As a child yourself, which parent would you feel more secure with? Choose for yourself, but having grown up with good parents who set good boundaries, I always felt secure and it doesn’t take too much intuition to know that a child with no discipline will grow up troubled. A child who grows up with a parent who teaches her the way that she should go can rest easy, knowing that she is in good hands and that the path she takes is right.

Without further ado we come to Exodus 20:20-

Moses responded to the people, “Don’t be afraid, for God has come to test you, so that you will fear Him and will not sin.”

Wait… how can Moses say “Don’t be afraid” and then in the same breath say that they are meant to fear God? The readiest explanation is that the fear of God is a healthy fear- an acknowledgement and acceptance of his sovereignty and amazing power, the realization that with a single word He could reduce us to ashes, and yet the understanding that He chooses instead to love us and guide us with a hand that is, more often than not, gentle.

The testing of our faith brings endurance (James 1:3). And when we fear God, we don’t have to fear anything else.

Fear Not # 6- He tests us so that we will not sin.

Fear Not # 5- He will fight for us.

Fear Not # 4- He will go down with us and He will bring us back.

Fear Not # 3- He is with us.

Fear Not # 2- He hears us in the place where we are.

Fear Not # 1- He is our shield.

If you are struggling with anxiety I encourage you to hide His words in your heart. They will come to you when you need them, and I can’t even begin to explain the elation of utter calm where there should be anxiety. It is a work in progress for me, but I want everyone who struggles with anxiety to experience this peace, and it is the peace that can come only from God’s amazing words.

Exodus 14:13-14:

¹³ Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. ¹⁴ The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

These words are spoken to calm the terrified Israelites who are stranded on the shore of the Red Sea after leaving Egypt, the incensed Egyptians in hot pursuit. Needless to say, they’ve got plenty to be afraid of. They have left everything they have known for 430 years to follow a shy and stuttering man into the wilderness because he talked to a bush! And yet God proved Himself faithful through the plagues and the protection of His people. The Israelites had no reason to fear considering the track record of God’s faithfulness, and yet they succumbed to the appearance of their immediate circumstances.

And how often do we do the same thing? Looking back over our lives it is easy to see where God’s hand has protected us, sheltered us, and led us through even the most terrible of times. And yet when we are faced with a new challenge, it is so easy to tremble and shake and let the anxiety strengthen its icy grip, chipping away at our sense of well-being, our confidence, and everything that makes me me and you you.

But if we can just be still for a moment and remember all the things that God has led us through, even those things that didn’t turn out the way we hoped they might, if we can realize that He never intended for us to fight our battles alone, then we can find that unexplainable peace in the knowledge that He is in complete control of our situation.All things work together for the good of those who love Him. It doesn’t mean things will be easy (ask the Israelites, who went from 430 years in slavery straight into 40 years wandering in the wilderness!), but they will work together for good. You can take that to the bank.

Stand firm! The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still.

God is giving us permission to cast our cares on Him, lay our burdens at His feet, and for goodness sake, RELAX. Take a deep breath. Take a bubble bath. Drink a glass of wine, if that’s your thing. Make some coffee. Snuggle with your dog. Take a walk. Read His word. Sit quietly in the presence of God. Meditate on His word. Being still isn’t about apathy, it’s about recognizing that you are not in control, and rather than letting that knowledge terrify you, follow it up with remembering who IS in control. Stand firm and be still.

Sounds good to me!

Fear Not # 5- He will fight for us.

Fear Not # 4- He will go down with us and He will bring us back.

Fear Not # 3- He is with us.

Fear Not # 2- He hears us in the place where we are.

Fear Not # 1- He is our shield.

When Israel is en route to Egypt, he stops for the night to make sacrifices to God, and that night God visits him:

(2) … “Jacob, Jacob!” He said.

And Jacob replied “Here I am.”

(3) God said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. (4) I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you back. Joseph will put his hands on your eyes.”

According to my bible, the phrase “put his hands on your eyes” means he will close your eyes after you die. So, essentially, Israel will die in peace with all of his sons around him, particularly his most beloved whom he thought long dead. Amazing!

At this point, the fact that Abraham’s descendants would become a great nation has been promised to nearly all of his descendants, and so when God reminds Israel of this fact He is assuring him that He keeps His promises. I especially love the next line- “I will go down with you… and I will also bring you back.”

God never leaves or forsakes His children. Even far before those words are ever spoken (Deuteronomy 31:6 and Hebrews 13:5), He was reassuring His children of this fact. He keeps His promises! We can be assured that whatever our own personal “Egypt” is, wherever that place is where we are afraid to go whether it is to a hopeless job, a new city, a place of bad memories or just to bed where terror waits in the darkness (raise your hand if you’ve ever been THERE), He will go down with us and He will bring us back.

Fear Not # 4- He will go down with us and He will bring us back.

Fear Not # 3- He is with us.

Fear Not # 2- He hears us in the place where we are.

Fear Not # 1- He is our shield.

At this point in the narrative, Isaac is living in the land of the Philistines and being blessed filthy stinking rich by the Lord. His crops are abundant and he has a whole mess of cows and sheep and other various hoofed creatures that equaled riches back then. The Philistines were extremely jealous of Isaac’s good fortune and began to get nervous about how powerful he was, so they asked him to leave. He camped in the valley of Gerar and began to dig wells, which one by one became sources of contention between himself and the herdsmen of Gerar, so much so that Isaac gave the wells names like “Quarrel” and “Hostility”. He finally moved far enough away that the next well he dug was not quarreled over, and he named it “Open Spaces” (For now the Lord has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land), which for some reason is very beautiful in my opinion, although I do wish I could read it without getting the Dixie Chicks song stuck in my head.

Wide open spaaaaces….

And moving right along to Genesis 26:23-24-

From there he went up to Beer-sheba, and the Lord appeared to him that night and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your offspring because of My servant Abraham.”

I can imagine that there were all sorts of things for Isaac to fear. Quarreling with foreigners, the vindictive and jealous Philistines he had fled from (who had, years earlier, stopped up all of Abraham’s wells out of spite), his apparent inability to settle in one place without problems. As blessed as he was, that’s a pretty substantial burden for a boy whose dad almost sacrificed him to God in the wilderness. (Also an incredible story…) I can imagine Isaac sitting up at night pondering the incredible responsibility placed upon him to care for his growing family, and then the Lord appears to him with exactly what he needs to hear…

I am with you.

This is, I think, the first instance of an allusion to one of Jesus’s names, Immanuel. God with us.

Chills.

Fear Not # 3- He is with us.

Fear Not # 2- He hears us in the place where we are.

Fear Not # 1- He is our shield.

With that, let’s take a look at the second instance of the phrase “do not be afraid” in the bible! Today it’s Genesis 21:17. At this point in time, Sarah’s servant Hagar has conceived and given birth to Abraham’s firstborn son Ishmael. Ishmael is a young teen, and was mocking his younger half-brother for some unspecified reason (plenty of baggage there to spur a nice sibling rivalry if you think about it…) For Sarah, who seems a bit crotchety and not exactly tender toward her servant if you ask me, this is the last straw. She commands Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. Abraham has a difficult time of it, seeing as Ishmael is still his son, but God reassures Abraham that even Ishmael will be blessed as his heir. So away they go, sent away with nothing but bread and a waterskin, which quickly empties in the wilderness and Hagar and Ishmael are left to die. Hagar can’t stand to hear her child suffering, so she leaves him under a bush and wanders away to sob on her own as her son cries, so that she might not have to hear him as he dies. And that is when God steps in…

(17) God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What’s wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy from the place where he is. (18) Get up, help the boy up, and sustain him, for I will make him a great nation.” (19) Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the waterskin and gave the boy a drink.

