Dee: My Grandmother April 12, 2011

My grandmother was named after the greatest man ever, her father, Denzyl.  Yes, the most amazing lady that ever lived was named Denzelle, “Dennye” to girlie it up a bit and then shortened to “Dee”.  I didn’t call her grandmother or any derivative of that, I called her, Dee. 

She never had an enemy nor did she ever talk bad about anyone.  She was always smiling, her glass was always half full.  She loved hobbies, she loved doing things, especially things that made other people happy.  She loved to journal and past this on to her son (my dad) and her granddaughter (me). 

She loved unconditionally.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  I’ve heard about it in the Bible about how God loves us unconditionally but I never knew a human being could do it.  She made you feel that you were the most amazing child, the most special, the prettiest, the smartest…  When we would visit her she would take us around to her co-workers or the local grocery store and show us off.  We, at the time, were embarrassed and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.  The fuss was about us, her grandkids, and how much she loved us.  She made it a treat for that person to have met us.  She was always so proud of me.  When I didn’t make the best of grades in high school, she didn’t lecture me or put any pressure on me, she didn’t judge me she only encouraged me.  I wanted to do better because she believed in me. 

I can only hope one day to be able to love unconditionally like her.  She was wonderful.  I miss her.  She died too young at 69 years old.  I’m sad that I don’t have her wisdom here to guide me but I’m even sadder that my kids will never get the chance to have known her love or felt her love.  Oh, how she would have shown them off.  Oh my goodness she would have thought they deserved a parade.  She was everything good. 

That’s the legacy I want to leave my family and friends:  unconditional love.

Today, April 12^th, would have been her 84th birthday.  Happy Birthday Dee!

Death….really? April 5, 2011

We really don’t ever die, do we?  We just move from earth to heaven or earth to hell.  We all have eternal life right now, we’re just in the first stage of it.  Hoping you made THE right choice in your first stage will determine where you go for your second stage  – right?                                                                 This first stage was never supposed to be like this…just think about Adam and Eve.  God created life to be like heaven on earth.  No sin, sickness, pain etc.  No walls holding us in, no sleep number bed because the one we have now hurts our backs, no carpet because the grass is soft and luscious, no HD TV because we have all the entertainment we need from all the vivid colors, smells, sounds and animals.  No cars to take us here to there because we can stroll through this beautiful garden and have everything we need.  No malls, grocery stores, car washes, movie theaters, gyms, etc.  There was never a need for those things.  We weren’t intended to be so busy with things that don’t matter.

God made us for companionship.  He wanted to spend time with us each day just walking, talking and enjoying all the things He just created for our enjoyment.  Man, have we come a long from His idea of entertainment.  His dream for us was to each fresh delicious fruits not the processed, greasy, non nutritional fast foods that we eat today.  No wonder we have to say a blessing before each meal – “Dear God, please don’t let this stuff I call food kill me (today)”.  Think about the air in the Garden.  I can’t imagine smelling clean air that wasn’t polluted by something we’ve made.  The flowers and trees would have smelled so much different.  Now, there are just muted by emissions from our cars.  I can’t imagine God entering the Garden to see me and then walking together just chit-chatting.  Today, we make it so formal “Dear God…I come to you today…asking for …”  when He just wants to talk like friends.  How much time to we spend each day just talking to our Friend?  Not that you have to spend 1 hour or 2 hours talking to God (that would be legalistic and not a friendship) but how often do you talk to your spouse each day?  On and off right?  You might call him/her throughout the day to tell them something you forgot or just to say “I love you”.  That’s what a friendship is.  Not doing it because you have to but because you want to. 

I think I will go outside and smell the flowers, look at the blooming Bradford Pear trees, listen to the birds sing their songs and talk to my Friend.  I think I’m going to tell Him “THANKS”.

Do you hear what I hear? March 23, 2011

When I would go to sleep at night I would hear little scratching sounds in the wall I was facing.  I would tell my husband to turn off the TV and listen.  He would hear… NOTHING.  I would hear it again but a very faint sound, then nothing and I would drift off to sleep.  The next night, their back, (you have to say that like the little girl of Poltergeist) I could hear their little feet scratching inside my wall.  I would lay there in the darkness thinking about how a simple piece of sheet rock was protecting me from this horrible animal.  Tony said it was probably a squirrel or a mouse or mice!  I would lay there saying “Do you hear that?”  Tony finally said, “There is nothing there.  You are hearing things.  Go to sleep.”  I knew what I knew and I knew I heard little feet.  Typical male dismissing a woman!  I am woman hear me ROAR!  Right?

