Dec27

Happy Birthday #60, Mama!

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Me and Mama when I was in 5th Grade.

Me and Mama when I was in 5th Grade.

Today has been my beloved Mama’s sixtieth birthday. She completed her sixth decade in spite of fighting a terrible battle with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD that saw her hospitalized for two weeks with two bouts that left her very near death’s door. More than once, I thought I was going to lose her.

Anyone who has known me more than an hour will know how much Mama means to me. She has been the one guiding star and constant throughout my life. Some people take being called a “mama’s boy” as an insult, but I’ve worn it as a badge of pride all my days.

One facet of our relationship that’s made our bond so strong is for many years at many times, we were all each other had. Mama and Daddy separated when I was five and finalized the divorce when I was eight. Today, people don’t think much about divorces but at that time (1977) in such a small town, I was the only one of my friends who entered kindergarten with divorced parents. Of course, by the time we graduated high school, several of my friends joined me on the Split Up Family Express, and I found out later I’d gone to school with other divorced kids, but I didn’t know any of them as friends so it wasn’t a great help to me.

The divorce was hard — way hard — on Mama. People didn’t know nearly as much about depression and its effects in those days as they do now. I have an early memory of sitting on her lap with her sobbing uncontrollably and I put my hands up to her face and said, “I’ll take care of you, Mommy.” Today, 35 years later, when she has an anxiety attack and starts smothering, I still put my — now much bigger — hands around her face and say, “I’ll take care of you, Mommy.”

What a lot of people don’t understand about Mama and me is how much I’ve felt her sacrifice throughout my life. In the picture of us on this page, I’m in 5th grade so Mama would’ve been about 28, which isn’t too old to start over by any scale and as you can plainly see, she was a beautiful woman. She had numerous suitors vying for her affection, but she always brought me out immediately in the conversation and any man who balked hit the bricks. She had more than one man of wealth who would have loved to marry her and make her life much simpler and easy, but she always put me before herself and my happiness before hers so she never took that risk. Security was one of the wonderful gifts Mama gave me.

Of all the things Mama gave me, though, the greatest was her faith. Mama gave her life to the Lord when I was barely three and it guides her still. I have a crystal clear memory of being six years old. It was summer. We were in the first trailer Daddy and Mama had bought and put on the homeplace in Gray Court where Mama still lives. I was playing in the floor in the living room putting together Lego blocks and I heard Mama crying in her bedroom down the hall. Like I always did when I heard Mama crying, I went to be beside her, but when I got to her bedroom door something made me stop. Mama was kneeling at the foot of the bed with her head resting on an open bible, sobbing. Through the tears, I could make out one sentence over and over, “I can’t raise him alone; You have to help me. He belongs to You, not me.”

Folks, I’ll be as honest as I know how. I’ve done a multitude of things I won’t mention. I’ve been a terrible person. I’ve been drunk, high, and stoned out of my mind. I’ve hurt people and been hurt myself, but no matter where I’ve been; what I’ve been through, or what I’ve done, I’ve never been able to get that scene out of my mind. More than anything else in this entire messed up life of mine, the reason I believe there is a God, a man called Jesus, and a place called Heaven is they’ve lived in my mother’s eyes since I was three years old.

One day, maybe sooner, maybe later, I’ll stand beside a pink casket over an empty grave next to Papa John’s in Cannon Memorial Gardens. I’ll read the 23 Psalm and the 31st Chapter of Proverbs before I say a prayer for Mama’s soul, and while I am completely certain my heart will be broken into shards t0o many and too fine to number, I’ll have the knowledge that I will see her again. Until then, however, I’ll cherish every moment with her.

I love her. She’s my Mama.

Love all of you, too! Keep those feet clean.

Dec25

And So This Is Christmas

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A_Christmas_CarolI just finished watching my favorite version of A Christmas Carol. In this rendition, Captain Jean Luc Picard plays the part of Scrooge and brings such a weightiness and excellent acting to the part that I tape the version each year to watch on Christmas Eve. As I told a friend of mine while chatting on Facebook tonight, I believe Dickens’ novella is the greatest story of a man finding redemption to be had outside the pages of the Bible. He starts the movie a hard-hearted miserly old . . . well, SCROOGE, but four ghosts later, he is a changed man who knows the meaning of Christmas isn’t presents or even family. The true meaning of Christmas is redemption.

Scrooge can find redemption for the same reason we all can, because a little over two thousand years ago, God was born in the flesh to a teenage virgin girl huddled with her betrothed in a dank odoriferous cave converted into a makeshift stable behind a cheap motel in the backwater town of Bethlehem in the equally backwater region of Palestine. That girl then wrapped God — creator of the Universe — in clean, but frayed cloths and laid Him in a feed trough and probably sang Him to sleep. Royal robes to old rags; angelic choir to a mother’s lullaby. All so that He could undo the tremendous mess His most prized creation had gotten the world into. He came as a baby with one purpose in sight — to die on a cross and save the world. Everyone born WILL die; He was born TO die . . . and save us all.

