Category Archives: Essay and Prose

Life, Loss, And Human Connection

January 11, 2024Education, Essay and Prose, Family Life, Holistic Health, Humanitychange, compassion, family, grief, human connection, loss, marriageL.L. Shelton

We all experience loss in varying degrees throughout our lives. Sometimes we lose a person. Sometimes it is someone of remarkable significance to our lives. Sometimes we lose our idea of a person. Sometimes we lose someone while they are still living. Sometimes we lose a person before they have a chance to be born. Sometimes death snatches someone from our grasp.

Sometimes we lose something. Something truly meaningful to us- a job, a relationship, a marriage, a family, a home. We may lose our faith in ourselves or our confidence in others. We may lose our affection for someone. Someone may lose fondness for us. Sometimes we lose our possessions, our good health, an opportunity, or a skill. Sometimes we grieve the loss of another’s good opinion, a phase of life, or a particular situation. We may lose our dignity to abuse. Sometimes, in the wake of trauma, a piece of our history is lost to us. In reaction to grief, we may lose a part of ourselves.

No matter. Loss is Loss. And in some form, each and every loss affects us. Our losses affect us at differing levels, on any given day, for as long as we live. This is true whether or not we can identify the trouble or admit to it.

Sometimes the pain surrounding our loss is evident to all. It’s conspicuous and loud- maybe even obnoxious. Sometimes our grief is quiet and obvious to few. Sometimes we suffer in silence. Other times we let it all hang out. But we all suffer. No one makes this journey without loss. Without grief. Without the change that loss entails.

We are in this life together- inextricably intertwined- if only in our minds, our memories. Our journey’s are our own; and yet we pass one another, we bump into one another, converge at various points along the road. We’re often gathered at intersections or stopped together in traffic. Sometimes we are involved in the parade and other times we’re held up by it. Sometimes we are forced to view an accident. Sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of the wreck. We may realize we instigated a pile-up. We can accept the truth of our relatedness or not. We can like it or not, we can cooperate with healing or not, but nothing can alter the fact of our wondrous interconnectedness.

The best that we can do is to be patient with one another and ourselves, and to be kind. We can be committed to honesty, to listening, and to being present. We can own our mistakes- time and again if necessary. We can seek forgiveness and we can be forgiving. We can offer grace- allowing new opportunities for growth. In Christ, we can practice genuine humility and real compassion. In Him, we can love in the truest sense.

On Generational Trauma and Parenting With Grace

August 3, 2023Bible Talk, Church Culture, Essay and Prose, Family LifeChristian Life, Christian suffering, Generational trauma, Healthy parenting, parenting with grace, sin, suffering, trials and tribulationL.L. Shelton

As healthy parents, we long to intervene in the suffering of our children. We want them to be well and comfortable. In infancy, this is good and ensures that their basic needs for food, shelter, and love will be met; however we should begin to allow some autonomy as our children try and assert themselves. When they begin to walk, we must allow the occasional fall. On the other hand, we must not be so over-bearing as to engineer circumstances to bring about their suffering, and at any rate it is hardly necessary as every created thing is groaning in pain under the weight of The Fall.

It is our task to provide them with the whole truth while shielding them from evil to the best of our abilities. It is not our work to prevent their suffering. Personal suffering to some degree is the very thing that leads one to God at the point of justification, and later at the various points of sanctification. It is ordained that each and every Christian will suffer at the point of glorification due to the death of the physical body, the actual separation of spirit from flesh. Though, we may cite an instance when a person is said to have “walked away with God,” this does not mean there was no pain in the metamorphosis that had to take place, and salvation is complete when it has passed through these three stages. We may be sure the thief on the cross passed through them; albeit in an unusually rapid manner.

Scripture does not allow that we make personal peace and prosperity our goal in life, and as parents we are on occasion unhappy in our own suffering. We occasionally desire, though it be momentary, to escape our hardship. We may attempt this in a variety of ways- some seemingly benign and others completely unhealthy. We may influence our children to attempt their own flight. Also, in this we may inspire our children, though unwittingly, to go forth and right the wrongs that we’ve suffered within the roles and circumstances that God has designed and allowed for us. This we must strive against as suffering is ordained for the Christian. The Christian by very definition, is the one attempting to navigate this fallen world in a manner that is pleasing to His Father God. A Christian is one who has recognized his own offenses before God (his sin) and has purposed to live in a fight against further offense. Therefore, to ignite in our children a desire to escape this difficulty is to inspire our children to abandon God. May it never be!

