Moving Blues

Moving

I’ve moved all my life.

Augsburg, Germany at birth.

Fort Benning, Georgia as a baby.

Luverne, North Dakota as a toddler.

Back to Fort Benning, Georgia for pre-school.

A short stay in Oakland, California as we waited for my father to send for us.

Off to Okinawa, Japan for kindergarten, first, second, and third grades, but even on that little island we moved twice.

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Fort Benning, Georgia for fifth and sixth grade;  I met my lifelong friend Pam here.

Columbus, Georgia while my father was deployed to Viet Nam.

Washington, D.C. for Pentagon duty.

Killeen, Texas for a year off-post, then a move on post to Fort Hood, then a move off post to Harker Heights.

Tallahassee, Florida for college, again, with my bff, Pam.

Fort Hood, Texas as a new bride, new teacher.

Off to Mannheim, Germany, and even overseas we moved three times.  We put our moving boxes into moving boxes, and brought little Lauren into the world in Heidelberg.   

Back to the continental US, to Fort Benning, Georgia.  Welcome Christi!

Off to Monterey, California, Fort Ord.

Back to Fort Hood, Texas within a few blocks of my folks.  Howdy Carlisle!

Fort Stewart, Georgia with a large battalion of other movers and shakers.

Fort Harrison, Indiana.  Hi Michelle! 

Carmel, Indiana.  Lebanon, Indiana.

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  Hello little Charlotte!

Mannheim, Germany once more;  then off to Hohenfels in Bavaria.

Back to the continental U.S. again, to MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida.

Retirement to Brandon, Florida, followed by an earthquake as Bo and I split up;  I  stayed in Brandon;  he took to the trails.

Back to Harker Heights, Texas, to look after momma. 

A move to College Station, and another move in College Station.

Put down roots you say?   Do I know how?

Roots have never been a home, a backyard, or a neighborhood.  Roots for me have always been my lifeblood—my children, their spouses, my grandchildren. 

But when I moved to this town, this neighborhood-- I found the closest thing I've known as home in a very long time.  But, it’s coming to a close.  The guys who own my house, not my home, are moving back in.  It’s their house.  I get it.

But I don’t want to leave my home.  I want to stay.

I know I'll find a cottage, a pup tent, a fortress someplace nearby.  But moving is hard.  This is the place I love.  This is the place I want to stay. 

God’s will is perfect.  His ways are not my ways.  Each time I’ve moved, it’s because He’s picked me up and plopped me exactly where He wants me to be.  He’ll do it again.  I know.

But moving is hard. 

It's a Grand Old Flag...

So much to-do in the news about the American flag and proper procedures when it is displayed.

A Miami police chief is chastised for not saluting the flag.

A crowd does not fully respond with respect to the flag’s passing; some sitting, some standing, some chewing on hotdogs.

Stupid, stupid drunk boys urinate on the flag of their country. 

The President of the United States does not salute the flag during the national anthem; fodder for ridicule.

I decided to check with Emily Post about flag manners.  Seemed like as good a place as any.  I noticed some key points.

The flag is alive. As a material symbol of our commitment to every man’s freedom, it lives.   We know too well the lives lost in defending it.    

It never dips to any person or thing, despite how dippy they might be.

It must be raised briskly; lowered solemnly.

It can never be washed; but it can be dry-cleaned.  When damaged beyond repair, with something like, for instance, urine...it is ceremoniously burned.

In times of national tragedy it flies at half-mast at sea; at half-staff on land.

On a power boat, it’s called an ensign.  On an automobile, it’s called a standard.  On your lapel, it better be on the left.

It remains aloft from sunrise to sunset.

When it passes, we stand at attention with our right hands on our hearts.  If we’re wearing a hat, we hold the cover over our hearts.  Veterans salute.

How well we have all come to know the dark blue union at the head and resting over the left shoulder of the deceased, as burial ceremonies ensue.

I love our flag;  I always have. 

It was part of our family culture.  My father taught us early how to stand and salute the flag.  Family memories are full of such occasions.

As little boys and girls we stopped our games on the playground at the sound of retreat; jumping off the monkey bars to stand with our hands over our hearts or stiff palms at our brows, facing the nearest flagpole.

As teenagers, no amount of drink could have convinced us to relieve ourselves on the flag of our father. 

I really can't fathom frat boys being so inebriated they couldn't wet their pants before they'd wet our flag.

Our flag has been blown up, beat up--despite such weary battles, it thrives.

