The Road Not Taken... Because It Was Too Curvy

Our kids left Friday afternoon for a fall retreat at church and didn’t returtil today. All five kids, because God is a good, good God and so He provided for the college retreat to be the same weekend as the high school one (and we praise Him, from Whom all blessings flow, especially the kind that arrange for all five kids to vacate the house at the same time). Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, but if anybody is going to be gone, it’s best if all are so that we are... you know... FREE. No thought of dinner plans, come and go as we please, lay in bed if we want or stay up late in the tv room if we want, no one banging around early on a Saturday, no one to drop off or pick up anywhere... just freedoms and us.

Anyway, we had talked about possibly going somewhere this weekend and ended up deciding we would likely enjoy even more just having a quiet house. {I realize it makes us sound like high school kids whose parents are gone, and I can’t explain the phenomenon, but Friday night we are out (and only paid for two meals!) and got our dessert to go and I literally said giddily to Kraig, “We can eat it in bed while we watch a movie!!!” Hahaha!} Anyway, we puttered around Friday night on our own time frame and it was awesome.

For Saturday, I asked him earlier in the week if he wanted to drive around and look at leaves, see waterfalls, walk around outside, etc.. I had considered a couple of routes and when I mentioned Murphy, Kraig said he could go to the casino. I hate casinos because of the cigarette smoke, but I told him I would love time to sit in the car and read.

We have never driven around to look at leaves before. We aren’t the people who drive up to the Smokies just to do it, who go looking for snow, etc.. If we are in the car, it’s to go somewhere. I’m always envious of the people who DO, though.  And the thought of spending a day driving and looking with Kraig, talking with no interruptions, sounded awesome to me. We even decided to take the dog, and it was seriously shaping up to be the kind of day I dream of.

I had planned for ya to drive to Tellico and see a waterfall I have been wanting to see, take the Cherohala Skyway over to Robbinsville, then come down through Andrews to get to Murphy, stopping when we wanted. At the last minute, Kraig mentioned the orchards in Blue Ridge, so we decided to come back that way. When we pulled out from this house, I was feeling like the kind of person I always dreamed of.

As we left Etowah and neared Tellico, I was realizing why I am not and never will be that kind of person. As we came within 7 miles of the waterfall and I was sick as a dog, praying for God to blast the trumpet and take us home, I told Kraig this was a horrible mistake. In fact, I had a few moments of bordering on panic, knowing that the only way BACK was the way we were coming IN.

We made it to the waterfall and spent some time looking and climbing around to the bottom of it from the road. My land legs came back fast, thankfully. However, I knew from looking at the map that the route to Robbinsville via the Cherohala was not going to be possible for me. I rerouted is straight to Murphy, then I reclined my seat and drooled through a restless sleep most of the way, praying every time I woke that I wouldn’t get sick.

We are a wonderful lunch in Murphy, I read almost a whole book in the car while Kraig supported the Cherokees, and then we drove back home. We didn’t have time to go to Blue Ridge, but it was still a great day. Last night we watched some tv and I did some decorating before bed.

We decided that we are going to enjoy our kids for the next four years or so, but that we are going to be SO GOOD at empty nesting. As long as it doesn’t include driving curvy roads in the mountains.

For Me

My pretty audacious goal of writing every day in November was inspired by a colleague who involves her students in the National Novel Writing Project every November. This woman gets 8th graders to commit to an insane word count over the course of the month and guess what, THEY DO IT. My own two girls both wrote impressive stories their eighth grade years (although Emma got too involved in the beginning and middle of hers and had to rush the end so she just had all of her characters die in order to end it, which is really frowned upon in the writing world) and they still talk about it. For someone (me) who deems EVERY YEAR “The Year of Writing” and then has hardly written anything over the past two, committing to a blog post a day for a month is as crazy as having 8th graders produce massive novels in a month. But.... here I am, and over at CMS, there they are.

Writing is weird because in today’s world it’s deeply personal and also very public if you so choose. In the pre-Internet world, writing was never seen until it was published as a book or magazine. Today it can be “published” the second after you compose it as an Instagram caption or Facebook post, a tweet, or a blog post.

