Mary and Elmer, Wonzell and Charles, Pam and Paul and a Nana

     I woke up this morning at 2:15. On my mind was a certainty of of how God knits families together.  Paul's Nana will soon take her last breath and go home. She is 98. 
     Now, at 4:27 a.m., I sit in the dark in front of a fire with thoughts and memories that will not stop and so I write...
     
     Mary, my mother, is writing down her story. She is being  and brave and she sends me pages that make me weep. My tears are of joy and of sadness. She tells of truths that have not been spoken to me before. She is doing it for me because I asked her to. I love her for it. 
     Everyone looked at my mother as if she was a movie star. I didn't know that she was broken, but, "Fragile...Handle with care" was stamped across her spirit even then. My Dad knew it, and a part of me did too. 
     God gave her four babies to love and care for and we were her life. We played, listened to records, read stories, sang, and Mother sewed. She made clothes for herself like the ones Jackie Kennedy wore, and she made Easter dresses and school clothes for my sisters and me. Ron was her first. Her only son. I was born 11 months later. Lori followed two years after me, and two years after Lori, came our baby, Kaylynn. 
     I love to dance and sing because my mother showed me the joy she got from them. I love stories because Mom didn't just read, she made books come alive. I love the way I love because my mother showed me how. 
    
      Elmer, my father, made me feel safe. I learned to trust because he was trustworthy. He left the house in a suit every morning and came home every night at 5:30 as Mom put dinner on the table. He was gentle. He was funny. He fixed skates, light switches, dryers, bikes and cars. He rescued kittens from inside walls, killed opossums, and saved feather-dyed baby chicks that had caught on fire. He showed me how to catch fireflies and he took scary out of thunderstorms. 
     He taught me to play. I played harder with my Dad than I have ever played with anyone else, and I can still feel the velvety grass he put under my feet ever summer of my childhood if I close my eyes. And boy...could my Dad laugh. It was the infectious kind. I know all little girls think their Daddy is the most handsome man on earth, but mine...Oh...mine was! His smile would light up whole room.
     
     Wonzell, Paul's mother, was born and bread a Texas beauty, but her father left their family to be with someone else and broke her heart. At sixteen she had a secret wedding to Paul's father, and Paul's brother, Charles B., was growing in her belly when she received her high school diploma. At seventeen, Wonzell was a wife and a mother. The next year Paul was born. Four years later, she had David and eight years after that, she had a baby girl who they named Charla, and their family was complete. 
     I will never know what it feels like to be in the skin of Paul's mother on that fateful day, but the decision she made changed the lives of her children forever. I grieve for all that was lost inside her room in the dark that terrible morning, and I must trust God for the things I will never know. I think about her often because she gave life to baby boy that I have shared a life with. I wonder, "Would she love me?" I never got to look into her eyes. I never got to ask her what Paul was like at three. She never got to hold our children. Paul's children. She never smelled them. She never got to know their hearts. 
     
     Charles Brockton Payne, Paul's father,  is a man I would have loved deeply. I know this just as I know that he too, would have loved me. Sometimes knowledge just comes and you know.  I see something in the eyes of the handsome man who fathered my husband when I look at pictures of him. I can't explain it better than this, but I long to sit beside him and hold his hand. I want to feel him hug me. I picture him weepy in love, just like his Paul, with anything concerning our children. He got so much taken from him that morning. So very very much. Did he see it coming? 
     