It deserves so much more from us.

I don’t really understand how a police chief or a President could choose not to salute the flag.

I’m not sure stupidity trumps patriotism.

I'm not sure our religion supersedes our nationality.  

An American reveres the flag.  An American salutes the flag.  

It’s pretty simple. 

The thing is, though…thousands of Americans have died for our freedom to argue these points.   

The flag of our nation draped each of their coffins.

The Iris

Forgiveness is the fragrance

of an iris

Upon the heel

that crushed it.

 

Mark Twain

It’s hard to tell the truth when you’re lying.  Great words for a country and western song.  Not such great words to say when you are trying to explain the incongruencies of your life.  Dreams and pretense create no backbone;  it’s the tough stories, trials, and mishaps of life that do that for us.  I have learned the most important lessons I’ve needed to learn in my life through hard choices, hard knocks, and hard questions.  

Real life requires a kind of consciousness that I have sometimes lacked because of an inherent self-consciousness.  I have asked God over and over to explain this to me; to help me understand who I am.  He has shown me too clearly what I am all about by summarizing the scope and sequence of my life with one word---unbelief. 

I have gone to church with my palms open, ready to receive.  It took me a long time to realize that I must go with my palms open, ready to give. Belief requires something of us;  trusting in the maker and creator of not only the universe, but our universe.  I have struggled with belief.  It confounds me to decode and decipher His will when my own is so strong.  He lives in me.  I have no unbelief about that.  But my obedience, my surrender, my trust are all put to the test pretty continuously.  

Unbelief has haunted my walk as a Christian woman. Is there grace in every moment?  Absolutely.  But grace requires appropriation; and I have missed the opportunity time and time again.  The vernacular of the community of faith gets so tangled up for a new believer:  appropriation, baptism, consecration, discipleship, evangelism, fellowship, grace….an alphabet soup of beliefs that must be digested quickly if we’re to grow as He intended.

I am a storyteller at heart, so I will try to make this a true tale.  In the telling, I hope that you will find some hint of wisdom, some whisper of jurisprudence, so that you may learn from my mistakes.  It is where the rubber meets the road, that place between understanding that God is who He says He is, and not the God we have created Him to be.  

My road’s had twists and turns; dead ends, divergencies, and exit strategies that I’ve ignored.  I’ve driven myself off a cliff and lived to tell about it.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

And so it goes:

Once upon a time…

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn

Hemingway wagered: Write a novel in six words.  He shared his own response on a cocktail napkin: For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.  Six words that can bring you to tears. Powerful stuff.  

I can't write a novel in six words, nor a memoir.  For a couple of years I've been recording a nonfiction piece I call Broken Heart: Fixing Your Heart in Christ's Home. But I haven't been able to finish it, because I've been working on other people's work and projects that are a little more pressing. It was born out of struggle, an internal wrestling match that I could not settle.  Full of essential questions each believer asks.  

      What if He really loves me?

      What does that mean, and how does that belief inform or transform my life?

As a new believer, I didn't understand why I needed to hide God's word in my heart.  

I didn't understand what to expect from my new pastor, or what he might expect from me.  

I didn't understand that I was meant to be a part of a church family, and that the community called "church" could be as complicated as my intimate circle of loved ones.  

I didn't understand that a church could wound, and a church could heal. 

I didn't understand that I could be trained, prepared, and equipped under the cross.  

New believers cannot and should not be ignorant for long.  Beneath the stepping stones of this spiritual journey, we must begin to understand the bedrock divinity of who we are as Christians, and who we are meant to be. 

Precious little conversion growth is happening in Western populations today. Experts estimate as little as 1-3%. We can traipse to Africa, send missionaries to Belize, reach the lost in Haiti, and these are all powerfully important.  But there are unbelievers in our midst, and I'm writing for them. And for me.

There is a huge demographic of believers who will not trust the church.  They make a conscious choice to stay away.  I believe this occurs because we may not understand our rights, but also our responsibilities as believers. 

While we understand that love wins,  it's an oversimplification to think that love is all there is, or that nothing is required of us.  God will welcome us with arms wide open, but can we live in such away that we are more deeply concerned about His opinion of us, than what the world thinks?  His expectations override our own.  

Some estimates tell us that 84% of Americans are not attending a conventional church, and 80% of the churches in North America have reached a plateau or are declining.  Churches experiencing rapid growth are, for the most part, growing due to "switchers", folks who get tired, turned off, or transplanted, and must find a new place to call home. Many churches focus on what the church must provide the switcher, the unchurched, the undiscipled.  