Atheists, scientists, other religions’ leaders down the centuries have tried to disprove that teenage girl ever had a child named Jesus. They’ve tried through time to say He never existed, and when they failed in that, they tried to say He existed, but He wasn’t God. I think they’ve failed at that as well.

See, the name of the holiday (holiday = holy day) is Christmas. Literally, that means Mass of Christ. Now I’m not going into all the theological historical arguments about Christmas being a usurpation of the pagan Saturnalia and Jesus not being born in December. I know all of those arguments and if you insist on hashing them out, give me an email in the comments and we’ll talk. Now, back to the name. A mass is a celebration so Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s right there in the name.

The name isn’t “Toymas.”

It’s not “Santamas”

It’s not “Treemas” or “Partymas” or “Frostymas.”

It’s not called “Shoppingmas” or “Retailmas” or “Giftmas.”

We don’t sing about “O Shopping Night” or “The First Black Friday.”

We don’t because no matter how much the rising tide of secularization tries to wash away anything Christian to do with Christmas, they haven’t thought to change the name. They’ve tried a time or two. Years ago it started with “Seasons’ Greetings” and today the most PC among us go with “Happy Holidays” (again:  holiday = holy day). Christmas is still on the calendar though. The name of the Federal holiday (holy day) is “Christmas” and not “Winter Holiday.”

The Roman Empire was one of the mightiest political entities ever. They tried to kill the holiday in the womb and stamp out Christianity, but they couldn’t get it done. Neither could Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, or Mao and they ALL had more power than any of our Presidents have ever possessed.

Every gift you run around buying? You are constantly reenacting a central part of the Christmas story — the Magi bringing gifts to the Christ child. Every scrap of “holiday” music you listen to from Halloween to December 26th? Reenacting the angelic host announcing to the shepherds the birth of the Christ child. Wrapping all those gifts? Just like Mary wrapped our ultimate gift.

So try to stamp it out. Try to humbug it like Scrooge did, but at the end of it all, despite the best efforts of generation after generation of genuises, the message of Christmas is still Christ is Born. To quote the greatest showman wrestler of all time, Mr. Richard Fleer, aka Ric “The Nature Boy” Flair, “Whether you LIKE it, or DON’T LIKE it, sit down and LOOK at it, because it’s the best thing going today!”

Can I get a “whooooo?”

Love y’all, keep those feet clean, and Merry Christmas.

 

Dec20

It’s Already Tomorrow in Australia

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It seems reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated!

It seems reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated!

As I’m writing this, folks who slept in all around Southeast Asia are just crawling bleary-eyed out of bed and on their side of the International Date Line, it’s already Friday, December 21, 2012 and the BBC, MSNBC, and FoxNews are all reporting nothing of consequence is happening across the Pacific. So, it looks like 12-21-12 is going to join a long and distinguishedly infamous list of other dates under the heading of “Days the Apocalypse Didn’t Come.”

I know some people are seriously disappointed. I don’t mean “fake disappointed,” either. Some folks are probably sitting around scratching their heads in real consternation wondering where all the earthquakes and meteors are or what happened to Nibaru? I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised to hear some disturbed individuals will have committed suicide by the time 12-21-12 makes it all the way around the globe. Echo and the Bunnymen said it best, “People are strange.”

I never seriously considered the world ending today. I still owe money and haven’t hit the lottery. If you ever see me on TV holding up one of those funny, oversized PowerBall checks, THEN you should probably make preparations because I’m willing to bet if I ever get rich, the game is going to end. That’s just my luck.

In the interest of some vein of seriousness though, any thinking person should have realized the world wasn’t going to end on this specific day. First, look at the problem scientifically. The Universe couldn’t care less about dates. The idea of dates — as well as most other divisions of time — are human inventions. “Tomorrow” or “next century” don’t have any meaning to planetary forces like earthquakes. Comets don’t punch time clocks. Any scientific end-of-the-world scenario hitting on a particular date is simply the wildest of consequences. The Universe just doesn’t have a calendar.

Secondly, from a theological standpoint, God doesn’t have a calendar. Neither does Allah or any of the other myriad gods man has worshipped over the millenia. Time doesn’t matter to an eternal being. God will end the world if and when He gets good and ready and not before. A being who exists OUTSIDE of time has no need of specific dates so anyone trying to pin a date down is just flirting with disappointment.

We petty human peons are the only creatures on the planet things like the page on a calendar or hands on a clock mean anything to. Animals go by seasons and the sun and natural rhythms. Tides have no time, but only the pull of the Moon and the Sun. We alone fret over our arbitrary conventional invention.

So get over it and go shopping, people. Christmas is only four days away! Go on. Occupy yourselves some other way until the next big prediction comes along. But until then,

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Geez, people, you took our lands, you took our gold, you took our way of life . . . can't you take a freaking joke? Just turn to the next calendar page!!

Freaking A, people, you took our lands, you took our gold, you took our way of life . . . can’t you take a freaking joke? Just turn to the next calendar page!!

