What Would Happen If I Tried to Be a Burglar

Wonder how this has worked out

Not yet

You must believe me when I say I'm tired of eulogizing my friends.  I want very much to be able to describe my friend to you, but words are leaving me as quickly as they come in my mind. I wonder where she is now. She really believed in heaven and I want her to have followed a bright light into a beautiful place, but I'm stuck here just wishing she didn't go.  Stuck thinking about her children and husband and her brother's despair and her mother's anguish and stuck worrying that getting the exact right words to honor her sweet life. I think mostly I do not want to write to you about her because as long as it's not really written, as long as we don't discuss it, I can continue to believe that she's just out of the country. It would be much better if she had not written to me to be honest and real in my blog.

I've heard there are several stages of grief and I like to spend the most time in the anger phase.  Rage suits me and I have a lot of good curse words in my vocabulary so usually my grief begins and ends there. I went to her memorial service yesterday and spent the whole time feeling like the odd man out because I have every intention of fueling my rage until the fight has gone out of me.  I do not want to hear about God's plan (he could come up with a better plan than plucking this wonderful mother of 7 out of our lives to be honest), and I don't want to participate in the "who loved her most" contest on Facebook. I don't want to be told that my anger is the Devil talking and I sure as hell don't want to be told I ought to celebrate just yet.  I know that Melinda could have done that.  But my grief is mine and it's authentic and my honest relationship with her demands that I honor her by just feeling whatever I feel for as long as I feel it.  Can you imagine a worse thing than going into a house of God and LYING about how you feel?  Surely God could handle my wrath? And if his own son can ask why God had forsaken him, is it a show of lesser faith if I do the same?

Or if I write about it?

I was not Melinda's best friend. I mean I was as a child - since we were 2 in the nursery at church, but as adults we did what most adults do and drifted apart. Some of that was because she was a home-schooling missionary and I am generally just offensive to both of those populations. What's left to talk about?  My sister and I ran into her and David during her most recent furlough in Rome and her sweet conversation made it the simplest thing to rekindle a friendship.  She was still the funny, generous, creative person she'd always been, just better.  We spent a few hours here and there trying to drink each other's grown up selves in and she had the idea that we should swap paintings - her water color birds for my little birds on canvas.  In her painting I made her blue because she said that's her favorite.  I tried to pray over each little birdie in her family because she would appreciate the sincerity.  Her work was lovely. Mine was at least from the heart.  We swapped them in another marathon coffee shop visit just before she left again.  I sat there yesterday in my car looking across the street at that table and imagined how her eyes always disappeared when she laughed.

Melinda was the only missionary I ever really liked.  I think I liked her mostly because she had legitimate reasons NOT to be nurturing and generous and open and yet she still was.  Who doesn't like that?   It's not my story to tell, but you can trust me that she probably considered herself to be the least fortunate in our group of church friends and yet she had the magnetic personality that made those things insignificant.  I am not kidding you when I say that her laugh could disarm a prison guard's doberman.  Some things folks learn in order to move more easily in the world, but Melinda's ability to warm the people around her was innate. I swear I don't remember a time when she didn't exist joyfully.

When you have every reason to dwell on your miserable adolescence, the abandonment, the worry, the necessary angst and self doubt, you can get your circle of friends to kind of give you a pass and you can just stay in that misery your whole life. We would have given her one because Melinda had legitimate reasons to be self absorbed and mistrustful, but she just wasn't. She didn't even consider that as a hat to try on - instead she built her life as big as she could think to make it. She built a life that involved only creating - she painted, and sculpted, and made things with her hands and she didn't take a thing from the planet. She built a marriage that was safe and trusting and she home schooled because she was smart and knew she could nurture. She adopted because she could love a few more and she became a missionary for the same reasons - she just had more to give and she believed - really, really believed - that God would make everything possible.  Her day was full of people who needed and it was no burden to her to give whatever came to her. She was grateful that it was her position to fill people.

She told me before she left that she could fit all they needed in 6 or 7 boxes and she was so happy that it made sense.  She looked as youthful as ever, I think because her delight in the world was so evident.  Maybe she would not have been as angry and flattened as I am over a loss of a friend. Maybe she would have seen something in a tragedy born from a mosquito bite that I can't find, am not even willing to find.  I know she would have. She lived faithfully and she would have arrived at the positive side of it within seconds, but the same God who created us differently in a billions of years old universe can just wait a relative minute while I get my shit together. My grief is mine, and it is sticky and clings to me like a spider web. It is infectious and inflamed and causes me to want to set everything on fire and when it finally leaves me drained, I will allow myself think about singing Hall and Oates together and remember boy crushes and church youth lock-ins and I will smile at how long we had to know each other. Just not yet.

