finished those Roman Shades

The re-covering was a dumb idea . . .

I thought it would make the room darker at night and in the mornings when we had the chance to sleep in. BUT they just didn't hang right. That's ok. They are finished now and are all beautiful and yellow. These go much nicer with the spread and pillows.

New Pillows

Well that's not exciting I know. I've had the material for ages, so I recovered a Roman Shade too. I think I'll do to more Shades tomorrow.

I did get the hole patched. Tomorrow . . . Wall Paper!

Fixing holes in the wall

you wouldn't think this would be hard!

Last week we had one in the bathroom. Joe has moved home during the week. Blythe is finishing up school and he's opening up a new store. So he's staying with us. I noticed that the towel rack was loose in the bathroom he's using. By the time I finished getting it off the wall, there was a hole - Metal anchors primarily to blame. So, some patch, sanding, small pieces of wall paper and it's nearly as good as new.

Which makes me think it's time to tackle the much larger hole at the bottom of the stairs that I've ignored for several years. Ron had tried to carry a mattress up the stairs by himself and it slipped. oops . . . I just hung a quilt over it. Since it was at such a prime location, I thought I should pull the entire panels of wall paper down for this hole - it spanned two. Joy! They didn't want to come off without the wall. What I thought would take 15 minutes took two hours. That was just pulling off the paper.

Tomorrow, I'll have to start patching the wall - not just the hole. Drat!

Well, darn

OK, so Sharon and James had to cancel . . .

Sharon is sick. I hope she get's well quick!

Company for Thanksgiving . . .

Sharon and James are coming for Thanksgiving!

I'm exciting. We won't have any of the kids over most likely. They would like to go out to eat. This has proved to be a feat greater than climbing Everest. We finally found a place closer than 100 miles.

My favorite was calling Salem Tavern.

We just found out we have out of town company coming. Are you open Thanksgiving Day?

Yes.

Wonderful! We'll need a table for four.

I can give you two tables for two.

But we have company coming. Couldn't you work out a table for four?

You've waited entirely too late to call!

Oh! Thanks anyway!

Oh well ;)

50!?!

Today I am 50!

*gasp*

Where did the time go?

I think the bigger question is: Why don't I feel 50? ;)

Guidance

This year, Kathy Glover asked to do Guidance during Bible. She's been doing a some decision making lessons and one of the situations was about a boy having to decide whether to live with his mom or dad. She made the statement that boys were naturally closer to their dads and girls were naturally closer to their moms.

When I got a chance, I had to whisper to her that this might not be true for a variety of reasons. I was closer to my dad - not that he was all that great a dad, but he was the one I gravitated toward. She asked me to share that, IF I didn't mind. AND you know, there were several girls that did say they were much closer to their dads than moms. Just because girls and boys are supposed to be a certain way - even in the best of homes - well, that doesn't always make it so.

My Cousin

When my grandmother Katie died, my cousin Brian wanted to buy her house. He and daddy worked out all the arrangements. Then of course Daddy died before Brian paid off the house with the land.

I wonder how all that really went down. Mother would have sued him, taken the house and put him on the street. That much I do know. But the contract Daddy wrote was legally binding and she couldn't. I wonder if he was anywhere near the worm Mother portrayed him as being. There is no way to tell.

A loss beyond words

We lost a student this week. He shot himself. He was actually on campus Monday to pick up his brother and then went home and blew off his head. There is no nice way to say that. He's gone. It's irrepairable.

Gabiden Kourman.

I taught him. He was on my math team. He was quite and intense even in the 8th grade. Still waters run deep. In high school, he stood up in Bible and said that he didn't believe in Jesus, in God, that he'd never believed. Students responded in all kinds of ways. The usual array from disbelief to trying to sway him to being mean. He later recanted saying that he was only trying to get them to think about what they believed. He was so close to himself, it's hard to know what his real intent was.

He was an excellent student. He loved math, he loved writing, he loved books. I heard that he'd said the pressure was too much. He was a freshman.

