Romance of the road

My sister has been posting about herecar trip outwest with her family and it has been making me remember the trips we would take as kids in the back seat, no seatbelts, actually the one trip Dad took a piece of wood and made the back seat into a bed.

No, we did not have a van, we were four people crammed into a 5 passanger car, sometimes 7 people crammed into the car if we met up with someone like my grandparents and I had to ride in the trunk, ok, well the hatch back or up on the shelf back window. We would drive for time and distance. Every time we stopped Dad would say "We are makin good time". I always wondered as opposed to what the other drivers who are not going where we are.

The trips always started in our house at like 3 am, on the road by 4 at the latest. Therewas endless singing of songs either by my parents or my sister and I,  each being horrified by harmonizing of the other, then there I was getting the words wrong just to bug my sister. The  constant look out the window, if you are bored there is so much to see, you know boring people get bored, there is away something to do, of course shortly followed by "Stop kicking my seat".

This was the days before cell phones, and everyone had some sort of scream in front of them at all times. Man, How did we make it? We as a family several times a year would drive down south at least once, usually twice, we made it to my grandmother's house one time in Arkansas in around 11 hours, when the fastest time before that was 13 hours. But this was after the fuzz buster (police radar detector) made it into our lives and we would race random people on the Highway at night with my sister or I running interference for my dad with the garage opener. See, the first ones you could fool the other driver into slowing down by pressing the garage door opener really fast making the other person think a Police officer was near.

I really liked those times, for a house that hardly ever got junk food it was heaven, dry cold pop tarts for breakfast, chips to snack on and soggy lunch snadwiches from the cooler filled with mostly water. There the moments striking lack of parenting like when because Mom and Dad would not pay 3 dollars a piece for 2 cotton in the shell in a bag they made us steal it from a field. They didn't even get out to help us, they sent 2 fairly young girls out into a feild in Louisiana to steal it and put it in the sandwich bag from our soggy lunch sandwiches.

I remember vividly shopping in flea markets and getting the super cool Don Johnson coat with the big fruit all over it that no one at school would have, not because it was hidiously ugly as you would assume (it was by the way) ,but because it was from New Orleans. The random back hills hillbilly stalking your family in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, podunk after staring at your licence plate for a good 10 minutes while you ate dinner and watched him silent fear.

ya know getting the flavor of the place experiencing culture, or lack of.

I do not know that this post is anything more than a tribute to the family car trip on the open road but there is so much more with that than just hitting the airport and taking off. there just seemed to be more time to just be thinking in those days. I am a fan of the airport and take off, get there enjoy were you wanted to go longer and in 4 hours as opposed to 2 days. but there is a love and romance for me in the ride there in the dirtiest backwoods bathroom to the really cool little place you find in the middle of nowhere on the way, that makes the trip. Most of my memories of the trips and fun of it were the times we were filling time in the car. I think it was the first time as a kid I was forced to get to know my parents as people. The most interesting things happened there, the love of getting there  taking the time for the unexpected detoures and twists and adventure of it all make the trip.

The dream that ruined my life

So I have been debating about writing this out but I think I need to. Last week I had a dream that ruined my life. I dreamed I was free of all the things that worp me. All the things that I feel define me as me were gone yet I felt more me than I have ever felt in my life. I felt so light I was afraid to walk the the gravity would not be able to hold me down. I was doing my life more free and open not confined by the usual anxed that I feel. As I began to wake up I felt the Lord talking to me about each thing he was placing back on me and how it has changed me. The weight of each thing was huge. Some were my reactions to pain caused to me. other were my own creation I cried with each one I woke balling and so sad I had to return to this life with all the crushing things that I knoticed before and have run into all my life but never knew how much it was not me.
One of these things is the rebel heart I have loved and cheered in my life and the oposit of that compliance that has plauged me I spent so much time caving to those forces in my life. The way I felt in the dream was like I was living actually in the kingdom living axactly as God wanted me to the things I did. the middle road between giving in to presure and going the other way in regection of that presure. I think so often I have lived in reaction both caving and rebelinng rather than living just as me.