I emailed her last when I saw a post she'd written about her youngest baby's distressful trip to the dentist.  She dreaded watching her newest little adopted bird's anxiety and pain.  I wrote, "To our new sweet girl: 'His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me'."  She would imagine the First Baptist Church's soloist Bonnie Nipper singing that all through the 1980s and hear it in her head I hoped.  I hoped it would calm her all the way across the ocean in China.  She had a heart that wouldn't wish sadness on me and when I can, when this sickening despair turns me loose, I'll accept what she offered me in her response, "Peace," she wrote, "to my lifelong friend."

Added to the list of bad ideas

Man turns face into tattoo billboard for Internet porn sites, regrets it

So I found this article which is NO JOKE and it made me think that this guy needs to find some better friends. You know, the kind of friend who will tell you that you are an idiot for even considering having a porn site tattooed ON YOUR FACE way before you go and do it.

The thing about suffering...

So my friend Ginger and I were talking this week about all the loss and suffering that's surrounded our community lately and she says this to me: "All I know about suffering is this: There's more coming."  She said a lot more about how that means we need to love harder, and something about wild turkeys, but I got stuck on the more's coming part.

I'll feel up to writing to you about the loss of my longest friendship later, but if you are suffering right now from loss, from confusion, from your own existence, let me tell you that this is just living and dying. It's not new. It's always been there and if you've not had the veil lifted on that before whichever sucker punch you've recently experienced, understand that this suffering is not exclusive to you, it's not targeting you, it's not even about you, except that maybe you can learn something from it about loving harder.

That's why I'm easy...

Whoever wrote that lyric "Easy Like Sunday Morning" obviously didn't go to church on those mornings.  Especially not on time change Sunday.  Getting ready for Sunday mornings as a family is traditionally a helter skelter sort of occasion in which usually a lot of threats about getting your ass in gear so we can go worship Jesus get thrown around.  It's not so much that way now that Olivia is 12. In fact, she's usually the one ready to go and tapping her foot for me to get it in gear now.

I am a minister's daughter. Go ahead and quit thinking all that stuff about minister's daughters right now. That's not the point. My point is that I've been doing this getting ready on Sunday morning my whole life except for the 7 years when I lived in Nashville (during which period I always just said I was still looking for a church when that query arose).  I don't bring this up as some sort of faith contest or anything.  I can assure you that whether I like you or not has very little to do with who, where or whether you worship.

I'm mentioning Sunday mornings because almost every Sunday morning there's this huge battle in the closet with what I'm going to wear. We look nice on Sundays at our church, but to be honest, I don't think other members of the congregation really spend their time assessing what clothes folks show up in each week. It's just an internal pressure that I feel - nothing anyone else imposes, but I have other friends who grew up in church who also have this battle on Sunday mornings so I think it's a real thing.  Also, I think there's value in getting out of my yoga pants once a week.  So most Sunday's begin in a frantic search through skirts and boots and tights and dresses and end with me saying, "Screw it. Jesus forgives and so can the Baptists."  Then I just throw on my favorite boots and something that doesn't show any lumps and Kenny grabs the tic-tacs and off we go.

We like to hold hands and walk the block and a half so usually the fresh air gives me a minute to put things in perspective.  This week the gorgeous weather made picking something out difficult - none of us are ready for summer clothes, but a grey dress just seems like an insult to the 70 degree temps.  I went with a blue Anthropologie dress with a v-neck that's sort of a prairie style and a pair of boots. It has some ruffle. I landed in this dress after I had tried on 4 or 5 others and realized I had approximately one minute and 45 seconds to hit the door.  This is a dress that I really don't prefer, but every time I wear it someone says they like it so I figure there must be something that I'm just not seeing in it.  I think maybe it makes me look like I have boobs.  I only realized halfway to church that I'd left on the gold circly disco sort of necklace that I'd tried on with a dress two outfits back and hoped maybe nobody would care that my jewelry didn't really work.