Dec14

Let Us Join With Rachel As She Weeps

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Rachel weeping I was all prepared to write something funny or something Christmasy as would befit the season, but this morning’s events in Connecticut have jolted me from that path and brought new sadness as well as sadness of memory to what should be the most wonderful time of the year. Earlier this morning, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza went into his mother’s 20-year-old Adam Lanza entered a kindergarten classroom in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, shot and killed his mother, and opened fire on the children. All we know for certain at the moment is 18 children — all under age ten — are dead along with eight of their teachers. Those numbers could rise. Lanza’s mother was found dead later.

This hurts me on more levels than I can adequately express. For one, I was a high school teacher in the black days of Columbine and the spate of copycat killings which followed. My colleagues and I talked about little else during that awful period because we were completely aware it could easily happen to us. We all knew students — TAUGHT students — who were ticking time bombs whom we were powerless to help. I must have run over an attack scenario in my mind hundreds of times. I even set up my classroom to provide maximum cover for students should someone think the unthinkable. The school supposedly had a plan; I know I did and I told my students if they heard gunshots they only had to remember one instruction, “follow Coach Wham.” My children knew how seriously I took the phrase in loco parentis and if anyone was getting shot, it would be me or over my dead body.

As someone who struggles with mental issues of my own, I also hurt because I KNOW this young man had to be mentally disturbed in some way, shape or form. Normal, well-adjusted people do not kill innocent babies in cold blood; they simply don’t; not even in wartime. That’s why the epithet of “baby killer” is one of the most terrible insults anyone can spew at a soldier. I have no idea what will eventually come to light, but I’m willing to bet someone somewhere is thinking right now “I KNEW this was going to happen. I saw all the signs.” I know what it feels like to cry out for help in all the wrong ways and to feel so helplessly out of control and at the mercy of my own mind. I’m just thankful that my anger has always turned inward because I can’t imagine doing something like this on the worst unmedicated day I’ve ever had, but at the same time I ache terribly for someone so consumed he could find no other means towards peace than this massacre which ended with him taking his own life.

This tragedy disturbs me and angers me as well because I am a gun owner and a gun supporter, but I know it won’t be long until some politician tries to make a name for himself by leading a crusade against firearms. First of all, it makes me want to puke whenever I see some little political worm making political hay out of a tragedy like this. It cheapens the deaths of these innocents and it paints even more innocent people with an unfairly broad brush. I will soon be 42 and been around guns all my life, but I have yet to see one that could act of its own free will. Legislators can ban anything they want but until they can ban evil and hatred from the human heart they don’t have a chance of stopping violence because laws do not affect people who have no intention of following the laws in the first place.

Most of all, however, this awful episode deeply saddens me as a Christian. I know, as surely as I know stop signs are red, people are going to start throwing out expressions like “Where’s this ‘God’ of yours now?” They’ll ask, “How could a God who’s supposed to love us let this happen to CHILDREN?” They’ll claim, “I’ll never follow or believe in a God who is powerless to stop this kind of evil.” And it will go on and on. Atheists like Richard Dawkins have a field day whenever a tragedy like this occurs because they point at it as proof God doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, too many people won’t look for answers and will believe this wrong thinking.

Where was God? He was where He’s always been — sitting on the throne of Heaven completely aware of everything that has ever happened, is happening, or ever will happen from eternity past to eternity future. The hard truth is, God knew this was going to happen before the plan ever became a thought in the poor deranged gunman’s mind. What so many people fail to realize is “knowing” something isn’t the same as “causing” something.

So, why does God “let” these things happen? That’s a have your cake question. Sure, God can “make” His creations (that’s us) do whatever He wants us to do, but that’s a one way street. Make us do something once, we’ll be made to do everything forever. It’s free will. We all praise and love the idea of “freedom” and “free will” but most of us don’t want to acknowledge the fact that “freedom” means just that — and if we’re free to do good; we’re also free to do otherwise. Without free will, we would never have anything like school shootings, but we’d never have anything like the Mona Lisa or the Empire State building either. Free will is all about choices and in order to free us to make good choices, God had to acknowledge some of us would make bad choices. We can’t have our cake and eat it too.

Finally, let me say one thing to those who can’t believe God could allow / do something like this AND to all the parents who lost their precious children in this horrible tragedy, God understands EXACTLY how you feel. He is a parent. He had an only child too — a son actually — who was also killed by hate filled, unfeeling men, with one important difference — God DID allow His Son to be killed. God knew from eternity past that His only beloved son would die, and He knew He would STAND ASIDE and allow it to happen even as that Son begged His Father for rescue. God the Eternal, Perfect Father watched His son die so that we could live. I do not pretend to understand it, but I know it is so. So for all the parents and loved ones who lost children today, understand that you are understood by the One who catches your tears in a bottle. If you will reach out to Him, even in this darkest hour, you will find Him waiting to comfort you.

Dec8

Forget the Mayans; REAL Evidence of the Apocalypse

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Proof positive we are a country of lunatics.

Proof positive we are a country of lunatics.