I want to speak my "give me Jesus truth" in a "gimme gimme world."  To receive Him is to love Him, and I believe I owe Him something in return.  

As I've marketed Broken Heart, I have been told over and over, "You've got to have a wider platform."  I don't have a platform per se, wide or otherwise.  I write, and I share what I write, and if it speaks to someone, I am happy.  The six words I'd offer Hemingway would be: I write because I can't not. I've decided to share Broken Heart.  In pieces and parcels. Over time. If it speaks to you, and I pray that it does, I am happy.  If not, I can't not do it anyway.  

I'll share two or three pieces a week...my prayer is that God will bless you richly along the way, but more than that, you will learn to richly bless Him with the sacred and sacramental love you offer, in everything you do. 

After all, He loved us first.  

No End in Sight

From the quiet enclave of my small office in College Station, the wizened yet tender-hearted staff sergeant sat beside me and shared his story, of what it was to endure a catastrophic IED explosion in an area once known as Babylon. 

He whispered words of instinct and survival,  despite partial and full thickness burns over most of his body, the loss of his ears, nose, and several digits, the vertebral fractures, the black lungs, the renal failure. 

In my heart, I could hear what he wanted to say that lay dormant between the place where reality is suspended and trauma threatens to suffocate memory or erupt in sorrow too deep, too wide. 

Yet I had the ears to listen and the heart to hear him, because I know something about sacrifice, having spent three-quarters of my life in a military household where service was benchmark and bedrock.

The term “PTSD” gets lobbed about quite frequently in communities across America reeling from devastating loss over the last dozen years, and I know something about that syndrome, that loss. 

While my father would never have used the acronym, he lived with combat every single day.  Having traded the wheat fields of North Dakota at age eighteen for the foxholes of Korea, he spoke rarely about his life underground.

With his vibrant sense of humor, he’d freely share the stories of shit-on-a-shingle served in a mess cup or his naivete as a teenager in battle, but the dark side of that war did not emerge in daylight. 

Loosened up with a few shots of bourbon and branch, he’d attempt to go there, but his inner censor would shut down most stories and he’d look upon a journey none but him could describe, unable to utter the horrific truths of what he saw, what he did, where a piece of him died. 

Try to call him a hero and he’d quickly defer to his older brother, Alan, who spent ruthless months interred by the Japanese at the end of the death march to Bataan.  That’s the hero, he’d say, and move the topic along, far away from the personal and precious details of his own sacrifice.

He would not use PTSD to describe the disconnect that came over him when he tried to recall the hidden battlefields of Laos or Cambodia as he donned his Green Beret and disappeared.  My brothers and I had vague clues of trauma when he tried to share—from airborne night drops onto the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to napalm and Montagnards, to bouncing betty’s and punji traps, and casualties too numerous to bear. 

It was the bombed and boiling river filled with thousands of NVA that woke him again and again from a dead sleep.

How deeply I loved my father, and love him still, but how badly I wish that he had understood the importance of treatment for trauma.  He kept it all inside. 

Today’s soldiers must not hold it in; this generation must be encouraged and supported as they speak aloud what seems impossible to say. 

The healing dialogue, the bridge of words across the deep crevasse between what we are able to process and what we cannot fathom, must be established. 

When I probed deeper into the psyche of my soldier friend, I understood that it was the telling, the retelling, the retelling, and the retelling, that was allowing him to decompress and come to terms with pink mist, the oily residue of blood and bone, the empty boot.  

Men, women, boys, girls, their families, caretakers, and support teams must learn how to listen, and how to hear the words that are so tough to utter, the stories that are so tainted by unspeakable tragedy.  

Unlike cancer, PTSD cannot be excised or radiated, but untreated it does metastasize.  The soldier who sits beside us in church on Sunday morning may take his life on Sunday night. 

We must reach out to him; we must listen to her. There is nothing unmanly or cowardly about speaking the truth.   Each of our veterans has a voice that deserves to be heard. 

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.  Matthew 5:7

My mom was not a religious woman.  And to tell you the truth, she did not appear to be a particularly spiritual woman either.  She was a member of the Greatest Generation.  So for her, being religious or spiritual would be a practice of self-absorption, and she was never self-absorbed. 

She was all about work and sacrifice. 

She could look in the mirror every morning and her reflection would be simple:  a woman who cared for herself, cared for her husband, cared for her family in the best ways she knew how.   

