I don't know about you, but...

 I happen to know the One who hung the moon.

NessaDeeArt

It never ceases to amaze me that the God who created the universe would want to have a personal, intimate relationship with me. God's love is not divided and diminished among the mass of humanity to the point where each of us receives only a distant, microscopic portion of Himself. His love is complete in each of us. You and I have God's undivided attention at any moment of the day. That truth doesn't sink in without totally overwhelming me.

God reaches out to each of us in countless ways to show his love towards us, but how often do we hear folks give luck, fate, chance, or coincidence the credit? God has chosen clay pots to house this treasure of love, but He never meant for them to be self-contained. He intends for his love in us to spill over onto others.

For too long I felt like I had to earn God's love somehow, not realizing there was nothing I could do to make God love me any more or any less than He already did.

Amazing.

Read Between the Lines

My daughter and I attended an SCBWI Writers Conference in Arlington, Texas, a couple of years ago. My son was two months into a three-month assignment in a hot spot on the other side of the world where phone and Internet capabilities were limited. During the morning of the second day of the conference, he sent me an email telling me he wanted to Skype with me that day, and gave me instructions how to set it up so we could see each other as we visited. The time difference was seven hours ahead of us, and he said he had to wait until late at night to call when the usage was lower.

Conference attendees had a thirty minute break at 2:00 p.m., so I tried to connect with him, but the calls kept failing to go through. At 3:30 we were sitting at a table directly in front of the stage listening to one of the keynote speakers when somebody's cell phone started ringing. Loudly. I looked around to see whose it was before I realized it was my laptop ringing like a phone. I opened it up, and there was Van's face grinning at me.

I was horrified that my laptop had so rudely interrupted the speaker, but the momma in me wasn't about to miss this call. I leaned over and whispered to the screen, "Just a minute," grabbed my laptop and started working my way through all the tables in the conference room to get to the hall outside. When I finally sat down in front of the laptop, Van was laughing his head off.

I asked him what was so funny, and he said he'd called all of his co-workers over to meet his mother, and all they saw for a long minute or so was my striped chest bouncing up and down on the screen while I was trying to get out of the conference room. By the time my face was back on the monitor, all the other men had slunk away, probably too embarrassed on my behalf to meet me. That's not the first time I've embarrassed my son, but I figure that's just one of my jobs as his mother.

Less than a year later my grandkids' other grandma called and asked if I'd heard the news of the four Americans' demise in a place that rhymes with 'ten gauze ee,' and I told her yes. She asked if I was okay, and again, I told her yes. It wasn't until some time later that it finally dawned on me that this was the same place my son had been assigned ten months before. And he had been providing security for the same person that had been killed. It hit me like ice water the danger my son's job often takes him, and then for a while, I wasn't okay. I immediately called him 1. to hear his voice, 2. to find out if he was okay, and 3. to hear his take on the situation. He has a group picture with the am bass a door, who he said was very nice and very good at his job. And he was there because he wanted to make a positive difference in that part of the world. It saddens me every time I see that photograph.

My son told me years ago when he was assigned to his first danger post to not worry about him. He said  that when his time was up, it was up, no matter where he was stationed. He said he could be walking across the street in DC and get hit by a car. Since then I've tried not to worry unless he gives me good reason to.

I wondered if I should even write this post since some big outfit with three initials is scrolling through all of our communications and blogs looking for certain keywords. If I get a knock on my door by some men in black, I'll try to keep you posted. But if this blog disappears, you'll know why. : )

Family Friendly?

It chaps my hide every time I see ABC's disclaimer tacked onto the beginning of the 700 Club saying, "The following CBN telecast does not reflect the views of ABC Family." 

Why do they feel so threatened about a show that does more good around the world than any other similar faith-based news show? Operation Blessing, Orphan's Promise, schools started around the world, surgery and health services made available to areas that have little or none, water wells for clean water, micro-businesses started, and so much more are some of the outstanding ministries they support. 

I don't agree with some of the things I've heard on the 700 Club, but that doesn't mean I discount everything about it and go to great lengths to disassociate with it. Overall, I know what the 700 Club represents, and that disclaimer makes me question the sense of the people running ABC Family. 

 As a believer in Christ, I am also thankful that the 700 Club provides news from a Christian world view. They often cover stories that the mainstream media doesn't. They also provide good segments on health and nutrition. I went through eighteen months of health problems and many visits to a gastroenterologist who did every test in the book and wanted to start all of them over when he couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. The 700 Club was one of the first shows to warn of the dangers of aspartame poisoning, and I  recognized that I had some of the same symptoms they listed. I immediately quit drinking diet colas and those symptoms - some of them debilitating - disappeared within two weeks.  

The 700 Club also interviews authors, athletes, actors, pastors, musicians, and others whose lives have been impacted by their relationship to Christ. They were one of the first shows, if not the first, to re-create real-life experiences of people using actors or the actual people involved to tell the story, which other shows regularly do now. 

