My son and his family visited over the weekend so that we could celebrate his birthday, and he told me that he had entered us (him and me) in a contest to win a WordPress blog. Guess what? He won! So I am moving and (hopefully) learning to do a lot more with my blog. My new address will be I Thought I Would Have It Together By Now. I hope you will visit me there. Thanks for coming by.

My daughter is an adult now, but she played volleyball in junior high and twelve years ago this summer, she tried out for the high school volleyball team. She had done well in junior high, but she didn't get a lot of play time until one of the regulars messed up. The coach used Jill to "punish" the other player, making the girl sit on the sidelines and watch as Jill set the ball time after time.

Neither my husband nor I played sports, so we watched her with a mixture of feelings. She liked what she was doing. She was active. She felt like it gave her a place. We supported her decision.

Then came that high school tryout. The same woman coached both the junior high and high school teams, so Jill was familiar with her. She was also young enough to think that life was fair. She worked her rear end off at the tryouts, which lasted two weeks, one of volleyball camp and another of the actual tryouts. The coach said everyone had to earn their spots. She was sure she had a chance. Spots were filling slowly, but she had survived several cuts, so we were really hopeful as I dropped her off for the last day of workouts.

When I came to pick her up, she had a smile pasted on her face and she asked if we could give a certain group of girls, not any of her friends, really, but preppie girls, a ride home. Hers was a country school, and begging for a ride that went to the right side of town could have taken them a while, so I told her we could. I wondered why that group of girls, though, and as I saw them coming toward the car, I asked how she had done. Her voice broke, just once, as she told me she had been cut. The coach who said everyone had to earn their spot saved three spots for girls who had been on vacation the whole two weeks the tryouts were going on. And the girls we were giving a ride to? They had made the team.

I was so proud of my daughter as she steered those girls who would have thought nothing of snubbing her in school into our car. She congratulated them all and spoke brightly of the fun things they had been doing during the camp, of how well she thought the team would do.

When we let the last girl out and headed for home, she didn't say anything. She leaned her head on my shoulder, and then the tears started coming. It wasn't fair, she said. She had worked hard for one of the three spots that were never really available in the first place.

I agreed with her. I have never been a coach, and I don't really care for organized sports, but I think it would have been fairer if the coach had made it clear up front that three of the positions were already full instead of letting the other girls who had worked get their hopes up. I think that would have been easier to take.

My daughter and I were talking about this today as I drove her to the airport. The reason it came up is because the daughter of a friend of hers is starting her freshman year at high school today, and my daughter was talking about the girl's maturity level. This girl was home-schooled (on paper, anyway) last year because she couldn't take people picking on her. While junior and senior high school can be horrible, my daughter thought the picking would happen no matter what. She looked at it as part of growing up.

Growing up IS hard, and I remember how proud of my daughter I was that last day of volleyball tryouts. She was generous enough to offer a ride to girls who really were not her friends. She did not try to take away from their accomplishment in making the team. She did, in fact, encourage them, which is something I don't think I could have done as a teen. I might have a hard time with it now.

I didn't remember if I had ever told Jill how proud I was of her, so I told her today. Better late than never, I guess. She still has a generous heart. She still tries to encourage. She still takes it on the chin and then gets up when things don't go her way.

And I am still proud of her. And glad I got the chance to say it.

This is a bunch of hooey as far as I am concerned. If the fetus moves away when being prodded, as far as I'm concerned, it feels pain. This is just another justification for devaluing life.

For much of our married life, my railroad husband traveled. A lot. I knew that he traveled when I married him, that traveling was part of working on the railroad, but as the daughter of a teacher, I did not exactly realize what that would mean. What it started out as was a two-week honeymoon after which he went to Goshen, Indiana, three hours away from home. He worked ten or more hours a day four days a week,which was really too long for him to come home every night. He would leave on Sunday night and come home on Thursday. The railroad provided him with less-than-luxurious accommodations. Later on, those accommodations were motels, but in the early days they were camp cars.

Ah, the camp cars. These were railroad cars, approximately the same size as a semi box, fitted with metal bunks and showers, one shower and bathroom per car. In the beginning there were ten or twelve men per car. That went on until the union pushed the issue of floor space per man. The upper bunks were eliminated; that meant five or six men per car. Still not a lot of room.

One of my favorite (NOT) stories about the camp cars has to do with chlorine poisoning. The bacteria in the one toilet per car had to be controlled in some way, so chlorine tablets were dropped into the holding tank. One time somebody did it wrong, and chlorine gas filled the car. Several people were hospitalized.

You have to remember that we were married in the pre-cell phone days, so I didn't find out about this right away. As a matter of fact, my husband and I survived on one phone call a week, which we planned for Tuesday night. There was no such thing as cheap long distance then. My husband had to find a pay phone. Local calls had just gone up from ten cents to a quarter. Long distance cost quite a bit more.

Another story involves my husband's working with an employee who was later diagnosed as schizophrenic. As I have said, camp car quarters were close. One night this man had been drinking and stormed into the camp car, grabbed my husband's foot and dragged him off his cot. The reason? He didn't think my husband had paid him correctly. That man is in prison now. He tied his wife to the bed and doused her with kerosene after an argument one night. Not being able to find a match or a lighter, he headed out for the store. Unfortunately for him, his wife got loose during that time and called the police, who were waiting for him when he returned with a lighter and some matches in case the lighter didn't work.

People I have talked to tend to think that having a husband who travels is hard on the wife and kids, and it is, but it is hard on the husband, too. I think about the time our five-year-old daughter was hospitalized in serious condition and I wanted to reach my husband before I gave permission for a medical procedure. I called the office, and the secretary/clerk informed me that you couldn't interrupt the work day for "just anything." The decision had to be made; I gave permission. My husband called the hospital hours later. He would rather have been there.