She was not someone who would tell a sad story, nor was she a woman who would share her own sad stories with you. 

Yet they were there--

… tucked under a childhood broken by divorce;

… stashed under the rejection of her stepfather; 

…buried under the wound of dropping out of high school; 

…concealed under the fear of traveling to unknown places all over the world; 

…submerged in the daunting task of raising four children, most days on her own;

…revealed in an overuse of alcohol to calm, numb and mask. 

Oh how I loved the woman she was, the mother she was, the friend she was. 

I was thinking of her yesterday, when I was with a little group of second graders at one of my schools.  The kids were being kids, and I enjoyed their little earnest faces of hope and promise.

I remembered my first year teaching.  I had a group of 21 young people, aged 13-21, with varying degrees of exceptionality, primarily what we referred to as mental retardation.  I had several students with severe cerebral palsy, as well as three in wheelchairs.  I loved those kids, and my aide, Mrs. Bales.  It was great work, and a great privilege.

My mom loved my school stories.

I’d stop by after work and tell her about what James did, or the time I found Melvin on the floor in the bathroom folding paper towels into origami shapes, or the way Ellen took care of little Shirley.  My mom got to know their names, their needs.  

And every once in awhile, she’d show up in the door of my classroom with cupcakes.

Oh how my students loved her impromptu visits. 

There’s no way in the world my mom would ever tell anyone that she did such a thing, that she showed up in my students’ lives to do something utterly generous and kind.  But she did. 

I'm probably one of the few people in the world who knew about her small acts of kindness, and who knows how many more there were?  We'll never know.  She was fierce yet meek. 

My unspiritual, unreligious mother showed me what mercy was really all about. 

And in her acts of kindness, I saw the glory of God, though she uttered not a word about Him.

Professional or Confessional?

Professionalism

I’ve been working for a living most of my life. As a kid I was a dog walker, a babysitter, a camp counselor, a waitress, a busgirl, a housekeeper, a retail clerk, and I even learned to center condiments on a sesame seed bun at MacDonald's.  I ran the dorm switchboard in college, worked for a teacher's union and a newspaper office in Tallahassee, and finally, degree in hand,  got to teach school.  I took a few years off to raise our children, but even during that season, I was always trying to find a way to make ends meet.  It’s what most military spouses do.  We put our own careers on hold, in order to make a new home wherever the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, or Coast Guard sends us.  Placing a career on a back burner costs us something. 

First it renders our resume a complete mess;  we can appear flighty, shifty, even unstable, when in fact, we followed our spouse from one course on one coast to another class on another coast and so on.  Most of us have found work, but many times it’s at a lower pay grade or we’re starting at the bottom of the totem pole time and again.  Rarely do we get to walk in the door with a shiny curriculum vitae in hand and garner the top spot.  About the time we’ve got the pecking order figured out and networked ourselves up to where we want to be, our service member walks in the door with orders in hand.  It’s a life we volunteered for, but it’s a life that takes a toll on our employment-- past, present, and future. 

Living a military life means we get to meet people from all walks of life, with many different levels of experience.  I’ve worked with folks who’ve been promoted to their level of incompetence, and I’ve worked with those who definitely hide their lights under a bushel.  In between those two extremes, the word “professional” gets bandied about with a pretty cavalier interpretation.  I’m old school.  Professionalism still means something to me.

I have my parents to thank for that.  They always demonstrated a very strong work ethic.  From the time they were teens, they worked for every thing they had, and never took their own abilities for granted. They had confidence, but they also had humility.  Humble is not a word they would use to describe themselves, but I would and do. The first characteristic of professional behavior is humility.  A true professional recognizes that every single point of contact is a human being, with talents, gifts, and abilities that are unique and special.  A professional is a good steward of those relationships, working to build them, deepen them, and create an environment of mutual respect.  Their goal is not to advance their own agenda;  their aim is to advance the mission with confidence and competence, while respecting,  growing, and developing the human resources required.

My children and I often went round and round about respect when they were little.  I told them that every adult they encountered must be respected, and as they got older and a little ornery, they would counter with the idea that the adult in question needed to earn their respect.  I admit, sometimes I would correct that attitude with a wooden spoon.  But over the years, each of my children learned that respect is not a given;  it's a gift you offer to each person you meet.  And the recipient gets to keep that gift, you don't get to take it back, unless the receiver decides to trash it, in which case you just dust off your sandals and move on.