I don’t know about you, but I get chills from the angel’s words. God has heard the voice of the boy from the place where he is. Most translations simply say “God has heard the voice of the boy (or the boy crying) where he is”, a few say “from the bushes” or “as he lies there” but there is just something about that line no matter how it is translated. Something about God hearing us at our most broken, our most destitute, our most desperate. That moment when you feel the most as if you are alone, abandoned even by the ones who love you the most, laying there simply waiting to die, God hears you.

I think we all have had those “alone” moments. I remember mine most poignantly- I was in the midst of my worst season with anxiety, in the early summer of last year. I was sitting on the couch, alone in my apartment, and absolutely stricken for no apparent reason. I couldn’t move, and just sat there on the couch crying and wondering where my God was. I wanted so desperately in that moment to feel Jesus’ arms wrapped around me, but instead I felt utterly alone. It was a horrible time as I cried out to Him and heard no answer. But a few days later, God was revealing to me that He had never left my side, and He brought that moment to my mind. I thought I had been completely abandoned in hopeless fear, but He spoke to me and reminded me that He will never leave me or forsake me. That even in my darkest hour of fear, He was there and He heard my voice from the place where I was. And now, when I am stricken with anxiety, I can look back and remember that even though in that moment I did not feel His presence, He was yet there, and I can be assured that He is with  me now and always, and He hears my cries.

If you are a parent then you probably have an entirely different perspective on this one than I do. I know my mom has a good story about learning to trust God with her little boy’s wellbeing- maybe she will share it in the comments. :)

What are your thoughts?

Fear Not #1- He is our shield.

Fear Not #2- He hears us in the place where we are.

Anyway, the passage in which “fear not” first appears is as follows:

After these events (Abram met with Melchizidek, priest of the Most High at Salem, who blessed him and prophesied that he was greatly blessed), the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:

Do not be afraid, Abram.

I am your shield;

your reward will be very great.

But Abram said, “Lord GOD, what can you give me, since I am childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” Abram continued- “Look, You have given me no offspring, so a slave born in my house will be my heir.” (Genesis 15:1-3)

Following this passage, the Lord tells Abram that he will give him a son. However, just previously in Genesis 14, Abram had participated in a battle against great odds to rescue his nephew Lot and his people, who had been taken prisoner during warfare. So God’s assertion to Abram that he is his “shield” is hearkening back to this event and reminding Abram of how God had been with him even in the midst of a battle that he shouldn’t have won. If Abram needed any convincing that he could trust God that his reward would be great, it was there in that little reminder that He was his shield.

So here we have the first introduction not only of the words “do not  be afraid”, but also of God giving Himself a title of sorts; teaching His children who He really is, what He is capable of, and how we can relate to Him: I am your shield.

That’s pretty cool.

Recently I read that the bible says some variant of “fear not” 365 times. I don’t know if that number is perfectly accurate, but I am going to find out. My devotional project for this year is to journey through the bible, from Genesis to Revelation, finding every instance of God saying “do not be afraid!” or some variant, and sharing it with you in context. I don’t know about you, but I need this. The world is a scary place. With the internet we are all so dang connected that the instant something bad happens, the entire world knows about it. I love twitter but in terms of being scared crapless by the sudden swoop and instant worldwide conversation about any given disaster, twitter is a bad place for me to be. Another time I may share more about my particular anxieties…but not today.

I am working on getting a handle on the things that trigger ‘panic mode’ for me and learning to control my thoughts. No running away in my mind into fear-inducing scenarios that haven’t even happened! My goal through the Fear Not Project is to fill my mind with the living word of Jesus Christ, the word that says that I am a child of God and I do not have to be afraid of anything! After all, if God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)

I hope this project will encourage you to lay your burden of anxiety down at the feet of your Father, who cares for you more than you can imagine. I know I am not the only one who deals with this. So please join me on this journey of learning to combat fear with the words that come straight from the mouth of our very, very big God!

1. Get pregnant. Nope- but right now I’m okay with it. I want to accomplish a few of those vague “bigger”‘ goals that I will talk about later, and I am learning to appreciate this precious time that I have with just my husband. We grow closer every day and I think we have something special that a lot of people who get pregnant much sooner in their marriage have missed out on.

2. Ride a horse.Christopher took me horseback riding- ON THE BEACH – for my 22nd birthday. It was amazing and magical and one of my favorite, favorite memories!

Chris's horse was named Nougat, mine was named Stiles.

3. Finish Gerard Von Rad’s Old Testament Theology. Bye bye to this one. I am reading a million books right now. I will come back to it someday, but not in the foreseeable future, and that is okay with me.

4. Finish my children’s book “Bird and Sheep”. See my “big goals” for more on this one.

5. Enroll in a graduate program. No grad program for me. Someday, maybe, when we can afford it, but not right now.

6. Paint a picture for the living room. Finished a year ago. :)

7. Update my blog at least three times a week. This blog is updated very sporadically, but Linus & Bubba Books gets updated every Tuesday and Thursday, and that is good enough for me!

8. Buy a plant and keep it alive. YES! Devil’s Ivy.

9. Eat at the Excelsior Inn in Eugene.  No, but someday.

10. Design my back tattoo. Actually the next one I want is on my foot. My back tattoo (actually lower neck) will be started when we have kids.

11. Make a new friend. ………… *chirp* *chirp* *chirp*  That is the sound of crickets.

12. Get on the worship team at Southridge Foursquare- I did accomplish this, and then we ended up moving on to a different church, where I was also blessed to be able to join the worship team.

13. Start a tutoring business. Yes! Starting in January I will have 3 students (clients? pupils? I really don’t know what to call them) and I will be tutoring 4 nights a week. PHEW. It’s a lot of fun and I am learning so much, and I feel this endeavor is really blessed because I have made no effort to obtain students- people just keep asking me to tutor their kids!

14. Watch all three extended editions of Lord of the Rings in one day.  We watched them over the course of a weekend, which I think counts.

15. Have a margarita. I had one (SO GOOD) at my now sister-in-law’s bridal shower earlier this year.

16. Get straight A’s during my last term of college. Um, YES. YES YES YES. I DID, and I have to say I’m pretty proud of myself for it. I worked hard.

17. Try one new recipe a week. This is a little ambitious considering my schedule, but I try new recipes often. I just made baba ghanouj for the first time and it was delish with some easy homemade pita bread. YUM!

18. Watch a sunrise and sunset in the same day. YES- while I was commuting to 3D from Eugene I did it every Tuesday.

19. Shop at a farmer’s market. I went pretty frequently over the summer. For a while when things were pretty bad we were on food stamps, and the farmer’s market accepted the Oregon Trail card plus matching the first $5 we bought, which was amazing. I am very grateful for that.

20. Go camping! We were able to go camping in beautiful Prineville with my brother and his wife and my cousin and her husband in August. It was a wonderful, restful time and I hope we can go back next year!

My little otter had the time of his life.

My brother fishing.

Me and the crawdad I caught. I set him free soon after.

21. Start a dream journal. I have one, but I don’t update it much. It just doesn’t interest me enough I guess.

22. Back up all of my digital files. Some to a different computer, some to dropbox…

23. Buy a video camera. No, but we got a new camera for Christmas last year that actually records thirty minutes of video with sound, and it’s pretty decent quality! So, YES.