On Sheep and Goats

February 6, 2022Bible Talk, Church Culture, Essay and Prose, Family Life, PersonalL.L. Shelton

Some may know that we graduated from our suburban Itty Bitty Farm a few years ago to our rural homestead property, Little Bigger Farm, where we are able to produce more- still on a small scale. We happily raise some of our own fruits, berries, and vegetables, as well as ducks, geese, American Guinea Hogs, a small flock of Dorper-Katahdin sheep and a few dairy goats. My mother resides on the property with us and she cheerfully raises chickens. We are learning and loving more everyday.

Being in this position has given me an excellent opportunity to study the behavior of both sheep and goats, to become aware of their commonalities and to note where they are truly unique. I easily appreciate these wonderful animals and find each species a joy to raise, however there are stark differences. I thought some of you, particularly those of you who are practicing Christians, would be interested in my careful and sincere observations; as Christ so often contrasted the goat with the sheep, and while never stating a dislike for goats, claimed the sheep as analogous to his own brothers and sisters. These are my discoveries thus far:

Goats are excessively curious about the world. Sheep are mildly inquisitive regarding the world.

Goats are usually flamboyant. Sheep are generally reserved.

Goats are bold and quickly into everyone’s business. Sheep are wary and hesitant to involve themselves in the affairs of others.

Goats crave attention and prefer to be the center of it. Sheep prefer to be inconspicuous.

Goats are particular and express a great variety of preference. Sheep are easily satisfied.

Goats are flirtatious and often without appropriate boundaries. Sheep are carefully friendly.

Goats are boisterous partiers. Sheep are pleasant.

Goats will stand on their heads any time to make you laugh. Sheep will wonder at your easy frivolity.

Goats are chatty and sometimes carry-on unduly. Sheep are quiet until it is absolutely fitting to raise a voice.

Goats will interrupt peasant or King and possibly trample him, no matter the solemnity of the occasion. Sheep stay near and maintain a respectable stance.

Goats are affectionate and indulgent with their off-spring. Sheep are tender toward their young, yet command their respect.

Goats appreciate it when their humans occasionally help out by kidsitting, and are completely trusting that they will have the best interest of their little ones at heart. Sheep are pleased to take care of their own little ones ninety percent of the time, and when the situation demands it, care only to pass them off to another sheep.

Goats are quite happy to include any merry-maker and appear to be open to accepting all as family. Sheep are kind to others and spend time with all, but remain truly interested in flocking and maintaining relationship with one another on a separate and primary level, which on occasion annoys the goats.

Goats are rowdy. Sheep are gentle.

Goats are clever. Sheep are thoughtful.

Goats are immediately attractive. Sheep will grow on you.

As I continue to care for both goats and sheep, I hope to remain astute and to capture further information of a similar nature to impart to you, my dear readers. Perhaps the next entry will offer a comparison of the two species.

Don’t Let It Be Forgot

October 17, 2020Academics & The Arts, Church Culture, Current Events, Education, Essay and Prose, Living the Word, PoliticsAmerican Christian, American church, American Election 2020, American politics, Biden, Camelot, conservative, Convention Of States, democrat, liberal, patriot, republican, Trump, United States of AmericaL.L. Shelton

Is it probable that we have so abused our liberty that we have propelled our nation into a choice between thinly veiled fascism and slightly obscured communism? Is it too late for any rational choice- too late for our healing? Has the time passed for our recognition of the other’s point of view and a sincere attempt to find a common moral ground? Professing Christians stand resolutely on both sides of the divide, each one sure of his perspective and of his thoughts regarding it. Each idealogical camp accuses the other of a lack of regard for the living. Each group is sure that the other is a culture committed to death of one kind or another; therefore each assembly is pushing for its members to vote according to conscience.

What if each individual and morally grounded voter is honestly compelled to consider an issue that he believes is a promotion of our culture of death, and is certain that the other party is oblivious to said issue; therefore he casts his ballot in the opposite direction? In this case, are we not obliged to consider that each congregation’s view of death is different. As our president so aptly stated during a press briefing related to the possibility of reopening the country during the COVID Crisis, and for these words I applaud him, “There are many ways to die.”

While good Christians are united in their belief in their need of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and in their belief in His divinely appointed position as the only begotten Son Of God, good Christians are diverse in their genetic compositions as well as in their life experiences, lifestyles, and in their personal and cultural histories. These differences allow for the development of a curious array of perspectives. What if each of us on both sides of the aisle- that is each one who is truly sane- understands that death is the ultimate evil ushered into the world by sin and longs for life to prevail? What if our greatest need is to sit with the other at a round table and discover the other’s understanding of the nature, structure, and definition of death? What if, presently, our greatest common good would be to cultivate a true comprehension of the other Christian American’s view? (This is not to say that the table should accommodate those who do not profess Christ as Savior and Lord. The table I imagine would seat my friends and family members who are fruit producing, baptized Believers, as well as their loved ones who are in the same position, and as the true church we would come together to discuss our opinions of God’s communication of what constitutes oppression and death, and to further our understanding of the other tribe’s dialect concerning such things.)