Folks, lots of people out “there” are completely convinced the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. If correct, we’ve got about 15 days left to go. Personally, I think these guys have the facts straight, but that’s not the point of this post. I’m now convinced the world is coming to an end sooner than later and it’s not because an ancient (and dead) civilization brilliant enough to follow the stars but too dense to invent the wheel says so. I’m also not worried about the polar bears or the end of the Gulf Stream because we aren’t going to live long enough for that to happen. No, gentle readers, I am convinced the world is going to end before schedule because America, the land I love, has been taken over by bands of raving lunatics and, no, I don’t mean Republicans. I am talking about “collectors” in general and collectors of Hallmark “Keepsake” Ornaments in particular.

Budge and I buy a few ornaments from Hallmark each year before Christmas. We seldom buy more than three and we always buy at least one based around the year being prominently displayed. We’ve done this ever since we’ve been married and we’ve got a beautiful collection of ornaments for our tree. Now this year was the first season in four years we’ve put up our tree, and I’ll tell that story soon, but not now. In celebration, we splurged on a couple more ornaments than usual. Now understand, every ornament we have in our three Rubbermaid 55 Quart Snap Top Tubs goes on our tree. We don’t buy “extra” ornaments for an “investment” because they are “collectable.”  If I want an investment, they make these things called “stocks and bonds.” Unfortunately for our country, I may have to change that philosophy.

One ornament we picked up this year was a miniature replica of the “Moose Mug” prominently featured in the Christmas classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Any killjoy Scrooges in the crowd, please keep your comments to yourselves as I am well aware the movie contains crude humor and bright blue language; the fact is, I don’t care. The movie is hysterical and a lot closer to the modern American Christmas than It’s a Wonderful Life ever was. I also happen to know Christmas Vacation is the favorite Christmas movie of my 1st-cousin-in-law Ashley, who not only is one of the purest, sweetest, and most Christlike young women I know, but also happens to be married to my oldest 1st cousin, Zach who, despite his surroundings in his early years, is a youth pastor as well as the purest, sweetest, most Christlike young man. If Zach will allow Ash to watch the uncut Christmas Vacation DVD snorting with laughter, I refuse to feel guilty.

But I digress.

Two years ago, we bought the ornament memorializing the scene in the movie where Clark finally gets all the lights on his house to glow simultaneously. After hanging the moose mug right next to the Griswold house I got on eBay’s online auction site to see if I could find the other two ornaments in the “series” from Hallmark. In less than 30 seconds, I found over twenty of the first ornament in the group — Cousin Eddie’s RV, circa 2009. Once I saw what they were going for, I didn’t even bother looking for the station wagon with the huge Griswold Christmas tree strapped to the top.

The CHEAPEST “Cousin Eddie’s RV” listed was over $100 dollars! The one in the image at the top of this post was at $215 and the reserve price hadn’t been met. I saw MANY going for OVER $300. Please, read that again slowly. Three. Hundred. Dollars. For a hunk of plastic resin made and assembled in Sri Lanka.  A family in sub-Saharan Africa could live a year off what these people are willing to pay for a PLASTIC CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT THAT IS NOT EVEN FIVE YEARS OLD!!! It’s not like it’s a rare painting by one of the “Old Masters.” It’s a freaking ORNAMENT for a TREE.

Folks, I’m not going to go on and on about this because there’s really no need to. The evidence is plain. When we’ve reached the point where people line up to give $300 dollars OR MORE for a small chunk of painted plastic churned out by children in a sweatshop factory located in a country 97% of the people using eBay couldn’t find with a GPS, a globe, and Google Earth, we are beyond the point of no return; we have converted the movie Idiocracy from a wonky comedy to a documentary and made the late Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” a work of true prophecy.

We. Are. Doomed. and we deserve to be.

So, keep those feet clean for the time we’ve got left and remember I love y’all so take care of yourselves!

Dec2

Why I Still Believe: Reason 2

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Granny Wham on her last Christmas with us.

Granny Wham on her last Christmas with us.

Granny Wham started teaching Sunday School when she was 18 and only quit over 50 years later because a stroke left her too weak to stand long enough to deliver the weekly lesson. She started teaching Sunday School at Dials United Methodist Church down Highway 101 where she grew up, but the bulk of her teaching years were given to Beulah Baptist Church in Greenpond. By the time I was born, the Sunday School Committee honored her by naming a class after her. “The Martha Wham Bible Class” exists to this day unless it’s changed and no one told me.

Her teaching Sunday School, however, doesn’t force me to still believe the truth of Christianity even in my darkest times. Not her teaching, not the beautiful hymns she used to sing with the choir, not the way she taught me personally about what Jesus expected of me. None of that. What is burned in my mind and scribed on my heart from a childhood spent at her knee is her faith.

Granny Wham had the purest faith of any Christian — man or woman, adult or child, clergy or laity — I’ve ever known. She believed the Bible was the Word of God. It was black (and some red) words on white pages and gray didn’t enter the equation. Granny’s faith in God and His Son Jesus Christ was a rock solid, steel strong backbone for her whole life.

Granny didn’t develop her faith living some cupcake life on easy street. Of The Greatest Generation who came of age during the Great Depression, she worked in the house with her sister — my great-Aunt Mary — and in the fields with her two half-brothers, Uncle Gordon and Uncle Henry. When old enough, she worked in the sweatshop conditions of a textile mill for a time. Her childhood and youth weren’t easy, but her faith endured those hard early years.

