Content about Positively Speaking

The exercises where one writes personal bits of one’s history on paper and burns them wasn’t appropriate. I had a lovely new life and was struggling with where to put the pieces of my old life. I’d raised four kids, been married for twenty three years, spent fifteen years preparing for the pastorate, and three years actually pastoring, with little if anything to show for it, or so I thought.

 Facebook memories tells me this time last year the great siege had taken over. The notation reads “Eye treatment on top of flu relapse....hot compresses on my chest...” Eight days later I found out it was not ‘flu relapse’, it was pneumonia.

Seriously, Google Analytics. Copy and paste code onto each of my web pages??!! I was raised in the era when Weekly Reader declared that three mice had returned from space alive. What are you thinking I am capable of doing??!!
And yet...by week’s end I’ll bet I will find it, the knowledge.

There are exactly two chimes of the clock before the Nutcrackers start to sing, all kinds of Nutcrackers. There are ones dressed in fisherman slickers, and plaid shirts. Some look like Troll Dolls with green hair. The trick is to get the mute button on before they start to sing. It’s the same with the dog’s eyes. The minute you see the eyes, you have to descend that volume pretty quickly. Ahh...the joy of Christmas ads. If Jesus had been born today, somebody would have set up shop outside the stable to sell tickets and selfies with the Holy Family.

“Pieces of April” and “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” are must haves in my Thanksgiving traditions.  At some point, in the coming days, I will watch both of them. They will both make me feel hopeful for humanity and grateful for all I have. They are stories of people with little, who find out they have much.

Waterfall cardigans are a wonderful invention of the fashion industry. With long billowy, front tails and a back that extends only to the waistline, they flatter every shape and size. The architecture of the design is such that it can be expressed in all weights of cloth from heavy to light. Again, wonderful. Fabulous.

 “There’s the mother”, she whispered loudly enough I could hear as she nodded her head to me. The couple next to me paced in place with artificial ease. “It’s OK” the husband said to the wife rubbing her shoulders as we all waited in line. Only I wasn’t “the mother”, the abusive mother. I had been the kind, loving mother and the agitated couple were vexed over something that had never happened.

That was my daily existence for twenty two years. At least once a day, everywhere I went in the little village.

The skid strip on top was well worn and the wheels were larger than normal. That’s what I noticed as the skateboard easily slipped into the empty spot between my feet and the wall on which I sat.

He looked at me, eager to retrieve the apparatus meant only to increase speed and agility, but willing to defer to a reprimand if this unknown woman so chose to offer.

With my best, “I love kids” smile, I reassured him, ‘No worries”, I said as he reached under my legs to grab it before the air was empty of my words.

Dateline: Family Camp, Camp Burton 2015

Does it bother anyone else? Those little puddles of water around a public sink that are great breeding ponds of bacteria and icky stuff. They really bother me. It’s such an easy thing to just take that paper towel when you’re done drying your hands and swipe around the sink for the next person.

Then, it seemed like my parents idea to go to Michigan was born of a desire to be in the best place possible for summers. Every year, for seventeen years, the pilgrimage to Grandma and Grandpa Anderson and Grandad and Grandma Richards was made. It began with a seventeen hour drive thru categorized by the seven tunnels, Indiana and ‘up to Kalamazoo. Drivers switched off at two hour intervals. First my mom and dad, then when my brothers were older, them too. Finally, me.

Orange construction fencing loosely waved in an effort to remain standing around the parcel of land. A crudely created sign designating an unsafe area inside the fence and warding off potential looky-lous, was stabbed into the earth at one end of the property. The little house in which I had attended so many holidays and family meals, the TV always on despite any event, the altar to Thalia carefully placed on the mantel over the fireplace, was gone. Now, not only was she in heaven, but her parents as well.

Sunshine helps. So does rest. But even on cloudy days filled with fatigue, the resiliency persists.  Bliss and happiness continue in deep and meaningful ways. The Grand Adventure continues so fruitfully there are not enough hours in the day or days in the week. Were it not that I love what I’m doing, I might be called a workaholic.