shack porch are still. For a few minutes, Cheeto stared out a long window, studying the movements of a bird in the azalea bushes, but he was too lazy and warm to even paw at the door—his signal for me to open it—let alone give chase. He quickly returned to his nap chair. Dave slept soundly through it all.

A lull in the action—that’s what we’re enjoying this morning. And I do love a good lull. Last weekend was crazy busy, and I got almost no sleep. This weekend, I stayed home, intending to chill, but that only made me acutely aware of the disaster area our guest room has become, so I finally tackled it, which took most of the afternoon. I fell asleep early, as usual, and when morning rolled around, I decided to just be still for a little while. (Cheeto has absolutely no problem being still for a while, “a while” meaning most of the day.)

I never thought about it before, but some of my favorite Christmas songs have an element of stillness to them—“In the Bleak Midwinter,” “O Holy Night,” “Silent Night” . . . Something world-changing—soul-changing—had happened that night, but for a moment, there was a pause—a lull after one long journey ended and another was just about to begin.

A prayer this morning for moments of stillness and reflection, for quiet, foggy mornings when the warmth inside keeps the cold world at bay, and we feel truly thankful for the sanctuary we often take for granted.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

This is one of THOSE holiday weekends—way too much to do in way too little time. It’s my last weekend with my third book, so it’s now or never to make any big changes. We have the only dark house in a cluster of festive ones, all lit up for Christmas. Amazon boxes coming and going. Busiest week of the year at work, likely beginning tomorrow.

Dave says I probably, seriously, really, really need to slow down.

So I took a break from everything yesterday afternoon to toss some icicle lights over the picture window and set up our Nativity in a new spot—in front of the window, on a trunk that Dave made.

Just looking at it makes me calm. My heart rate and blood pressure seem to drop a few notches. And I give myself permission to just “be still and know.”

Last week, I reconnected with a dear friend from my Baylor days. She sings with a choir called Bel Canto Company, whose music is so beautiful. Sharing a little of it this morning and wishing you the peace and joy of the first Christmas this season.

(P.S. Love you, Anne!)

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

I guess this big football weekend has me thinking back to my time on The Plains. As an only child who had never been anywhere, I had a rough adjustment to college. But once I got over that hump, my Auburn years were some of the happiest of my life—final exams notwithstanding. (That's me and my big hair, studying on the steps of the apartment Missey and I shared around 1983 or 84.)

During those first trying weeks, I thought that if I could ever get myself situated and satisfied in college, then everything would be easy. But that wasn’t true. What happens when you love the home you left and grow to love the one you’ve come to is that you’re always missing somebody. You’re always telling somebody goodbye—either your friends when you go home or your family when you return to school.

That’s a pattern that followed me for years. Good things always seemed to come with partings—leaving home for Auburn, leaving Auburn for Baylor, leaving Baylor for my first job (back at Auburn), leaving again for what would become my career in Birmingham . . . It was actually a relief to travel with Southern Living photographers who struggled with the same dilemma—that we couldn’t do the work we loved without leaving the people we loved, at least for a little while. The flip side, of course, is that we met people and explored places that stayed with us always. (That’s the thing about great stories—they never really leave you. Maybe that’s why I love them so much.)

We’ve entered a season of partings and reunions—Christmas Eve with one side of the family and Christmas Day with the other; college students coming home for Christmas break and returning to their friends after the holidays.

It's much bigger than that, of course. A Father and Son temporarily parted. A birth to overcome death. A promise of homecoming and reunion.

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: 1-4