ABC Family's new logo says, A New Kind of Family, and I just about choked when I heard an announcer say ABC Family was so proud to present Pretty Woman as one of the movies they showed. I noticed they scheduled another new kind of family-friendly movie recently - Burlesque. If those two movies are their idea of good family entertainment, they've gone off the deep end. 

It's hard to find good family entertainment on TV these days. But we think one of the best family-friendly shows on TV today is Disney's Good Luck, Charlie. It's one of the few children's shows with an intact, functioning family. The parents are very much involved each week, which I think encourages all ages to tune in. Four generations in my family watch and love that show. 

ABC Family is also owned by Disney, and is contractually obligated to show the 700 Club, but the poor souls don't realize that's one of the best shows on that channel. 

A Dangerous Mother

Yes. That was me. 

But I didn't know it until I had my first grandchild -- a beautiful baby girl. I tried to do my motherly duty and give my daughter the sage advice I had learned the hard way over the years of raising my own two children.Twelve years ago, I let Audrie fall asleep on my chest and then gently placed her on her stomach in her crib.

"Mother! They don't lay babies on their stomachs anymore!" My daughter corrected me. "They might suffocate!"

Dear Lord, forgive me for almost suffocating my children hundreds of times when they were babies.

I prided myself on the fact that my two children started sleeping through the night at a fairly early age, and it pained me to see Vanessa so exhausted night after night after night of little sleep because her three babies (when they each were babies & the third one still is) kept waking up wanting to nurse. I told her to give them a little rice cereal so they'll feel satisfied and sleep longer so she could rest.

"Mother! They don't feed babies any food other than breast milk or formula until they're at least six months old or they could develop allergies!" 

Dear Lord, forgive me for developing allergies in my children for feeding them baby cereal at too young of an age.

Car seats for babies and small children were just coming into existence when my kids were little, and it wasn't a law back then, so my kids were exposed to countless hours of riding unrestrained in vehicles. Van sometimes stood tucked behind his Daddy's shoulder while his daddy drove 70 mph down the highway. My toddler son even opened the pickup door while riding with his PaPa Van Cleve on I-35 on the way to Laredo. I still shiver when I think about that. I've lost count the times my children rode in the back of the pickup around town and in the pasture. And I learned well after the fact that Uncle Jimmy let Van drive his pickup and trailer to Pearsall, thirty miles away, and the boy was only 10 or 11 years old! 

Dear Lord, forgive me for letting my children go ANYWHERE with their father and uncle and grandfather in a pickup.

It's a wonder my children weren't traumatized by what I made them wear.

I never realized life was so dangerous for my children. 

• I didn't walk out into the street and watch them walk to their grandparents' house 50 yards from our house. It's a wonder they weren't kidnapped! 
• Until they got their driver's license, I made them walk to junior high [it's now called middle school] and high school three blocks away. They could've been run over!
• I let them play out in the 40 acres behind the house. I don't know why they weren't bit by a rattlesnake!
• Van fell off the roof several times putting up Christmas lights and was electrocuted once as he stapled into the wire about the time Vanessa plugged the lights in. They didn't tell me this until after they went to college. 
• They rode horses and worked with big 4-H show calves, and stepped in manure in the pens and were scratched by feral cats in the barn, and also swung like Tarzan off the tall stacks of feed with ropes attached to the rafters. They could've broken bones [oh yeah, Van did break his arm three times falling off a horse] or contracted some deadly disease out there!

Dear Lord, forgive me for raising my children in such a dangerous environment. Thank you for keeping them safe in spite of my ignorance. 

Little August

And now our precious little surprise, August, showed up last July, and I have the inexpressible joy of getting to hold and kiss on a baby again. I'm scared out of my mind that I'm going to do something wrong, so when I keep him, I follow him around like a shadow when he's crawling, or I just hold him on my chest the whole time he's sleeping. 

Dear Lord, please don't let this errant underwire sticking out of my bra stab him. 

I'm so glad my own children survived their dangerous childhood. I'm surprised how healthy and strong and happy they look! They're hiding their suffering well.

 Vanessa & Van

And here are my grandkids, whom I'm trying to be safer with.

Audrie, Finn & August

I think I just butchered that last sentence grammatically. Is it 'with whom I'm trying to be safer' or is it okay to write it like we speak it: 'who I'm trying to be safer with' or what?! I can't even trust myself to be safe with grammar! That even sounds like a nickname for grandma!  Ol' Grammar Van Cleve. 

Okay,  I'll stop now.

A Time of Transition

My Sunday School co-teacher, Penni, referred in a prayer to this time with my mother's ALS as a transition. That stuck with me because we often think of death in terms of an ending, a finality, a loss. But those are terms that more accurately describe the survivors' earthly status to the deceased, but the deceased has actually transitioned to the next stage of life, an eternity with one's Creator, or an eternity without. The first choice is heavenly, the second is heart-rending.