     I have spent more of my life with Paul than without him. Thirty-seven of fifty-five years. He is the most beautiful picture of a life redeemed I will ever see. And that is my gift. Paul was fifteen when his Nana gave up her life for theirs and moved from Cleburne, Texas to Oklahoma City to care for four broken children left behind. Life went on.
     At 17, Paul met a free-spirited, guitar playing, Maxi-dress wearing girl with long hair bleached as white as snow. He thought she was beautiful. She was me. 
     We dated. We fell in love. We made plans for a life. 
     Weeks before our wedding, Charles B., Paul's older brother by one year, committed suicide. Paul's life stopped again. He was 20. This time, we planned a funeral together and after it, we married with broken hearts and began a grown up life with a 15-year old. David, Paul's younger brother, moved in with us and Nana, now full of grief and 63, took eleven-year-old Charla back to her home in Cleburne to give her the only life she knew how to give.  A few months later,  I found David locked inside his bedroom and Paul had no more brothers.  
      There is nothing especially unique about these peoples lives. They could be your family, but they aren't. They are mine. All of them, however, had an end to their life before it ever started, but God knew every detail and breath of every single one of their days.   
     The Pam and Paul story continues to thrive with struggles and laughter and love. We began our family five years later with a beautiful precocious daughter named ReAnnon who was in charge immediately. 
     Our handsome son, Michael, too smart, too cute, and oh so charming was born to negotiate and stole my heart four years after. He still charms like no one else and always makes me laugh out loud. 
     Chandler, our stunning, free-spirited, photogenic and fiery red-head, surprised us three years later and brought new life back into her Father. This one is so much like me that it that it takes my breath away.
     ReAnnon's story continues now at the leading (thank you Lord) of her husband Garrett and three precious boys. Jude is 4. Reed is a 2. And Gideon is 3 months. I have never been so much in love.  
     Gideon cooed at giggled at me this week...
     Jude and Reed happily took a spot beside me in the Higerd family Hillbilly band, but I know this will not last much longer...
     Michael is coming home for the holidays...his first trip home in almost two years. He's bringing his girlfriend Kim...
     Chandler moved back to the area from San Diego so I get to have her light and beauty much more often as she sings and dances and cuts my hair...
     And Paul? He recently came across a shoe box of love letters written between his parents while Charles was in New York City studying to be a stock broker and Wonzell was back in Cleburne with Nana.  Charles B. was four, Paul was three, and David was growing inside her belly as this shoebox became his gift.  
     Nana's body is old and tired and she is ready to go see Jesus and Paul is preparing to speak about the woman who sacrificed her life to four grandchildren...
     Life...it simply happens...and we are here.

The greatest stories ever told.

 I love a good story. Really love them. If you give me one, I will usually jump right in to the pages and often linger there between the lines.  And It's in these places that the story often takes me on side road.

    Now please come back in time with me and picture Noah building the Ark.  The scholars say that it took approximately 75 years to built the boat and that it was around 450 feet long. It is however, the years of life not described in the scriptures, where I sit between the lines. I know that Noah was called by  God to do this huge and incredible task, but the people around him were not. His wife was not. His sons and their wives were not, and yet for 75 years Noah continued to do the job God had assigned him.  

     And so...

     What I think about and imagine are the whispered, and maybe not so whispered, words of the people who watched Noah do this. Did they think he was crazy? Was he talked about? I think they probably did, and that he was.  "Crazy old Noah has been doing that for 40 years," someone might tell a newcomer when they asked about the man and the boat.

     And then that day arrived. The day the animals began to show up on the horizon. l thought about this for a very long time. Can you imagine it? Scripture says they arrived two by two and scholars say this probably happened over the course of 7 days. I picture the looks on peoples faces and the gasps they made as the creatures headed together toward the old mans boat. Giraffe's and elephants, lions and tigers and bears, "Oh my." The town gossipers must have been sleep deprived and exhausted. 

     And then there's Jonah. He spent 3 days in the belly of a whale. He did this alone. No one was watching, but boy do I want to have a talk with Jonah about that one day.

     And then there was a King who heated a furnace 7 times hotter than usual to burn 3 Jewish men who refused to bow to his image. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were tied together and thrown into the flames. I'm sure many people were watching this horrendous thing unfold.  Inside the furnace, the men prayed and praised and the King saw 4 men walking around inside the flames. The solders who placed them in the fire were burned to death, so the King ordered the men to come out, Not a single hair on their heads were singed. 

     And then there's Daniel. He survived being thrown into a pit of hungry lions because an Angel came and closed their mouths. Can you imagine that moment? A stadium full of spectators waiting for Daniel to be ripped apart and devoured. I try to imagine the looks on their faces, their whispers, their unbelief.

     And then there is that Holy Night in Bethlehem where the greatest story of all begins.  I have thought about that night so much since taking part in the "Bethlehem Walk." What an incredible experience that was for me. And inside this greatest of story, I find myself settling in where the Magi finally get to meet the Savior of the world. 

