Headaches and thanks

Luke 12:48

It seems I have been doing a lot of griping lately – not enough of this, too much of that; not enough room, not enough time – the litany goes on and on.

Abundance brings its own headaches and issues.

I do live in a world of abundance and it is an intentional understanding of abundance, for the most part. I believe that when I begin to hold onto things, just in case; when I begin to hoard, far less is received.

This is lived out every week at Trinity Food Ministry Pantry. I try to give, and give, and then give some more. Still, the larder seems full, space is limited. So, I gripe.

But I have a friend – Gwen. She is such a friend that she is comfortable yanking my chain, pulling me up short when I complain.

And so, she did recently. After listening to me for a good while, she asked, “What’s the rest of that verse “much will be given?” Well, I couldn’t recall right off the top of my head, so I asked my other friend, “Google” if she knew. Of course, she did.

Luke 12:48

“From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”

Gwen said, “yeah, that’s it. That’s what I was thinking while you were talking. You have a lot, you owe a lot.”

See what I mean? Gwen stopped me short.

Immediately, I offered a short prayer of thanksgiving. Then, I followed that up by asking that God help me so that I did not become complacent in my abundance.

There is always a lesson, isn’t there?

Today, I am thankful for Gwen and for abundance. 

To My Family, written rather than told because that's what I do

 Yesterday I cooked. I enjoyed it. It was the first time in a long while that I enjoyed cooking. Then we all sat down to eat and it was over. It was good but it was not the stuff from which memories are made.

When I was a child, every holiday was an opportunity for a family gathering. I do not remember going to multiple houses on Thanksgiving so we must have alternated the holiday between my dad’s and mom’s families. Or maybe we went on Thursday to one and another day of the weekend to the other. Regardless, at either one, there were lots of people but more children at my dad’s family.

I especially loved the Click/Knipe gatherings. When I grow nostalgic for Texas, that is where my mind goes. My daddy’s aunt and uncle had a turkey farm in Lampasas. We would travel down there and have a great time. My memory is that it was always outside. Maybe I have gotten my memory of a Willie Nelson movie and my real life intertwined but I don’t think so. It’s just a way of life in Texas. Kids chasing chickens, music playing, people dancing, long tables filled with as many dishes as there were people. After dinner, at every single gathering I can remember, Uncle Roy (my daddy’s uncle) would find a tree with a little grass under it, lie down, pull his hat down over his face and take a nap.

Sometimes, we would gather at my great-grandmother’s historic home in Cresson. She had a big pot-belly stove in the middle of the living room and a huge cast iron stove and oven in the kitchen. She is the one who always called me by my whole name, “O.J.’s Oldest Daughter Barbara Gail.” Every time. Or so it seemed in my memory. She was also the one who admonished us as we raced out of the back door, “You chillren don’t chase the chickens!” And of course, that was exactly what we did. The back yard led out to a chicken coop and a little barn. It was a great backyard with trees to climb and corners to explore. Plus there were grapevines and swinging from grapevines was just about the best.

Later times, we would go to Grandma and Grandpa’s home in Godley. The smells of her house as we opened the door were intoxicating. Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, reunions, or just some plain old Sundays, I can easily remember those plus the warmth and sound that rushed out the door to envelop us as we entered. The noise levels were incredible. Anyone having an auditory issue might have been very uncomfortable. But it was all good noise – laughter, love, and lots more of each.

Everyone seemed to have their special place to be inside that house. Grandma, Gail (aunt) and Mom were all in the kitchen or at the table. Grandpa sat in his chair in the living room. Daddy sat in Grandma’s chair. Damon (uncle) and Karen sat on one of the three couches. Jim (aunt’s husband) commandeered another couch. If my great-aunts and uncles were there, the couches had to be shared.

And my grandpa’s hands. I remember his hands on his hips with his head leaned back and laughter pouring out. He had the best laugh. His whole body was a part of it. Or his hand resting on the top of my head when I was still small. Later, his hand gently touching my daughter’s redhead as she sat beside his chair when she was two. I think he loved her best because she was a redhead like his beloved Babe (Grandma).   

Until my sister and I got much older, we would be asked to sing. We dutifully sang whatever song Grandpa requested. My sister Jo and I were the only grandkids for a while. The others were seven+ years younger than us. So, she and I were on center stage for a while.

It seems like most of our Thanksgivings were spent at the Clicks. Christmases were spent with my mom’s folks on their Palo Pinto farm. Grandmother (or Mamaw as she was also called), Mom’s mom, was a story teller. She was always telling stories from mom and her sister’s life. Or of me. I swear I do not know if I remember certain things or if I just heard the tale so many times it became my reality.

Thanksgiving always brought this poem:

Do you know what I’m thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day?

If you won’t laugh, I’ll tell you.

For there’s lots that I can say.

I’ve reasons to be thankful.

You’d think so too, I guess.

I fell down stairs last night and tore this big hole in my dress.

I skint my knee and broke my doll

And Oh! I bumped my head!

So you just better believe…

I’m thankful I’m not dead!

My grandmother would tell the story of my aunt (mom’s older sister) being a little girl and performing this poem on a stage, complete with all the actions necessary to make it real. I looked up the lines and found the poem in a compilation, Oregon Teachers Monthly, Volume 16 page 172, “A Thankful Girl” by Edith P. Putnam. I love Google.