24. Eat in ten new restaurants. I am going to go ahead and say I have by now, although don’t ask me to name them. The most recent one was Cypress in Oregon City- they serve Mediterranean/Indian fusion cuisine, and it is TO DIE FOR. I seriously love Indian food.

25. Find a home for Butterscotch and Peppermint. YES- we found a home for them back in September 2010! They both went together to a farm in Oregon City.

This has been a crazy year. I briefly worked two jobs and we had to use food stamps for a while in the summer when we finally felt ourselves hit by the economy, but since then I have been able to go back to full time at my regular job and we are supporting ourselves pretty well now. Visiting the Department of Human Services is a humbling experience that I hope I don’t have to have again.

We lost dear Poppie on May 1 on a beautiful sunshiney Sunday.

I put together and worked my first trade show for 3D Electrical Services in October, which was a great learning experience for me, and we’re doing another (much bigger) one in February.

I got to attend PAX with Christopher this year, which was extremely fun and brought out a very very geeky side of myself.

Cute McCutereson and his press pass. HOT.

One of the only pictures with me in it, outside our motel, cause I was behind the camera for the entire weekend.

I discovered Pinterest and did a great many crafty things for Christmas, some of which I still plan to blog about. I made pinecone mobiles, homemade sugar scrubs, homemade whiteboard calendars, teacup candles, all kinds of delicious treats, adorable 3-tiered serving trays, and wine bottle stem vases.

And now a little about my goals for 2012:

1. The Bookmobile. It’s a crazy idea, but I think it will work. I really do. I am still trying to figure out some of the logistics. I would like to try Kickstarter for most of my funding (because, thanks to exactly one crap-ton of student loans I can’t easily take out another loan), but it would be really ideal if I could get a hold of my bus first so that the Kickstarter funding can go toward re-painting and furnishing the thing. We shall see. My goal is to have the thing up and running by year’s end.

2. Finish a Children’s Book. I’ve currently got two very solid ideas I am working on. One of them is Bird and Sheep, which I have talked about a little here. It follows the story of two best friends, Bird and Sheep. Bird gets very very sick (with what is implied to be some kind of cancer) and dies, and Sheep is left trying to keep living life without his best friend. It is based very loosely on my experience of losing Brad. For over a year I have known that I wanted to write a story about these two characters, but I had no idea how to go about it. I recently discovered what I think I want to be the focus of the story: not focusing on how Bird passed away, but focusing on Sheep’s life after Bird and how he learns to cope with the loss of his best friend. After all, that is the experience that I lived and it’s what I know how to talk about. I want to finish this story this year for several reasons:

• Poppie told me to. During one of our many conversations before he passed, he told me never to stop writing because he thought I had a gift for it. I didn’t even know that he had noticed so it was a very powerful moment for me. I want to honor his desire that I pursue this particular passion of mine to the best of my ability.
• I believe that we have a responsibility to use the talents that we have been blessed with. There’s that parable of the servants who were all issued different amounts of money by their master when he went away for a year. One wasn’t given much, but he still invested it and had doubled it by the time his master came back. Because he was faithful with a little, his master put him in charge of much when he returned. A different servant was afraid of messing things up so he simply buried the money in the ground until his master returned. He had nothing to show for the year his master had been gone. I want to be like that first servant. Even though I don’t know “what I’m supposed to do” with my talents, I know that I have been gifted with an affinity for bright cartoons and silly poetry and meaningful little stories, and I can’t just sit idly by and do nothing with it. So I am just going to do something, and see where it takes me.

3. Give. My last goal for this year is simply to become a more giving person. In some venues this means being more giving to my husband of my time and my attention. At church it means giving more of my time to volunteer and being committed to giving monetarily. It means that when I see a need, I will do my best to meet it, even if it might hurt at first. I have learned this year that when we give selflessly, we ALWAYS receive something back. Maybe not right away, and maybe not in the way we expect, but we always, always see a return when we give of ourselves and our resources.

SO. That is a little bit of my year in review, and my goals for this coming year. What are your goals?

I have a lot of flaws. (GASP! I am sure this comes as a great surprise to all of you.) Many of them I have no problem talking about. Pride? Absolutely, I struggle with it. Selfishness? Unfortunately, guilty as charged. A stubborn resistance to asking for help? Goes along with pride, and yes I definitely have one of those. I can openly admit these – I’m not proud of them by any means, believe me, but I guess I am somehow okay with them being out in the open.

But there is one sin that I just really hate to admit. To the people who know me the best this is not a surprise at all, but it might come as a surprise to those of you with whom I don’t interact on a regular basis:

I have a bad temper.

There’s got to be a better way to say it more accurately. I have poor control over my temper.

The reason that I have a hard time admitting it mostly boils down to a family history of short tempers. I’m not blaming anyone else, but certain experiences that I have had growing up have made me want to distance myself from this particular vice… and yet I can’t. Whether by nature or nurture, it is a part of me that I have to deal with on a consistent basis.

So what does it even look like? I don’t break things, I don’t often shout. But when I get frustrated there is likely to be an increase in door-slamming, stomping, muttering under my breath, heavy sighs. I am likely to lash out at the person (or, as often is the case, the dog or cat) closest to me even though they have nothing to do with it. It’s like there’s this buildup of extremely negative energy that has to be released NOW, and once it is released I feel incredible relief. But that negative energy (and I don’t mean that in any sort of new-age way, I am simply referring to the general mood that is cast around me when I lose my temper) does not affect only myself. By the time I have “gotten it out of my system”, whoever happened to be in the room at the time is on edge and probably frustrated with me for feeling like I took it out on them.

SO. All of that to say, I had been praying that God would reveal to me some aspects of my character that needed changing. I felt like he brought my temper to the forefront of my mind, so I decided to make a special effort to control it.

Ha!

When you ask God to change your character, expect to be challenged.

The week that I made the decision to try harder to control my temper, it seemed like every little thing went wrong. I don’t even remember everything that happened now, but it doesn’t matter. They didn’t have to be big things, just irritating. Bad traffic. Being cut off or tail gated. Problems with the copy machine at work. A dog who is barking incessantly for no reason. Thinking that I lost some cash I had just been given. (Ugh, I remember that one.)

I found myself doing my version of exploding, over and over and over again. I was so frustrated! I thought that once I made the decision to TRY, that it would somehow become easier. Shouldn’t God be helping me here?! At one point I sat in my car and just cried, because I was so disappointed in myself. So frustrated that I kept making the same mistakes over and over again.

I bet you’ve been there, too.

It was during worship at church a few days later, during an entirely unrelated song, that He quietly spoke to my heart like He does. “You can’t do it without Me.” And the tears came, because suddenly it all made sense. Here I was, nobly congratulating myself for making the decision to try and control my temper, so proud that I was Learning a Lesson, and again it was not what I thought. I guess I keep forgetting- Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5)

What God revealed to me through all three of the lessons I’ve talked about recently has been a pretty humbling lesson that I don’t know as much as I sometimes like to think I do. That as smart as I might be, as hard as I might try, I can do nothing on my own. My own strength and intellect and will is simply not enough. Sure, it’s a good start. God wants me to work hard, I know that. He wants me to use the gifts He’s given me. But if I try to do it by myself I end up falling flat on my face. Every. Time.

But that’s where it gets beautiful! God knows I can’t do it by myself. He doesn’t even want me to try to do it alone. Exodus 14:14- “The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still.”

That stillness is a sort of surrender. Surrender is a Christian buzzword, and even though I heard it in church growing up, I never knew what it meant, until now. Maybe it means different things for different people depending on what their own personal battles are that they are trying to fight, but for me surrender means admitting to Jesus on a daily basis that I can’t do this without Him. And it’s hard! I’ve got this independent streak that wants to insist that I can do it by myself. I don’t need any help! Watch me succeed! But how will I ever grow if I refuse to take some gentle direction from someone who knows better than me? Surrender.