His 7th grade brother found him.

As mad as I got over the dismissal of David last year, I do know without a doubt that he would not have handled chapel today like Roger did. I do know that students have heard the plan of salvation over and over and over again this year. No one can leave Calvary Baptist Day School this year and say, "But how was I to know the way to heaven?" They know. Our walk through Romans has plainly and clearly shown our sin in Adam and the redemption in Jesus Christ.

While this is tragic beyond words, it is amazing to see God's hand, His placement of people, to know He is working.

I am heartbroken and yet awed in His presence.

Moving

We moved a lot when I was growing up. Sometimes Daddy would come home and he'd be gone the next day. We'd have to move within a week.

We were always told it had to do with Daddy's job. It was because of what he wanted to do. That may have been true. Also helped him hide affairs that's for sure.

BUT I do wonder now, with hindsight on my side, if part of it wasn't in part because of Mother. It had to be easier to up and leave when she had run through her course of friends. How hard it must have been for him to have to explain in a small, tight-knit community like Western Union was. Why won't Joy come over any more? She used to be so close to all the girls and now she won't even return calls.

I don't know and of course I can't ask. But I do wonder.

Cold bed pans

When I was in the 7th grade, my periods were terrible – so bad, that I could hardly get out of bed or keep any food down. I had to go to the doctor. He put me in the hospital. I missed enough of school that I got my one and only D in math. I also got several blood transfusions which made going to the bathroom impossible. I might not remember Mother and the cold bedpans at all except that our next door neighbor, Mrs. Rollo came to relieve her for a spell and during that period, I had to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Rollo warmed the bedpan for me to use. She didn’t make me use a cold one – she warmed it!

Captivity

I must accept God's continual presence in my life as absolute fact! I am parched for him. I want to surrender completely to you. I am so saddened it has taken me this long to surrender.

Captivity is anything that keeps me from have the abundant and full life with God. Lord, I've been captive and didn't even know. Please break these chains and set me free. I want victory in Jesus. I don't want them to be words. I don't want triteness and pettiness. I want be free from this bondage.

God's presence

Matthew 14:25-32
25And in (A)the [a]fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea.
26When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, "It is (B)a ghost!" And they cried out in fear.
27But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, "(C)Take courage, it is I; (D)do not be afraid."
28Peter said to Him, "Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water."
29And He said, "Come!" And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
30But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"
31Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, "(E)You of little faith, why did you doubt?"
32When they got into the boat, the wind stopped.
God is present during the storm. God is present is this storm.

Realizations

I've been thinking about the letter mother sent to me about Ron. There is more to it than what's written on the paper. Divide and conquer themes run rampant.

It would not surprise me at all if the ulterior motive was to divide Ron and I. A split. Ultimate divorce. To make me distrust Ron too. She has never given any indication that she has did not love Ron as a son, that she did not trust him with everything in her life - including her life. AND then out of the blue he is untrustworthy and has been for years.

Now I struggle for real words - the ones that come out of my mouth. They are much easier to come off my fingers. This year to me has been amazing. I know I've said that at least once in this journal.

I probably would have kept taking the horrid treatment my mother kept dishing out except that she turned on my family. She turned on my baby first. This was harder to put together because of the distance in miles, but we did. Then she turned on Ann (actually, she turned on her again, but her behavior toward Ann during her move was so juvenile). You don't say things to your children like, "I know you think you love me."

Through all this, I've found that I've been distancing myself from her. I can't trust that anything I said would be interpreted appropriately or realistically. I've felt manipulated at every turn. In reality I've been manipulated my entire life. Then of course there was the letter about Ron. This was the final straw in my eyes.

He is struggling with severing the relationship completely. He is struggling because he is the kind and generous and loving man that I married. No, I take that back. He is more kind and more loving and more generous than he was. It is amazing to me that he can think about picking her up for church, but he can.