Halloween always brought up “Lil Orphant Annie.” The night before Christmas, before we would be tucked into a big feather bed with heavy covers ready to bear down upon us, she would sing this song,

Santa Claus is coming, children, he’ll be here in a day.

The snow is deep and even. You can hear each reindeer hoof.

So, hang up your stockings and go to bed quickly

and close your eyes tight was you can

for he’ll peep through the keyhole to see if you’re sleeping

that good-natured, jolly old man!

There really was a keyhole in the old door of the old house. And I could always imagine Santa peering through it to see if we were asleep. It was so hard to keep our eyes shut because on the other side of the door, out in the living room there would be the jingle jangle of bells. We would hear rustling noises as the jolly old man set out our presents. Later, I discovered that the jolly old man was our Poppy. That made the memory all the sweeter.

I have not found another person who knows this song. Nor can I find it via Google. Maybe she made it up. It is a good song and one that I have sung to my own grandkids when I have been with them on Christmas Eve.

I wonder what memories I have set up for my grandkids. I know that for most of them, the farm out at Springtown was a big memory. The youngest one was not yet born. The other two’s memories are fading because they were so young. Probably most of their family gathering memories are of my parents’ place in Granbury. Just as noisy, just as filled with laughter and food. Of course, there were no chickens but there was an occasional duck wandering from one cove to another. And of course, there were the admonitions to close the doors as kids raced in and out. It was a sliding glass door so there was not that satisfying clap of a sound as it slammed shut, unhindered by child hands.

Time is rushing by. I miss our family most on these days. Rather than making memories, with so many dead or those living scattered across the country, it seems to be more of a day for remembering. It is too easy to get lost in the sorrow of loss and miss the here and now. 

Funny how the memories we hold dear seem so much more defined than the ones in the process of being made.    

The certainty within the Mystery

When I first saw her, I could tell she was near tears. A volunteer had come to tell me that there was a young woman that I needed to see. She was a small woman with a backpack cutting into her shoulders. She looked as though she was carrying the weight of the world.  

As soon as I said hello, her eyes filled with tears. She told me her story. She was homeless, her car was out of gas, and she and her two month old baby had spent the night in the park. She had three more children with her but she was able to find them a place to stay for the night. The problem was that she had nowhere to spend the night and this night, she would have all the children with her. She was frightened.

A major blessing of working at Trinity Food Ministry is having a nurse from Deaconess Faith Community Nurse Ministries (faithnurses.org) there. While my resource list is growing, I am often at a loss as to help people when their needs are so far beyond the immediate need of food. I introduced her to our nurse.

This was all just a part of the story. She began working for a man four years ago. He was disabled and needed help around the house. She and her little girl moved in with him. The man had two children of his own that came to live with him after their mother went to prison for drugs. At some point, the relationship between the man and the young woman became romantic and later, she became pregnant.

She left his house with all the children after the man was arrested for hitting her. While she had a place at a domestic violence shelter, she could not take his two children there because she did not have custody of them. As a result, she couldn’t enter into the shelter until she found a place for the two. Their grandmother was coming from Kansas City to pick them up but would not be able to be in St. Louis until the following day. That left her one more night with four children.

After many phone calls, we were able to get her into a motel for the night so that she and the children would be safe. Arrangements were made for her to meet the grandmother and for the shelter to pick her up. I filled a bag with food and other necessities for the evening and she was on her way. As far as we know, all things worked out.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? The Mystery. The Great Unknowing. We do what we think we are supposed to do, to help, to pray, to offer food and drink, then we simply have to rely on the idea that it all was enough. That it was exactly what we were supposed to do. That God heard our prayers.

As a culture, we seek certainty. We want to know that what we do matters. We want to know that if we do good things, good things will follow, that all will be well simply because we think that is the way it should be.

Yet, the only certainty in life is that it will end at some point. We can try to force the issue but all in all, life happens and sometimes it is very messy regardless of how we try to fix it. At some point, all we have is faith.

Faith is a mystery. God is a mystery. It is what it is. Simply. Profoundly. Mystery.

We accept that we have been commanded to help the “least of these”, to feed, to tend, to care for the children of God who are less able to care for themselves.

No car. No phone. No money. The young woman could have turned the two children over to Family Services. But she didn’t. She put herself at risk to make certain they were handed over to a family member rather that slipped into a system where they could disappear under mounds of red tape. She had a faith that she was doing the right thing.

It often feels as though the problems of this world are so large and so numerous that it threatens to overwhelm me. I feel smothered by the need surrounding me. But community pulls me out from under the cloud, fills me with the breath of God so that I can walk up to the next person with God’s smile in my eyes and say, “Hello. How can I help you today?

It is in that common core of community that I find my life. It is in the midst of that community that I know I am called to beckon to others. How do I know that? I don’t know “how”, I only know that I do know. It is that mystery.

It is in that mystery that regardless of where that young woman ended up, I know that along her way, she found a short respite where people cared enough to sit, to pray, to listen, and then to do what could be done. She searched out and found a community that could help her. I trust that it was what was needed at that moment in time.