Or there was the time six years ago when our home was broken into. That might not have happened had it not been known that my husband traveled. My daughter and I survived the whole ugly business and called my husband, who was three hours away in Elyria, as we waited for the police. Our son hurried home from college in the next town to stay with us. I told my husband not to come home. He might as well have, he said. He didn't sleep at all.

The railroad employs men predominantly, and those who have lived under the conditions I just described have a common bond. They survived. They lived in conditions that were uncivilized even under the standards of the day. They ate camp car food like green bologna, which was probably full of bacteria since it was not handled according to today's standards. Most of them, at least in the track department, started out doing physical labor, so they are strong men. Have you ever swung a sledge hammer all day? They probably weigh ten pounds. Such a job is not for the weak.

Mostly, though, these men survive the loneliness. I know many of them are proud to work on the railroad. There is a romance there. It never ceases to amaze me that people come up to my husband when they see him in his truck to ask what he does. Does he ride the trains? How does his truck get on the track? And all that big equipment! The men who are asking these questions, though, have no idea what it is like to live without your family four or five days a week for most or all of the year. They don't know how boring restaurant food can get or how tired you can get of channel surfing when there is just no one to talk to.

The railroad has changed some since those early days. It was bought out twice. Consolidated. Abandoned in some areas. The management moved from local to regional. The territories expanded. Men who used to only have to go two hundred or so miles to the job might now have to travel eight hundred if they want to work. And most of them do. They love the job, even if they don't like the travel. They are honorable men. They pay the bills. They do the job.

My husband is always glad to see the men he knew in the old days, and for a while one of them, Eddie, has been in town. Eddie worked on my husband's gang way back when. He has been around a long time. He knows his job. I think he finds a certain comfort in working with someone that he knows. My husband does. Each of them knows the other's expectations. Each of them knows the way things SHOULD be done. They know about each other's kids. And grandkids. And the knowing gives continuity, stability, to a job that can change from minute to minute.

I saw Eddie today, and we talked for a bit. We talked about kids,about grandkids. About jobs. He mentioned a backhoe operator he and my husband both knew. I asked if the man was still ornery. A little smile crept onto Eddie's face. Yeah, he said. Still the same. The funny thing about this is that at dinner, I told my husband about the conversation and the same exact smile appeared on his face. Some things never change, he guessed.

People think that because working on the railroad is such a physical thing that all there is to the men who work there is brute, but there's a lot more. Just like men anywhere, they need their families. They may not ever talk about it, but they need their friends. They need people around who know both what the railroad is and what it can be.

That's why I also am glad when Eddie is in town. He and my husband share a lot of memories. I'm thankful that though the railroad has changed a lot, they can get pleasure out of sharing their "railroad ties."

This is what we sang in church this morning. It is from the hymn “Christ Be My Leader”:

Christ be my leader in age as in youth
Drifting or doubting, for He is the Truth.
Grant me to trust Him; though shifting as sand,
Doubt cannot daunt me; in Jesus I stand.

I like this whole hymn, but I thought this verse really illustrated the differences between being young and being, well…older. I am watching my son and his wife as they look for a condo or a house, my daughter as she seeks to find a life post-divorce. I remember drifting and doubting. Could we afford the house? Was it the right one? What if the lay-off (and there were many) lasted too long? How would we make the payments? I knew that God wanted the best for me, but what if there wasn’t anyone out there who wanted to marry me? How would He fulfill that longing that I had from a very early age?

Truth be told, I still drift and doubt. Quite a bit, more than I should. But I am much better at coming back to the anchor, Jesus. At least I think I am. This looking to Jesus earlier can be best illustrated by two conversations I had with my friend Martha on Friday.

Martha is a blessing to me. Her spiritual light shines in a way that you don’t see very often, and she can quote a Bible verse, without knowing what the problem is in your heart of hearts, that will pierce through to your soul. I am humbled by her faith, and I hope I get there some day.

Martha doesn’t call very often, but she did on Friday. I was glad to hear from her, but I could tell that something big was on her mind. Turns out it was her Army son. He was to ship out to Iraq on Thursday, and she wanted to go to Kentucky to see him, but her car was not in working order. He was set to ship out for a year and a half, and this would be his second tour of duty in Iraq. I knew that weighed heavily on her spirit, although she never came out and said it. My son just completed his service in the Marines. She knew I would understand.

Interestingly, the turn the conversation took was the cancer Martha dealt with this year. She is now cancer-free, but she told me how she wasn’t worried and enumerated the times she could already have died but hadn’t. Obviously, it wasn’t her time. I was interested. She was actually ejected from a car when she was two, in those pre-car seat days, and the car rolled over on her. Obviously, she was fine. Why? Angels were at work, and her little two-year-old body ended up in a depression, a hole just big enough to protect her from the weight of the car. She said that she figured her time had not come yet, but when it did she was ready to go. She wondered if that was fatalistic. Both of us knew we were talking about more than her. We were talking about her son.

This is what we sang in church this morning. It is from the hymn “Christ Be My Leader”:

Christ be my leader in age as in youth
Drifting or doubting, for He is the Truth.
Grant me to trust Him; though shifting as sand,
Doubt cannot daunt me; in Jesus I stand.

I like this whole hymn, but I thought this verse really illustrated the differences between being young and being, well…older. I am watching my son and his wife as they look for a condo or a house, my daughter as she seeks to find a life post-divorce. I remember drifting and doubting. Could we afford the house? Was it the right one? What if the lay-off (and there were many) lasted too long? How would we make the payments? I knew that God wanted the best for me, but what if there wasn’t anyone out there who wanted to marry me? How would He fulfill that longing that I had from a very early age?

Truth be told, I still drift and doubt. Quite a bit, more than I should. But I am much better at coming back to the anchor, Jesus. At least I think I am. This looking to Jesus earlier can be best illustrated by two conversations I had with my friend Martha on Friday.

Martha is a blessing to me. Her spiritual light shines in a way that you don’t see very often, and she can quote a Bible verse, without knowing what the problem is in your heart of hearts, that will pierce through to your soul. I am humbled by her faith, and I hope I get there some day.