I knew when I set out to write every day in November that I would publish all of the blogs, no matter how pitiful and uninspired, but I would only share the posts on fb that really mattered a lot to me. I wasn’t sure at that time how much I was tied to the feedback of others on my writing, and I’ve realized I very much am. On a blog, you can see how many “hits” your post has gotten. I don’t have an established readership outside of people I know (because let me tell you, they would be very tired of waiting for posts if I did 😂), so the ones I don’t link to fb get zero to little hits right away. It’s been an exercise in remembering my purpose these past nine days as I have seen the low numbers on “seen” blog posts, and a good exercise for me, I believe. I have been reminded that this month is for ME to prove to ME that I can discipline myself in my writing, that I don’t have to only write when the Muse hits, and that sometimes inspired writing happens only when I put fingers to keyboard and not always in my mind before. I need this month. I’m doing November for me and for the hopeful future I have.

The ability to see interactions made me think some about my recent discovery of Instagram stories and how you can see who all watched them. I never think or care to check but every time a kid gets my phone to show me how to archive them 🤷🏻‍♀️, she looks at my numbers. Kids today can tell you when they lose a follower on social media and I can’t even tell you how many followers I have nor how many people I follow. I have noticed that I pay attention to the “likes” and comments on my posts, but I can also tell you I never notice it on anyone else’s.

This morning, this Wired article  showed up in my twitter feed and I wondered to myself how it’s going to rock the world of some teenagers. It’s an interesting premise, the idea that hiding engagement (and it looks like users will still be able to see it, maybe, just not the public, like blog posts? or maybe not) will increase the authenticity of posts and make Instagram, as I read one place on twitter, “a nicer place”.

I guess the future will tell how that goes, but I’ll just be over here the rest of the month (I hope), faithfully putting fingers to keyboard. For me.

(And waiting to post this blog till a high traffic time. 😜)

I Remember

Today is the anniversary of the storm that took my three children’s first parents and their little sister. It’s also the anniversary of the storm that took their home and everyone they knew from their lives, as they moved across the world three years later.

On this day, although I’m never sure about how they are going to respond to it (most years they mention the date, although this year no one has and I take my cues from them so I didn’t bring it up), I remember.

I remember a man and a woman whom I never met, but who brought into this world three of the greatest kids I have ever known, a man and a woman who raised those three the very best they could in the circumstances they were given... A man and a woman who made mistakes, no doubt, just as we all do, but who must have loved these three very much because these three very much know how to love and be loved... A man and a woman who would probably love to see the teenagers and young adult their three babies became... A man and a woman whom we will always try to honor with the ways we cherish and raise their kids.

I remember a little girl who didn’t live on earth very long (just four or five years), but who left a lasting impact and forever memories with her big sister and big brothers. I remember a little girl whom I’ve never seen but who I imagine to have had Angela’s beautiful face and Roman’s mischievous eyes and Francisco’s bright smile. I remember a little girl whose likeness may one day show up in the face of one of my grandchildren, her nieces or nephews. I remember Francis May, and I know that one day I will see her running down the streets of heaven, yelling “Kuya!” and “Ate!” when she sees her Francisco and Roman and Angela again.

On this day, I remember.

Blessing Addition through Subtraction

Tonight I left a comment on a fb post by a friend. Her son didn’t make the basketball team and he is devastated. I wrote something along the lines of, in addition to knowing that God has more for him and not being able to see the long game from here, that I prayed they would soon see (as we did this year) that sometimes God blesses us by taking things away.

I’m not so good at deciding on “no”. I’m not good at quitting things or refusing things or saying no thank you to things. Ironically, I’m also not good at losing. I’m not good at not making things or not getting what I want. In high school, I never ran for SGA because I was afraid I wouldn’t get it. If I ever had a doubt about making something, I just didn’t try for it.

Last spring, I applied for a teacher grant to take a trip to Europe with a Holocaust curriculum organization. This is going to sound super arrogant, and I’m aware of that, but here’s the truth: I KNEW when I applied that I would get it. In fact, I said these exact words to Kraig, “I need us to both be in agreement before I apply, because there is no doubt I’ll get it.” And it’s not even terribly arrogant (though it sounds it), it’s just logic. I have been teaching about the Holocaust for 19 years, I have been a Teacher Fellow with the TN Holocaust Commission for 15 of those, I teach a course for which I wrote the curriculum, I have won awards in the field, and I use this curriculum regularly. It’s a no-brainer. I just needed to make sure that I was okay with it because it would mean getting back home from Cambodia on a Monday and leaving for Europe less than a week later, then missing the first half of in-service week and returning to school literally the day after I got back. I can be a machine when I need to, and I was desperate to do this trip, so I knew I could make it.