I find that I agree with Ayn Rand (who by her own admission, thought under the influence of Aristotle) in specifically this: For one man to demand that another man give up his own life and personal happiness for the sake of another is the ultimate selfishness and is evil. That said, I wholeheartedly believe that the Creator God who exists does ask this of each man for the other, and encourage the Christian education that exposes others to this Biblical Truth, and the subsequent explanation of all Scripture. I hope for the church to continually propagate her beliefs founded in The Word of God to man, and that many will give up their own self-centeredness to the better man in Christ Jesus, to the power of His Holy Spirit, and to the will of God.

In conclusion, it is apparent that some good Christians are assured of the science evident in the natural physical world and other good Christians avow the “magic” of Aslan, and that some of us embrace both; of course both in the purest sense are True, as both in the purest sense can be known. Come, let the church of America reason together. Let us remember our history, and in all gravity, think on the mistakes of the past and learn from them. Let us consider the abundant evidence of resulting corruption and reject fascism, communism, and all other terrible notions. Let us avoid the evil of a totalitarian regime, as it is an absolute government of man in the place of God; and may He Himself have mercy on our souls!

I Choose You

May 10, 2020Current Events, Essay and Prose, Family Life, Politicscapitalist, coronavirus, COVID-19, depression, economy, government, laborers, novel coronavirus, taxation, unemploymentL.L. Shelton

In the midst of this novel coronavirus outbreak, if being in the high risk group, I must isolate, must choose between my right to go anywhere and to do anything, and my healthy neighbor’s right to work and earn an honest wage- I choose for my neighbor. I will stay home voluntarily or take my chances. If I leave our property, I will wear a mask to be kind to the other fellow. I will contribute to our shared economy in whatever way I am able from my weaker position. If I am sick, I will stay home.

Why ?

Because I choose you.

Where do we- the American government- get our money? We take it from ourselves- the workers: The common laborers, the tradesmen, the producers, the service providers, the professionals, and small business owners, large privately owned companies, corporations owned by a board of shareholders. The workers. The money that we provide to fund the government is paid in the form of taxes; therefore, if these individuals and groups- the workers- do not earn money- neither will the government. The government will have no money. No one will have anything. Now, I will be first to state that our tax system is in constant need of reform- and that need should be consistently addressed, but that fact does not change the former truth.

If our stronger brothers and sisters are not allowed to work, they cannot carry those who are weaker. The abled must be given opportunity to provide for the disabled. Younger adults must have a way to provide for children, and the elderly. We the people, must have a way to provide for the expense of our common government. It’s only logical.

I choose you.

Some Will Dream

May 3, 2020Bible Talk, Church Culture, Current Events, Essay and Prose, Living the Word, Natural Disaster9/11, COVID-19, novel coronavirus, Prayer, prophecy, Spiritual DisciplinesL.L. Shelton

For Tricia Mikkelsen

By way of introduction, may I tell you that this is the truest account of my own extraordinary and personal experience that I am able to render.

To begin: Reasoning, following the careful study of God’s Word, that I, being a pitiful sinner, would most likely find it overwhelming to focus on both the necessity of avoiding my personal sin in the here and now, and giving attention to the magnificent scope of the future; I largely put away any emphasis on eschatology. Were I not to do so, to my way of thinking, I would surely fail in the primarily important endeavor to pursue the near maddeningly elusive business of holiness. However, I have lovely friends in the fellowship who have found it not only challenging to study the things to come, but invigorating, as it further encourages their own faiths and thrills their souls and I’m delighted to tell you that while I’ve avoided such, I was not foolish enough to turn a deaf ear to their joy and have therefore been privileged to listen to many interesting briefings on the subject, and I did form a loose opinion of the end (or if you prefer, the beginning, or starting over, the second coming, etc.) as it did appear as a formidable part of the whole.

All of this is a preface to my decision to tell you of a possibly prophetic dream I experienced. Because this dream appeared especially vivid and significant, I noted it in my journal, as I’ve had a habit of keeping a diary since becoming a Christian as a young woman. (Now, it is another story, but I will tell you that many would not have my testimony as I give it because I walked an aisle and professed faith as a child then later believed I had been mistaken. Again, knowing as I do that I am “chief of sinners,” I had no more desire to continue in such argument then as now, as it was and is apparent to me that I had best be about the job of cooperating in the challenging process of my sanctification.) Also, as it was especially brilliant, I relayed this particular dream to my eldest son on the morning following its happening. It was not customary for me to tell others of my dreams and certainly not for me to write of them. Over the years, I believe I have written of only two- possibly three- and this is the one dream I have felt pressed to consider as a word for the future.