Martha doesn’t call very often, but she did on Friday. I was glad to hear from her, but I could tell that something big was on her mind. Turns out it was her Army son. He was to ship out to Iraq on Thursday, and she wanted to go to Kentucky to see him, but her car was not in working order. He was set to ship out for a year and a half, and this would be his second tour of duty in Iraq. I knew that weighed heavy on her soul, although she never came out and said it. My son just completed his service in the Marines. She knew I would understand.

Interestingly, the turn the conversation took was the cancer Martha dealt with this year. She is now cancer-free, but she told me how she wasn’t worried and enumerated the times she could already have died but hadn’t. Obviously, it wasn’t her time. I was interested. She was actually ejected from a car when she was two, in those pre-car seat days, and the car rolled over on her. Obviously, she was fine. Why? Angels were at work, and her little two-year-old body ended up in a depression, a hole just big enough to protect her from the weight of the car. She said that she figured her time had not come yet, but when it did she was ready to go. She wondered if that was fatalistic. Both of us knew we were talking about more than her. We were talking about her son.

I assured Martha, as our conversation ended, that I would pray for her son and for travel mercies for her as she went to see him. Getting the car fixed was the first order of business, and it weighed on her heavily.

Not half an hour later, as my husband and I were leaving, the phone rang. He looked at me, and I could see that he was questioning whether we should answer it or not, but it was his on-call weekend, so I did. It was Martha, and she was crying. I understood through her tears that her Army son had called. What, I wondered, could he have said? I gave up and asked. Much to my delight, her answer was that she cries when she is happy! Her son had called to tell her that he would not have to leave until next year. The Army is going to send him to school, and they decided not to ship him to Iraq and then bring him back for the school. She was so happy that she wanted to share.

How wonderful are the works of God! I do not know what He saved Martha’s son from, but I do believe He intervened. And just like God cares about the lilies of the field, He cared about a mother’s heavy heart.

Martha’s son told her not to worry about coming to see him, not to worry about the car. He was going to try to come home and see her. She assured me we would get together so that I could meet him. And I will make a special effort. I want to meet the young man that God can use better here, in this country. At least for now. As a mother, I can only imagine the joy at that reunion.

I don’t think Martha fears death. Don’t get me wrong. I think her attitude is the one we all should have, the one the hymn we sang in church this morning so clearly illustrates:

Christ be my Savior in calm as in strife;
Death cannot hold me, for He is the Life.
Nor darkness nor doubting nor sin and its stain
Can touch my salvation: with Jesus I reign.

Amen.

I read this advice for aging gracefully on another blog, Linda’s Thoughts.  It was given by Chuck Swindoll, and I think it is apt.

1. Be bold.
2. Be joyful.
3. Be godly.

OK, so this would be why I sometimes hate the railroad.

My husband called me as I was on my way out the door this morning to tell me he had been offered a job in Chicago, something which he did not want. His boss asked him what he would do if he were assigned, and he said he'd take the job. So we both spent the morning wondering if the issue was going to be forced.

There is nothing wrong with Chicago per se, you understand. Real estate costs more there. Maybe everything costs more there. Gangs there have taken railroad equipment hostage and demanded ransoms, which they received. It would be a big adjustment. Not to mention the fact that we are west of all the family we are close to now. We had hoped that if we moved, it would be east.

Anyway, the danger has passed. When my husband didn't jump at the job, they offered it to a guy who is working as an assistant up there, someone they will not have to pay to move. I think that makes good business sense.

I wonder, though, if we will have a chance to move east, which is what I really would like to do. The town in which we live is really economically depressed. Houses here take a year or more to sell. I would like for the company to move us before retirement, when we would have to deal with all of the hassle ourselves.

This is the second or third job my husband has been offered since we moved here, depending on the way you look at it. One was north of us and just outside Chicago, actually, a yard job. He was assigned there during the illness and subsequent death of the supervisor. He doesn't want a yard job, really, because people who work in yards tend to die of stress-related things. Then there was this job. And there was the job in Michigan, which I really wouldn't have minded, except that it would have capped his pay at less than he is making now and kept him inside, which I don't think he could have taken on a long-term basis.

I am thankful, though, that my husband's superiors notice his potential. I wonder if he realizes that, that they have confidence that he will do a job and do it well no matter what. I guess I am back to wanting the fruit that confidence will bear to go on our side of the tree, so to speak.

I don't know what the future holds for us, but for once, I am not a case of nerves about it. I am certain that God has it all laid out, and I am equally certain that He may not be done with us yet.

We shall see.

I have two sisters. One is seven and a half years older than I am, and the other is seven and a half years younger. I don't know why, but the older sister and I didn't ever really get along. The younger sister and I have been friends all of our lives. She is forty-two.

Yesterday, my younger sister was razzing me because I won't leave my husband alone to travel. "You're afraid something is going to happen to him while you are gone," she said.

It's not that really, or maybe it is, but only a little bit. It is more that he traveled for the first twenty-one years of our marriage and he doesn't like being alone. He even said that, which is a lot for him to admit. He is an adult, and I know he could survive without me. I know I could leave him for a while. But I don't want to. That was hard for me to say. My sister's pull is strong.

Later in the evening, my teaching partner from Ohio called. She and I have maintained our friendship even through our move to Indiana. It has been six years since the move, ten since Lisa and I started working together. I had called her because her sister runs a consignment shop for children's clothing near where my grandchildren live. I had thought that I might patronize it on my next visit.

Lisa called to tell me that her sister was....dead. She was forty-one. She stopped at a light and died before she took off again. That was in July, and there is still no cause of death. Her death leaves Lisa, who is forty-three, an only child. Her mom has Alzheimer's and no longer recognizes her. Her father died two years ago.

God worked things out so that Lisa was already on her way to her sister's that day. She arrived to find several police cars in front of the house and accompanied her brother-in-law and her sister's children, aged five, seven and nine, to the hospital. Nobody was rushing around when she got there, she said. So she knew.

