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The Coldest War (Excerpt)

woman on rock platform viewing city
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“Tidal waves don’t beg forgiveness

Crashed and on their way

Father he enjoyed collisions; others walked away

A snowflake falls in may.

And the doors are open now as the bells are ringing out.”

-Pearl Jam Man Of The Hour

 

Ch. 1 

In 1991 the Cold war ended both in Russia and in my home.

I stood at the end of his bed, eyes focused on his swollen, purple ankles. My mother finished massaging cream over his cracked heals. She let go of one foot, then the other.  But it made no difference now. His athlete’s foot was dying too.

He shifted in the hospital bed and sat cross legged as normal. He looked so normal. Like he was about to dig into a fat, brown, bag of Alaskan King Crab.  But this time there was no brown bag protectively nestled in the curve of his bent legs. This time a hospital ventilation bag hummed a mournful tune behind him.  “Smoker!” “Don’t smoke!” “Smoker!” “Don’t smoke!”   His last lecture to me.

“See you in the morning.”  I could hardly hear the hoarse words drug across chapped lips.  He must have noticed my dumb look cause he said it again.  This time, his chin rose with more bravado and aided in summoning his baritone. “See you in the morning.”

His message was clear.  I was dismissed. Free to go. So I left with a, “Ya, k dad.”  And walked alone down the hospital hall, out to my gold Honda Civic hatchback, where I tightened my bike rack and went to buy books for my freshman year of University.  

I never saw him in the morning. I knew I wouldn’t. Unless, in his creative way, he’d been being figurative and using the word  morning symbolically for,  never again on this damned dark earth.  

Come to think of it, that is probably exactly what he meant. But see you in the morning was just so much more convenient at the time. His lungs finally giving out from one too many Camel Lights while watching John Wayne movies and being cool in the 60’s.

I wish we had texted. He would’ve loved text.

“Cu n the mornin…” He could have said. Then maybe a few ‘x’es and ‘o’s, cause he was always better at writing his feelings to us. Especially his little girls.

“Mourn n…”  

That’s what I I would have texted someone… had  anyone I known owned a cell phone that cloudy January day in 1991. The morning I learned I would never have a father again. 

“…Mourn n…” Ya. I would have texted my feelings. Cause I’m like him. And besides, how else does an  eighteen year old cope?

I knew how it was going to happen. I had felt it. Like I feel what’s happening now.  In that place within my bones that isn’t owned by my veins, nerves or tendons.  That space for IT.  The hollow where what some might call a sixth sense lives.  That hollow where feelings and facts join hands and skip through my body, jump rope over my heart and decorate my brain with dreams of things before they actually happen.  

I knew he’d died. Before he died.  I was laying in bed awake before the phone woke up the rest of the house. Before my mother decided not to say, “Your father’s gone to heaven baby.”  She’d save that for the end of my first day of University. 

“Your father’s gone to heaven baby.”  She said after dinner that night.  Like she told me about the end of the cold war.

“The Berlin Wall’s come down baby. The Cold war is ending.”  

But I had already seen it, written about it.  Don’t ask me how. I just knew.  Like I know now. Dreams flutter past my eyes, butterflies before a storm, and tell me I have cancer before I’m ever diagnosed. Tell me my dad’s dead before the phone rings. Tell me, The Cold War has ended. Why? Cuz I’m kinda a freak. 

As usual, my tears the day my father died were lost in trying to reason out the shadowy facts my mind throws at me before things actually happen. That day I simply finished eating, went silently into my room, folded cloths and when the house was asleep once again, I wrote and wrote some more. Did what I do to make sense of things.  And grew up without him. 

 

 

Talks On The Way To School-Mama, You Made Me a Christian

libbysmiles“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”  1John 1:4

 

Here we go again. My kids floor me with their thoughts on faith, race, contradictions in humanity, and today…Marshmallows. Don’t get me started on the argument about batman and Jesus both needing to wear underpants. In the words of my 3 year old, “DIST-GUSTIG!”

Today’s insights on what makes a Christian, come from my 8 year old…

“Mommy not all the kids at my school are Christian.”

“No baby. They wouldn’t be. A kid doesn’t become a Christian just because their parents are.  They have to choose it for themselves.”

“Yes. But you made me a Christian.”

“No, you don’t have to be one. Just because I’m a Christian doesn’t mean you have to be one.”

“Yes it does.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“Yes it does”

“No it doesn’t”

“But you made me one. So now I’m one.”

“Baby, another person can’t force someone else to have faith. You have to decide if you believe Christianity is the truth.”

“But I do… because you made me a Christian.”

“Do you want to be a Christian?”

“Yes. Of course. But that’s because you made me one. You took me to Church. You pray with me.”

“Yes, I will always pray. I will always hope you see Christianity as the truth. But I will love you no matter what. I can’t force you to love God. Love is not forced. Not if it’s a true relationship. And Christianity is a relationship with God. A love relationship.”

“Yes, but if you didn’t take me to church, I’d not become a Christian.”

“Well, like Keith Green said, ‘Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.’ ”

“But what about Marshmallows?”

“Huh?”

“What if I want to be a Marshmallow? I could eat a lot of marshmallows.”

“Ok.”

And there you have it.

Children raised in a Christian home 101. What about Marshmallows?

It’s the ultimate church kid question. What about…?

To be honest, it’s the ultimate human question. What if I were to do this? What would have happened if I had been raised in a different home? A different country?  With different parents? Could I have become a Marshmallow? Just M A Y B E?

Even the child of an Atheist will ask these types of questions ( maybe not the marshmallow part, that kind of crazy is reserved for me) and we have to be ok with it. No matter our belief system, our children will one day do their own soul searching. Yes, we provide our own wisdom along the way. Mostly, I pray I don’t provide her with dogma and legalism, but a soul searching heart that digs deep, is sometimes confused, but also comes back around to find her peace in God. I don’t want her to have her mama’s relationship with God. But her own.

She doesn’t have the same relationship as I do with her father. That would be just plain weird. She has her own relationship with her dad. Based on her interaction with him. So I hope it is with her God.

So as her mama, all I can really do for her spiritually is pray for her, “God speak to her soul. Be near to her. Let her know you in a deeper way than I ever have. Help her to love truth and search hard after it.”

And I rest in that…maybe a few protection prayers after she eats all those Marshmallows too!

But yes, I want her to think about Marshmallows! I want her to think about her Atheist friend and her Muslim friend and anything else. As all good parents do, I will teach her according to what I have learn to be true. In the end though, I want her to know why she doesn’t believe in certain things, as much as she knows why she does believe. Covering all her beliefs, like a candy shell, I pray will be love…even to those who don’t want to be Marshmallows.

And if one day, she walks up to me and says, “Mama, I am going to be a Christian And a Marshmallow!”

I will love her just as much and say, “Ok Babe.”

Three Pick Up lines Every Church Planting Husband Needs To Use On His Wife

forrest-gump-jenny Song of the Month-

Thinking Out Loud:  Ed Sheeran

Note to Reader:

If these lines don’t work…Just try Forest Gumping it.

“I may not be a smart man Jenny, But I know what LOVE is.”

Three pick up lines every Church Planting Husband needs to use on his wife.

  1. I See you.
  2. I hear you.
  3. I understand.

First practice them like a mantra. Say them as you fall asleep, while you’re driving alone, or shaving in front of the mirror.  Then use them on her, and wait. It doesn’t really matter when you start to use them, just to do it. Preferably before you’re neck high in hot water. But I believe these lines work even then.

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