So after this dream I honestly was so sad I had to live in this yuck that defines me more than it should, I also and this sounds so mellow dramatic but I Honestly was afraid I would die. I beleive in healing so much and have had tasts of the freedom and the lightness but never togeather nor the amount. I had never thought that amount of healing was posible or that one could live if they experianced it. SO I knew I was going to die. I wrote out my dream so people would know why I died and I knew people needed to know this was posible it might kill ya but it was what Jesus talked about the pearl in the feild that you would selling everything to own. It was the Kingdom of God. I tend towards drama in expressing things but Honestly I can say I am under selling this, there just is not words to describe it well.

This dream as ruined my life I mean it ruined me for it. I no longer am willing to just excpt the things weighing me down as me. I am sold out for the pearl there is nothing worth more, not that I no longer want things I do and will. But when the chips are down my number one want is Jesus. I have known for long time I am called by him but still have no clue into what, But I will take a que from Bill and trust God's will for my life is none of my business. I am still unravling what this means but I do know there was something the Lord spaired me and did not lay back on my when he piled the soul worping things back on me and the was a dought in who I am and who He is. Not that I have any answers as to who I am other than knowing how God sees me, That enough for me right now.

Unearthing the barried even if it is only barried an inch deep.

OK so aperantly I have been having a raceist weekend not all day but certainly quite a few. IT started with watching the help and cryin like a baby through it. Then going to dinner on Friday and having a waitress just out and out tell us her daughter started to learn the N word from her son but she thinks she is smart enough to know when to use it. Are you kidding me? You never use it you teach her the history of the word and tell her it degrades people  and the have the same talk with your son. And why are telling a table of people you hope to get a tip from that? I spent a good portion of the day yesterday reading an artical from Dr. Martian Luther King Jr. It was long but I wanted to really take my time and think through what he said, Being a man I respect and think I know too little about.
                           I grew up in a home that really did celbrate all people my parents espcialyy my Mom never used to say diragitory slirs about other people. We even had nights when we would spin the globe and land on a country and then go to the library find books on the food from there and a game they played there. We would make the dish and play the game learning about the culture of that place. A love for culture I still have today. My Mom was from a bigger city and wanted to make sure my sister and I were exposed to it because our small town had little to offer in that way. Although my parents were suprized when I started to date and then married someone from another counrty. Not sure why they were suprized but they were. I remember when I was 5 and we were out to dinner with my grandparents we were on vaction visisting them in the south. A very afluent african american couple walked in with their children and my grandfather said loudly the N word. I being all of 5 and the only one to say anything stood up and yelled at him. that is all I remeber about it. I know I wanted to apologize to the couple but not sure what happened after that I know crying was involved but I am not sure if it was because I was upset or I was back handed for making a scean. But I do know from an early age I had been taught that was not ok.

I woke up this morning with a thinking about how our society has been built on the backs of others and we all suport it knowingly or unknowingly. When our country started we stood on the back of the first nation people to this day we are grinding them into the dirt.

Then we moved on to africans we brought here as slaves. the breakign of this subjigation at least in some manner has cost us blood in the civil war and the cicle rights movment and although our treatment is better than it was it is not equal in most places.

Moving to modern day we stand on the back of not just imagrant workers as we have int he past we still do but we stand on the backs of illegal imagrant workers.