While I am accomplished at communication, my preferred manner of lending a hand to a fellow is that of listening skillfully and asking thoughtful questions, thereby trusting both the individual and God Himself with the conclusion, and I have never considered myself any kind of prophet. Though I have wondered at the supernatural, I have known and preferred the greatest knowledge and power available to man which is found in devotion to God and to His Word, and ultimately culminates in wisdom. I have actively sought for Him to reveal Himself to me by communion with His Holy Spirit made possible by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ; through His written Word, communion with the saints, and the evidence of His existence and will in the natural world. I have had no occasion of which to remark that I have felt myself to possess some sort of psychic power.

These things recognized, let us move to the heart of the matter: As related to my son, who was drawing close to his twelfth birthday that particular morning, this is how it transpired: I was aware of myself cleaning an apartment on the upper level of a building. The sublet was small and neat, sparsely furnished, reminding me of an economy hotel suite. There were large plate glass windows on one wall and the drapes were pulled revealing a view of the sky. I knew that I had my little ones- Anna, Jonathan, and Alexander with me (Jaxon was there “in the secret place” though I am not sure I knew it and Madelyn was still only a thought in the mind of God.). As I was on my knees busily completing a task, I felt someone staring at me and l looked up and toward the window, simultaneously I heard something startling and tremendously loud and realized that a plane had crashed into the end of the building where I labored.

Standing before the window and to the right was a stunningly attractive woman, very neatly groomed, in a chic dark business suit. She had short, closely clipped, glossy black hair and fair skin. Her hair was parted to one side. I am not sure, I suppose oddly, of the color of her eyes, however her gaze was penetrating and her tone commanding. As I looked to her, she gestured toward the scene outside the window and stated plainly, “This is how you can always know that a storm is coming.”

I turned my attention from her to what was to be seen through the looking glass; and there presented was a scene I can not yet find sufficient words to describe. I tried once a few years past to paint the scene and could not nearly reproduce it, but yet I am no great artist. The best I have been able to report is that it seemed as though,as noted in my journal, “the sun had exploded and was consuming the sky” (and I was aware of the occurrence being of an explosive nature). There was a great deal of light, warm color, and possibly flame- all against an expanse of black (I wonder if I should be ashamed of having shared such a thing with my child and would not normally have done it, but a sense of urgency prevailed.).

Less than a week after relating the pressing dream to my son, and having nearly forgotten it amid the daily bustle of life in our home of many children, other creatures that come along with them, and a high volume of traffic, I answered the persistent alarm of our landline (in those days we still had one) and heard my husband, Lee, who is so consistently even tempered to my regular displays of terrific passion that I am continually vexed, with an uncharacteristic urgency ask me to immediately turn on the television.

Our phone was cordless and the TV located in our finished walk-out basement. I hurried downstairs from the kitchen to where the children were gathered to begin school, and did as I was asked. The children quietened in response to my evidently anxious mood, and together we watched in shocked silence as a plane flew directly into one of our World Trade Towers located at One Financial Center, Wall Street in New York City, New York. We watched aghast as the horrific events of what would quickly become etched in the memories of all Americans as 9/11, unfolded before us on live television. Understandably, I temporarily forgot my dream until some time after when my son reminded me of it and of the odd coincidence.

It had been several years and a move to a new state before I revisited my old journals and was prompted to consider my dream, the message, and the incredible timing, once more. As I sat with my old journal in my hands wondering anew at those days of upset and unrest, at the tumultuous state of the world and at the odd coucidence of my peculiar, pressing dream, I realized that I had included something else in the entry- the end. In my dream, I eventually turned away from the compelling site in front of me and grabbed little people shouting for children to run along with me to where I had parked our over-sized green van. It seemed to take an eternity to traverse what was truly a brief distance and I remember thinking that we might not make it in time. In time for what? I clearly recall that as we drew closer to our vehicle, I noted that my two oldest children, Emily and Donald, were not with me as they had been cleaning a different apartment at the opposite end of the building. I was disturbed at our being separated and awakened feeling agitated.