     Scholars say that when the Magi arrived, they found the young child in a home and that Jesus was probably around 2 years old.  I wonder what they found Jesus doing? Was he toddling around outside playing with a stick? Was he watching his Father Joseph him make a table? Was he playing with his brother James?  Maybe he was sitting in Mary's lap.  And when the Magi handed the precious gifts to the child did Jesus understand what they meant? Did he understand who the men were? Who he was? A two-year old little boy who was also God. Perhaps he did.

     And when Jesus was 4 and 5, did he climb trees and throw rocks and play sword games with sticks like other boys his age? Did Mary and Joseph worry about him like other parents do? He didn't run away to the synagogue until he was 12. Did he look and act different to the world before then? I have to believe that he did. How could he not?  And yet, wasn't he also just a little boy?

     I believe one day I'll get answers to the questions I ponder. The things that lie between the lines of the, "Greatest stories ever told." Until then, I'll continue my journey of imagining, and questioning and being in love with the stories of God. In all His power, in all His glory, He gave us the greatest gift of all. The baby born in a stable during a cold and possibly rainy night in Bethlehem.   

     Merry Christmas

Surgery on my heart...a tough season.

     It was a week before my upcoming surgery, and I was a total mess. The pain in my right eye preventing me from wearing my contact and my reading glasses gave me such intense headaches that I literally couldn’t read anything for days. 
     I had also been diagnosed with one-sided deafness. I'm 78% deaf in my left ear. (This has it's own story) But over this last week, the noisy room full of children, which is usually just hard, has become raging river of echo’s and roars. Chaos inside my head. 
     These things, however, dim compared to what I want to share with you now.    

    Back in Jan. I began to taste weird things in my throat.  When I walked into certain pylaces I could taste metals in my mouth. I could taste it in my food for days. Other times, when I was around chemicals, my neck would start to spasm, my throat would constrict, and then my head would ache for hours. 
     It all came to a head in Houston Texas at the Siesta Scripture conference. t  I had been memorizing Scripture with the LPM ladies and had been looking forward to a trip to Dallas to see my sister and a then the trip to Houston for months. 
    A few hours into the teaching with Beth Moore at the First Baptist church, I was so sick that I asked my sister to lay hands on me and pray inside their beautiful Chapel.  

     Back in Dallas on Sunday, I went forward At Gateway church for prayer. I was ushered to a precious couple in their eighties, and as I stepped forward, they each reached out to hold one of my hands.  
     I told them I was scared. That something was wrong with me. I remember placing my hand over my throat and picturing nodes of cancer growing there. 
     They spoke simultaneously.  “I think you're having a strong allergic reaction to something." And then they prayed for me.  

     I had never even considered that, but as soon as they spoke the words, my fear fled, and I had great peace. But as the day went on, God reminded me of something I had read in my "Juicing" book but had forgotten about. When I got home I dug out the book. There was one small section that I had highlighted. "Take it slow. I got really sick when I started this. Your organs are going to release their toxins."
     I got more and more sick before I was told that my reaction to chemicals and perfumes was near anaphylactic.  (I know you ladies from Californian won't really get this, but picture with me a very large church in Houston Texas full of beautiful ladies that love hairspray and perfume.) I am smiling now, but I don't wonder any more why I go so sick there.)yt

     This was something I could deal with, but I was br than I had ever been in my life.  I had no energy. I was exhausted.  I could barely do my job and if someone looked me in the eye, I started to weep. I have never been so thankful to be in communion with  women of faith. Their love and prayers kep ihuht me going.   

     Then the Wed. morning before my surgery came,  and when I opened my eyes, even before my feet hit the floor, I knew that God had done something amazing. 
     Walking to the bathroom I felt light and energetic. I hadn’t felt that way in months. 

     I put in my contact in.  And that afternoon, the classroom noise was just loud. 
I climbed into bed that night praising God for what He had done. 
     My surgery was scheduled for the following Monday.  
    On Fri., just two days before, I had a deep feeling that the reprieve in my allergic reactions might be just temporary, that I wasn't done with all that yet, but I also told two friends that I believed God was saving me from something.  Something that had to do with my upcoming heart surgery.

    And he did. 
    That part of the story will come in the form of a Memorial stone. A memorial stone that is shaped like my heart. I am going now to dig a deep hole into the ground of remembrance. And for me, it will always be a blister on my back.