what does that say about.....movies

standing in line is not one of my favorite things, but as with other things involving my waiting around for something to happen, my mind tends to wander. i was renting a video and ahead of me was a family that was doing the same. the delay and my resulting wait was caused by the fact that the movies the couple had previously rented had not been scanned back into the system. as the clerk searched, the male part of this customer set listed the movies that they had returned from the previous night. the list included; barbie, bigfoot and drag me to hell. quite a diverse selection if you asked me. pink fluff, gigantic podiatry stuff and i give up- i've had enough. evidently each piece of entertainment; and i use the word loosely, must have represented a family members choice and therefore their state of mind at the time. we all choose to feed our mind with things based on what we hunger for or is it what we think we want...
my choice, when the missing videos had finally been located was coraline a wonderfully creepy story of a girl who dreams of a more perfect life then is horrified when she discovers it's not all it's cracked up to be. i don't know what that says about me, but i now have a strange button phobia.

reading is fundamental...

one of the greatest joys in raising matt was reading to him. we started when he was just a couple of months old. partly because it was fun but also because we just wanted as much time with him as possible. jim was great at it, and if i were to be totally honest, i think matt preferred him to read. he did great voices for all of the characters, bert and ernie, jp funny bunny and of course dr. suess' the grinch. i still have most of matt's favorites, tucked away for future use or maybe just for memory sake. as matt got older reading time gave way to his own reading, by 1st grade he was reading jack london and lots of serial science-fiction. matt is now 17 and still reads, 1 or 2 novels a week. he is continually in the library.
i'm not an expert on cause and effect, but i can't help but think that the love of books and story came from those bedtime reading sessions all those years ago.

little girl in the rain

she rode her bike, it was raining and she was lost. as it got darker, maybe she wondered if anyone would bother to look for her. she wasn't an only child or special. was she really worth it?
without hesitation the search began. through the muck, through the storm those that loved her searched. no holding back, no worry about whether she would receive the attention well or not. it didn't matter, she was lost.
of course that was last night, today is a new day, katie sleeps in her own bed. her hair is dry, her body warm and although rebellion may still lurk in her heart, deep inside she knows that she is loved. she is no longer lost.
as i think about last night i think about how God searches for us. never stopping always persuing. read Luke 15. we are the lost sheep, the lost coin, we are the lost child. the one that God wants so badly to come home; regardless of the words we've said or the choices we've made. some of us stand in the rain and wonder "have i gone too far this time? have i pushed past the point of love and forgiveness to the point of no return?" the answer is "no" God has no point of no return. there is no end to his grace or devotion; no place he wouldn't go to rescue you from yourself. sometimes it's dark and you may think there's no one there. but you're wrong. He there past the thunder and the lightening searching in the rain. wanting for His child to come home.

25 years

a quarter of a century, when you put it in terms like that it seems impossible, but the date on the sealed piece of paper that says jim and i are husband and wife doesn't lie. 25 years ago we stood on courthouse steps, said a few words...very few mostly we nodded while the old man asked us questions; an old man btw that is probably about our age now. a silver anniversary. how time flies, the good and the bad, the happy and sad all pass on eternal wings.
i don't feel old, except in the morning, i don't think i look old at least from 15 feet away. but 25 years is a long time. time enough to experience some of the best times and some of the worst with a man who now has to wear reading glasses and has bouts of tendenitus. we are old, relatively, but jim still looks great as he passes by in his faded jeans, he makes me laugh more now than he did then; but that could be senility setting in. he is the most loyal and patient man i know. we are complete opposites, but that keeps it interesting.
25 years, a quarter of a century, two young people who started out not knowing what they were doing now two aging adults still in love and married. happy anniversary!

viewing a life from an odd angle

they brought in the pictures in a large plastic bag. images of a soldier's life cut short.
whenever we have a funeral at northpointe, it is my priviledge to take upon the sad task of preparing the slideshow. it seems odd to me that i am entrusted with this. a stranger with little to no knowledge of the life that now exsists only in a series of fading shots and the memories of those it touched. as i try to order the images on the computer screen i wonder about what happened that day, the smiles on the faces, some genuine some not; the aunts and uncles with names like fred, wilbur and edna. the christmas', birthdays and school pictures flash by limiting the length of this life to about 5-6 minutes. it's futile to sum up the total of a life in mere images on a screen, but they say it helps. i'm not sure about that... then again i have my own slideshow, framed photos line my hallway, reminders of those who once were here and now are not. as i think about how much i like it when guests in my home comment on the beautiful little girl in the red hat, my mother who people often said should have been in pictures; or giggle at little boy in the bunny suit who will be 50 next year. at some point we all die, and perhaps it's the memories of what life is about, portrayed in these pictures that really helps.

i have an incredibly sweet (cheap) husband

some of you know the saga of mother's day. first off, mother's day is not really a happy day for me. my mother died when i was 12 and so seeing women and men escorting their mothers to church and sunday lunch, makes me feel pretty empty. jim has a somewhat dubious reputation in gift giving, mostly practical and sometimes sort of thoughtless, so when he decided to get a new potty for matt's bathroom and title it a "mother's day" gift, my reaction was less than joyous. it's not that it wasn't an appreciated purchase, it's just what part of "don't get me a potty as a present" did he not understand?

a day or two after mothers day i was surfing online and came upon a wonderful friend for our cat commi, who we got from a rescue shelter a little over a year ago. commi has been the most loving and fabulous pet ever, but he seems to get lonely when we are gone. he cries loudly if he thinks no one is home, and i assume it's that way when he really is alone. anyway, i found a beautiful russian blue female cat, a little younger than he. she had been injured at some point and only has 3 legs. i asked jim if we could adopt her, afterall she came at a discount, a clearance cat. he said "we have a cat, we don't need another, i don't even want to look at her." i, of course forced him and he snorted. that was 3 weeks ago.

i got home on saturday, tired from working at the church all day to find no one at home, which was sort of strange since jim was supposed to be there. i sat down and a few minutes later jim walks in the door with a cat carrier. i immediately thought something happened to commi and was freaked out. to my amazement, it wasn't commi. but my fabulous belated mother's day present, a most snootty, fluffy, silvery precious 3 legged cat.

frankenstein psycology

the other day i was driving and thinking...not a good combination for me. my son matt has just finished english lit and plans to become a psycologist. the two ideas merged and i got to thinking about mary shelley's frankenstein and how our lives work, or don't.
the idea of taking what is dead and incorporating it into the living is absurd...or is it? perhaps in tissue, but in the heart and mind, not so much. we as human beings constantly dig up issues from our past, things long buried, and bring them into our present. the two become intwined into our actions and like shelley's freakish monster we walk without direction, we harm without intent, we rage without any idea of the source of our anger.
people are a mixture of past nightmares and future dreams, but it's in the present where these two non-realities are merged, stitched together haphazardly; with no regard of the scars it will leave there are sometimes half-life results.
...no wonder i missed my turn and nearly ran into another car.