Disruptive moments

I have spent a considerable amount of time the last few weeks either ducking in the bathroon with Daisy and Thurber or glued to the weather information while ducking tornadoes. Spring in Mississippi is definitely a mixed bag. Having lived through the 1971 tornado in the Mississippi Delta, I tend to pay attention to the Weather Channel.

On my way to Birmingham last weekend I rode through the storm ravaged McFarland Boulevard area of Tuscaloosa. My daughter lived there for two years during graduate school at the University of Alabama. The reality was chilling...and much worse than the pictures on the news. I could not begin to guess where I used to turn to go to the house where Betsy lived during grad school. All the familiar landmarks were completely obliterated. Without the landmarks, I was so lost.

Set me thinking. We need those landmarks in life. God never meant for us to get so comfortable on this earth that we forget that it's all temporary. Every now and then He seems to emphasize that concept...but it is soooo hard for us humans to really get it. I am as attached as the next person to the shiney, pretty, great stuff of this life. But an F-5 tornado can wipe it all out...anytime...short notice. Nope. The Only real thing in this life is the next, and NOTHING can separate us from that one. It would be good to spend more time thinking about that fact than worrying on most of the stuff we stress over in this life.

National Day of Prayer

May 5 was the National Day of Prayer. It was the first time I have ever participated in the program on the south steps of the Capitol in downtown Jackson. I grew up during the days we were all encouraged to love our country and to consider patriotism a virtue.  I felt a tremendous surge of that old patriotic emotion as I listened to the fervent prayers from a diverse group of citizens - we were legislators, business owners, pastors, black, white, men, women - just citizens who want to be one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

God bless the United States of America.

Dinosaurs in the Kingdom

Dinosaurs R Us..or at Least Dinosaur is ME

A little research reveals that dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago. Scientists do not seem to agree on what caused a species that had been around for 165 million previous years to up and disappear from the planet. Theories include everything from volcanic catastrophes to disease to biological changes within the dinosaurs that made them less competitive with other animals. In other words, when it came to the “Survival of the Fittest,” the dinosaur did not make the cut. I personally think I understand.

I am having great compassion on the dinosaur this morning. I think he must have glanced around one day to find a world filled with “new-fangled” critters who were more agile, quicker, and probably smarter than he was. He became overwhelmed that the world was going by so fast and he seemed to be standing still doing the same old dinosaur things he’d been doing for generations.

Technology is overwhelming to me at the moment. My assistant Christi is 27 years old. I do not think there is anything the girl can’t do if it involves a camera, a software program, a cell phone, or a computer. She can also throw a spiral football, but as amazing as that may be, it does not intimidate me. It’s the ease and speed with which she manages all things technological that really get to me.

She and another “young gun” friend suggested recently that I join the professional social networking sight “Linkedin.” They thought it would help me connect with some beneficial business contacts. Christi opened the sight and demonstrated it to me. I thought, “Oh, I can do this.” A few minutes later I had accidentally invited everyone in my address book to my “professional” network. All of my friends, who are dinosaurs like me, quickly e-mailed me quizzically asking, “What is Linkedin?”

Truthfully, most of my friends are either (a) retired or (b) never worked in the marketplace in the first place.

So that tells you a lot. Even so, I will not die happy unless I master a few more things in the world of today. I thought when I learned to execute an e-mail my children should “rise up and call me blessed.” And I have to say, they were a little impressed. But that was ions ago.

And since then, I learned to text and thought, “Surely, I have now arrived.”

And so help me…then there was Facebook. And I complied.

Christi said to me, “You need a blog.” And I complied…kind of…it’s just that my life is not that interesting that people would want to follow it and so I don’t update it as often as I should.

Then came Twitter….and I finally just said, “I’m tired.”

Please….could we have a moratorium on technology and social networking? Can I just use the telephone? But then there is automated answering and I discover the whole world “has stepped away from their desk” therefore, nobody answers or returns calls anymore. What is a dinosaur to do?

Right now I am working on learning how to use the camera I got for Christmas. Will let you know how that goes. My prayers have become very very self-centered….”Lord, help me.”

Going Home Again

A few years ago I decided I needed to read some of the classics of American Literature. One of the first books I chose was Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again. I plodded through the book…I mean PLODDED. Despite the Southern themes, I did not identify. You see, I find that I CAN go home again and again…and it’s almost as though forty years have not passed at all.