I believe that when we freely admit our own weakness, it provides a way for God’s power to be made real in our lives. Of course He already knows my weakness. He isn’t up there watching me and wondering if I am going to be able to make it. He’s just waiting for me to admit it. “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

And as I begin to wrap my mind around that beautiful realization, it all makes sense. I can’t do anything without Him, but with Him I can do ALL THINGS! (Phil. 4:13) I just have to get over myself and admit that maybe my Creator knows a little more than I do. It’s such a simple concept, but it is everywhere in the bible. Confess with your mouth. Humble yourself. Be still.

Surrender.

What has been your experience with surrendering as it relates to your faith? Is it as hard for you as it is for me? Do you agree with me about the place of surrender in our walk with Jesus?

Well, we’re coming into the Christmas season (actually, for me, the Christmas season starts on November 1st and doesn’t end until January 1st, but I am at least willing to admit I have a problem.) We’re all thinking about giving. I have no problem giving gifts; few people really do. We love to give good things to the people we love. It’s not really a sacrifice. But how much harder is it to give to the people we don’t love? I’m not really talking about enemies (although what a challenge that would be!), but about people in need.

There are a bazillion charities associated with Christmas time, and I knew that I wanted to start doing something at Christmas to give to someone less fortunate. It would be an awesome tradition to start and a way to remind us to live with gratitude and humility. A reminder that we need nothing but Jesus. Everything else is just stuff. “You are my Lord, I have no good besides you.” (Psalm 16:2)

But I didn’t know where to start! I was looking for that perfect thing that Chris and I could start giving to or doing together. I was sure that I would know it when I saw it. I considered so many options- all of which are excellent causes. But I didn’t know which one was the BEST! Which one would help the MOST people? Which sock donation would change LIVES?

I couldn’t settle on anything. Nothing seemed right. Nothing was perfect enough. Nothing was “Christian” enough. Ha! Finally, I came out into the entryway after church one day and saw a big basket collecting items for Church Under the Bridge. On the outside of the basket were attached little cards, each listing an item that was needed. Backpacks, blankets, socks, etc. I grabbed a card that asked for 2 good blankets, and I made my decision.

We’ll just start with the blankets. It still didn’t seem “good enough”, and that’s when God spoke to my heart in that quiet way that He does. While I am looking for that perfect opportunity to give to someone else, the thing that will make me the BEST Christian, people out there are shivering in the cold and would really benefit from a good warm blanket, and I can’t stand to give it to them because it isn’t enough for me. Maybe deep down my dilemma comes from a good place, but it had been distorted into some internal competition, and as a result I was dead in the water, unable to choose any one thing.

And all God wanted me to do was to start somewhere! So tonight, I will go to the store and pick up a couple of nice warm blankets, and I will donate them to this cause. I am not saying this to toot my horn. I’m saying this because it actually took a leap of faith for me to get here- to realize that it’s okay to want to do extravagant things for God, but that we have to start somewhere. I was looking for opportunities, but they were all around me. I just needed to pick one.

I think the same can be said for all kinds of giving- tithes and offerings at church, volunteering our time, charitable giving, etc. Something is better than nothing, and God is capable of opening doors, presenting opportunities, and multiplying even the smallest of gifts when they are given with joy and a pure desire to serve God and others.

So from now on I am not going to agonize over how expensive the gift is or in what quantity I am able to give it. I am going to do what I can with the little I have, so that when my Master comes back He will look at the small portion He put me in charge of, see how instead of burying it in the ground for fear that nothing I could do with it would be good enough I just did what I knew how to do to the best of my ability, and He will hopefully grab me in a big bear hug and tell me I did a good job.

And who knows who will be touched by those simple blankets? I know that we will be praying over them before we send them out. It’s not a lot to start with, but five loaves and two fish wasn’t a lot either, and look where that ended up.

Once I finally reached the point, about three months ago, where my anxiety was under control and I felt like I could make an effort to move forward in my faith and as a person, I began asking God in earnest to teach me. Teach me how to live. Not just how to survive, not just to get through each day in one piece, but to really live for Him. In the past couple of months I have learned 3 things that have really stuck with me, which I will share about in a few different posts. The first has to do with Proverbs 31 and the Virtuous Woman. Here is what I have learned….

The standard to which I hold myself is not the standard to which God holds me. I believe that God holds me to a much higher standard of behavior and living, but it’s different. I hold myself to a high standard of excellence. Aside from what I realize is a bad habit of being LATE nearly everywhere I go (and I am working on it!!), I pride myself on working hard, having big dreams, making a real effort. Giving it my best shot. And sure, those are good things. But God doesn’t care about how hard I am trying, if I am trying hard for the wrong reasons. He cares more about my character than my comfort.

A while back I was reading a lot in Proverbs 31, which talks about a certain Virtuous Woman. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. All you really have to do is bring her up in conversation with some Christian women and you’ll get laughs and eye rolls, because Mrs. Proverbs 31 is pretty well near perfect.

¹⁰ A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
¹¹ Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
¹² She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
¹³ She selects wool and flax
and works with eager hands.
¹⁴ She is like the merchant ships,
bringing her food from afar.
¹⁵ She gets up while it is still night;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her female servants.
¹⁶ She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
¹⁷ She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
¹⁸ She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night.
¹⁹ In her hand she holds the distaff
and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
²⁰ She opens her arms to the poor
and extends her hands to the needy.
²¹ When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
²² She makes coverings for her bed;
she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
²³ Her husband is respected at the city gate,
where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
²⁴ She makes linen garments and sells them,
and supplies the merchants with sashes.
²⁵ She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come.
²⁶ She speaks with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
²⁷ She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
²⁸ Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
²⁹ “Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all.”
³⁰ Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
³¹ Honor her for all that her hands have done,
and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

Seriously Lady, are you TRYING to make us all look bad?

Anyway, for a while I was reading hard in this passage because I was still battling anxiety with some immediacy and I drew a lot of confidence and inspiration from verse 31:25- “She is clothed in strength and dignity. She can laugh at the days to come.” Of course I read the rest of the passage as well, and began to compare myself to this woman. She is crazy productive. She is a shrewd business woman, a masterful homemaker, wise, confident, good with her hands, and she probably wears a size 6.

Okay, just kidding about that last part. I paid attention to verse 30, too.

As I was just beginning to reach a place where I felt ready to start working on my character during my day-to-day life (versus just trying to get through the day without breaking down), I really took this passage to heart. I looked at the Virtuous Woman, let’s call her “Olga”, and I compared her to myself. (Hint #1: Don’t compare yourself to anyone!) I concluded that even though I lead a very busy life with a full-time job, part-time tutoring, plans to own my own business, and being involved with various musical endeavors, I should also do the work of a full-time housewife in addition to everything else. Olga can apparently do it, why can’t I?

So I started trying to clean the entire apartment the minute I got home from work. I would get home at about 5:15, do the dishes, do the laundry, clean the kitchen, tidy up the living room, vacuum, and then start dinner so that it would be ready by the time Chris gets home at about 6:30. Of course by this time I would be completely exhausted and feeling irritated that Chris was selfishly commuting in traffic instead of snapping his fingers and materializing at home so that he could help me with all this housework. I felt stressed all the time and I was so bent on trying to do it all with a smile on  my face that I didn’t even realize how stressed I was.