I do not want him to be alone with her. I do not trust her. I don't say this out of malice. I say this out of fact and self preservation. If she were anyone else, I would have severed the ties ages ago. I would have come to the conclusions that it has taken me this entire year to draw years ago if not decades ago.

I know now that God has used this year to draw me out and away from her so that I could sever the relationship when the time came. The hardest thing in all this is to recognize that your mother has used you for her own gains -- which I truly believe are to make everyone miserable because she is miserable. This is a shame, but it's not my shame.

To Know God and Believe Him

God chose me to know him and to be his witness!

John 8:36
36"So if the Son (A)makes you free, you will be free indeed.
I have a personal relationship with Christ, but until this latest mess with mother came up, I had distanced myself from him. Why did I do that? He had not moved. I know it was me. I'd gotten busy. I'd been working on web stuff. I'd been looking for things to do. I'd been working on the house. I'd been empty.

So right now, I want to change the distance. I want to be in the middle of what I need to be in the middle of. I don't want to be satisfied with anything less than what God wants! I want to know God intimately.

Division

I've been thinking back over my adult life at the division Mother has caused. It's been there ripe for the picking. I just didn't know it.

Comments that were frequently attributed to someone else.

Your grandmother even commented that your mother-in-law is going to be a handful.
Joe mentioned that he wondered why y'all had moved me out here and hadn't done more than you'd done.

She's got something else in mind, that little daughter-in-law of yours. You better watch out for her.

Those kinds of comments, looking back on them, were made for one purpose and one purpose only: to divide and conquer, to keep people from fully trusting one another, to create disharmony. She's a master of it.

Now, I want to let this go. I do. But I don't want to sweep it under the rug either. I don't want to excuse it or make it less than it is. I want to embrace it and understand who she is. I don't want to forget. I want to look her full in the face (or at least a photograph) and understand how she has manipulated our lives.

Laverne

Laverne, my Dad's sister, left Arkansas as soon as possible and moved to San Francisco. She went to work for a shipper as his bookkeeper and rumor was that she became embroiled in some scandal involving the mob. Of course that rumor came to us through my mother. So that rumor served as a source to divide and conquer. Divide us from Laverne who I admired because she escaped.

When our grandfather died the scandal was used again. We couldn't go to the funeral. Who knows who would show up. We had to protect the boys. Like a lemming, I believed her. We didn't go. Did she use the same line with Ann? I need to ask. We were not talking much then, so I don't know for sure.

Laverne was in Colorado by the time my grandmother got ill. She quit her job and moved in with her to take care of her in her last days. Mother won't have this gift. Then when Daddy died, Laverne offered to move in with her. This seemed like a natural transition. They'd gotten along fairly well. Seemed like sisters. We'd not recognized Daddy (once again) for the buffer he'd been.

Things went smoothly for awhile. For awhile. Then we started to notice the comments. Mother didn't like the way Laverne hung the towels on the refrigerator. She didn't like the time of day she washed the clothes. She didn't like the clothes she wore to exercise. She didn't like the way she ate or drove or well, it didn't matter, she didn't like it. We were back to the best friends and then no friends. Before we knew it, Laverne was gone. Back to Colorado. Mother was alone and glad to have her house back. She'd made it clear that Laverne was a guest.

Can you imagine what Laverne's life had been like once Mother turned on her?

Adult Children of Abuse

I didn't know this list existed. Ann found it one night when we were talking on the speaker phone. She should have been writing a paper. I was grading.

It is the 13 Characteristics of Adult Children. But it's not just alcoholics. All everyone who discusses abused families uses. It's that kind of list. So many organizations use is, I didn't even have to list a source. Just put Characteristics of Adult Children of Abuse in Google.

I've grown through some of these because of my relationship with a loving husband and a merciful God. But at one time, I had virtually all of them. So did Ann.

1. Adult children of alcoholics guess at what normal behavior is.

2. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.

3. Adult children of alcoholics lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.

4. Adult children of alcoholics judge themselves without mercy.

5. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty having fun.

6. Adult children of alcoholics take themselves very seriously.

7. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty with intimate relationships.