We just returned from my stomping ground…Indianola. There was a party this weekend for my friend Ellen’s son – also my god-son – and his bride. Maybe it is just an Indianola thing…but it’s always like a big family reunion. Lots of hugging, lots of catching up …telling old stories and reveling in the easy conviviality of being among friends…the kind who share your history, who know you inside out and love you anyway.


We woke up on Saturday morning and I gave Charles a tour of my home town, winding through neighborhoods, visiting the building that once housed my daddy’s business, the house where I grew up and more. I pointed out the B.B. King Museum; we ate lunch at The Crown in downtown Indianola and stopped by the cemetery to check on my parent’s graves on our way out of town.


No matter how the years fly…no matter how long I call somewhere else “:home,” nothing is ever “home” in the way Indianola always will be.

 

Once a Mother, Always a Mother

I have been in Birmingham the past few days visiting with Betsy. Having a daughter who is a professional living the single life puts me in a place where I kind of live through her a life I never got to live -. She has a lot of friends, travels, only answers to her two very large Black Labs, and it all looks quite glamorous to me most of the time. However, when she has surgery or a crisis…she has a host of friends I call the “girlfriend brigade.” They swoop in to tend to their own, but she usually calls me, too. And I would be lying if I did not admit that I love to be a part of her life. I love to think that even though she is an incredibly strong woman, there are still times she likes to have the security of a soft place - her very dull and quite square mom around. And in those times, the generation gap seems to disappear.

She was once the cute little cherub girl in the pink smocked dresses and the pink hair bow to match who could stomp her foot and tell me I hurt her heart when I said, “no.” “No” from me was probably a far too infrequent occasion.

My daughter is a lot more articulate at this age, and, thankfully, her heartbreaks are not usually a result of something I did or said. It doesn’t matter since her heartaches still seem to be mine as much as hers. I guess it is so true that “once a mother, always a mother.” It is indeed a life-long sentence.

Still, when you see your child pick herself up, rise to the occasion, and seek her comfort and her peace and her answers in God, you get a tiny glimpse of what it means to “pass the torch” and you think, “Thank you God.” And with the same breath you thank Him that she still needs you, you thank Him, too, that you know she doesn’t need you at all.

Road Trip

Charles and I made a quick trip to Moon Lake last weekend. Daisy and Thurber really enjoyed their travels. Thurber slept most of the way. Daisy was a little more curious. As the old society columns in the small town weekly news used to say, “A good time was had by all.”

I feel sorry for anybody who is not loved by a dog…or two.

The Products

My products…I don’t leave home without them. They are one reason I have a hard time leaving home at all. It takes thirty minutes to stuff all of my quart zip-locks into my carry-on bag, and then I groan my way through the airport with a bag the size of Santa Claus’s. Getting through security always causes stares. I can see others in line surveying my zip-locks and thinking, “That lady is nuts.” I wish I could say that all my creams and potions deliver what they promised, but they don’t. Still, I continue to whip out the American Express, take them home and proceed to glop them on my skin or in my hair. Somehow, I always believe total transformation is just one pump, squirt, or spray away.

I just did a little research and discovered that American women spend seven billion a year on cosmetics and beauty products. I am surely doing my part for the cause.

2 Corinthians 4 talks about an outer body that is wasting away and an inner body that is being renewed day by day. So, in other words…God tells me up front I am fighting a losing battle with gravity, time and the inevitable decline of my physical body.

Even so, I have invested a small fortune in products that promised miracles…and so far I have yet to meet one. The old adage rings true. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is – unless we’re taking God at his word.

The Bible makes it clear that although we tend to size each other up by the outer appearance, God is interested in our hearts. So, obviously, I need to be checking my heart more than my wrinkle quotient. I am old enough to know – not just by what I have read or heard in church – but certainly by what I have seen up close and personal. It IS true. I have watched many a mentor go on to glory and realized the truth of Philippians 4 – that thinking on whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable….that thinking along those lines tends to color your actions…and that your thoughts become deeds that lift up, give to others, and…surprise…come back to bless you, too. Imagine our world if more of us lived with that verse in mind…and lived like we believed it was true. How much joy would we be doling out to others every day just by being in their lives – with or without wrinkles.