The two oldest children, who are girls, took their mother's death in vastly different ways. The oldest was teary. The middle child didn't shed a one. And the five year old, who is a boy, stood at the window and told everyone who passed by that his mom had died that day. I can't even imagine what that was like for my friend. Instead of having a fun weekend with her sister and her family, she planned her sister's funeral.

Lisa is worried about her brother-in-law and the kids. There are some financial problems, and of course they are all dealing with the grief. She sort of wishes they would move north so that she could be of more help. But in the middle of it all, she has her own grief to deal with.

This is what she said to me: "Becky, she was my sister. We were only sixteen months apart. We told each other things we couldn't tell anyone else. Who else can be that to me?"

What could I say to that? I have no way to ease the loss she has suffered, but I could hear the anguish in her voice.

Like I said, I am only really close to one of my sisters, and I don't really know why that is. But I know it would devastate me if I lost her. Razzing and all. I know she is going to heaven when she dies. But what would I do without my friend?

I was mowing last night, and my neighbor was out pulling up her crabgrass. We don't see each other very often, so I stopped to say hi.

As always, Betty asked about my children. I mentioned my daughter, who survived a divorce earlier this year, and her face grew sad. "You know," she said. "you have to admire her strength. My husband had affairs for years, but I had no skills and I was never strong enough to leave."

I was dumbstruck. Betty and her husband seem so happy! Certainly she can't mean this husband. She must have been married before. Widowed maybe? I don't know how old she is exactly, but she has adult grandchildren.

I do admire my daughter's strength. I got married right out of college and although I worked and considered myself independent, I went straight from my father's protection to that of my husband. I have never lived on my own, signed a lease, bought a car. I mean, I have done those things, but not when the final responsibility was mine and mine alone.

I am sure Betty has strengths that she doesn't credit herself with, but she's right. It is brave to face those things alone. And I admire my daughter for having made it.

Part of my job as a special education paraprofessional is to be in the classroom with special education students who had to be mainstreamed because of the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT. That is how I ended up spending fifth period in English 12.

The teacher chose to read Isak Dinesin's story "The Ring" out loud. Being a former English teacher, I thought her decision was wise. The story is steeped in imagery and not the kind of thing many kids today would read or understand on their own. I think understanding always comes more easily when someone reads to you.

The story really concerns the loss of innocence suffered by the main character, Lise. The kids were having problems with that, so the teacher explained. She can't be more than thirty, and this is what she said

"It's all about knowing yourself. To know yourself, you have to be willing to be alone. I've heard all the moaning about needing a boyfriend and a girlfriend, but you don't. I've heard that you are afraid, that you can't leave mommy and daddy, but you can. You will never really know yourself until you are willing to be alone."

I think those are wise words, although I doubt that seniors can actually understand them.

- Forbes.com

Proverbs 15:16 (New International Version)

16 Better a little with the fear of the LORD
than great wealth with turmoil.

Proverbs 30:8,9

8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.

9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, 'Who is the LORD ?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.

A while ago I posted on a wedding to which my husband and I were invited, that of his long-dead brother's eldest son from whom we had not heard in fifteen years. Jay is only twenty-three, so the lack of contact was in no way attributable to him. His father died suddenly and accidentally, and his mother, who was young, got on with her life.

Neither my husband nor I knew what to expect. For instance, we did not know if my husband's remaining three brothers had been invited to the wedding, and we were afraid to ask for fear that they had not. We had no idea what Jay looked like. We didn't really know if his mother wanted us there, or what kind of reception we would receive. And we decided not to worry about such things. After all, this was about my husband's brother's son joining his life to that of another and asking for participation from his father's family.

The wedding and reception were held at a little country rental hall. When we drove up, we did not see any cars that we knew, but we were a little early. Chairs were set up for an outside wedding next to a gazebo, and thunder rumbled off in the distance.

We decided to venture inside. We recognized Jay's mom right away; she had not changed a lot in fifteen years. She made no move to approach so my husband (thank God for the supervisorly habits he now has) stepped up to greet her. The ice was broken. She introduced us to the groom, who stood at her side. Before the wedding was obviously not the time to get acquainted, so we went outside to sit down.

There were not many people on Jay's side of the aisle. Jay's mom and her second husband sat in front, holding a baby girl who we later found out was the couple's daughter. We were there, and there were three other couples. Total of ten. I wondered if that kind of thing would bother him. I know a similar situation bothered my daughter-in-law very much.

Jay has a younger brother and my husband and I searched for him, hoping that he would be in the wedding party. My husband did not see traces of his brother in the groom; maybe he would see them in the other son. Then the wedding began.

As the wedding party proceeded down the aisle, we picked out Jay's half-sister, his mother's daughter by her second husband. She is a pretty girl and looks a lot like her mom. We still could not pick out the groom's brother. Like other weddings, this one held the promise of the future. The father of the bride beamed as he led his daughter down the isle. And Jay and his bride, although they may have been nervous, could not seem to stop smiling.

The ceremony was quick, and we proceeded to the receiving line. Jay received our congratulations, but made no other comment. I don't really know what my husband expected. I thought maybe something like saying he was glad my husband was there.

Our sister-in-law (ex-sister-in-law?) came up once we were seated and chatted for a minute or two. She remembered that we lived out of state. We didn't know how to ask her where her younger son was, and we thought maybe our questions would be answered anyway when the wedding party was introduced.

That introduction happened in short order. Jay's younger brother was not in the wedding party.

We tried to decide what to do. My husband and I are not really bold people socially, although he has been a lot more forward since he has been in management. It is awkward to sit at a wedding where you don't know anyone, where you don't know anything, really, about the newly married couple.

We sort of decided that we would leave after the cake was cut, and it was to be cut before the dinner. My husband had done what he came for, really. He was at Jay's wedding since his brother could not be. He stood for a part of the family that we were guessing Jay really knows very little about.

