Looking back

                  So I can not divorce my self from the things that I write in my other blog about beauty today, this painting I posted today reminded me so much of my Dad's parents. My grandfather Jim had so much heart, I always remember wanting to be around him. sitting by him while he talked of the south Pacific in the war and how he would go back someday shooting riffles that knocked me on my butt in his back yard. His kind eyes smiling out at everyone. I do not think I went any where with him that everyone in the place did not know him. He smoked so much his voice was low and comforting. He was so short hardly even 5 ft. tall It was a right of passage to be taller than him. But no one could eclipse him any where he went. He was quiet but friendly and such a loving man.

                   My grandmother and him were so funny together I remember when I was 5 watching him mow the lawn he walked over to this flower bed around a tree took down the brinks and mowed the flowers then replaced the bricks. and continued to mow. I found it odd it was not till 3 hours later when my grandmother went out to water her flowers that I heard he yelling about him mowing them and how she could not understand how he could do it she had put the brinks there to stop him and he still gets them with the brinks unmoved.. I laughed but never told. They had such a funny relationship to me they called each other old crab and old crow with such affection. Too hard headed to admit they loved each other you could see it without the words. They made such a funny couple with my grandpa being so short and grandma being so tall seeming to me as child to be almost 6 ft. tall.

            My grandmother was a harder one to know with all her German stubbornness she loved but was not so much with the affection. She was a wild women in many was going to biker rallies and gay bars with her sons, a fire deep with in her. I do remember her coming to take care of us with my Grandpa when my parents went away for vacation. Sitting on the couch with them and her arms wrapped around me talking to me and tickling me. Other times swimming with her in the lake in Arkansas and stopping at any yard sale we could find every where. With all her toughness she put out there was a tender heart underneath. She was a Rosy the Riveter in during the war going to work to support her family and the men fight in the war. She had lots of determination.

                I am not trying to say they did not have their faults just that I loved them and miss them. Parts of them I would like to not know and other parts I long for more of. I miss you love you both. Relationships can be so hard with people living so far apart hell there hard living so close together.  I think it is important to take time to look and remember those that have past and not editing them to suit us ether hard or just good but to remember the whole person. I wish I had known them both better but cherish what I did have.

            I am not sure the blog world will care about this post much but I hope it stirs you to look back at some people in your life you have lost.

The Desert Place

Oh, Monday can be such a bitch when she wants to be. Woke up to hear of yet another friend that is at the breaking point if not beyond that. My heart breaks for them, so many reaching for hope to find none. The person struggling with illness only to find more and more  different types of illnesses coming their way. The couple trying and trying for children only to loose one after another. There is nothing to say, there are no words that seem big enough, no actions seem to fit. It is killing my certitudes about life. I am Sue Heck at the core of who I am, I watched "The Middle" for the first time and knew, the girl who gets so excited to be a part of something and never makes it but has a bounce back rate of like mine is being tortured in me.

                          We have lost so much in the last years; I lost my health, my job, our house, my husbands job, my family and our money. We gained a few things. I would never never want to be without, we gained friends that are family to us. My husband found a job that he loves even if it pays just slightly above what he made on unemployment from the other one, and a deep deep appreciation for Jesus and a more honest relationship with him.
                         I mourn the things I lost. I have always been the Sue with an optimism that could not be kept down, that is fading a bit more to the side of being a slave to hope. I think it might be easier to be without but can't drop. I never was unaware of the bad like most people thought I was. I just chose to not entertain it. But when I go dark, I go very dark.

                     There are those that pull out the Christian phrases and Bible verses that seem in time of hardships; just mock and make one feel less than because "why is that not be true for me?"

       Or the GCB's in life gloating over people's pain because it proves them to be not worthy or flawed. It is hard to sit in pain with people, so much easier to sit in celebration with those celebrating. Facing the hard life sucking soul crushing things that everyone comes in contact with sooner or later is the things nightmares are made of.  This is why people feel so lonely in the face of the big ugly in life.
                            The end of certitudes in my life has been so hard on me. It is so much easier to cling to behaviors and rules of life; "if I do this this will happen" and if it does not then the beating of ourselves up at least gives us something to do in the face of it rather than the void of "I did what I was supposed to" and it still crushed. I mean there are things that have no reason when you do a + b you get c, but, What do you do when you add it up and it comes out duck, not even a freaking letter? There is no reason it should not be working, every story has an ark, right? It can't just keep plummeting. I have no answers for that. I can no longer say "I know",  there is much firm ground left. It is hard for me to go to this place. I have struggled to go to the sparkly happy twirly bow on it through writing  this whole thing: making the grand Disney ending we all long for: the Hallmark movie we could all write when we were 10 but love and watch anyway. I seriously every other sentence wanted to write the but now answer for it all. What does one do when there is none?

                                       Yes, Jesus will be with the person and us walking them through it. But to hurry through just to make others or your self more comfortable robs us and belittles the person going through it. Sometimes all one can do is sit next to the fire with the person in it, and when the time is right offer a little distraction and a lot of prayers. I have to say right now that sucks, I want to do more. To have answers that really work, some boot strap to offer that isn't busted off yet from pulling trying to get up. I am rung dry of tears and starved for the Knight in white saving at least one person I know from this breaking . Someone, anyone that is not kicked to death once they are down. I am left with so little answers and so many more questions.

                                     Sorry, this is so dark. I hate this view and fear the vulnerability of saying this and conclusions people will make of it. I felt I needed to say this and get it out of my head. The desert in life is not a fun place to be but there is life there. I look at the world God created for quest of life, the lush jungles are great but not without struggle, mountain meadows no one sees and think our lives are much like the land spaces God made but the desert place is such a hard place dotted with so few oasis . Be one for someone starving for it today while prayers that seem more like begging than firm ground it used to feel like. Certitude is starved but continues to cling to life and the Father holding all of you close.

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?