Her faith endured watching those brothers go off to war, one to the Army and one to the shipyards. During that awful war she started exchanging letters with a nice young man from a nearby community. That nice (and handsome) young soldier eventually became Papa Wham and her faith and prayers helped bring him and all her loved ones home safely.

Her faith would not forsake her when Papa Wham came in to her hospital room late on a cold night in January 1948, gently took her by the hand and told her their precious infant child — a little girl she never got to hold — had passed away. I’ve lived to see the death of a child rip marriages to shreds and reduce the strongest faith to agnosticism, but it did not overcome Granny. She grieved, and in some very powerful ways, Aunt Judy’s death would mark Granny — and through her, all of us — for the rest of her life, but as the writer said of Job, “Through all this, [s]he never lost her integrity, nor blamed God foolishly.”

Granny’s faith endured some of worst trials through her other two children. Daddy especially was singled out for her unceasing prayers when he was sent to Vietnam for 13 months to fight. I’ve heard how drawn and pale and haggard Granny looked over those months of waiting, never knowing if the knock on the door would reveal an Army officer and a chaplain with the awful news so many mothers received in those terrible years. It wasn’t to be though, and Granny’s faith was rewarded with Daddy’s safe return.

The latter half of Granny’s life gave a multitude of trials. Mama and Daddy’s divorce was a crushing blow to Granny’s heart because is was bitter torture for her to see her family torn. Later, when my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Larry’s had to endure some growing pains in their early years, Granny prayed hard for them too. When Aunt Cathy was so very sick through two extremely difficult pregnancies, Granny stood by constantly to help and to pray. Of all Granny endured, however, one night nearly 20 years ago stands clearest testament to her trust in her Lord.

It was December 1995; Papa had passed away in July on the day after Granny suffered a stroke. For months she had battled to talk clearly and to walk unaided, but worst of all after 49 years — just 6 months shy of 50 — Granny was alone. This night, we’d eaten at Daddy and Teresa’s. I was on the couch with Budge and Granny watching The Trip to Bountiful which reminded me so much of what Granny had endured I was teary-eyed before the old hymn “Blessed Assurance” began to play.

I thought Granny might have dozed off until I heard a voice — not the strong alto that sang to me, read to me, and prayed for me all of my childhood and beyond — a thin voice, a tremulous voice, but for all that, a perfectly clear voice singing softly, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation; purchase of God. Born of His spirit; washing in His blood. This is my story; this is my song; praising my Savior all the day long; this is my story; this is my song; praising my Savior all the day long.” Laid low by a stroke, no longer independent, and bereft of the love of her life, Granny Wham still sang her praises to the One who had never forsaken her, Blessed Assurance truly was her story and her song.

Granny is gone  now. I wish she’d been peacefully at the home she and Papa built together, but in her last years, she required more care than we could give her. She was never happy in the nursing home, but her love of us kept her here until she missed Papa more than she needed to stay and “look after us.” So, with Aunt Cathy gently holding her hand she slipped away to join the loves of her life — Papa Wham and Jesus Christ, and that is why she is a powerful reason I still believe.

PurchasePurchasing – Purchasing refers to a business or organization attempting for acquiring goods or services to accomplish the goals of the enterprise. →

Nov22

Thanksgiving 2012

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I wanted to take the time this morning to ponder some of the many things I am thankful for. It’s been a tough year in many ways with Mama being so sick and other difficulties Budge and I have encountered and tried to overcome with varying degrees of success. Still, it is a poor, poor life indeed that has nothing to be thankful for and I happen to have plenty.

  • First of all, I am thankful Mama is still with us this Thanksgiving despite fighting COPD tooth and nail this entire year.
  • I’m thankful for all my family — the ones I was born with and the ones I’ve chosen and who have chosen me over the years.
  • I’m thankful for Budge and the nearly 18 years she’s deigned to put up with me.
  • I’m thankful all my furry babies are happy and healthy for another year.

Of course, everyone can be thankful for such wonderful things, but I’m thankful for some stuff others might not think of.

  • I’m thankful to live in a country where the Antichrist can be elected President and defeated for President in the same night.
  • I’m thankful to live in a country where people have the luxury of getting to act like complete fools over a bunch of young men chasing a tough little odd shaped pumpkin up and down a cow pasture.
  • I’m thankful I’ve never been shot at to be free, but I am eternally grateful for every man and woman who HAVE been shot at for my freedom.

I’ve got some things to be thankful for others may not need. I’m thankful that:

  • some scientist somewhere figured out how to isolate whatever makes bupropion and venlafaxine do what they do so I can have a chance at a normal life.
  • even though three of the four are gone on now, I had over twenty precious years with the most wonderful grandparents anyone could hope to have.
  • my beloved Papa Wham — who worked hundreds of 16+ hour days at his service station in Fountain Inn — didn’t have to see the day we’d pay for water in a bottle AND air from a pump.
  • my sweet nephew Stoney and my beautiful niece McKenzie Grace came into my life in this past year.
  • Logan and Caitlyn Brown aren’t my nephew and niece by blood, but by love and that’s all matters anyway.