Finally, I ROARED – “Go in the attic and see what it is.”  To his surprise when he shined the flashed light down the wall beside my bed he saw – let me just say- multiple eyes looking up at him glowing in the light.  BATS!!!!!!  I was wondering why we had no mosquitos when we have two ponds behind our house. 

He called an exterminator who tacked up a piece of a window screen in front of the opening so they could fly out but couldn’t find their way back in.  Yes, we paid $50 for a piece of window screen.  For the next few nights you could hear a few light thuds and then no more scratching.  However, we did get mosquitos.  Tony made a bat box but they didn’t go to it.  Oh, how we want the bats back -  No insects! 

I knew I heard something but I would have never thought it was BATS in my attic!

My Home March 22, 2011

My home isn’t eye catching, elegant nor will ever be on the front of Home Beautiful magazine but to me it’s beautiful.  We had many opportunities to buy a bigger better more in-style house but why would I want to leave this one?  It has everything I need and holds all my memories for the last 18 years.  My husband built our home and since then the wall décor has changed many times.  Thank goodness.  We bought our first dog, Roxy, a black lab that quickly became our baby.  Roxy lived in the house with us until six years later when we had our first “real” baby.  After, about a year I couldn’t handle Roxy’s black hair on my sweet little baby.  So, out she went.  On the walls of my baby’s room I had painted “For this child I prayed”.  I had prayed for her for 6 long years and finally I was blessed with a beautiful healthy baby girl.  Since then those words have been painted over a couple of times but if you look real close you can see a few of those brush marks.  It makes me smile.

Then baby #2 came, a precious baby boy who completed our family.  My living room was cluttered by all their toys.  If I sit on my couch and remember, I can see each one of those toys before me.  It makes me smile. 

Oh, the “wallpaper” and you have to say that with the same hatred that Mommy Dearest said “No wires hangers”.  I have grown to hate wallpaper.  Having to strip it from the walls in almost every room will make one tend to think negative of the decorative styled paper.  Paint is my new best friend but I know what was on those walls before. WALLPAPER –  It makes me smile. 

I am now holding a Bible Study in my house once a week with four of the most  special ladies and it’s so amazing.  I am making new memories all the time. 

I will be sad when we move one day but I won’t be like those people on those TV shows when they get to come back and see how the new owners change the house.  The previous owners are so shocked that the new owners don’t have the exact same taste as them.  Stupid.  It makes me smile. 

To sum up… I love my house like a mother loves her ugly kid.  It’s what’s on the inside that counts.  Ha-ha.

The Shack March 13, 2011

This book was recommended to me by a good friend.  She warned me that it would be very sad and shocking.  I’ll skip the sad part, you can read that, I want to tell you about the shocking part, the way we view God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

I honestly see God as a white grandfather man, white long hair, white beard wearing a white flowing robe and He’s standing on a cloud (that’s white of course) and the back ground is white.  It’s amazing I can see Him at all, right?  But that’s the images I’ve been fed all my life.  After getting to know Him more I realize I have put Him in this nice neat little box that isn’t true at all.  He isn’t a man, He doesn’t have flesh and doesn’t have hair and has no need for a robe of any color.  I have shredded that box! I realize I can see Him however I want, however He wants me to see Him.  In the Bible it’s written “no man has seen the face of God” because it is so bright and beautiful.  The Bible also says that Adam and Eve walked with God every evening.  So, they saw something.  They saw who God wanted them to see – an image that their eyes could handle.  In this book the man, Mack, with the sadness saw God and He was a large black woman named Papa.  That was hard to handle at first and some people don’t want to even read the book because of that but the author wanted you to remove all the other “pictures” you had of God and take them out of your box.  The man had a problem with it also and when he questioned God, He replied, “I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature.  If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it’s because I love you.  For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me ‘Papa’ is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling back so easily into your religious conditioning.”  So, if you know God then no matter what ‘costume’ He’s wearing you will be able to pick Him out of a crowd.  I wonder how many times we encounter God in a day but rush right by Him because we don’t KNOW him.  The devil could come to us in the ‘White” image and we could unfortunately recognize him as God.  It’s what on the inside that counts not the outside.