So anyway, there we are in our usual spot next to my mama and I'm trying to remember if I even put lip gloss on while the children's minister talks to the little ones about prayers.  Kenny hands me a tic tac which I pop in my mouth. Or at least I meant to pop it in my mouth.  Only I missed my mouth and the tic tac lands very precariously in the circly necklace just above my cleavage.  Holy moly if there's ever a moment for stillness this is it.  Thinking no one has witnessed this and with the delicacy of a surgeon, I dislodge the candy from its golden perch and move it to my mouth just as Kenny leans over and whispers, "Whew. That was close."  Have you ever tried not to laugh in church?  That's pretty much like asking me not to cry at a Hallmark commercial.  That's like asking me not to say "Awwww" at a puppy video.  Prayer time is of course the worst possible moment to laugh if you are in a church service.  But there I am shoulders shaking, hand over mouth and gut heaving with effort not to guffaw.  Kenny is begging, whisper pleading with me to stop which of course, only makes me snicker more. It's like he doesn't know me at all! The worst thing to do at this moment is tell me what I shouldn't do. He is now starting to giggle a little and says, "Please don't snort" because he knows this is entirely within the realm of possibility and which actually makes it way more likely that I will.  Thank goodness we went to the choir's anthem so I had a few minutes to make sure and keep my own joyful noise to myself.

Looks like the wrong necklace saved my reputation of being a well behaved church goer this morning. I would have had to wait until the offertory to figure out how to get that tic-tac out of my dress if it hadn't.  Next week maybe we'll take gum.

I wasn't kidding

When I said winter has always been a problem, I meant it.  Or it could be that my hair was getting me down.  I can't believe the photographer didn't even give me a hug after this picture.

Elevator Experiment

I can't say for sure what I'd do if I happened upon this in an elevator. I like to think I'd come up with something more resourceful than taking a picture with my phone.  The fire extinguisher guy is a genius. 

Here comes the sun...

I've had a couple of people mention that I've not posted much lately. I really love when I can find something to share with you that makes you laugh and I really love that you show up to see it.  If you don't know me well, you're probably not aware that I really come to life in the sunshine months.  These gray Fall and Winter days hammer away at me and it's been a lifelong habit for me to sort of hibernate and conserve energy until the sun shines consistently on me again.  That means most of my energy is spent sort of inwardly.  For those of you who have never heard of it, Seasonal Affective Disorder (appropriately acronymed to SAD) is a real thing - just ask the folks in Seattle - and we all probably deal with it to varying degrees.  I promise that as soon as we can string a long a few days that don't look like this you will hear more from me.

Now other SAD sufferers might call me a traitor, but you can find some good things about the fall and winter months. I mean, you may as well since it seems to come around every year anyway.  Green tea, good boots, lots of books and a great hot water heater can all become things to look forward to in a pinch.  I've come to believe in the wisdom of exercise and avoidance of comfort foods as real remedies for all sorts of winter complaints.  But trust me, I've done the experiment and it's not like you're going to feel better in Spring if you've succumbed to a sedentary and boozy, mac-and-cheese fueled Winter.

I'm starting to see more signs that soon we will all be complaining about the heat cast off from that big yellow ball that gives us all life.  The daffodils are all kamikaze like, coming up like Blackberry Winter isn't really a thing, but I guess when you are gorgeous you can just burst forth from the ground and show it all off and end your life thinking it was worth it to stretch towards the sun and let your life be a sign to those in hibernation that it will be okay soon. I  always treat the March and April months with a suspicious optimism.  It only took me like 35 years to stop breaking out the shorts until May. Still, I suppose I've seen this turn of seasons enough to poke my hibernating head out a little and soak up whatever blue sky and Vitamin D I can find.  It's coming friends. This week's forecast looks hopeful anyway.  I keep hearing Alabama Shakes' song, "Hold On" and that helps. Click below if you need the encouragement...

There are no words...

Well maybe there are a few.  I can tell you I have never witnessed this many men in their underwear behave in such a fascinating and entertaining way.  Really, just fantastic. I have snort laughed my way through this video more than once this morning already. I do not even want to know how this came about or what sort of tradition it sprang from - it doesn't even require a history.

Wonder if there are spiders down there?

If I didn't already sleep upstairs, I would move my bedroom over this article:


Man missing, brother rescued after giant sinkhole appears under house near Tampa