We would be notified in April as to whether or not we got it, so imagine my shock to receive an email  from the organization in March while on Spring Break. My first thought when I saw it in my email was that it was a quick and easy decision so they sent them out early. And I was ready! I had priced airfare and asked permission to miss the days of in-service.

Except that it wasn’t an acceptance email. It was a rejection email. I actually read it three times, I was so sure that I had misunderstood. I was breathless. How in the world??? How had I not gotten it??? Well, the email stated that they had such a response that they did the first two cuts by eliminating anyone who had already been to Yad Vashem or Auschwitz. With that, I was out of the running.

I don’t think they have ever used that criteria before, and nothing in the paperwork made mention of it mattering how widely you had traveled before. First time for everything, I guess!

What I realized in July of this year, upon my return to the US from Cambodia and at the beginning of some weird foot swelling thing that started the end of July (while I would have been in Europe, walking nonstop), is that I couldn’t have done it. I never would have been able to pull off getting home from one trip across the world and then left immediately for another across the pond, then gotten back and started school with students. It would have set a tone of complete exhaustion and challenge on a year that would bring more than its fair share of both.

I didn’t know any of that. I don’t say “no”. I don’t try for things that aren’t for sure. But He knew all of it and He blessed me by taking away the opportunity. It was the same thing He did for Emma this year in regard to volleyball. He knew how much of her joy was lost to that white ball and the image it gave her of herself. He knew how frustrating and difficult so many parts of being on that team were for all of us, things I didn’t even realize until it was over. It didn’t feel like a blessing at the time, but it was. Some days since, it hasn’t felt like a blessing, like the game I forced myself to go to this year to support my students and the loss of being part of it was almost too much to bear... like the day they left for state and we cheered them on in the hallways and I unexpectedly started to cry because I was always certain that would be us one day, that volleyball would always be part of our life. I missed some of the girls. I missed some of the parents. I missed the thought of a senior night, of putting a picture of Emma at her first volleyball camp as a tiny girl next to her senior photo. I just missed it. I call volleyball the sport that broke my heart, and I wasn’t even the player. But the truth is, volleyball MAY HAVE broken my heart, but we are so much better off without it. Its absence is a blessing.

He does give and take away, and often He takes what He does because we aren’t smart enough to know to say “no” to it. It’s just the blessing of addition through subtraction.

Rest and Death

One day in the fall, one of my kids asked me, "Why do the trees die?"

Without really thinking, I responded with, "They aren’t dead, they just shed their leaves. If they were dead, they wouldn’t bloom again in the spring."

As the trees are turning right now, and leaves are starting to fall (hello to my two LEAST favorite seasons of the year, fall and winter), I've been thinking about death and rest and bloom. 

Seasons are... weird. And also refreshing (except when the season leaving is glorious like summer and the one coming is sad and dark and cold and empty like fall/winter, haha!). It's strange that the scenery around us can go from blazing full of gorgeous color to spindly skeletal tree limbs. And sometimes only a day separates the beauty from the void.

Often, we mistake rest for death.

Often, rest is required for bloom.

I think that in a society that celebrates being busy, on the move, getting stuff done, seizing the day, and on and on, we think that taking time for rest and restoration is something to be ashamed of. We see a pause as a stop, a rest as certain death.

Not only does rest not mean death, NOT stopping to rest can absolutely lead to death. The entire premise of crop rotation is based on giving the land room and space and time to rest and recover. Without it, the bloom would never come.

There is a Jon Acuff poem (weird, I know, as we don't think of him as a poet) that I LOVE:

If at the end of my life, the only thing I’ve accomplished is a comfortable life, my days have been wasted.
If at the end of my life, the only thing I’ve fought for is my own name, my days have been wasted.
If at the end of my life, the only thing I’ve stood for is my own reputation, my days have been wasted.
If at the end of my life, the only thing I’ve traded are works for rewards, my days have been wasted.
May we not go to the grave quietly.
May we not make refuse of the gifts we’ve been given.
Arrive empty to the grave, having given all you were given, stewarded all you were tasked with.
Give the grave only bones.

"Give the grave only bones." Wow. And the entire premise of this poem is that we must live as if we are people on mission, using our gifts and talents for the Lord and others. I think that is ABSOLUTELY true.

I have learned, through some weird health situations, that my body requires rest and if I don't offer it willingly, it will take it forcefully. Since 2016, I have been doing a better job of listening to the rhythms in my body and taking time to slow down, get plenty of sleep, drink water, and even specifically schedule time alone for myself to recharge emotionally.