Until that day of rediscovery, I did not think to question GOD concerning the details. Now, I immediately wondered why the sense of urgency related to the dream, that I had felt at the time, had suddenly returned as I sat with the book of my collected messy musings open in my lap. In His Presence, I wondered, and after a time, three things were made clear to me. First, I knew that the storm was not the events of 9/11, but that the events of 9/11 were a precursor to the storm and second that the storm would involve the entire globe, and third that it would arrive prior to Anna leaving our family to begin a life of her own.

I soon reminded my family of my dream and shared fully my further thoughts regarding it. I cautioned them not to tell anyone else what I had disclosed and one child rolled her eyes in exaggerated fashion, giggled and quickly exclaimed, “Don’t worry, Mom!” The others nodded their agreement and their terrific contagious laughter enveloped me as well. Can you blame me for being unwilling to risk being committed to an institution for those not-quite-right-in-the-head? Seriously, I was concerned that I may be obsessing a bit, but I was well assured that I was as sane as the next guy, and was, after some prayer, content to put it away and to rest in Jesus- until recently.

Only our youngest two children live at home with us now, as the others are pursuing higher education or working and living with a roommate or a sibling Our oldest is a young widow with a son- our first grandchild, and our second child is married. My mother and I, along with the two still living at home, were at her river cabin this year, the week of March eighth, observing the first presidential address to the nation concerning the novel coronavirus since February the twenty-ninth. My brother and his wife were with us there as we gathered around the television and heard our President suggest that no one go to work if he or she felt unwell and that schools should consider closing. That night, I marveled at this new turn of events for a considerable time before sleep claimed my restless mind. In the morning, as I was preparing to enjoy a cup of coffee with my mom on the spacious front porch overlooking the exquisitely beautiful river, my dream returned- slamming into my consciousness with a force akin to a plane crashing into a building, nearly knocking me sideways. I reminded my mother of my dream. Of further interest, when we returned to our home from the river, Anna was engaged to be married.

I am sharing with you, with my readers, now as I believe GOD is prompting me to do so and to trust Him with the outcome, as for my own journey in His Spirit, this experience, this dream and all that has surrounded it, encourages my faith and thrills my soul! But I do not profess anything beyond what I have told you. I have no idea if the second coming of Christ will be tomorrow, or ten years from now, or ten thousand years from now, but this has been for me greater evidence of the reality that is His Existence and Truth, and of the fact that He truly loves His children and communicates with us still.

May God continually manifest Himself to you, to me, and to a world continually in need of His Presence through Jesus Christ Our Lord,

Amen.

Please see The Book of Acts, 2: 14-21

Cheers to Bridges

December 1, 2018Current Events, Essay and Prose, HumanityL.L. Shelton

Is Facebook destroying true intimacy? Is social media creating a false sense of community?

Only if one is not thinking…

When I like or love someone’s post on Facebook (or other social media), I’m not trying to imply a sense of intimacy. It doesn’t mean that I know the person well and love everything about him or that I’ll be expecting to be invited to holiday dinners- or even that I would want to be invited. I’m showing only that I like (or love) what he has expressed here, or I stand with him in this particular thing. When I touch the emoticon representative of a person consumed with laughter- I’m thanking a person for sharing some of the best medicine of my day! When I hit the angry face, it’s because what is portrayed frustrates me. I touch the sad face when I am moved to tears by something shared and the hands clasped in prayer when I know it is the needed answer. When I offer a comment, I say what I mean and I mean what I say. Social media is a tool and like any other tool, it has no power of its own- the power is in the hand of the one who wields the tool. I don’t think I have a false sense of the community being built here, rather I know it is a bridge to community. I like bridges- a bridge can be destroyed if it becomes dangerous but a bridge is usually a wonderful idea.

In The Shelter of The Storm

November 11, 2018Essay and Prose, Family Life, Humanity, PersonalL.L. Shelton

A Memoir

(An attempt to recollect this life to the best of my fallible faculties in the case that my children and grandchildren, my nieces and nephews, may be interested in pieces of history, particularly family history that preceded them.)

Before Branderham
1963-1969

In those days, there were no car seats- no restraints. There was only freedom.

My blocks are square, but not a flat square. My letters are painted on the sides in bright colors. I like to play with my blocks in the Old Gray Goose. The floor of the van is hard and straight when the Old Gray Goose is still, and I can build a tower, but when it is moving down the road the floor jerks and the things I build fall apart.

These days, we live in a little house in Texarkana. It is white and green and just the right size for us. We have a big brown dog that I can ride around the yard. He is stringy and moves like Pinocchio. Mama and Daddy love Spook because he’s so smart that he won’t let me play too near the road.