Until my husband said something about it. It was a flippant comment that I don’t even remember now in its entirety, but it boiled down to something like this:

Me: So I made dinner and then cleaned the kitchen!

Chris: *Nod*

Me: What?

Chris: Well, it’s obviously stressing you out.

Me: What? No it’s not! I need to do this.

Chris: You’ve just… kind of been ignoring me lately. You’ve been too busy.

Me: I’ve been taking care of the apartment! *sudden realization*

It was in that moment that a little lightbulb flicked on in the back of my head. I had been spending so much time and effort trying to be the perfect wife, that I had been completely neglecting my husband. What kind of wife is that?

If what my husband wanted most in the world was to have a perfectly clean apartment and an expertly crafted meal every night, he would have hired a chef and maid. Instead he married me. And being Martha Stewart is not what I excel at. I excel at being me. And that is what he really wanted.

I had to sit down and apologize to Chris for neglecting him in favor of what I thought I needed to be. What I have come to realize since that time is that Proverbs 31: 10-31 is not about telling wives that they should be working harder. It’s not about how much you can get accomplished in a day, how many items you can check off your to-do list. It’s about the spirit behind those actions.

Why is the Proverbs 31 woman greatly praised? Because she fears the Lord. Period. It is her love of God and her husband and family that motivates her to work her butt off, not her love of looking like the perfect spouse.

So I am working on evaluating the things I do for my husband each day that are really about loving him with everything I’ve got, and the things that are about feeling good about myself as a wife. When I do the former, I automatically get the latter, but the same can’t be said for the inverse.

The big lesson that I learned here was to really evaluate the motivation behind my actions. Faith without works is dead, but works alone are just works. If I clean my house top to bottom because I want to “be a good wife”, the fruit of those actions is going to be feeling like a martyr and becoming resentful. If, however, I clean my house top to bottom because I know that that would be the best way to show love to my spouse, then the fruit is love and all the awesome things that come with it.

I am just in awe of the fact that God loves me enough to teach me things like this. When I take the time to ask Him what He wants to teach me through a given situation, the lessons are everywhere and they are always constructive and encouraging, never condemning! I feel empowered to be a better spouse, not guilty that I can’t do it all.

I hope this rambling makes a little sense to some of you young married people like me who are still trying to figure out how this all works!

Stay tuned for the next post about what God has taught me this year, about giving.

Special thanks to Olga for being awesome so that I could learn a valuable lesson. But seriously woman, you crazy.

I am a little disappointed with the pine cones because the scent is not very strong, but what can you do?

With just those three simple items, I made three adorable pine cone mobiles! It couldn’t be simpler- just cut sections of twine at different lengths, tie one end to the pine cone, and the other end to the wreath.

The one issue I encountered was that some of the pine cones were bigger and thus the wreath was unbalanced and didn’t hang right. I solved this pretty easily by redistributing the pine cones so there was one heavier one on each side.

The idea was that they would also function as scented room fresheners of sorts, but since the scent is not very strong that part didn’t really work out. I’m thinking about getting some cinnamon room spray to attack them with. Still, they are very pretty and perfect for autumn. Just be careful you don’t hang them too low so that your husband smacks his head on a pine cone every time he goes to the bathroom… (*snicker*).

Left to right- A bunny, a pin up, a Native American princess and a peacock (me). And below that... one sneaky dog.

Part of playing hostess is providing a delicious meal for your guests, and if the presentation is ridiculously adorable then that is just a plus. The minute I found this recipe on Pinterest (on which you should follow me, by the way!) I knew I had to try it. So without further ado, I present to you…. Dinner in a Pumpkin!

The first recipe is Cheese Fondue:

Step 1. Cut off the top of and clean out a medium-sized pumpkin. There is no exact science here, just pick one that will fit in your oven and is moderately round-shaped. Round is a shape. Save the seeds for toasting!

Step 2- In a separate bowl mix together 1 cup of vegetable or chicken broth, and 1 cup heavy whipping cream.

To the whipping cream/broth mixture add about a half teaspoon nutmeg and a half teaspoon pepper. It looks like a lot more than 1/2 tsp of nutmeg because it spread out over the surface. Cool, huh?

Step 3- In a separate separate bowl, blend together about 5 oz. of fresh grated Parmesan cheese and 2 or 3 times that much grated mozzarella. Again, this isn’t really exact, and it doesn’t matter. (Substitute your own favorite cheese!)

Step 4- Chop up some of these babies.

I got this as a souvenir in Florence, OR when we went horseback riding there last weekend for my birthday! (FABULOUS experience! AND I got to check it off my Day Zero list!)

My pony was named Stiles, Chris's was named Nougat. They were lazy and a little grouchy and MAJESTIC.

Anyway. Don’t ask me why I chose smoke flavored garlic as a souvenir from the beach, but I’m glad I did! You can use regular garlic for this recipe, too, but it won’t be as delicious! I am pretty sure this stuff can be replicated by marinating peeled garlic cloves in liquid smoke for a day or three.

I used about as many cloves as would make up a medium-sized bulb of garlic, and I actually think I could have been a lot more liberal with the stuff, but better safe than sorry (especially when some peoples’ husbands are affected in certain unpleasant ways by excessive garlic…).

Chop those bad boys up with one of these lovely contraptions. No hand chopping = no stinky garlic fingers!

Not to mention a beautiful mincing job in 1/3 of the time.

Step 5- Toast some baguette slices in the oven. You could probably do this while you’re preparing your other ingredients instead of waiting until now, but I just remembered this step so here it stays. Oven should be at about 450 F, give them maybe 5 minutes maximum. It’s okay for the slices to be really hard and crispy because they are going to get soft later.

Step 6- Now comes the fun part! Layer the baguette slices, cheese, cream mixture, and garlic, all the way to the top of the pumpkin (but not overflowing. Leave maybe a half-inch.)

When you’ve reached the top, pour in the rest of the cream mixture if you’ve got any left, and put the lid back on the pumpkin. It’s like it’s hiding a special secret! Rub the outside with a little olive oil and place on a casserole dish. Bake in the oven (which should already be at 450 F because you just toasted your baguettes) for one hour.

Pay no attention to the white stuff on the bottom of the oven. Could it be because I recently caught it on fire and had to douse the flames with half a box of baking soda? I will never tell.

After about an hour your beautiful creation should look like this….

It should be obvious why you want to bake it in a casserole dish. Perhaps so sludge doesn’t collect on the bottom of your oven and eventually catch fire, not that I have any experience there. Also the pumpkin will be soft.

The pumpkin is edible as well, of course, so literally dig in as you serve up the fondue. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of the inside, we got right down to it at the party. But I can tell you that it looks exactly as you might expect: like melted cheese. And it takes wonderful! Next time I am going to experiment with some more adventurous and tangy cheeses. I’m thinking goat cheese, maybe some feta, maybe gouda? So many possibilities, and all delicious.

Second Recipe- Chicken n’ Rice n’ Stuff.

The excellent thing about Dinner in a Pumpkin is that it is really only limited by your imagination and the contents of your fridge. For my second pumpkin, I layered pre-cooked white rice, uncooked chicken (cut into small bits and seasoned with salt and pepper) and about 2 cups of made cream of broccoli soup (had been sitting in my freezer waiting to be put to use. I thought it was a little bland by itself when I first made it, but it made an excellent sauce for this recipe.) I was very generous with the salt and pepper for this recipe, and it still struck me as bland, but it got rave reviews from party attendees. I just like my food with a lot more tang or a kick, I guess.

An adorable pumpkin salt shaker in the background for good measure.

Careful about not overfilling, especially with the soupy one. This one ran over the sides a bit.