However, as I try to follow these patterns that I know are right for me, I am constantly fighting the part of me that keeps screaming, "You are losing the ground you gained! Your business just started getting a lot of interaction on social media and now you're letting it go dry again! You just got into the flow of writing and now you have nothing you want to say anymore! You just got the house organized and straight and now you're letting it slip into messiness again! Keep going, doing, being! GIVE THE GRAVE ONLY BONES!"

Contrary to what that voice inside my head is screeching, I also think that poem and statement can be read as a caution against dying with dreams and potential unrealized, with regrets. And many times, what is needed to realize our dreams and our potential is a season of rest, or at least moments and rhythms of rest along the way.

I'm trying to learn the simple lesson of science that the trees teach us every single year... resting isn't death, it's necessary for new life.

Wisdom and Strength

I love to hear my kids pray. As much as I wish I could say we are super spiritual and that we pray together every morning, or that I can hear them praying aloud from their bedrooms, that would simply not be the truth. However, I do get to hear one of them pray aloud each week in our family devotional and meeting. It’s the highlight of my week, especially with a few of them, the ones who tend to guard their thoughts and feelings a little more closely than the ones who share every thought that crosses their minds (KELSEY). When they pray, I get a glimpse into their heart and their relationship with God and often really profound things are said in this conversation with their Father.

Back in the fall, Roman was leading us in prayer and one of the requests on the list were the cross country meets for four of five sons and daughters. I will never forget what he said…. 

He prayed, “Lord, give us wisdom to run a good race and the strength to finish.”

Admittedly, I am not a runner. If I were praying about a cross country meet, my prayer would just go, “Please let me survive to the finish line and not be too embarrassed.” As I thought about his prayer, I thought about the difference in a runner and a …. let’s just be gentle and call me a “non-runner”. 

Until I parented runners, I didn’t realize that wisdom went into running. I just assumed you run as hard and as fast as you can until you can’t anymore. I didn’t know about pacing and about reading your competition and about training and about the mental game of running. It takes wisdom to run a good race. 

How often are we living our lives in a “just let me survive to the finish line and not be too embarrassed” sort of way? How many Sunday nights do I look at the week ahead and think, “I just need to survive these next three days and it will ease up”? How many mornings do I wake and mentally calculate the number of hours till I can get back in bed? How many days do I just get through, waiting for a weekend? How many obligations and events do I “just survive and hope to not be too embarrassed”? Is that living? Or is that just surviving?

The wisdom in running our race can be found in His Word and in time spent with Him. What sets us apart from the world, the world that is just surviving, if that’s all we are doing too? I’m afraid that too often, we lose sight of the fact that we are to run our race with wisdom. We are called to spend time listening to the message He has for us, to apply it to our lives, and to live our days with purpose and intention, with wisdom and integrity. 

I don’t know if Roman was thinking about the connection between running with wisdom and finishing with strength, but they are closely linked. The strength to finish comes from the wisdom with which he runs. If he runs wisely, pacing himself and keeping his mental game in check, the strength for the finish will be there. But if he pushes himself harder than his capacity and lets his competitors get in his head, the finish will be a gasping disappointment.

Nehemiah is one of my favorite books of the Bible. I don’t know what the draw is that my heart feels to that book, but I have loved it since my rediscovery of it as an adult. It’s one that I like to go back to and read every few months. This last time, back in December, the words of Nehemiah 6:9 jumped off the page at me: “For they wanted to frighten us, thinking, ‘Their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.’ But now, O God, strengthen my hands.” 

What a SIMPLE prayer… Strengthen my hands. Nehemiah was building a wall while fielding threats and rumors and dissension in his ranks. My kids were running 3.1 miles while fighting their bodies and their minds and the terrain and their opponents. You and I, we might be battling anxiety or bad news or family dynamics or difficult people bent on making our lives challenging or maybe just the day to day mundane tasks at home and at work that never seem to end. But no matter which camp we find ourselves, a simple prayer for strength will spur us on.

He longs for us to run this race of life with wisdom, the wisdom found in Him and through His Word and relationship. He longs to grant us the strength to do more than just survive, but to LIVE with joy and contentment and as a beacon of His light to those around us. So today, let that be the whisper of your heart to your Father: “Give us the wisdom to run a good race and the strength to finish. And while you’re at it, strengthen my hands.”