My husband had hoped, though, to get life stories from Jay and his brother, and he finally could not stand it any more. He approached the cake-cutting as pictures were being taken. Jay's stepdad waved him over. My husband got at least a portion of the stories he hungered for.

Jay is an electrician. He had lived in Toledo where his father lived for three years. His younger brother was serving in the Navy. It was not much, but certainly more than he had known before. My husband got a chance to tell Jay and his mother that our youngest grandson is named Tony in honor of Jay's dad. We had met his mom's second husband before, and my husband was glad to know that he was still around, that Jay and his brother had a father-figure when they were growing up.

Then we left. It looked like it was going to be a long night, and my husband saw no sense in waiting around until Jay opened his gift. My husband had chosen to give him a framed family portrait of his family when all the boys were younger. Jay's dad as the oldest of five, stands in the middle, surrounded by his brothers and behind his parents. Maybe that was the whole reason we were invited in the first place, to connect Jay to the father who died when he was three.

I hope our presence did that. I hope Jay is curious enough about to ask questions of my husband or his other uncles. Although it is easy to see that Tony lives on in his sons and his granddaughter, Jay's asking questions would keep his dad alive, at least in a way, in his heart.

Victoria Times Colonist - canada.com network

My son sent this to me, and I can't really improve on his comment, which was, "This is a sweet story. Too bad all the sweet stories nowadays come from Canada."

Hope it blesses you like it blessed me.

...beggars would ride. Isn't that how the saying goes?

OK, so I know we don't always get our wishes, but here is mine.

My daughter has a male friend she has been spending time with since her divorce. He is good for her, and it appears that she is good for him too, since the time they spend together seems to be increasing. I wish things were moving faster since it appears from the outside that they love each other, but these things move at their own pace.

On Monday, this young man has a job interview in Columbus. He wants to get out of Toledo. My husband and I have wanted our daughter out of Toledo and therefore away from her ex for a long time. Our son lives in Columbus, so she would have family support if she moved.

My wish? That he get the job and that it propels the relationship forward (Lord willing, if the time is right) so that the young man is unwilling to move without her.

We'll see if I will ride or not. And thank God my daughter never reads my blog!

MSNBC - Man dies after 50 hours of computer games


I knew it! Computer games can be bad for you!

I was talking to my daughter-in-law yesterday and telling her that I was praying for a situation she and my son are facing when I heard myself say these words, "I wish I could do more." I can't believe I said that!

I am often frustrated by the physical distance between me and the people that I love. I wish I were closer to help them more. But even if I were, the best way to help them is to pray to the Person in charge.

So here I am, semi-publicly, saying that I am sorry I did not acknowledge the fact that God, not I, am in charge. I know I am forgiven. I hope I will remember not to do it again.

The DE is gone with no mention of a transfer. Whew!

I receive a daily news update called Citizen Link via e-mail from Family.org. A lot of times this gives me news that does not appear in mainstream media. The item below was in my update yesterday, and I find it disturbing:



A new video produced by Planned Parenthood uses outrageous depictions of violence to illustrate the opinions of those who stand for sanctity of human life, The American Life League reported.

In "Superhero for Choice," an eight-minute animated short
on Planned Parenthood Golden Gate's (PPGG) Web site, the so-called "superhero" drowns an abstinence educator in a trash can, blows up peaceful Christian pro-life activists and, during the closing credits, decapitates a pro-life protester.

Jim Sedlak, executive director of American Life League's
STOPP International, said Planned Parenthood is
glamorizing, and possibly instigating, violence against
people of faith.

"In this post-9/11 era of terrorism, Planned Parenthood
has recklessly crossed the line by promoting violence
against people who do not share the organization's radical beliefs," he said. "This appalling animation, posted on an official Planned Parenthood Web site, demonstrates the organization's complete disrespect for human life."

Ever get one of those feelings? Like you know something is going to happen to change your life? I get them now and again, and usually, nothing comes of them. When I was younger, I let them really bother me, but now I try not to. Usually.

Yesterday, my husband came home and said that the head of his division was coming to Marion today and that his immediate superior (who is twenty-six and new to the job) was nervous about it. Now, this man comes out to the Hoosier boondocks at times, and he sometimes comes unannounced, but the fact that neither my husband nor the kid knew why, well....given the recent movement in the railroad ranks, that makes me nervous. What if we get transferred?

The only opening that I know of in my husband's division is near Chicago, which I suppose would not be such a bad place to life except I hear that it is really expensive and much farther from our family. We already agreed that if he gets transferred again before he retires, we will live in an apartment because it will be temporary. I am starting a new job, but it is hourly, not salaried, so it wouldn't be a big deal to leave it. I am afraid it would be really hard to sell our house in this area, though, because it is so economically depressed. Most of the houses in my neighborhood stay on the market a year or more.

Probably nothing will happen. But I will still feel better when my husband comes home and tells me that.

Two years ago, when it looked like my husband was going to be transferred, he told me that if he was, he did not want me to work. Now, part of the reason I work is for my own sanity, so his comment surprised me. As time wore on, though, and he actually talked to me about work, I began to see his point. He has so much to think about at work that it reassures him to know I have things working smoothly on the home front (well, at least I do MOST of the time).

As we age, we seem to need support from one another even more than we used to. I thought about this a lot today since he gave me a list of things to do before he left for work at a little before 5AM. I was sort of surprised to think that the need for this kind of support would surpass the need for my financial contribution, but I guess that is the case.

Relationships in midlife sure do take a lot of twists and turns. The stresses and the tolerances we have for them are different. I am thankful that at this stage in my life I have the time to listen and observe. And learn. At least I hope I am learning.

Yesterday, I received a Mary Kay catalog in the mail. My daughter-in-law sold Mary Kay a while ago, and the person who sent the catalog was her mentor. I am a lost cause make-up-wise. My family knows this, and even though they get me to buy some from time to time, I seldom use it.