My brother is in this place with me, toddling around on his little fat legs. When I am lying on the floor of the kitchen looking at my book, he wobbles near me with a can in his hand. Mama is cooking and I like the way it smells. My brother is like a live dolly and he likes to stack the cans from Mama’s cabinet. I am hearing the hum of my father’s voice as he talks and laughs with his friend at the table. The table has metal legs but it doesn’t walk. I am listening to the sounds of Mama’s work. Paddy has moved closer to me. The can slips suddenly from my brother’s small chubby hand.

I am bleeding. My daddy is rushing around. He is not usually a rusher. Daddy’s friend is helping him hurry. We go somewhere.

I am on top of a table, now. It is hard and straight, like the floor of the Old Gray Goose when it’s not moving. Someone begins to stretch wide belts from one side of the table over my body and then to lock them on the other side. In my head I am yelling: Wait! I am on the table! Someone help me, I can’t move! Will I stay here until forever? Maybe I can’t breathe.

I guess I stopped being able to think, because the next thing I know is that I’m in my daddy’s arms, and he is sorry for me.

I don’t know where Mama is.

The tall skinny dog is dead. A car hit him. Daddy is crying while he digs the hole. It is dark outside and the night sky is big and wonderful. The pine trees are gathered around us, the sparkly stars are shining over us, and Daddy is going to put the big dead dog in the hole. Now I am sorry for Daddy.

And I wonder- who will keep me out of the road?

Someone is holding me. Someone that I don’t know. We need to borrow the phone. Our car is crunched. We were on our way to pick up our maid, Cody, when we crashed in front of this house. I can feel Mama is upset.

Cody’s color is a soft smooth black and I think she’s beautiful, like the velvet night sky. She takes care of me and my wobbly baby brother. Paddy’s eyes are blue and shiny and when he laughs it makes me feel nice.

Cody’s our mother while Mama works at the munitions plant where she makes bullets for the war. Who will pick up Cody, now? Will Cody still watch over me and Paddy?

I am crying and searching for Cody. She’s in the kitchen at the table. She is smoking. Daddy and Mama smoke, too. I think everyone smokes. My nose is hurting. “How’d this happen, baby?” Cody’s putting too much of Mama’s cold cream on my face. She thinks maybe I have a broken nose.

I was at our neighbor’s house, jumping on the bed with the other children when I smashed. This is all I know. Cody is sorry, and I love her.

My bed has a cloth across it that is flat with raised bumps on it. I can feel the soft pattern when I run my hand across it. I like to do this. Sometimes when I wake up, I have a print of the shapes on my skin. I wonder if it will go away, and if it does, will it come, again?

Daddy is supposed to go to school, but he has a hard time doing it. He doesn’t like to get up. The war made him tired. But, he has a fancy camera and he likes to take pictures. He likes to talk with people, too.

Sometimes he is a milkman. I like to see the inside of his truck. It has large open doors on each side and Daddy wears a special hat when he drives it around to give the people their nice cold cow milk in the clear glass bottles.

Other times he’s a fireman and we take his dinner to the station. The station has a large room where all the men who work on fires eat and play games until a fire comes. When it comes, they hear a bell and they jump around like popcorn until they hop onto the big red truck and go to meet the fire and kill it. Sometimes it makes them sad and they tell each other a lot of jokes to feel better.

My daddy’s mother, my grandmother, is tall. She has a beautiful voice. And she loves to play with me and to sing to me, “My Sweet Lolita Labonnie, with big blue eyes and bright red hair! Oh what a little honey!”

I am watching the world go by from the back window of her silver Wildcat. I am enthralled. I see that everything is a different color of gray. Everything except my pretty gum. My gum tastes good, and I don’t notice that I’m eating the whole sack of yummy, sugary, sticky stuff.

Too late, I realize I was supposed to chew a piece and then spit it out into the trash and wait awhile before chewing another piece. I hear them say it may take years for the stuff to work its way through my system. I wonder what this means.

My brother is riding his bike! Everyone is amazed. Paddy’s color is the same as mine, only he is gold on the top and I am copper. He’s not four years old and look at him go! No training wheels, they would only get in his way.

I am feeling pressured. I need to ride my bicycle now. I need to ride without training wheels, too. After all, I am the big sister.

I somehow master my bike and ride behind Paddy down the black-topped road beside our house. The road in front of our house is a busy highway through South Side, Arkansas. We live here now to be close to Daddy’s parents because they own a lot of land nearby, and someone has to help them build houses on it.

We live next door to my Daddy’s hunting buddy, and almost next door to our little church. I go to the church to sing, “A Sunbeam, a Sunbeam, I’ll be a sunbeam for life!” I sing out with my whole heart because I like it there. The carpet is dark green and the walls are paneled brown. Sometimes a ray of light will come through the window and I can see tiny pieces of the world floating through the air. Air is not as empty as people think.