Being a former librarian, I’ve got some strange things to be thankful for, such as being grateful that:

  • 75 years ago this year, a little Hobbit went on a great adventure and wrote about it in the Red Book of Westmarch.
  • Peter Jackson finally gets to put that Hobbit’s story on the big screen next month.
  • 50 years ago, a precious lady wrinkled time.
  • 150 years ago this year, Prisoner 60214 was released from 19 years hard labor and had an encounter with a kind priest that changed his life and made literary history.
  • 60 years ago a doomed little pig met a very talented spider and the rest, they say, is history.

I’m also extremely thankful for all of you, my readers, who stop by and spend a few minutes with me. I realize time is precious these days and you have many things you can do when you’re online so the fact you choose to come here, some quite regularly to see what I’ve pounded out is gratifying to say the least.

So, know I love y’all and, as always, keep those feet clean and enjoy Thanksgiving with family and friends!

 

 

Nov21

Popping Purple Vein Wednesday

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After visiting two supermarkets this morning, I’ve decided to take a momentary break from my explanation of why I still believe in God to make some observations on goings on around me. First of all, did any of you know that Americans celebrate a holiday called “Thanksgiving”  on the fourth Thursday of November? EVERY November? Did you know this Federal holiday tradition dates back to George Washington? Did you know the fourth Thursday in November date was set in 1863 by President Lincoln and when FDR moved it a week earlier in 1939 and 1940 the country almost split again over such a foolish move?

If you knew any of these tidbits of information, you are much farther ahead of the curve than the three quarters of a million people crowded into Publix and Bi-Lo supermarkets on Fairview Road in Simpsonville this morning. From the way the grocery shoppers were treating each other and the personnel of the grocery stores, it seems they thought the holiday was several months away. I was so curious about the state of confusion I stopped in the middle of the Bi-Lo baking goods aisle and pulled up my calendar on my phone. Apparently I was right because November 22, 2012 appeared in bright red signifying a major holiday. Just to be sure, I used my calendar function to check the last several years and — sure enough — Thursday, November 24, 2011 AND Thursday, November 25, 2010 both had red outlines. I wanted to be absolutely certain this trend would continue, however, so I thumbed ahead and I can say with unflagging authority November 28, 2013; November 27, 2014; and November 26, 2015 are all outlined in red and have “Thanksgiving Day” in small font in the box for those days — all of which happen to be the fourth Thursdays of November in their respective years.

Of course the fact I undertook this small research project right in the middle of the aisle of the store containing flour, sugar, packaged nuts, and canned pumpkin almost caused a riot. Several sweet looking blue-haired elderly ladies bumped into me quite forcefully and purposefully with their buggies.

(Important Sidebar Information: I don’t like to act overly sectional in my writing, but I am somewhat proud of my Southern heritage — screwed up as it is — and I am especially sensitive about our accents and vernacular. Now having said that, in the South, we put groceries in a BUGGY, not a SHOPPING CART and if you don’t like it, well, bless your Yankee hearts you are in luck because Interstates 75, 85, and 95 all head north back to the Mason-Dixon Line so get thee hence and you won’t have to endure us poor benighted Dixie-dwellers. Just don’t come crying back when you are freezing your nether bits off  because they are covered in snow.)

I know at least one harried looking woman with a buggy full of Dixie Crystal and LibbyLibbyLibby Pumpkin Puree claimed my parents had, in fact, NOT been married at the time of my birth while another mom left off screaming frustrated obscenities at her three rambunctious offspring long enough to scream frustrated obscenities at me. She not only claimed I was descended from the genus Canis, but that I had untoward carnal knowledge of my female parent. Normally I would have given her a piece of my mind before soundly thrashing any adult male accompanying her for espousing such base slurs upon my character, but something of a maniacal glint in her eyes coupled with the way she was gripping  a family sized can of Hanover Cut Green Beans made me think she might possibly have some murderous intent in her heart  as well as the wherewithal to carry it out, so I let the moment — and her buggy of hellions — pass without incident. Discretion is, after all, the better part of valor.

This was by no means an isolated incident. I saw displays of outright “buggy-rage” in both stores I went into. In Publix, two women appeared destined to come to blows over the last box of 10X Dominos Confectioners Sugar in the store. While they were loudly discussing the merits of each others hair styles, weight, and clothes choices, I took the opportunity to actually slip behind them and take the aforementioned last box of powdery white goodness and beat a hasty retreat before the two amazonian brawlers noticed the object of their forthcoming gladiatorial contest had mysteriously disappeared!

Now I realize I was just as guilty of procrastination as everyone else in the stores and I actually have less of an excuse since I have much more time available to shop. Still, why get so angry and stressed out because YOU waited until the last minute to try to find an unbroken dozen eggs the day before one of the “egg-heaviest” holidays in the year? It’s not the little girl behind the register’s fault that you won’t stand up to your mother-in-law and refuse to make six pecan pies when she just called and asked you at 8:00 AM the day before Thanksgiving, just like she does every year. The Publix manager can’t help it that you are too much of a control freak to let your daughters and daughters-in-law help cook Thanksgiving dinner so you drive yourself to exhaustion for two days and then bite everyone’s head off at the meal before complaining bitterly that “no one wants to help me!”