I decided to e-mail the lady back and tell her to save her pennies and not mail me one again for precisely that reason. No fault to her for marketing her product. I just know I won't use it, and I would imagine that in a business you are in for yourself, every penny counts. I even commended her on her marketing, meaning that she is several states away and is a go-getter to send a catalog to me. ( And were it Avon, I might have responded.)

She wrote back and said she was sorry she had offended me, and I feel bad. I really just wanted to save her the money. Maybe this is what the Bible means when it talks about sins that you don't know you committed.

I wrote back and told her it was fine, but I will not open any more e-mails if I get them from her. It is just so frustrating to try to do the right thing and have it end up like this.

My husband came home from work Friday with all sorts of news. The job he worked two summers ago is open again because the guy who had it was promoted, and this time my husband was not the one assigned to it. Hallelujah! Also, the job in Ohio, which he initially thought he would try for, appears to have opened up. We have decided, though, that that is one job he should avoid due to past associations.

I start a new job on Wednesday. Truthfully, I am glad in a way since my local school system is so very messed up. I sense change in our lives. In my heart, I believe something good is happening between our daughter and the young man she is seeing, and I don't think anything will happen with my husband's and my physical location until that takes place. Of course, I am not God, so I could be wrong, but those are my feelings.

In a way, it is nice not to feel stuck in a rut, to be looking forward to the future. In another way, it is sort of frustrating because I only feel that this is the way things are going. There is absolutely nothing I can do to bring them about.

Time will tell. The immediate future is filled with....cooking dinner.

I went to an in-sevice for my new job yesterday, and because it will keep me on my feet as much as being a classroom teacher would, I bought a new pair of shoes, the most comfortable I could find that would fit with the district's dress code, which is much stricter than that of the district where I used to work.

They cost $135! That's twelve hours of work at my new job, and I don't think I am cheap, but that sort of hurt.

Doesn't matter, though. If they keep my feet from hurting, they will be worth it.

I ran into a high school guidance secretary, one of the few who still has a job, when I was at the mall this morning. I asked if she still had a job and she replied that she did. She was on her way there. Grade-level secretaries don't start until teachers do, so she has to rely on parent volunteers to help with scheduling. That will make it a lot harder.

She asked about my job, and I told her I had taken a job as an aid instead of a teacher, that it made me a little nervous but seemed like the right thing to do. She replied that "everything happens for a reason."

Yep. No one asks about somebody else's job...or health...or mate at our age without knowing that the worst could happen to them. Fortunately, a lot of people in my acquaintance are skilled at seeing the hand of God in what does happen to them.

Proverbs 16:9 says,"In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps." I have found this to be so true in my life. I decided not to take a teaching job, and I am convinced that I am doing the right thing. The Lord put me in the job that I will start next Wednesday, and although it is not shaping up the way it had been explained to me, I am sure it will all work out.

The big difference, I think, between being in your twenties and being middle-aged is that when you are twenty-something, you often feel as if the bad things that happen in life ARE going to kill you instead of making you stronger. As you get older, though, you find out that you will probably live through them, no matter how hard they are.

In this uncertain world, I think it helps to remember who is in control, both when things go well and when they do not. At least I think it helps to remember that WE are not in control. And although I often have to be reminded of that, I am very glad it is the case. As it says in Proverbs 16:33:

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.

Amen.

A long time ago I watched this episode of STAR TREK:THE NEXT GENERATION in which everyone on a certain planet was required to commit suicide on their sixtieth birthday. The scientist in this episode took off on the Enterprise to see if his lifelong work would succeed. It didn't, and it appeared that he knew what was wrong, but he had to go back home. His sixtieth birthday was approaching. During his stay on Enterprise, he fell in love with Deanna Troi's mother ( I forget her name) and she tried to get him to stay on board ship, but his daughter called and shamed him into returning. I was ten years younger then than I am now, and I thought that was a big loss. All of this scientist's experimentation would die with him. Why couldn't he at least teach others about what he had done so far?

The way I understand it, the idea of each generation's NOT having to start over is called corporate memory. Things work more smoothly if there is someone around who knows what they are doing. At the Catholic school where I worked in Ohio, there was a great deal of turnover. The year we moved, they lost four out of six teachers on the junior high floor. Only one of the teachers who was left really knew her stuff, and she just knew sixth grade stuff, not seventh or eighth grade stuff. My teaching partner and I wondered what would happen to all the "traditions" when the people who knew about them were gone.

My local school system, in its not-so-infinite wisdom, decided to fire everyone who was not a teacher and make them interview to get rehired. At a lower rate. Needless to say, many of them were irritated and sought jobs elsewhere. As a result, there is no one left at the junior high where I work who knows how to schedule including the principal, who just moved up from elementary. Welcome to chaos! None of the teachers are looking forward to school's starting.

Today, I had another encounter with what I consider a lack of corporate memory. I called my health insurance company. What I wanted was to know how my arthritis treatment is covered under my husband's health insurance, which right now is my secondary insurance. That will change come October 1, and I wanted a pre-determination. Note the prefix pre. Before October 1.

First I called the company that handles prescriptions, but they said that Remicade, the drug I take, is called a specialty drug and I had to call my insurance company as it would probably be covered under major medical. So I did.

The insurance company told me that I would have a 20% co-pay subject to my deductible. I knew that. What I wanted to know was if the treatment, called an infusion, was covered at all, but when I tried to explain that, the young man at the other end of the line interrupted me and told me to let him finish. He told me I had to call benefits.

OK, fine. I went back to the number on the insurance card and tried to navigate through the phone menu, but none of the options were benefits, and all of them took me back to someone in Customer Service, which is where I started. Maybe they were getting annoyed with that. I know I was. I finally lost it and yelled at the girl on the other end of the line. I told her that I had a degree, that I was not an idiot, that I could read the benefits card and I understood deductibles, I just could not seem to navigate through their voice-mail options and if she could not help me, she ought to connect me with someone who could. I was mad. And teary because I was frustrated, which made me even madder.