8. Adult children of alcoholics overreact to changes over which they have no control.

9. Adult children of alcoholics constantly seek approval and affirmation.

10. Adult children of alcoholics usually feel that they are different from other people.

11. Adult children of alcoholics are super responsible or super irresponsible.

12. Adult children of alcoholics are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.

13. Adult children of alcoholics are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsively leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

Drinking and Baptist Jobs

Well, I just don't understand why the two are at odds.

If it said: Getting drunk and Baptist Jobs - I'd understand. BUT really, having a drink is not antiScriptual. But it is heritage and it's hard to shake heritage. I've been amazed at the contingent against it. I've been amazed at the groups that make scripture say that wine in the Bible isn't wine. Now I understand that wine was watered down in the Bible, that it wasn't the strength that is served today. But to say that drinking at all goes against Scripture. Sorry, just can't buy it.

Why am I bringing this up. Well, we've lost our Associate Headmaster. He wasn't perfect. We butted heads on more than one occasion. He made me mad a few times. I don't think he always heard what I had to say. But I think he had great potential when he wasn't being a bull in a china cabinet.

He had a drink in public. He's gone. He violated his contract.

Well, so have others. I don't imagine that every one has turned in their lesson plans on time or serve in positions of leadership in their churches. I know that some have missed staff prayer. I wonder if we went through contracts with a fine tooth comb what we'd find. I just wonder . . .

Crying

I wish I could quit crying. There are times I am near breathless and I don't understand. This should come as relief. It seems quite unfair to have reached some of these decisions finally and still be in such emotional turmoil.

Mother's Car

When Mother called me over to tell me her driver's license had expired, she wanted to sign her car over to Ron and I.

Wouldn't that be awkward in lieu of her letter . . .

Hindsight

So much is clear in hindsight.

When Mother first moved here, I took her to all my doctors.

She liked Dr. Hudson, but they cheated her on the bill.
The nurses at the allergist talked ugly to her.
Her eye doctor in Arkansas was a nice guy but the gal that fitted her glasses spoke to her like she was ignorant.

The helped a young man with a loan and he quit paying it. When she went to see him, he wouldn't talk to her.

She's never had a job or volunteer job where the people didn't eventually turn on her.

This has played out dozens upon dozens of times. Here and there. Literally everywhere we've lived. It's not just friends. It's everyone.

Houston to Atlanta

I was pregnant with Joe when Ron was transferred to Atlanta. The movers came the same day Joe did.

I stayed with my parents while Ron moved. He made arrangements for us to move out 17 days later. I was anxious to see him. Even under the best of circumstances, it's not your parents you want to be with when you have a newborn.

Now Ann was living with my grandmother and going to college. She had planned to come in the weekend after Ron was coming back to get us. Mother and Daddy let me have it. Ann had every right to meet this nephew of hers and I would stay. I was alone, defenseless, and didn't even have a room to go into and shut the door because I was staying in the living room. I really did sink into my shell.

I tried to explain to Ron. I knew he wouldn't understand and it was on the phone.

I recently told Ann and her response was, you've got to be kidding? Of course I would have liked to see Joe, but you guys needed to be together.

I was almost afraid they wouldn't take me to the airport. AND I was never so relieved to see anyone as I was to see my husband that day.

Ron

Ron is not perfect. He would be the first one to tell you that. But he is kind and generous. He is generous when I am not. He has been oh so patient.

He has always been generous with my mother. He has taken her shopping for groceries and clothes, picked her up for church. He buys her air filters and changes them. He has changed light bulbs and moved furniture. He has paid for untold number of Sunday lunches and weeknight dinners.

There was a time I told people she loved Ron more than she loved me.

Pain

I physically ache. My stomach aches. My chest aches - or is that my heart? I could crawl in the bed and cry. I keep crying in short little bursts like when I've slipped out of class to run to the bathroom and have to get back quickly. I feel betrayed all over again.