The moral of the story is, it’s Thanksgiving. You knew it was coming so stop! Just stop! Quit trying to make everything perfect and just enjoy the family or friends you get to share the day and the meal with. Stop getting purple in the face and letting “that vein” pop out on your forehead over the 2 package limit on Philadelphia brand cream cheese. It could always be so much worse. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, folk. Today isn’t too soon to start practicing being thankful!

Love y’all and keep those feet clean and belts loosened!

Nov19

Why I Still Believe: Reason 1

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You have to draw your own conclusions, but let me know when you do.

In my previous post, I mentioned my spiritual crisis the last six years and how it brought me to the brink of atheism. I also promised to give reasons why, plagued by questions and doubts, I still believe in God. The first reason is I witnessed a bona fide, verifiable miracle.

In early 1998, a new couple — Brother and Sister Baldwin — came to Abundant Life Church of God where Budge and I attended.  Brother Baldwin had been a pastor for years, serving eight churches across the southeast. He and Sister Baldwin had retired to a house Brother Baldwin built himself in Greer. They had not planned on retiring because Brother Baldwin was only 65 and Sister Baldwin two years younger, not especially old in a denomination where pastors and evangelists routinely minister well into their 80s and the occasional nonagenarian will deliver a message of a Sunday. Unfortunately, the Baldwins had no choice. Sister Baldwin had a virulent strain of lymphoma. Doctors had tried chemotherapy and radiation both but neither had proven effective. Surgery was out because the cancer had spread throughout her body before it was discovered. Sister Baldwin had come home to die.

I dearly loved the Baldwins. Brother Baldwin was “intellectual” which isn’t a common trait in Pentecostal or Charismatic circles. To this day, he is the only person who would sit with me and answer my theological questions until I got tired of talking and that is truly saying a great deal. Sister Baldwin was precious. She had obviously been a great beauty in her day and her eyes still sparkled out of a face gone drawn and pale under the ravages of chemotherapy. She wore a beautiful headscarf to church  to cover the few wisps of snow white hair her fight  had left her.

I watched Sister Baldwin grow weaker and weaker, but her spirit never faltered. Brother Baldwin had the resigned look of a man who was watching the light of his life go out before his eyes, but neither ever complained or railed against the God they had so faithfully served for 40 years. Sister Baldwin was getting worse, however, and the oncologist at Greenville Memorial Hospital told her she likely had less than a year to live. He took several x-rays showing the ravaging path the disease was taking through her body. Keep those x-rays in mind. They are extremely important in a minute.

An ancient tradition of the Churches of God during the week of July 4th is the annual Campmeeting at the state campground in Mauldin. People from all over South Carolina converged on Mauldin for six days of preaching, teaching, and wonderful Southern Gospel Music. Sister Baldwin wanted more than anything to attend the 1998 Campmeeting as she knew it would be her last. Even though she was weak, Brother Baldwin brought her, and the ushering team — of which I was a member in those days — would find her a seat where she could see the stage from her wheelchair.

Friday night, a quartet from down in the lower part of the state was singing “Jesus on the Mainline” as the band was playing about 90 miles per hour. The State Tabernacle was electric and in the middle of all the excitement I saw Sister Jeannette Vance making her way towards Sister Baldwin. I know it was Sister Vance because it’s impossible to miss Sister Vance in any crowd as she’s the very definition of “statuesque” at 6’3″ tall.

She knelt by Sister Baldwin (and still towered over her) and laid her hands on Sister Baldwin’s shoulders and began to pray earnestly. Several other pastors’ wives from around the tabernacle came and formed a circle around Sister Vance and Sister Baldwin. When Budge and I left around 11:00 Pm that night, Sister Vance was still praying and the circle of ladies was still around them holding hands and praying as well. I will say right here I didn’t see anything “supernatural” occur. No sparks. No one “falling out” like some Benny Hinn nonsense. Just one precious Christian lady asking God to spare the life of another precious Christian lady.

Sunday morning, Sister Baldwin came to church, stood up and told us all gathered there she no longer had cancer. God had healed her. I said this was verifiable and provable. It is. The next week, Brother and Sister Baldwin went to the oncologist and told HIM God healed her and they wanted x-rays. He obliged with a very cynical smile according to Brother Baldwin. The man wasn’t cynical when he came back though. In one hand was the x-ray from January all covered with cancerous shadows; in the other was the x-ray he had just processed. Behind him was a radiologist and the two of them were steadily talking and shaking heads. The oncologist stuck the x-rays on the light box and it was obvious one was full of cancer. The other, however, was crystal clear. Not a single spot of cancer anywhere to be found and not one but TWO board certified specialists, both of whom admitted they were agnostic and did not believe in miracles, verified the fact. Sister Baldwin brought the x-rays with her to church the next Sunday and I put them on the projector in front of 300 people.

Sister Baldwin, sadly, has left us, but not in 1998 of cancer. It wasn’t 1999 for that matter. Sister Baldwin passed away April 23,2012. She wasn’t 63; she was 77. For those keeping up, that’s 14 years after she was supposed to die. Now you might convince me nothing happened but explain to me how you’re going to convince those two x-rays?