I wonder if I really will be a Sunbeam for life.

Daddy hunts, and we eat what he kills. Mama is good with food. She can cook squirrel and rabbit and stuff to go with it.

Daddy says I must try the fried rabbit and squirrel. I’m not sure that I want to eat something that I like so very much to see alive. But, I obey and it seems mama can make anything taste fine.

We have a little dog. She’s a Boston terrier, white with black spilled over her. Her name is Sugar. I like that name. I like the way it sounds when I say it. She’s sweet, too.

Today, Mama says I can’t play with Sugar. She has to stay in the storage building behind our house because she’s in heat. She’ll only be hotter in that old building, I think.

Now, we are in the car driving along a gravel road. Sugar is running along behind us. I wonder why she isn’t in the car with us. Mama says it’s because she’s in heat and she needs some exercise. This will only make her hotter. I’m thinking, again.

We sail past small real houses and some trailer houses. I am on my knees in the backseat looking through the back window. I think we are going too fast. I think we may lose Sugar. “Please slow down, Mama,” I beg. “I can’t see Sugar! Are you sure you can see her, Mama,” I ask. I probably ask twenty times because that’s how I do it when I’m worried.

Next to Sugar, Paddy is my favorite thing. He can play outside with me and I look after him. I don’t know what we do, only that he is mine. My own dimply laughing brother! I know he is important.

Sometimes, when the wonderful sky is black and glittering and it is bedtime, my Mama will come into our room and sing to us in her pretty voice, “I’m a little teapot short and stout. Here is my handle.” She places her hand on her hip. “Here is my spout.” She throws the opposite arm out to the side and curls her hand downward. “When I get all steamed up, then I shout, just tip me over and pour me out.” We think it is the best show ever! But sometimes Daddy comes, and then we are super excited because he picks Mama up and tips her over! And they laugh and so do we, and I feel warm and safe under the dark sky stretched over us.

It is a bright sunshiny day! The kind of day that a sunbeam should feel right at home. It’s late spring and the earth is awake. Mama asks me to keep Paddy on the porch while Daddy is mowing, because it is dangerous to be close to the mower while it is running. I will, because he is my own important brother and I don’t want him to be in danger.

I smell the early summer. I see it in the open field across the road in front of me. The concrete stoop leading to our door is smooth and cool under my bare legs as the large old trees are shading us. The dark sticky highway is glistening, and the steady sound of the mower is soothing. Paddy is squirmy. Nothing is calming to him. He likes to go. He wants off the porch. I don’t want to let him off the porch. “No,” I say. But he doesn’t like no. Suddenly, the sound of the mower makes me afraid.

I hear a thud. It doesn’t sound right. I see Paddy fall. Blood is everywhere. Paddy is limp like a towel. Daddy and Mama are fighting. Blood is filling up the clean places. Mama is being loud and scared.

Now we are flying around the big curve in the mountain, heading to Batesville. Daddy is piloting Mama’s silver mustang. I am riding along with the wind. Mama is holding my bleeding brother.

I am doing what I do when I am nervous. I am talking at the speed of a sunbeam. I don’t know what it is that I am saying, and startlingly my gentle Daddy snaps at me, telling me to “shut up now!” I do. But I am still anxious. Maybe Paddy will die and it will be all my fault, because I am the big sister and a sunbeam, and I should have saved him.

We are in the waiting room. We sit on dark green soft vinyl chairs. I stare at the plain gray-green walls and then at the cool, slick, matching linoleum tiles under my feet. It smells funny. I don’t care for it. There are too many clean smells for anything to be alive in here. Does that mean Paddy is dead? I don’t ask because it is my job to stay shut up.

I notice that Mama and Daddy watch the double doors to our left and they smoke. I am too young to smoke, and I don’t think I want to, but I can watch the doors.

After a long time, the doctor pops through the doors. Now I know why we watched them. The doctor has Paddy, or he has what’s left of him. I hope there was enough left to put Paddy back together so I can still have him for my own brother. I listen. I hope. I can understand big things when I try hard. I try hard.

He says Paddy is alive, but he may or he may not be able to see when the bandages are removed. We will have to wait to know. My family is not good at waiting to know, so I shudder.

We are at home. It doesn’t smell funny here. It’s clean because Mama likes it that way, but you can smell that people live here. Paddy has patches over his eyes. I read to him. Maybe, I just make up a story to go with the pictures. I don’t know because I’m little.