AND I'm kicking myself. Why did I think that because she was aging or because she needed us or because she moved here or any other reason that might change? That she might want a normal relationship. That she might be different this go round. What in the world was I thinking?

I feel loss. I have finally come to grips with the reality of what I never had. And it is painful.

Duke vs WFU

I was at the game -- fully expected to see Duke beat the stuffing out of young WFU. Thought winning the the first half was a victory!

With 5 minutes to go, I was screaming. I was jumping. Ron kept saying, "we still have 5 minutes and it's Duke."

I kept saying, "enjoy the moment!" He still had a little smirk though - he couldn't help it. It was fun.

We had Duke customers in the box. Poor things - they came in fully expecting what I was expecting. They were so dissappointed and then when the Duke players started to foul out. One-by-one . . .

What's that on the court!?! Ahhhhh! the rush of Wake fans!

Dino, in the aftergame interview, he kept calling the players kids! Well, they are aren't they! All those freshmen and sophmores! And they beat Duke. I do realize this may be it, but man, they looked GOOD last night.

The Emotional Cripple

This would be my dad. I know this is why he worked the way he did because at work he could shine. At home he was just one of the rest of us. He was abused like we were. He even escaped once and came back! Ann and I probably had something to do with that. He didn't stay gone long enough for us to adjust and we were stuck with mother. We didn't know then that we had any other choices than to be her children.

Daddy's childhood was emotionally crippling if not physically crippling. I'm sure of the first. The second is not so easy to discern. Every thing they owned was sold out from underneath them. PaPa left with other women. He moved off with at least one. Laverne left and moved half way across the country as soon as she could. Martha Jean, well, she's the one we strongly suspect sexual abuse with, but too much time as passed and too many ties have been broken.

Daddy's first wife favored his sisters we've been told. She drank. She ran around on Daddy. She gave him a son and verbally abused them both.

Mother and Daddy met at Western Union in Baton Rouge. Married, had me, led and idyllic life. Right. Daddy had a great need to be dependent on someone, to have his life organized for him, to be told what to do and when to do it. Mother had a great need to make people dependent on her. It was the perfect union.

After Daddy left and came back, Mother had everything, absolutely everything put in her name -- bank accounts, business, CDs, house, retirements. She had that right. He'd left. He'd not been honorable. He knew he was tied to her in unimaginable ways. One of Mother's new favorite stories was that she could just utter the words, "Travis, we need to talk," and Daddy would blanch. She loved the control.

The moment Daddy went back to mother, I realized how dependent he was on her. They were tied together with a gossamer thread, but not the pretty kind like you think of fairies using. This one is harsh and cold and unrelenting. This thread is the kind that nightmares is made of.

Sexual Abuse

Mother was sexually abused by her grandfather while her mother watched. She's lied so much about so many things and I have only her word for this, but I believe her. It makes so many things right. It explains so much.

I don't even know if she remembers telling Ann and I -- not at the same time, but at different times. Once, when we were all here together in Winston Salem, after she'd moved, she told us in one of her pronouncements that she wanted to have sit down and explain some things to us that might help us understand her better. That's what made me think she'd forgotten that she'd ever told us. She wanted to tell us again. I cringed. There are some things you just don't want to hear. There are some hurts you are healing yourself and you don't have the strength to help your abuser heal.

The Young Couple

There was one young couple in Fort Worth. I don't remember their names. They were fun. They laughed. She had the cutest hair and they had a little chihuahua. They had holes in the bottom of their car and I remember that I was always afraid that my shoes would fall off and land on the road.

He worked for Daddy.

They came over for dinner one night and admired the handiwork of some salt and pepper shakers that Daddy had made. The set was wooden and had little tiles around the middle. They were eight or nine inches tall. There was another set in the drawer and I told them about the other set.

Mother and Daddy both said, "NO."

I should have caught on, but I was a kid. A pretty small one if we were still in Fort Worth.

"Yes, there is. See!" And I hopped up to get them. Well what I ruined I didn't know, but I ruined it.