This all started out with a simple question, really. My doctor had told me that my insurance company changed Remicade from a Tier II to a Tier II drug, which meant it had a 40% co-pay instead of a 20% co-pay. All I wanted to know was if that was the case and if it was, would it be cheaper for me to switch to Enbrel, which is the same class of drug but might cost less since I would inject it myself instead of receiving it intravenously. And I wanted to know now, before Oct. 1. because 40% of my $6000 treatment every eight weeks is a lot of money.

It just seems to me that there is no corporate memory. The people in benefits only know what the benefits card says, and since I can read it, what help are they? The people in customer service know less. And it wasn't just me that got the run-around. The reason I called was because my doctor had tried and been told that no determination would be made before my husband's insurance was primary, and he thought I would have better luck. I told the girl I ranted at about that, too. If they wouldn't tell my doctor and they wouldn't tell me, who would they tell? Do they even know anything to tell?

I finally ended up with a woman in pre-approval because the one I screamed at transferred me. She was very apologetic, but she said she could not help me until October 1. No pre anything for me, I guess! She did at least give me a plan to follow on that date. I hope it works.

Why is it easier for companies to have a bunch of employees who aren't paid very much and don't know very much instead of a few less who know a lot about their job? How can you work around one part of a job and not know about others? How did we get so compartmentalized in the first place? And where will it all lead?

When I was a kid, I took water for granted. We lived in the city, and it was always there. I washed in it, cooked with it and swam in it. No big deal.

Then I got married and moved to the country where we had a well. I found out quickly that water was something special. Pumps fail. Not only that, sometimes in the country you are without electricity for quite some time, and electricity runs the well which gives you.....water. When we moved to Indiana, we swore we would get a house with city water and sewage, but we couldn't find a house we liked in town, so we ended up with a well.

This morning my husband, who rises for work at 4AM and obligingly shuts the dressing room door while he gets ready said, "Uh-oh." Hearing those words that early is really not a good thing. I asked him what the problem was, and he said we did not have water. It fizzled out when he was brushing his teeth. He was worried because he did not want to leave me without water.

I was worried because I have a list of things a mile long to do today and tomorrow, and I was wondering how that was going to fit in with waiting for the plumber. Then I worried about the expense of getting the thing fixed.

My husband wandered out to the garage and checked the pressure at the filter. There was none. Then he checked the breaker, which was not tripped. He reset it anyway.

In Ohio, we had a shallow well and the pump was under the house, we could hear when it was running and when it wasn't. Here we have a deep well, so we never know right away if something like tripping the breaker will work.

A few minutes after he reset the breaker, we heard the toilet finish filling, but we thought that was a fluke since there was still no water at the faucet. Of course, if the pump has been off, it takes a while to build up pressure.

When he sat down for breakfast, my husband asked me to try the faucet in the kitchen. It was too soon, maybe, but....

And we had water! Both of us felt better. Obviously the system hiccuped, and unfortunately it will probably do so again. Probably when I am rushing around getting ready for work. And the big test will come with a shower or a load of wash. Still, I am thankful.

I can't imagine what it must be like to live in a country where you do not have water available at the turn of a faucet. I imagine that you would get used to it. But I feel for the people who must live that way. And I am thankful that at this point I do not.

Frist's Folly - Christianity Today Magazine

Admittedly this is only one source, but it deserves some comment. Embryonic stem cell research hasn't yielded cures for twenty-four years. Adult stem cell research has.

Senator Frist took a lot of heat for standing up for Terri Schiavo. I suppose that could have caused him to re-evaluate his position on cloning. Nevertheless, his statements do have flaws. If he believes that life begins at conception, why is he condoning the killing of such life?

All of us change our minds about important things at times. All of us have backed down at some point or another when the heat is on. We all have to live with the consequences, both temporal and eternal.

So will Senator Frist.

My pastor told this story in his sermon on Sunday. I found it online at About.Com's Christian Teens Site. I'd like to dedicate it to my daughter-in-law, Beth, whose earthly family often frustrates her.

A seminary professor was vacationing with his wife in Gatlinburg, TN. One morning, they were eating breakfast at a little restaurant, hoping to enjoy a quiet, family meal.

While they were waiting for their food, they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting with the guests. The professor leaned over and whispered to his wife, "I hope he doesn't come over here." But sure enough, the man did come over to their table.

"Where are you folks from?" he asked in a friendly voice.

"Oklahoma," they answered.

"Great to have you here in Tennessee." the stranger said. "What do you do for a living?"

"I teach at a seminary," he replied.

"Oh, so you teach preachers how to preach, do you? Well, I've got a really great story for you." And with that, the gentleman pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the couple.

The professor groaned and thought to himself, "Great... Just what I need... another preacher story!"

The man started, "See that mountain over there? (pointing out the restaurant window). Not far from the base of that mountain, there was a boy born to an unwed mother. He had a hard time growing up, because every place he went, he was always asked the same question, 'Hey boy, Who's your daddy?'

"Whether he was at school, in the grocery store or drug store, people would ask the same question, 'Who's your daddy?' He would hide at recess and lunch time from other students. He would avoid going in to stores because that question hurt him so bad.

"When he was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to his church. He would always go in late and slip out early to avoid hearing the question, 'Who's your daddy?'. But one day, the new preacher said the benediction so fast he got caught and had to walk out with the crowd.

"Just about the time he got to the back door, the new preacher, not knowing anything about him, put his hand on his shoulder and asked him, 'Son, who's your daddy?'

"The whole church got deathly quiet. He could feel every eye in the church looking at him. Now everyone would finally know the answer to the question, 'Who's your daddy'. This new preacher, though, sensed the situation around him and using discernment that only the Holy Spirit could give, said the following to that scared little boy...

"'Wait a minute!' he said. 'I know who you are. I see the family resemblance now. You are a child of God.' With that he patted the boy on his shoulder and said, 'Boy, you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.' With that, the boy smiled for the first time in a long time and walked out the door a changed person. He was never the same again. Whenever anybody asked him, 'Who's your Daddy?' he'd just tell them, 'I'm a Child of God'."