I see Jesus as this tan slender Middle Eastern man with long dark brown hair, beard or no beard, He doesn’t have large muscles and of modest height.  You know this image, you’ve seen it a million times too.  In the book I see Jesus much the same way in stature but now I see even more on the inside.  The author writes, “The truth shall set you free and the truth has a name; he’s over in the wood shop right now covered in sawdust.  Everything is about him.  And freedom is a process that happens inside a relationship with him. “  The book explains in much more detail how human and how godly He is. 

I have always thought of the Holy Spirit as 3^rd in the Trinity.  For some reason 3^rd on the list doesn’t seem as important as God or Jesus but that’s my religious background painting this picture for me.  Actually, it’s easy to describe but hard to comprehend in our human brains.  God is the Holy SpiritandHe is Jesus and they are God.  The three are equal to each other and they don’t work independently from one another but they are…different.   In the book Jesus describes the Holy Spirit, “my spirit, the Spirit of God who restores the union that was lost so long ago.”  The Holy Spirit is described as an Asian woman who “seemed almost to shimmer in the light, and her hair blew in all directions even though there was  hardly a breeze.  It was almost easier to see her out of the corner of your eye than it was to look at her directly.” 

This book definitely gets you thinking and opening your heart and mind to something more than what we’ve ever been told.  It’s not about thinking of God in a certain way, it’s about knowing who He is by knowing His character, knowing the truth about Him.  You will see God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in a whole new way.  This is one of the most loving books I’ve ever read – besides the Bible.  This author captures the Trinity’s love for us in a way that we can imagine.  Instead of trying to figure out what They look like we should be trying to understand the love They have for us.

“An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children.  He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.” A.W.Tozer (That’s a quote from the book.)

If you have lost a loved one so dear to you that you feel you can’t breathe anymore read the Bible and The Shack.  You will still miss your loved one but you will love God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit more than you ever have before.  “When all you can see is your pain, perhaps then you lose sight of me”, God.

Inspiration! March 11, 2011

I’m 39 years old and feel like I should have taken more chances in my life.  I’m a play-it-safe kind of person.  I don’t want to put myself out there too far because “what if I fail?”

I wish I would have taken a photography class.  I love taking pictures.  I enjoy remembering each experience that I captured on paper.   I wish I would have taken a writing class.  I love writing.  I find myself jittery at times needing to write something, anything but what and then what do I with what I just wrote?  (Thank goodness my friend showed me how to blog.)

I feel it’s too late for me to start something new.  My problem is when I do something (that I want to do) I do it with total focus.  So, once I started having kids I totally focused on them and didn’t have time to do anything that would take away from them.  I took my share of 1000’s of pictures of my kids and journal everyday about everything new they were doing.

…Wait a minute… as I’m writing this blog I’m realizing that I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do at that time and that I still have plenty of time to go into photography and writing.  I needed to focus on my kids completely and as they get a little older and a little more independent I can venture out.  I’m not ready for a career in photography or writing – that might take the fun out of it.  But I am ready for my own blog and maybe the picture that I chose to capture the title will be one that I take.  Hey, baby steps right? 

I’m not going to make myself feel guilty or beat myself up because I “missed out” on something because now I know that I didn’t.  What a relief!  I’m doing exactly what I should be doing at the time I should be doing it – but still dreaming of things to do in my future.  Did ya catch that?

I think I’ll go take an inspiring picture and hopefully it will inspire me to write about it.

Shock at a Funeral March 5, 2011

My mom and I went to the same church when we found out that a lady from our church had died.  We didn’t know this lady as a friend we just knew of her.  She had to have been about 45 years old and we knew she had kids but wasn’t sure if she had grandkids yet and if not she would never get to know them.  We were saddened by the thoughts going through our minds.  We decided to go to her funeral to support her family and friends. 

We arrived, took our seats towards the back of the church.  We did not go to the front of the church to visit the casket we didn’t want to take time away from her family. 