I am so sorry that I let my brother get hurt. I didn’t do my job. Please God, let Paddy see and be just like he was before the rock hit him in his face. Please! I meant to do my job. I’m sorry. Will I get fired from being a Sunbeam?

It’s time to take the patches off! I hold my breath. Paddy is not holding his breath. He is too full of living for that even with patches. There is a big long scar under the bandages. It starts between his eyebrows and moves down and across the bone in his nose down to the holes he needs to breathe. I heard the big people say that it took one hundred stitches to close up the hole that the rock made.

But he can see! And now Paddy is my own dimply laughing brother with a sewn up hole in the middle of his face.

Today we’re loading some of our stuff into Mama’s Mustang. It is a 1964 and a half. I’m not sure what that means, but daddy is so proud of it and so happy that mama drives it. The story is that when my mama was in the hospital having her baby- this was before she gave him to me to be my brother- my daddy called her on the phone and said look out of the window of your room, and Mama did, and she saw a beautiful little silver sports car that Daddy had purchased special for her. I think when you make a boy, a daddy buys you a car.

We are packing her car because Mama is angry with Daddy. She is out of groceries and he is gone hunting on his parents land to get us some meat. Mama knows that we don’t have to live this way in this modern world. We’re going home to Texarkana. I am puzzled. I thought home was the place where my daddy lives, but mama says it is the place where her daddy lives.

It’s hard to be four- or am I five?

It’s good that Daddy bought Mama the car, so we could go get some groceries the modern way, from her mama and daddy.

There’s another reason that it’s good. When Mama had me, she was living in Ankara, Turkey, in the middle east with my daddy. My father worked on a military base because he was a soldier and he operated a ham radio.

Mama had never been away from home before and she had never had a baby before. She and Daddy lived in a tiny apartment away from the base where she had to wash my dirty diapers by hand, wring them out, then hang them on string strung all over the place. If she hung my diapers, or anything outside in the air, the thick coal smog would shade them so that it was as if she had never washed them at all! Then, she had to wash them all over again. And I was colicky and I cried much of the time. Mama says she felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. I guess that hurt because she cried a lot, too.

When the world comes out of the sky to sit on your own shoulders, it brings the brilliance of the sunshiny days and the deep darkness of the night too close to you. Poor Mama.

It’s a wonderful thing that the new car helped her to not be sad like she was when she had me. And Paddy came fast, too. Mama didn’t have to hurt so long and she didn’t have to lie on her back for two days with a splitting headache. I’m glad it was easier for her to have her boy baby.

We live on Jefferson Street in Texarkana now, because we are getting groceries the way you’re supposed to these days, and Mama works at JC Penny so we can have Christmas to go with our groceries.

Granny is my Mama’s mama. She’s short and mostly round, with bountiful, wavy, shiny chestnut hair- like Mama’s hair. Granny fusses with Mama, and I think it’s brave because Mamma’s strong and she’s not happy when anyone bickers with her. Granny favors the kitchen and the church, and is mostly in one place or the other. Pawpaw is her husband and Mama’s daddy. I think the ladies I call aunt and their kids belong to them, too.

Pawpaw sits on the side of his bed wearing his uniform light cotton jumpsuit. Sometimes he calls to me softly and I enter and approach him. He grins and hugs me and calls me his own Bonnie rabbit. I think he’s always worried and a little sad. I think the modern way may be too hard on him.

When Christmas finally comes, I wake up and slip into Granny’s Living room. Santa (or someone) has surely been here because on Granny’s sturdy, pretty, gold and green couch is perched a doll. The prettiest Barbie doll I have ever seen is dressed in a red velvet Christmas coat with a white fur collar. The buttons on the coat are tiny gold balls. She has blond hair like my tall grandmother, and it’s thick with pretty curls. She has large unassuming blue eyes and dense lashes- and her own shoes! My grandmother has deep blue eyes, too, and this dolly is shaped like my blond grandmother and my mama are shaped when they wear pants. I am delighted, and now my first Barbie, the one Santa delivered to our little white and green house with her dressed in only a short yellow nightie, will have a friend with a coat she can borrow.

My daddy has come to Jefferson Street to visit. He and my mama are in the bathroom around the corner from the kitchen and off the hall to the right. Daddy is sitting on the countertop and Mama is standing across from him, leaning on the shower wall. Daddy is using both hands to grip the speckled Formica counter and he”s crying. Mama has her arms loosely crossed and appears amused- casual. There’s something wrong with the picture and I don’t know what it is. I’m worried and my head hurts. I wander away to somewhere else. Hopefully, somewhere less complicated…

(God-willing, there is more to come.)

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Scripturally Speaking

Thoughts Of A Wondering Christian