You may say to me I do not benifit from illegal workers and say all the things the right says about them. I would ask you then do you buy organic everything? If you do not the low cost of your food comes on the backs of the people you are so angery about being in this contrey. Not just the vegatable that Chaves held up and raised to the american concesness but the milk you drink the beef and chicken you eat all come at the price of modern day slavery of using illegal imegrats. People say the organic is so expencive, it is because it gives a living wage to those producing it and the people they hire.
People do not wnat tothink about what there words say let alone their actions. I see racism as self hatred turned out word. The soul knows how wrong it is but instead of rejecting the evilness of race hatred and all that goes with it people take the feeling of how ick that is in their soul and turn it outword to the people. I am not sure if this is right or not just is the only way I can wrap my mind around it. I think as a nation and responcible people we need our country and our actions to speak what we really feel. Do we really feel the little kid with so little opertunity in the getto is worth less than any other child? Do we really want to blame the people coming here for better opertunity and keep them out of the system so we can profit on their hardship? How does one live in a socity in a heart ethical way when our culture and the rules are set up in many cases to enslave and trap others? I do not know that I have all the questions even to find what needs to be done but I would like to start asking the ones I do have so maybe some one will have some of them and we can start to realize Dr. Martina Luther Kings dream. in our lives as a reality

Everything is so important

   Everything feels so important lately. People starving in  Somalia walking 18 hours to just get somewhere for help leaviing children dead on the road cuz they are too weak to carry or bury them. London a blaze with riots with little solid reasons known behind it. In my state deep rip on our communities felt so close, the elections lost and won by just a few vote with corruption and fraud being raised. Even closer dear friends living in grief over loss and illness. My heart breaks and longs for something different in all these things, the overwhelming sense of grief and injustice hangs in the air in daily life tangible just under everything we see. It is so easy to sit in my comfy chair and turn it off or become numb to those suffering make them and other, you know. I am not like that, I am glad I am not there. They are outside my experience so do we tune it out.

                        Since I was a young girl nothing has felt more right to me than to fight for Justice for others. Learning about Apartheid in 8th grade all I wanted to do was to go there and fight for justice for the oppresed people. It has been the only thing I have ever felt I was built for.

                      The need is so great, the wave so overwhelming and the words seem to evaporate into nothingness in the face of so much pain. People say all I can do is Pray. All we can do? I think there is a fundamental image problem with Prayer. All we can do is ask the power that raised Jesus from the Dead into any of these world ending things. Jesus came to bring freedom to the enslaved hope to the lost and healing to a broken hurting world: there is a tension we live in the already and not yet. Jesus brought in the kingdom of God available to us all. But that kingdom is here and now and yet is to come. Not a contradiction but a real. We can not comand God, we can ask Him into a situation not to our will or our bidding but to bring the healing and life to it. When we pray there is always a response, always, never an exception, never. When I pray and I do not get my way I am inclined to say God did not respond, but this is an inacurate view. As we pray we invite change we invite growth we invite justice and light into the dark place in our lives or the lives of our love ones or those we may never know around the world. This may take longer than we are will to see or want that does not mean there was no response. What happens when we pray is we invite God to break through and make a change that would not happen if we do not ask. For His will for our lives or those of others to break into our reality making miracles and the supernatural or natural appearing things happen. I never got when people would say it was a natural ocurrance to explain away something extraodinary that happens that is a bit out of the ordinary. Nature is extraodinary,who would have thought a flower can break up a sidewalk? even if it is just how it works that is extrodinary!

                        People never understand why I am so passionate about Prayer and think it's boring and ineffective: But it is never either of those things It is not head down eyes closed stay quiet kind of Prayer, it is eyes open shouting, crying, doing daily life, and talking to friends while I pray kind of thing. Not to be a shame thing for those that do not, but for me it is how I deal with all the injustice and pain I see in the world otherwise it just is a tidal wave and we stand on the shore waiting to be swallowed or worse we become calloused or tune it out. I just can not see standing in face of so much and just turning my back. To see the pain in a strangers eyes and not ask God to intervene. I may never meet them but I know one thing, God loves them and mourns with them, or celebrates with them no matter their view of Him. Jesus love is not bound by all the rules man tries to put on him. the in and out club of church has nothing to do with how far and how wide the Grace will takes us further than an gymnast can bend. The question for me is Am I willing to let Jesus challenge me? Will I let him break my heart for others will I let him show me myself and how I am like the person that I can not stand at this moment? Will I be willing to stand with the hurting with out trying to fix it or change them but can I stand and love even those that I naturally would not?