Child B

“There he stood, already beyond my reach, my father, the center of my life, just labeled JEW. A shrill whistle blew through the peaceful afternoon. Like a puppet a conductor lifted a little red flag. Chug-chug-chug –puffs of smoke rose. The train began to creep away. Papa’s eyes were fixed upon us. He did not move. He did not wave. He did not call farewell. Unseen hands were moving him farther and farther away from us. We watched until the train was out of sight. I never saw my father again.” ― Gerda Weissmann Klein, All But My Life: A Memoir

Tomorrow, my Holocaust Lit class will discuss what is probably my very favorite Holocaust memoir. Gerda Klein's word-poetry as she shares her story of survival is absolutely something that lodges in your spirit.

This particular quote is one that I always take with me from the text. I can hardly read it aloud to my class without tearing up. It's not even the final goodbye in this moment that gets to me, it's the very first line.
 "There he stood, already beyond my reach, my father, the center of my life, just labeled JEW."
That line echoes with the many layers and worlds that each of us have and inhabit. When I read that line, I think of my own dad. I think of his raucous laughter, his generous spirit, the joy he takes in hearing funny stories and pranking people. I think of the pride in his eyes when he looks at his kids and grandkids, the way he loves my mom (and harassing her), and the profound faith in the Lord that he has walked out throughout his entire life. I think of his gentle touch with his animals, of his adventurous spirit, and of his loyalty to his loved ones. While my dad could be called "Christian," "electrician", "cowboy", "family man", or "friend", he is so much more than any of those titles. When I look at my dad, I see the young, strong man who used to slalom ski while holding me in his arms. I see the man in his 30's who climbed powerpoles in storms. I see the middle-aged man who buried his parents. I see the aging man who keeps sick grandkids and drives people around when they need it. I see my past, my present, and I see my future in him.

And yet these Nazis, they saw only one facet of the lives of their victims. And that one facet, while something to be celebrated, they viewed as something worthy of death. Gerda's father, who held as many memories and personality traits and talents and weaknesses and laughter and interests and hobbies and goals and ambitions as my own, was seen only as the one word that condemned him to death.

Yesterday was Roman's birthday. I was searching through old photos to share some of him and I came across a photo that I actually never did see at the time, but that was sent to me later. It was the photo of him from what is called the Special Home Finding List, a list of children who are available for adoption in the Philippines who are "difficult to place", children who have physical or mental challenges, who are older, or who are part of a sibling group. Roman, as a part of a sibling group of three and a teen, fit into this category. This list is similar to the Heart Galleries of foster children that many states have and lists that other countries produce. In Roman's photo, he is labeled "Child B". The accompanying written description is about Francisco, Roman, and Angela (which I won't share).

I looked at that photo yesterday, "Child B", and the above quote came immediately to my mind. Roman, our jokester, our smart as a whip boy, our emotionally complex guy, our athletic and talented teenager... Roman, the source of so many memories, just in the past 2 years and 8 months since I "met" him on Skype... Roman, the boy I can't imagine living without, the one I cannot WAIT to watch grow and become and be... Child B.

When I look at that picture, I can't help but chuckle at the pen he has tucked in his shirt and the fact that I can guarantee you that what is cropped out is a shirt tail that is either already untucked or was as soon as the photo was taken. He always, ALWAYS has a pen because he is ALWAYS fiddling and doodling. He is never still and neither is his mind. I think of all the people who looked at this list, at my Roman, and just saw Child B. And quite honestly, I think how grateful I am that he didn't become the son of some other people who saw this list, that God knew that he was for us and we were for him.

After having all of those thoughts yesterday morning, we had a church service with special music by Voices of Lee. One of the lines from a song, "Ever Be", jumped out at me: "You Father the orphan
Your kindness makes us whole." Roman isn't "Child B" to the world anymore because he is now (again) a chosen, treasured son. But he was NEVER "Child B" to God. The moment his parents perished in that storm, he was legally an orphan, but he was never left Fatherless. God picked him up in His arms, all three of them, and named them... "Loved"... "Protected"... "Cherished". And that is who they are today, valued as such by the Lord and by us, their family.

The world will attempt to devalue those in it. It will attempt to strip identities, to slap a label and consequences that come with that label on everyone in its path. It's up to us, all at different times, to refuse to allow the labeling of "Other", "JEW", "Less Than", "Illegal", the R-word I can't even say, racist terms, "Addict", "Monster", the children abandoned and abused and rejected by their families. Every person we know is a person of layers, a person who inhabits many worlds and who carries all of time inside him or her. It's up to us to just LOOK.