To Iowa

Four little sleepy souls
and one torpedo van

Molly asked
if Mamma was still awake

All through Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas,
All the long black road to Iowa
The landscape changes,
But we do not

We don't have to be lonely,
not ever

Seven years
Have made a family

We rid
and drive
and laugh and yell
get bored
and laugh
again

Too many hours in a car
But we're adding up
The eighth year

Family and friends
People I never knew
Whom I now can't imagine
Not knowing
Will wave us in,
hug us in the driveway;
We will eat at their tables
and sleep in their beds

All the long, long roads
from San Francisco to Iowa,
Arkansas and Texas -
There were three, four,
then five and six
And we will go back and back
and back again
As long as we live,
we six,
Our family

I watch
unspoiled Kansas
Roll and dip its green hills
Its groves of trees
shading over lazy cows
little ponds edged with reeds
Farmhouses,
tight, cozy homes -
Kansas stretches;
My eyelids
drop as if by hanging weights
And I dream the rollings hills
All the way
to Iowa

July 21, 2010

Summer School

Sometimes they are tough;
Firey brown eyes
Sometimes they don't hide,
when they hug me at the door

They do not know
What I see

Aurora wrote an essay
When I asked about a time
they were afraid . . .
She said she prays for her mom
When she runs outside to hide from her

Yesterday my back was hurting
I joked about going to the hospital
"Will you take me with you?"
It was Renee
But she said the bruises
weren't as bad as the last time

One day they asked me about God,
About the Bible -
What do I know?
But their eyes -
and no one would talk
until I spoke up,
gave an answer
Holding their breath -
I did the best I could
and I felt so sad

I told Daniel
that I would visit him at JH;
"That's what's up," he said,
because he knew I meant it.
He asked, would I bring him some brownies
and a Bible -
those braces, that underbite,
the tattoo of his mother's name -
the kid's going in for aggravated assault
and he wants brownies and a Bible -
said he sold pencils the last time he was in,
and he read 300 pages of the Bible

It's just Houston, Miss.
I won't graduate.
It ain't nothin' to me,
it's just the way it is.

They told me the difference
between being high and being wired,
then they laughed,
even though we all knew
it wasn't really funny

Benjamin said,
"We're just bad kids.
The cops tell us,
and everybody thinks it.
We are just bad."

I told them they weren't.
They weren't bad kids;
Said something teacherly,
something that covered over
something much bigger -
things I can't say,
but hoped they heard it anyway

I got home and hugged my kids
and prayed into their hair
and breathed in their smell
and hoped that they would never need a teacher
to love them for me

Baytown - It's Full of Surprises!

A couple of days ago, we went here.

Find out a little more about it here.

I had known about the trail for awhile and had been wanting to try and find it. Turns out, it wasn't that hard to locate, though it is in a part of town in which we rarely find ourselves (mainly because it is not near WalMart or Kroger). It is a nice paved trail that runs by the water. We found a great area on the trail that had some docks, an overlook, a playground, and some big, open grassy areas that would be great for picnics or playing softball or football.

Come on down and see us! We are finding more and more great things to show you.

More Family Adventure Time

And More . . .

More Adventure Pics

Adventure at the Baytown Goose Creek Stream Trail

No!!!

My cell phone is broken!!!

When did I become so attached to that thing?

I can still send text messages, but I can't make or receive phone calls.

And Scott is out of town!!!

This is going to be a looooong week!

Private No More

I am tired of having my blog private. I'm changing it back. However, I am having trouble loading videos and pictures. Weird! I have never had a problem loading pictures. Any advice? Something I need to download? Anybody? Thanks. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Can I Just Say . . .

. . . how annoying it is to have this blog private? I really don't like it at all. I'll say something else about it later.

Ten Years

This is inspired by Auntie Tiffy (look to the right on my blog roll - at present she is getting her groove back). Tiffy posted about the changing of the decade and all the things she's been doing since the calendar switched to a new millennium. I thought that was a great idea, so here goes mine, even though we are three months into this decade already:

The past ten years have seen me:

1. Get divorced. Sorry to begin on a negative, but it happened very early in 2000.
2. Become a mom three times over. Eliza was six months old when 2000 began; Molly came in '04, Aaron in '05, Charlie in '08.
3. Graduate college - May 2001.
4. Live in four states - I moved from AR to CA in '01, from CA to IA in '03, from IA to TX in '04.
5. Run a 5k - CA, 2002.
6. Find the love of my life, Scott, and learn a lot about commitment - he and I met in '02 and were married in '03.
7. Watch my brother get married! Something we never thought we'd see - July 13, 2008.
8. Minister to youth and create some of the best memories of my life at FSBCMC, Arkansas - just before leaving for CA; summer 2001.
9. Drive 95mph between Benton and Arkadelphia and never be pulled over - fall, 2000.
10. Become a teacher - officially in Jan. 2009.