So there you have it! I also didn’t take any pictures of the two pumpkins on the table, but I know somebody did so I am going to try and track them down to share with you. The presentation is just adorable, and it’s especially nice because the pumpkins are edible as well.

Have you made any delicious fall/Halloween themed treats lately? (I know Halloween is over, but we have another month of fun fall treats before we shift into full on CHRISTMAS MODE.) What are your favorite fall recipes?

If you have a couple shots of vodka first and maybe squint a little, you might think it was a flower. I’m so proud.

In related news, this means I’ve found a new project to obsess over, as if I needed one.

What happened is this:

I live in an apartment complex with a pretty lousy parking lot. Free spaces are a hot commodity. Fortunately for me, I park my car in a designated covered space assigned to our apartment (my husband is not so lucky). There is a line of three free spaces right next to the mailbox, and as I pulled in I decided to stop and get the mail. There was a truck in front of me pulling into a space opposite the mailbox spaces, so I waited for him to pull in before zipping into the free space so I could get the mail. I was then going to go to my own parking spot. After I parked I looked in my rearview mirror and noticed something funny- the truck was diagonal and backing up. Then he saw me and stopped, and it occurred to me what was going on- he was about to try and back into the space with his big truck that I had just easily stolen with my little Aveo. I instantly felt bad and opened my door to apologize and tell him that I would move. But as soon as I opened my door he just said “Thank you.“  You know the kind- the mouth says “Thank you” but the tone says “You’re an idiot”.

I tried to apologize and explain that I would move right now, that I had just parked to get the mail and he could have the spot, but all I could get out was “Sorry, I” before he cut me off with a wave of his hand and started to drive away. “Hold on!” was my response (which surprised even me because I hate confrontation, but it seemed like such a silly reason for him to miss out on this parking space because of a misunderstanding), but he drove away.

And that irritated me.

Now I am being honest here, and it pains me to admit it, but the first thing that came out of my mouth next (fortunately it was just under my breath and he had already driven away and didn’t hear me) was “Douchebag.” That is not a pretty thing to call someone, and the spirit with which I said it was even uglier. I pulled out of the parking space in a huff and started to zip around the corner, nearly hitting a young guy who was on his skateboard in the middle of the street. Granted, he shouldn’t have been in the middle of the street, but I immediately had to stop myself and take stock of the situation. I had nearly hit this guy and I had been going a little too fast because I was in my own little personal offended world. But in an instant, had I not been paying attention, all of that would have seemed so much smaller. I thank God that I WAS paying attention at least enough to hit my brakes and avoid hitting him.

As I pulled into my real parking spot I started thinking about the guy in the truck, after I calmed down and my heart stopped beating, and what kind of day he might have had. Maybe, I thought to myself, he just lost his job. Or he had a really lousy day and people were rude to him at work. Or his mother is dying. There are all sorts of reasons why I should have cut him a little slack, even in my own mind, for reacting a bit rudely to me. After all, from his perspective what I had done was pretty darn rude. I wish he would have cut me some slack.

But that got me thinking even more: why did I need to think up an excuse for him? Maybe he didn’t have a lousy day. Maybe it just irritated him that some blonde in her tiny car zipped in and stole his parking spot when it should have been obvious that he was trying to pull into it. Honestly, from his perspective, and not being able to read my mind, that’s understandable. And I can’t in good faith say that I have never yelled at someone from the safety of my car when they did what I perceived as “stupid” or “inconsiderate”. Do they all need a good excuse, or shouldn’t I give them a break on the basis that we all do stupid things, and a little understanding can go a long way.

Did I need an excuse for what I did to him? I certainly didn’ think so as I sat there fuming. Yet I expect the utmost courtesy from everyone else unless their mother is dying or they just lost their job.That seems a little silly to me. And I know that I hope for grace from other people when I do something stupid, regardless of whether my excuse is “I just got laid off ” or simply  “I wanted that parking spot.”

So here I sit, a little humbler than before and a little more willing to cut some slack for other people, regardless of their excuse for how they behave. My excuse? I’m human. And so was the guy in the truck, and so are you.

Let’s give each other a break!

Start with a nice, moist, cheap cake from Safeway. (If I had more time, I would bake the cake from scratch, but I started at 10:00 o’ clock at night because I’m a smart person.)

Bake the cake, and once it has cooled a teeny bit, shred it with some forks. It’s very easy to do, it pretty much just falls apart.

Add an entire can of nice cheap frosting from Safeway. (Again- it would probably be delicious made from scratch, but who do I look like? Correct answer: not Martha Stewart.)

It’s my kitchen. I can do whatever I want.

Blend it together with some forks until it’s nice and moist.

Make some nice strong Sumatra roast coffee.

Drink, preferably from a Donald Duck mug.

Roll the cake + frosting mix into 1-ish inch balls. You’ve got to have a light touch because since the batter is already baked, if you squish too hard it just kind of falls apart.

4 inch lollipop sticks- $5 from Michael’s. Insert them shallowly into the cake balls.

And stick those babies in the freezer for as long as you can wait. Mine were in there for almost 24 hours because of a little thing called “work”.

Once you’re ready to move on to the fun part, get yourself all set up first.

Invite your puppy to keep you company. Yours is probably not as adorable as mine, but that’s okay. Your cake pops should still turn out alright.

Wear a cute apron.

Things to get prepared: as many bowls as you want colors for the candy coating, a pan to collect stray sprinkles, and the styrofoam to store them on once they’re coated.

Floral section at Michael’s, about $5.

Get your candy melts ready- ($3 at Michael’s in every color imaginable!)

Aaaaand your sprinkles, if you wish. I chose nonpareils because they’re cute.

Melt a portion of the candy melts in the microwave- about 30 seconds at a time and then stir- same as you would do chocolate if (like me) you don’t have a double boiler.

Cute! (and delicious, it turns out.)

There are two ways to coat your cake pops- either dip them in, or spoon the coating over the top and cover it that way. I chose the spoon method because the bowls were shallow and the coating wasn’t deep enough to dip the pops. (I used a little at a time because I wasn’t sure how much coating I would need and I didn’t want to waste any!)

Add your sprinkles!

Super cute, no? Then just pop it shallowly into the Styrofoam. Careful about poking it all the way through.

At this point your dog should be trying to convince you that he has died from hunger.

Lather rinse and repeat (without the lather and rinse part I suppose).

In retrospect, I should have started in the middle and worked my way out. It’s hard to stick wet cake pops in the middle when the outside is already surrounded. As the great Latin poet Virgil once said- “Duh.”

Purdy purple.

I prefer the purple over the red- the sprinkles just pop!

Admire my six dollar Walgreens manicure.

Purdy lello.

Cause you needed another picture of the melted candy to REALLY understand, right?

Cute! I will note that I only took the frozen cake pops out of the freezer about four at a time (you can see the ones on deck there in the background) so that they wouldn’t thaw out and make it hard to coat them.

At this point your dog should be downright offended that you haven’t dropped anything delicious on the floor.

And he should flounce dramatically away with a flick of his tail.

I started from the inside with the second batch and it made it MUCH easier. :)

Any extras should be fed to your husband of choice to prevent excessive whining.

Bring them to your nearest wedding rehearsal dinner and bask in the exclamations of how adorable and delicious they are.

And tap those stray sprinkles that you captured in the pan into an extra bottle (I had a mostly empty bottle of multicolor nonpareils already). Waste not want not!