We are not that desperate girl

I am so sick of hearing from the Republican party, especially here in WI. but nationally too, that we need to do this so we can get jobs: But if we stop now we will not get jobs. Can't raise taxes, we will scare the business away. Like hearing the sad story of an insecure girl at a dance or bar. If I do not dress like a tramp, have a snookie bump,  orange spray tan and hump the all the guys and girls I will not get any atention. Really? lets make this a real life thing.  Do we want the atention of the business that will be drawn in by this kind of behavior? or is that the equivalent of the atention this girl I described atention she is going to atract is the kind that you have to keep your hand over your drink and your eye on cuz he probably is going to ruffy you.

Come on! No one, not any decent business anyway is going to be atracted to a desperate atention seeking antics like are being proposed. Any business that is not willing to help and be a part of the solution for the good of the whole community is not worthy of being a part of. We need to look and learn from history. Yes, Business loves a fascist state where they have total control over the people Germany and Italy under there facsist leaders proved that their economy was booming. I am not willing to go that far. We have brilliant workforce here, hard working genuine good people that do not want a free lunch but also do not want this lunch taken away from their grandmother, children, or the ones who educate and feed their children.

So before we go off and buy our state booty shorts and a halter top lets take a look at who we are and who we want to become. Selling everything for the chance of a look from the creepy business in the corner is not worth the damage we are bringing to our people.

The Squeak

So I started this blog because I feel I need a place to have a voice. So much of my life has told me to shut up and not say anything. I do not know if you can relate but it seems a theam in my life.


I used to love to sing. I did it all the time, I woud walk around singing all the time. A few friends and my hubby encuraged me that I sound good but I lost my joy in it long ago when A 'profesional' guy brought in when  to our chorus class said "You were the reason choruses were for volume, not quality". I was crushed and have lost my confidence in singing since. I struggle to sing in worship even in church, afraid someone will hear me. I recently have started singing just at home again trying to gain back a little of my voice, not the sound of it but the right to do it. It may sound small and tright but I feel it is a step to gaining back a small part of me held too long by someone who ment no good for me.


Since I started singing again all this stuff seams to have come back ground.  I thought I gained and been healed from. Growing up I never was enough for my Dad, who I was at my core was wrong and he felt it was His job to save me from myself litterally who I was. My personality how I saw the world even my joy and excitment about the world needed to be changed. Leaving me with a deep lack of identity, I have struggled for years to gain a sense of who I am and gain the ability to have a voice or something of value to say. Not that it's more important than others I loath being put on a pedestal or held up mostly cuz I struggle with legitimacy in being worthy of being in the room at all.


Why do we as people have such a struggle either putting people up on a pedestal or under our feet? Why is equality and just honoring each individual for who they are such a hard goal to reach? Everyone deserves to have a voice, everyone is deserving of love and healing God has to offer. It seems in the church if you admit you struggle and are hurting in need of God's healing and help people can not seem to relate or deal with it. They either want to fix you with more religious behavior or shame you into silence.

I know God can heal, I know God sees me different than  I seee myself or how I see him. That does not change the fact I am where I am. The Holy Spirit can heal and bring new life to areas long dead with in me. It may not be instant or anything like that but as I come before the The Lord I will be changed,  I will heal.

I have a tatoo on my arm that reads learning to live loved, It is not for show or anyone else. It is large and somewhere I see it every day to remind me I am loved by God, I am learning to live that way. I do not have the answers, I do not have a pretext that says I know anything other than I am in desperate need of Jesus,  His love, His healing, His hope.


The only voice I have is mine, My little squeak will continue as I learn to walk this life, maybe one day it will be confident enough to be more than a squeak.