And a lot more stuff, but these are the things that came to me quickly. Why not make your own ten years list? I want to read it.

HAPPY BDAY!!!!!!

Today is Scott's 25th birthday!

Happy birthday, sweetie!

I love you!!!!!

New Blog

Yes. Another One. Because I am all crazy bloggy and stuff.

You can see it here.

Let me know what you think.

Real God

I think I grew up with a mostly sterile God. I got a wonderful spiritual foundation at a church that was gounded in the Word, but the God I came to know growing up really only wanted to hear hymns and not any other kind of music and He appreciated prayer in a kind of formula. He liked for you to sit really still and quiet and listen for a long time. He was especially fond of church camp. It was His preference that if you were going to get to know Him, you should walk down an aisle and discuss it with someone first. And He liked code words like "saved."

As I blog, I am constantly aware that I might be offending someone, and I don't want to offend people. However, I don't want to spend an entire paragraph apologizing and qualifying. Anyone that knows me well (which is pretty much anyone who reads this blog) knows my history, so I am not going to go into a diatribe of "don't get me wrong."

I have spent the past year and a half analyzing (without even really knowing that that is what I was doing) all that I have ever thought or believed about God and the church. And I am sure that I have always known that the God I met and came to know cries with you, hurts with you, provides for you. The God with whom I formed a relationship was close to you when you were in pain.

But I am not sure that He saves parking spots for you or gives you raises at work. Do you know what I mean?

And in my year and a half of anaylasis, I have come to think that I want a different God. Or a different kind of God. If this is selfish, let me know. But I'll explain:

I heard a segment on a Christian radio show about a year ago on which there was a guest speaker. She was the wife of a very prominent pastor of a very large mega-church here in Houston. There was a caller asking her this: "Why have I not found a spouse, even when I have waited patiently on God and He knows that is the desire of my heart. All of my friends are married; why am I not married?"
And the guest said this: "You know, God's not going to give to one and not give to another."

And I became angry. I thought, how wrong. How misleading. When I have friends who desperately want children and will never be able to have them. When I see people work hard and are good and loving parents and lose their jobs. When I see dear, loving men and women who may never, ever get married. When I see loved ones battle cancer and watch as some are cured and some are not. And on and on . . . I thought of the guest speaker, "How dare she!"

I heard a pastor not long after hearing that guest speaker say this to His congregation: "God will not give you more than you can handle."

And I thought, yes He will. Oh, yes, He will. Has the man never read the book of Job? Has he never dealt with real situations and real people? I thought that perhaps a better way to word it would be, God won't give you more than HE can handle, but saying it the other way around gives people nothing more than a way to fall into guilt when they can't handle it.

I've gone in a direction with this post that I hadn't intended. Let me try to get back.

The kind of God I want isn't the pretty pedastal God. I want the God that doesn't have to have answers for what He does or does not do, and that doesn't promise health and wealth. I want the God who doesn't have the memory span of a human, who doesn't forget tsunamis and earthquakes. I want the God who is getting dirty as he lays beneath tons of rubble with people who are dying horrible deaths due to natural disasters. I want the God whose heart is broken because there are real people dying of torture and disease and hunger; who is close to small children who have no one to be close to them. I want a God who doesn't have to dress up for church or walk an aisle. I want a God who will get dirty in the midst of tragedy, instead of sitting on the sidelines patting your head.

I want a God who is with someone, really in the midst of someone, whose pain is so great that they start to self-destruct. I want to know what that means, that God is with you. I want a God whose love is more than something that sounds good in a sermon or on a greeting card, whose love is difficult and comforting and understanding and sobbing and giving. I want a God who can make sense of this whole big painful world.

Am I asking too much?

God, to me, does not have to be pretty. He can do the hard stuff. He can go beyond a feeling and become a fact. He can get in my face. In fact, I'd prefer that. The God I want really talks, and is really heard. And He doesn't need code words. He can be known. Where is that God? Who is He? Where do I find Him?

I do not want God to be sterile. I don't want to have to tiptoe around Him or have to be careful around Him. I want Him to be dangerous. I want Him to be real.

And for the record, I also really like church camp. :o)