Later that couple quit coming over. Daddy said the young man stabbed him in the back. Typical. It was always something. I guess when I said that Daddy never had a friend I forgot this one. He behaved more like Mother than I thought. Best friends and then no friends.

The Ice Queen

I'm not talking about the one from Narnia. I'm talking about the one in my memory. I'm not sure when I realized that's how I thought of her. It is sometime in recent history though.

Writing for LifeWay

An inquiring mind at the BB *coughEdEdwardscough* wanted to know more about my writing years at LifeWay, so here is the story . . .

We were living in Marietta and I was a children's division director at a mega church and very active at the associational level. I had taken a group of preschool and children's teachers to Ridgecrest for training and one of the conferences was on writing. It was led by an adult editor. He did every thing possible to discourage anyone from writing as I recall. He made it sound grueling and boring and inconvenient and unrewarding. It is all those things - except for the unrewarding.

At the end of the meeting, he handed out cards for us to fill out for our age division if we were possibly interested. I think I was one of a handful. He was a very good discourager

Not too long after that I got a phone call from the editor of Bible Discoverers, Louise Hobson and was assigned to my first writer's conference. Lots of changes happened during my time writing, and I about 8-9 years ago, I made the switch completely to the Media Center, so now I'm completely out of the loop.

When I first started, the KJV was still being used, not too long after that, we got an NIV-KJV parallel and used both in all the lessons. I know they use the HCSV now but that was after my time.

At that time, there were two writers for each unit. The unit writer who worked with children in Bible study and a Bible background writer who was either an adult Sunday School teacher or a Pastor. I had the great fortune of always being able to write my own Bible background. I don't know how that worked out, but it did. Later, all writers got to write their own Bible background.
In the children's area, we would have a writer's conference. Bible Learners, Discovers, Searchers all conferenced together at the same time. Family Bible Series - Children usually conferenced at another time. We were given our assigned scripture and we had to come in with a pre-assignment which changed depending on the layout of the curriculum - but would include a variety of ideas that we charted to make sure that there wasn't too much overlap. Some overlap was inevitable, but we really did try to minimize it.

At the conferences, we would work in large groups, we would work one-on-one with the editor, and we would work in our quarter groups. All the time we were trying to eliminate duplication. Those of you who use the curriculum wonder what happened I know - it's hard. There are only so many things that can be done in a single Sunday, so many ways to present a lesson, so many ways to get the kids actively involved . . .

The first year I wrote, I'd write a lesson and send it in. Louise would make corrections and call me. We'd argue ( ), I'd fix what she'd told me to fix, and resubmit it. Because I worked so closely with her on that first unit, I was asked to immediately come back. And soon I was writing two units a year for Discovers. And then I started writing for two publications - Discoverers and Searchers and doing some work for Learners in other capacities, and then I started writing for Family Bible series and picking up pieces for the children's magazines.

Writing curriculum is not like other kinds of writing. You write it, you submit it, they do what they want with it, and it is published. You are very removed from the process after you submit your work. You also work a year or two in advance. I remember one year, for my Bible background I'd written an intro about Anwar Sadat and I didn't know it had been cut until it the material was published. When I called the editor to find out why, I was told that she had good reasons at the time. This is one of the drawbacks of this kind of writing. At the time, she was a new editor and I was an experienced writer. I remember how unhappy I was because it was a strong intro for the background.

One of the things I really enjoyed were rewrites. One year, the powers that be decided to redo the curriculum in the middle of the year. Six of us were brought in to rewrite two year's worth of curriculm in a week on computers in conference rooms to the new format. And a couple of times, I got to rewrite curriculum that was turned in but not usuable.

I always wrote on a computer, but at first, I still mailed in a manuscript, then I mailed in a manuscript and a disc, then a disc, then I emailed it.

Again, I haven't done this in 10 years, so I don't know what's going on now.

OH and when I started, it wasn't LifeWay, but the Baptist Sunday School Board. Now I feel very dated.