I remember that even if He doesn’t rescue me from the flames, He will walk through them with me, and together we will emerge unscathed, not a hair singed, not even smelling of smoke. He will hold me in his lap in the middle of the lions’ den and let me cry, and when I open my eyes as He wipes away my tears, He will point it out to me: the lions’ mouths are shut. No weapon formed against me shall prosper.

No matter  what happens, I will trust in my God to take care of me. He will clothe me like the lilies, and feed me like the sparrows. I will wear His glorious forgiveness like a crown, and trade these ashes in for the beauty of being His daughter.

These are quotes taken directly from my transcription of my conversations with my grandfather, Poppie as he was known to us, in the weeks before he died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Click here to see a brief story of his life, which was marred with enough irony and tragedy you would hardly think it wasn’t a Hollywood script. But it really happened- and for some events it was best simply to leave in his words, as you will understand.

The Hobo

“I don’t know where I learned what a hobo was, but I remember one evening being outside and Grandma Senne was out there watering flowers. I was playing outside and a man came walking up from the railroad tracks up to our house, and I was yelling “there’s a hobo coming!” I don’t know if he was or not. “

Playing the Piano

“Dorothy taught me not to trust her- she was not one that you could confide in. If you confided in her she would turn around and whip your butt raw. She would use a wire coat hanger- probably not worse than anyone else… She used to have one heck of a temper. She had me taking piano lessons- I had no musicality in me, I could barely play a radio- and it was classical music (oh and you know how I love classical music). I couldn’t read music and can’t today, but I learned to play by ear- at our recital I played just perfect.

Just  a month later that summer, she had some of her friends there and she wanted me to play. I couldn’t remember what it sounded like and she plopped the music down in front of me- and that’s when she learned I couldn’t read music. Talk about somebody going ballistic- she popped my butt so hard I felt like my head was going to fall off my shoulders.”

On Arm-Wrestling

“I was always very strong even though I was little. From the waist up I was a heavyweight and from the waist down I was a lightweight. Consequently a lot of men underestimated me when it came to arm wrestling- I used to make a little bit of money on the side, arm-wrestling. I used to work for one shop and there were 15 of us and the boss, supervisor, and foreman above that. We got into an arm wrestling match one night and I beat everybody in the shop and my boss twice- he couldn’t believe it because he was an ex-marine and built like a Sherman tank!  I broke one guy’s arm and my boss was as little ticked at me. What can I say, it was all fair sport!  Those were wild years, they seem wild now.”

Teaching the Cowboy some Manners

            “We went fishing down on the lakeside and Bill must have been 10, Mike must have been 8, of course Pam was 5, I guess. Anyway, we hiked way back into the backside of the lake to go fishing and have a picnic- it was a very pretty day. I carried the ice chest and all the gear back there. We no sooner had our stuff set up and we were in the water having a good time, and under an old dead tree I had thrown my line and was about to take a siesta when these three guys came up in a boat and started in on Carole and the kids- cussing them out and using foul language because we were fishing where they wanted to fish. I came out from under the tree and hollered at them and they gave me some kind of peace sign.

We hiked back to the campground- it was about the end of the day. I told them to get in the car and lock the doors and just wait until I get back. I went to talk to the park rangers- I said “I gotta favor to ask you. You got some clown here on the lake who has a really foul mouth and he was cussing my family out. I need to teach him some manners before I go home.” They said “He has been a pain in our butt and there’s nothing we can do about it!”  I said “I don’t want to be arrested or anything…” and they said “That’s not going to happen” and I said “Thank you.” Pretty soon the boat came put-putting in…and I hadn’t realized how big he [the main clown] was. He was gawking at me, and I said “You can apologize to my family, or you and I can settle it.” And he said “Why don’t we settle it like two men?” He was laughing because I was shorter than him. It was slippery on the ground and I was wearing moccasins. I was walking away from the water so I didn’t slip. I said something like “It really takes a big man to say those things.” He said “I got something to say about that!” I turned around to see what it was, and it was a fist between the eyes.

I did give him a left hook before I went down. I thought this isn’t working worth a darn! I saw the sun shining on his big cowboy belt buckle and I thought there’s the target right there- I hit him in the belly and knocked the wind out of him long enough to get on my feet. We had fun and a good old boxing match- it was the first fight where I was enjoying it and using my head.  I hit him in the mouth and knocked his tooth into my hand. I thought I was about halfway to the moon by the time I stopped- I remember hearing my head crunch and I backed up and thought wow, that was a good one. He came up with a sadistic smirk and I thought I haven’t hit you right yet- I don’t remember where I hit him, but he spun around on a right angle to me and I thought what kind of trick is this? I hesitated a second and hit him in the side of the head and he shrunk down and I thought that was kinda’ fun, so I hit him again. He went facedown in the dirt. I used to hunt, and they talk about the death rattle- and that’s what he was doing. He went facedown and his hands were shakin’ and I was kinda’ scared.

The next day I was worried about him. I asked the guy I hunted with if he would go up and see what happened. He said “You have nothing to worry about- those rangers said that was the most excitement and fun they’ve had up there! They said some short blonde guy beat up a big cowboy over there. It took some time to revive him.”

Otto

“She [Carole] was working at a pizza place. We hadn’t been married all that long, we had just bought our first house and there was a pizza place not too far down that she worked at. It was a Friday and I loaded her and the kids up in the car and said “Let’s go to a movie, it’s Friday!” We pulled into a drive-in movie. I was all happy ‘cause it was two days off-no work, family, paycheck, something to eat and she went and ruined it for me! She said that she and the kids were in the house and (Otto was her boss’s name) and she turned around and he was there in the house! He was trying to make advances toward her and trying to get her take off with him to go to the beach or something. I thought you’ve got to be joking. She finally got rid of him. That was the end of the night- I took them home. I went up to the pizza place and was parked there ‘til they closed around midnight. Mr. Otto was walkin’ out with his brothers to go home. I walked in front of him and actually was trying to antagonize him. I was smoking mad. I got in his face and confronted him about coming into my house. He had those expensive shiny black boots on, and I had my construction boots on and I was smoking a nasty smelling cigar. He got in his van and shut the door and said “Why don’t you go home and forget about it?” That was the wrong thing to say- you don’t forget  about it! Then my body took over and I smacked him in the chops and hit him out the other side of the van . His brothers were circling around, and I told him “You had better call them off or I’m going to kill the first one who comes at me.” He did, then told me he was going to sue me for everything I had and I told him “Be sure you bring your wife to court when you come!” I didn’t hear from him again.

Down at a swap meet years later, there was a guy and his mother out there, and it was Otto! We made eye contact at the same time and he remembered me. I realized I had given him a hairlip where I hit him. I felt a little bad about that.”

On Fighting

            “Gramma did not take kindly to it- I think she only finally trusts me now that I wouldn’t do that anymore. Part of my penalty today.” (Gesturing to his oxygen tubes and laughing.)

“I’m not bragging about this- in all honesty it was a different time, in a different place, in a different environment that I grew up in. With all of the guys that I associated with, there was no room for sissies. You had to be a scrapper  or you weren’t going to be there! The motorcycle guys were nice guys, but they weren’t sissies either.”

            Poppie was very concerned about the inclusion of any fighting stories at all. He did not want anyone to get the wrong idea about him, to think that he was hot-headed or quick to throw a punch. On the contrary, and as I assured him, it is very evident that he only fought to defend those who needed defending, particularly his family, as he felt it was his duty to do. Poppie wasn’t sure that he wanted any fighting stories included at all, but I made the choice to include them in his own words because they are a part of who he was, and they are evidence of the kind of man that he taught his sons to be: those who were not afraid to stand up for what was right and defend those weaker than them, even if it meant getting hurt in the process.