As we sat in the pew waiting for the service to begin we looked around the room looking for what we thought her husband looked like.  When we couldn’t find him so we assumed that the family was in a back room getting ready to come out.  As we didn’t see her husband we did see HER-upright!  She was walking down the aisle!  She’s supposed to be dead!  I whipped my head around with eyes wide open and looked at my mom in shock.  She looked at me not knowing what’s going on.  I said “Look who’s coming down the aisle.  It’s the dead lady”.  She looked at her, her eyes widened, she looked back at me and then we got so tickled.  We were relieved that she wasn’t leaving this earth so early but this was crazy. 

Low and behold this lady sat down behind us.  Trying not to appear to be laughing we turned around to her and explained our mix up.  She laughed and said she was touched to know that even though we didn’t know each other that we would have attended her funeral.  She thanked us.

We asked her whose funeral we were attending and she said it was an older lady that attended our church with a very similar name as hers.  We sat through the mysterious lady’s funeral – well we couldn’t just get up and leave “Oops, sorry wrong funeral.”  Who does that?

The Frog on the Roof February 26, 2011

BEFORE...

About 9pm I was sitting on the couch with my 8yo son just watching TV, when he turned to me and said “There’s a frog on the roof.”  Not understanding what he was saying because I couldn’t possibly of heard what I just heard, I asked him to repeat himself.   He said very sadly, “There’s a frog on the roof.” 

“Why is there a frog on the roof?”

“I threw it up there today.  I wanted to watch him jump off but he didn’t.”

“Oh my gosh!”  It was 100 degrees today which means our black roof was 500+ degrees!  I couldn’t stand to think of that poor frog stuck on my roof.  What if he did survive the heat he couldn’t survive the JUMP!  My husband was working out-of-town so I had to call my neighbor.  He came over and brought his ladder.  I know he was looking at me like I was a complete idiot to care so much about a FRIED FROG but he didn’t say anything.  With flash light in hand he climbed up the ladder and searched for the frog.  He found it!  The crispy little frog  didn’t stand a chance on that stove top we call a roof.  He climbed down and went back home.  We went inside and my son told me he really thought that the frog would jump off the roof and go back home.                                                                                                                                          

The innocence of kids have killed more wild life than anything else!!  Ha-ha

R U Who U Wanted 2 B? February 22, 2011

Your dreams from when you were a kid may have changed, been tweaked a bit but what do you want to do, now?  Maybe you even accomplished your dream job but what about that other dream?  Was your dream as a kid to work all day and only come home to eat and sleep?  Did you really dream of not having time to play in the pool, throw the baseball with your kid, or go on vacations?  I can’t imagine dreaming of staying inside a building as a kid.  We wanted freedom, we wanted to run and yell, jump and scream!  There is a balance.  We can have our job AND we can have our LIFE too?

Think about what you really want out of life.  Do you want to live to work or work to live? 

I love my quaint home that we can afford because we can go on vacations and splurge on things that we WANT!  We are not strapped to our house.  We do not try to keep up with the Jones’s – have you seen their credit report?  Don’t live to impress others live to impress yourself!

“I drove my Motorcycle” February 16, 2011

My Cycle

My grandmother is now 92 1/2 years old and resides in a nursing home.  Some days she is very coherent but other days well not so

You never know what you are going to walk into when you enter the crazy, old, memory challenged, home of the weird smell, concrete building of the old and older.  Having said that very important statement you will totally understand why I said what I said next.

Ok, so I visited my grandmother again and this day she thought she was 56 years old and wanted me to take her home.  Her childhood home!  She explained that “they are going to kick me out of here because I don’t have any money, please take me home.  Can I go home with you?  I know that’s a lot to ask but it would just be for one night.”  Even though I knew she wouldn’t remember this entire conversation in an hour I tried to explain to her that her home was 3 hours away and I wasn’t sure if anyone was there.  I explained that she lived here now - in this wonderful place where the people love her very much.  She wasn’t listening to me.  So, I had to do what any normal person would do I told her “Granny, I can’t take you home today.  I drove my motorcycle.”  She immediately had a smile on her face and said “Oh, I love motorcycles.  I rode one once and I loved it.”  Then she asked “do you love riding it?”  I looked her in the eyes and I replied, “Yes, I do love riding my motorcycle.”  With that she was perfectly fine and content.  That made leaving much easier –  I got in my SUV and took off towards home!

I love my grandmother very much and have so many wonderful memories with her; now I will have a few crazy ones.