The distinguished gentleman got up from the table and said, "Isn't that a great story?"

The professor responded that it really was a great story! As the man turned to leave, he said, "You know, if that new preacher hadn't told me that I was one of God's children, I probably never would have amounted to anything!" And he walked away.

The seminary professor and his wife were stunned. He called the waitress over and asked her, "Do you know who that man was who just left that was sitting at our table?"

The waitress grinned and said, "Of course. Everybody here knows him. That's Ben Hooper. He's the former governor of Tennessee!"

You're only ours for a while, Beth. Remember who you really belong to.

Love,

Mom

I have always believed in the value of stories. I think they teach us who we are. That's why I think sharing stories about the past, about your childhood, is valuable. Sharing memories comes with a caveat, though. I have found over the years that some of my childhood memories are faulty. I put together the facts that I had at the time, but I didn't have nearly enough facts.

Let me give you an example. When I was six, something was going on in my house, and I, in my six-year-old mind, decided that it had to do with me. This was back in the day when parents didn't share with their kids like they do now. Kids were on a need-to-know basis like you see on TV, and the adults mostly figured that kids didn't need to know. Anyway, I decided that I had been adopted and my parents were going to send me back. In my own defense, I have always been a reader, so I must have read a story like that. Still, I was firmly convinced that was the case, and I was MUCH older when I found out that the big deal had to do with my brother and not with me at all.

This experience, combined with a couple of others, caused me to make the decision to BE an adult at the age of six. I remember doing it. And, being six (and seven and eight and.....), I screwed it up. A lot.

That might be why my husband said he could not envision me as a child until this vacation. I have told him plenty of stories about my childhood. I enjoy the stories that he tells me about his, even though some of them are sad. I can see, in my mind's eye, the little boy who blew up the tree. I smile when I think of the little boy who rode his bicycle out in the country as far as his little legs would take him and came home hours later. I lived in those times. We both lived in the times when summer was sweat without air conditioning and falling asleep meant listening to the crickets and the cicadas and praying for a breeze to come through your window.

On our vacation this year, we went by my Aunt Jeanette's house, which will soon be razed for a highway ramp. Aunt Jeanette's was always the first place we went when we visited Fairmont, WVA, where my parents were born. Aunt Jeanette's husband, Finley, passed away at the beginning of May, and my cousin has been urging me to go back and see if there was anything I wanted from the house. My memories, though, are OF the house, not so much of anything in it.

To get there, my husband and I had to find the house, which involved getting off at interstate exits with which we were unfamiliar, but we managed. We went up East Park Street, where my dad lived until he was seven and his parents lost the house because of the Depression. We went by where the old toll bridge was. I remember my dad paying a nickel for us to cross just so I'd know what a toll bridge was.

Finally, we found State Street. I used to walk down State Street to cross the river and go to the pool. I also visited my Great Aunt Lucy. Good memories. But Aunt Lucy's last house is boarded up, and the house she had before that was not in much better shape. It looks sort of like people have given up on this side of Fairmont already.

Finally, we were at the house. We parked and walked around it. There used to be an orphanage at the top of the hill, and that is gone. One of the neighbors noticed that we were there and came out to find out who we were. She wanted me to call my cousin, who is the executor of Uncle Finley's will. I did call to please her, but I was sort of glad he wasn't home. I didn't want to go in. I wanted to remember the big garden at the side of the house and the black cocker spaniel, Prince, who lived in a house behind it. I wanted to revisit the grape arbor under which I lay on my back and watched the clouds roll by.

Then I decided I wanted to visit the house across the street. I could tell that this surprised my husband, and he actually just pulled the van up and watched. The house across the street housed an Italian family, and the summer I was ten, I played with their youngest daughter, Mary Theresa. I told the mom who I was, but she did not remember me. She remembered my cousins, who visited much more frequently. She invited me, though, to wait for Mary Theresa, who was due at any time.

I was getting a little nervous making small talk, especially since the lady I was talking to did not remember me. Neither did her older daughter. But see, I did not spend time with her older daughter. There was a group of kids just older than Mary Theresa and me, and they did not want "the kids" hanging around. So we played with each other.

Finally, Mary Theresa arrived. She knew me right away, although she had not seen me for close to forty years. I felt a lot better. We made a lot of small talk. She has one son. She showed me his picture. I pulled out the pictures of my kids and the grandbabies. When I left, she gave me a hug.

My husband was quiet after we left, and I was sort of teary. Then he told me that he had actually not been able to envision me as a child before, but as he watched me talk to Mary Theresa, it was as if we were both ten again.

That summer, see, I came back to Fairmont with my Mom's dad because our bathroom was being remodeled. My sister had just graduated high school, and my little sister was three. I guess my parents figured it would be better for me to have my cousins to play with than to be there amidst all the remodeling chaos. We only had one bathroom. Surprisingly, I do not remember putting up a fuss, and I was a homebody as a child.

Aunt Jeanette had a lot of kids in her house, and times were safer then. She really didn't care what you did between meals and bedtime as along as you were there for your assigned chores at the assigned time. So that summer, unlike other summers in my life, I was free to wander. I remember wandering out in the country just to see where a road would lead. And I was all by myself. I probably didn't go more than a few miles, but it seemed like quite a trek to me. I went up the hill to visit Aunt Florence and Agnes, and I came home when I wanted to. I lay on my back and watched the clouds roll by. These are all kid things to do, but that summer is really the only one that I remember doing them.

All the houses on Pleasant Street will be gone by this time next year, so I probably will not go back to Fairmont again. I am glad, though, that I got to see it. I am glad I let Mary Theresa know that spending time with her is a pleasant memory for me. And I am glad that my husband finally got to see me as a little girl.

The stories we tell people, and the stories people tell us, really are a means of understanding them. I have known my husband for over thirty years. We have been married for twenty-seven. I am glad this one finally got told.