So that’s the first reason I’m still hanging on to my faith.

Love y’all, keep those feet clean, and check back for more reasons why.

 

Nov17

An Emotional Sucker Punch Put Me on the Canvas

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Thursday coming will be Thanksgiving and the “official start” of the Holiday Season. Of course, nearly half the stores around here had Christmas decorations out before Halloween, so I’m not so certain about how “official” the start is anymore.

Since I love to eat and love my family, the holiday season has always been a coveted and special time of the year for me because it involves a great deal of both. The holidays have also been precious to me over the years because I was raised with an eye towards keeping sight of the real reason we celebrate Thanksgiving — to give thanks for all we have — and Christmas — the birth of our Savior. The holidays held meaning beyond turkey, trees, and tinsel ever since I can remember and as unbelievable as it may sound, I once came desperately close to chucking it all and throwing my lot in with the rest of the commercial and material world because I very nearly renounced my faith in God and Christ and became an atheist. Very, very nearly.

The event leading directly to the train wreck of faith I experienced was the death of my maternal grandfather in October 2006. I’ve written about Papa John’s death before, but I’ve never admitted in my writing just how profoundly his death crushed me on a spiritual and emotional level. Nothing else I’ve ever faced, or am likely to face — including Mama’s impending departure from this life — hit me as hard and affected me as deeply in a core area, THE core area, of my life.

I haven’t always been a Christian, but I’ve always been a believer in Christ. Mama took me to church willingly or by force until I was 12 years old and she said I could decide for myself. Granny and Papa Wham took me to church every Wednesday night and many Sunday mornings when I was young and stayed with them on the weekends from time to time. Christ, the Bible, and Church were the warp of my life and I no more doubted the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible than I doubted the air I breathed.

Quite literally, “Mama ‘n Them” said God said it and they believed it, so I believed it as well. Completely and without question. As I got older, I read a little bit more and studied a little bit more on my own and hashed out some reasons on my own why I believed what I did.

Still, I never put in a lot of thought about my faith or what I believed in. I just took it as a matter of course. Growing up in a small Southern town didn’t really present me with a great many attacks on my beliefs and even when I was challenged by some “Godless” professors at Clemson and later USC, I just laughed them off. I was a de facto associate pastor at the church where Budge and I were married and I was the one many people called and referred others to with hard questions about theology and faith. I was happily and blissfully going along with my Christian life secure in my beliefs and certain beyond doubt God was in His Heaven and all was right with the world.

Then in October 2006, when I was 35, Papa John fell and had to go to the hospital. Seventeen days later, he was dead and when I conducted his funeral in a driving rainstorm the next day, I left my world insofar as what I believed in and the faith I had unquestioningly carried with me from childhood in a hole in the red Carolina mud with him. When I walked away from Papa’s grave, I walked away confused, in more pain than I thought I could bear, and believing in nothing anymore. I’ve mentioned before how much of a hammer blow getting fired from Woodmont and Greenville County Schools had been to me, but that entire event was an emotional scratch compared to the effect Papa’s death had on me.

Here’s where some explanation is due but you aren’t going to get all you need to understand why I reacted so badly mainly because I don’t know how to explain it to anyone but my wife, my therapist, and a tiny handful of people I still call friends. Even if I told the entire story from beginning to end, it still wouldn’t make sense to any of you and worse, you might take the opportunity to think less of and even make a disparaging comment about Papa John and if you did, I’d hate you for the rest of my life. So what broke me? Long story short, Papa John wasn’t supposed to die crippled in a coma the way he did. Oh, he was mortal. I knew that and I’m not stupid. Papa, like all of us, was destined to die, but not the way he did. I hope that’s enough, but just know that’s leaving out 99 and 44/100th% of the story.

I didn’t darken a church door for over a year. For several years before Papa’s death, cracks had been forming between me and my former church and they now became canyons and ended up being hammer blows of their own. Worst of all for my mind though, I started asking questions. I’d always tested and examined every dimension of my life in miniscule detail, but not my faith. Now I did. Once I started asking questions, the gates fell down as questions led to even more questions and the more the questions multiplied, the more the answers disappeared. The more the answers disappeared, the more the doubts grew.

For someone like me for whom faith was the same as oxygen, I was dying. I could have picked up a red hot horseshoe and it may have made a more visible scar, but it wouldn’t have been anymore painful. I couldn’t tell anyone though, because I didn’t want to drag someone down with me. During this entire time, Budge was the only one who knew how bad I was struggling. I had to stay strong for Mama, because for six months after Papa John’s death, I thought we were probably going to lose her also since she was grieving to the point of starvation.

Days dragged in to weeks and weeks turned to months and I was no better off than I’d been standing by Papa’s open grave. It was at that lowest point I figured I would be better off turning my back on everything I had believed in all my life than it was to try to force myself to hold on to what no longer made any sense to me.  At that moment, I was very nearly an atheist and that condition would last for longer than I like to admit.

Come back later and I’ll explain how I ended up still believing today.

Love y’all. Keep those feet clean.