I think everyone can act professionally, but just because a person calls themselves a “professional” doesn’t make it so.  A professional by definition is someone who has cultivated a special competence or skill;  they’ve honed their knowledge, gifts,  and talents to the extent that they are no longer mediocre at their calling;  they have become an expert.  I meet people every day who call themselves professional, but therein lies the rub.  Who gets to decide?  My neighbor’s going through a nasty divorce with an attorney who calls himself a professional but uses pretty unscrupulous business practices to advance his agenda.  My friend has an agent who calls herself a professional but has trouble drawing a line between personal ambition and professional behavior, and it’s taking a toll on everyone involved.   My daughter maintains a professional relationship with her clients, upholding her oath to behave ethically, reliably, and openly with each and every one, regardless of their material wealth or earthly goods.  My son honors every agreement he makes, knowing that a professional is only as good as his word.  Who gets to decide which one of these folks is a “professional”?    Could it be that some folks who call themselves professional are really cons...using that word to advance their own goals and objectives...a confessional, or wolf in sheep's clothing so to speak? Is the word professional a word we can simply assign to ourselves, or is it a term that's earned.  Could it be that professionalism is, in fact, in the eye of the beholder?

I’m still old school in many of my work habits.   I value the hours I spend on my work, and I want my employer to do the same.  That’s not always an easy contract in an educational setting.  Many times we have to do things that are unpopular;  or we have to do things we don’t want to do.  We don’t get to call the shots very often.  At the end of the day, we have a boss, and he gets to tell us what to do.  But as a professional, I’m called to competently carry out my duties, and my boss has every right to expect me to do what he’s hired me to do.  If asked to do something illegal, immoral, or unethical, I would simply refuse, but otherwise, I get to do as I’m asked or told if I expect to last for long and pick up that paycheck.  But, as a professional, I get to decide when it’s time to hold ‘em, and when it’s time to show my cards and move on. 

For me, work is a privilege. I get to work with an amazing group of professionals, and the thing I love about my cohorts is our shared vision and common goals.  They don't insist on being called "professionals..." --they're actually too busy for all that.  They do insist on doing what's right and relevant, and together, we're all working on the work.  We each have our own talents and abilities, but we work together and over time, we have created a pretty well-oiled machine.  We want each other to succeed, but moreover, we want our mission to be successful. 

We all wanted to be "librarians" when we grew up, not realizing that our school district would end up doing away with librarians.  So now, we do the admin stuff that librarians do, and miss out on a lot of the fun, but nevertheless, over time, we hope to convince our school board and our community that the leader in the library is missing, and we need to bring her back.  We talk to kids all the time about what they want to “be” when they grow up;  but I think the conversation would be much more meaningful if we concentrated more on asking them who they want to “be.”  Situational ethics is averse to me.  I want to be known as someone who does the right thing, all the time.  I want children to learn this as well.  

We’ve started a “social contract” with our students this year.  When they violate one of the tenets of the contract, we’re to ask them, “What are you doing?”  We listen and learn.  Then we ask, “What were you supposed to be doing?”  We listen and learn again.  Finally we ask, “What can you or I do differently to insure you’re successful in doing what you’re supposed to do?”  Again, listen and learn, and hopefully reach an agreement and understanding of what new behaviors will replace the old.

I wish I could have that same dialogue with a lot of adults I meet in the business world or in the educational setting who call themselves “professional.”  I’d like to ask, “What are you doing?”  And find out how they view their behavior.  Then I’d ask, “What should you be doing?”  I think I could learn a lot from their answers to that question.  And finally, I’d like to ask, “What can I or you do differently to insure we’re successful in doing what we’re supposed to do?”  I think that conversation might bring about real change, real reform, and at least a much higher level of understanding. 

It’s something I’m going to experiment with…something tells me I might get some push back from a few of the “professionals” who are in my line of sight.  But I’m okay with that. I have a lot of experience under my belt, and I know more than I did when I was walking dogs and watching other people's kids. I know more than when my spouse presented me with a Plan B, C, or D,  with three weeks or three months to pack up and move to Germany, Georgia, or someplace in between.  No one’s walking in the door any more with a set of orders in his hands, ready to rescue me from what could be a professional morass.  I’m staying right where I am.  I’m willing to take the risks and to do the work to get the job done;  I’m willing to be the consummate professional, even if it costs me something in the process.  At the end of the day, it won’t matter what I call myself if those I serve see that my actions don’t match the words that come out of my mouth.