Because of our relationship with our Creator through Christ, I know my mother and I will see each other again after her transition. I've already asked my mother to meet me by the gate-- no matter who goes first. And none of us are guaranteed a long life.

I realize those folks who have grown up outside of a knowledge of God and the Bible, and even for agnostics who are familiar with Christianity, that probably sounds like wishful thinking from a simple-minded anomaly at the top of the food chain. That's okay. I'd rather live a life of trust in my Creator and his Word, which He has proved to me time and time again, than the empty, hopeless worldview without God. There is no transition for unbelievers. Life has no meaning, only a brief speck of existence during a moment in time, and then it's back to the dirt. Lights off. The end. Finis. Terminated. And if folks want to live with that belief, I can respect that. But I choose otherwise.

And it's God's grace that will sustain us as we're getting into the hard days of Mom's disease now. She's lost the use of her legs and most of her muscles, and cannot move without two of us helping her in or out of bed and in and out of her power chair, which right now is the only thing that allows her to defy her paralysis. We are so thankful she can still do things with her hands, including writing to communicate with us. I pray that we will not lose that connection. I pray for courage and peace for Mom, and she's demonstrated that; I can't imagine what it's like for a perfectly healthy mind to be trapped in a body unwilling to do its bidding.

Even as old as I am, the little girl in me still wants to crawl in bed with my momma and hang onto her for dear life. I'm already missing her-- not being able to converse. I'm tired of my one-sided conversations, and silent house. The writer in me wants her to spend this time recording all of her memories and thoughts and messages to her kids so we can have those words to keep us company until we're re-united again. But Mom doesn't think the way I think, and only records thoughts when I prompt her to. I've stepped back from that, telling myself to be content with what she's given me and letting her live out the rest of her life as she chooses.

She loves to watch the Spurs. She faithfully watches Jeopardy, Family Feud, and Wheel of Fortune. She still has one favorite soap opera she watches, and I try to bite my tongue when I want to spout something sarcastic about another predictable, worn-out story line when I'm walking through the living room. And I've stopped fussing about her feeding the dog scraps from her chair. That gives her joy. She deserves it.

And that gives me joy.

Mother's Day in DC

My daughter & her family & I made a flying trip to DC to visit my son/ her brother for five short days, which happened to fall on Mother's Day weekend. Bonus!

We became very familiar with the Metro, DC's subway system. 

My grandkids felt like they were on a carnival ride every time we boarded it.

We slipped into the back door of the Capitol for a tour

And spent a lot of time looking up at some amazing things

like the Rotunda ceiling

and a very tall statue of Abraham Lincoln, 

sculpted by an 18 year old girl!

We walked around the side of the Capitol after a visit to the Library of Congress, which they evacuated while we were there due to an unattended package left in front, probably left by a tourist. But they were playing it safe for everyone's sake.

We made it to the front of the Capitol (I assume it's the front), which faces the Mall.

Little August did great on the trip, and spent lots of time smiling.

This beautiful cascading water structure was in Meridian Park 

across the street from my son's apartment building. 

We got plenty of exercise walking, but the weather was nice and cool.

It was the nicest Mother's Day weekend I've had in years. 

Rigor Mortis or Life?

Too easily I find myself gravitating toward 
                           the path of comfort, 
                                             the place of no conflict, 
                                                             the sound of quiet.  

I look around, and I am alone. 

When I am alone, I can create my own perfect world.

When I am alone, I don't have to worry about offending anyone.

When I am alone, I don't have to worry about disagreement.

When I am alone, I don't have to defend my beliefs.

When I am alone, no one suffers from my mistakes.

When I am alone, no one sees my flaws.

When I am alone, I close my heart to avoid pain.

When I am alone, I forget to live.

I find it all too easy to reside in my world of one.

In my world of one, I feel my strength wane.

In my world of one, rough edges remain when no grit of change polishes me.

In my world of one, I am blind to my faults.

In my world of one, I get lazy when nothing challenges me.

In my world of one, I forget to pray.

In my world of one, I stop growing.

In my world of one, regret haunts me.

In my world of one, I must fight to leave it before rigor mortis sets in.

To live is to come out of hiding, stretch my limbs, open my eyes.

To live, I must stop escaping and live in the now.

To live, I must seek God through his Son, thank Him, talk to Him, & intercede for others.

To live, I must continue to learn, express, think, & act.

To live, I must defend, occasionally offend, sometimes bend, & lend a hand.

To live involves sometimes tripping & falling, but always getting up.

To live is to engage, listen, speak, & listen some more.

To live is to experience loss to attain gain and growth.

To live is to open my heart, at the risk of pain.

To live is to love above all else, and through it all, to love.