Lessons to his Sons

“I didn’t want the boys getting hurt, and I knew how mean guys could be. I knew, especially if you joined a gang, how deadly mean they could be. For some reason, I could never explain it, I was never afraid of those people, but they made me angry. I hated to see them picking on other kids, and heaven forbid if they bullied a girl ‘cause there was no excuse for that! I did not allow that if I was around and if there was anything I could do about it. I was concerned about my family- I taught them how to defend themselves, but also at the same time not to start fights. I told Mike and Bill- “If I ever catch either of you intentionally starting a fight, you’re going to have another fight because I’m going to whip your butts for you! And two, if you see some little kid or a girl being bullied and you don’t do something about it, you’re going to get your butts whipped too, try to understand what I’m teaching you.” I told Mike- “If you’re in school and you get in a fight that you started not because you were defending yourself, you’d better win the thing because you’re going to lose the one when you come home! No sense losing two fights in one day.”

A Bonehead or Two

            “I wasn’t always smart- I pulled some bonehead ones too. It’s kinda’ comical now. About six houses down the street that we lived on, there were two boys just a year or so older than Bill and Mike- brothers. They were meaner than junkyard dogs, both of them. Their dad- I don’t think his elevator went all the way to the top floor- he was a big brawny guy. He was married to his mother-in-law! He divorced his wife and married her mother. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, just part of the story. Pam was just starting to walk, not really stable. Those boys were over there picking on Bill and Mike and in the process one of them knocked Pam over on the concrete walkway, and I just went livid. Those boys took off running.

My nephew Tom lived a couple of blocks away from us and he was 3 or 4 years older than Bill and Mike, so he was obviously several years older than those bullies. I called him up and said “Get your butt over here. Do you want to make five bucks? I want you to go over there and kick their butts for ‘em.” “Sure Uncle Chuck,” he said “thanks!” He rode his bike all the way down there. Their old man was workin’ in the driveway on his car and the boys were hanging around there someplace. Before they knew what was going on, Tom was over there and he decked both of them. Their dad said “What the hell are you doin’?! You’re twice their size!” “Well,” Tom shrugged, “Uncle Chuck gave me five bucks to kick their butts.”

I was in the shower and that big bramble bull came up the walk, and he was trying to snort and get in. Gramma was trying to keep me back and his wife was trying to keep him back. All of a sudden there’s Randy and Ronnie and Billy and Mike all sitting like angels on the lawn playing nice together- little brats! That oughta’ make you feel stupid! Fact is, they wanted us to be friends so they forced us to go out fishin’ all of us together. Boy, that was fun. I was glad when that day was over. “

Bill and Mike

“I’m proud of the boys- they did good. They probably started fights I didn’t know about, but it couldn’t have been that many or I’m sure I would have heard about it. Bill used to stick up for Mike now and then, that was funny. I think Bill went through a stage when he was about 18- Good Lord, he wasn’t afraid of nothing! I would hear the stories- this one kid was 20 years old and kind of a dope dealer and I don’t’ know what he had against Bill, but Bill and him got into it one day, and he started to get out of the truck and Bill slammed the door back on him and bent the door, and also proceeded to slam his head! I heard about it from some friends we had coffee with. Old Jimmy warned me that that this guy that Bill had whipped had a lot of tough friends- he gets his gangs together. I was so mad when he said that to me- if that happens, its going to be the stupidest thing that idiot could do. If that happens I could hire every black guy  I could find if he wanted to have a gang war. Don’t take my kid on!

Bill was a junior or senior in high school- he had a different girlfriend (girlfriends, you could say). He went to some game, and they were in the bleachers. I don’t remember how all that started- somebody said something about Bill’s girlfriend and that torqued his jaws. Bill went to sit in the bleachers and the guy stuck his foot out so he sat on the guy’s foot, being a smart aleck, so Bill went in to a little bit of a fight there. The guy hit Bill and Bill turned around and broke the guy’s nose, I guess. The guy was getting cleaned up and his friend came in there, and they expelled Bill! He was out, period. We had to get a hold of the superintendent of the schools and set up a meeting. The most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen in my life. The principal showed up with a briefcase like he was a lawyer, with all this evidence against Bill. He told us you gotta realize some kids are just in a gray area and they can’t be bothered with them, so they throw then away in so many words. That was their final decision- meeting was dismissed, we got into the car. I said “Stay here, I want to go say something else.” I went in and said “First of all , Bill was only doing what I taught him and I’m proud of him for the way he behaved. He was sticking up for his girlfriend as he should have and you’re expelling him for that. You know what’s funny? What I’d like to know is if I saw your wife walking down the sidewalks of Gladstone and said something indecent to her, how would you react?” He said “You better not!” and I said “That makes you a hypocrite, because that’s what my son did. Every cotton pickin night of the week he’s getting calls from the Marines and the Navy to get recruited. Why would he want to get recruited to protect people like you? You’re disgusting.”

End result they let Bill back in school. He can’t stick up for his girlfriend,  but you can stick up for your wife. Now explain that one to me.”

“Mike got in fights- Mike’s fights were funny, I mean from an outsider’s point of view. He usually had 4 or 5 guys on top of him pounding him at the same time. You could never see Mike- he was down there someplace! One happened at a little league game of Bill’s. I looked over and saw a mound of kids and thought Mike must be on the bottom. I pulled them all off and broke them up. Mike was so mad at me- he said “I could have taken care of ‘em!” and I said “It looks like you were doing a good job!”

Gramma got called home from her real estate office one day- Pam called and said “You need to hurry and get home, there’s 4 or 5 guys on top of Mike just beating him to a pulp out there!” He had a natural way of just ticking some of the guys off. When he was a little guy, I’m guessing probably about 4 or 5 years old, Bud Raybert (he’s a good man) lived to the right of us and was doing some concrete work or something. I heard him- he said “Mike don’t you dare, I’m not going to warn you again.” Whatever it is he told Mike not to do, he did again and then took off runnin’! He was right after him and Gramma said “What are you going to do?” and I said “Nothing- Bud’s taking care of it- whatever he’s doing Mike’s got comin’!”

“The UPS guy got out one time and paddled Mike’s butt- you couldn’t do that nowadays. Mike did something, and you know he knew he deserved the paddling because he didn’t come tattle!”

“Bill’s first day of school, Gramma was walkin’ him to school- across the street he made her stop and said “Don’t go no further!” He didn’t want to be seen with his mom.”

“Mike started at the same school and of course we heard about him- he had that type of personality that liked setting off the fire alarm system at the school.”

On Defending your Family

“Just to sum it up so you understand that I’m not a complete idiot- well, okay, I am, but at least from a complete idiot’s point of view I have justification for my reasoning. I told you where I grew up and how my father died. That does make you either hide under a rock or try to make yourself the other way so you don’t have to be afraid. It did affect me, obviously, him being murdered and seeing other people killed up there and all that and seeing that this isn’t a nice world. And then I get married and we started having kids, and it scared the tar out of me. I thought Gosh, now I have that responsibility- they’ve got to learn how to be able to take care of themselves but without turning them into creeps at the same time. I’m very proud of them. I know doggone well they did the same thing for their families. They stick up for you guys and don’t even have to think about it.”

“That’s what a man’s supposed to do- I know people will tell you different nowadays but I don’t care. They’re wrong, I’m right.”

On Family

“What makes my life today – the happiness- is family. All my kids, my grandkids. It is such a treat. An eon in one eye and a twinkle of the eye in another. I get flashbacks all the time.”