Spring in the South

I don't think I ever feel more deeply "southern" than when I'm sitting on my back porch. I think a porch brings to mind lazy days, ice tea, bare feet, wicker, ceiling fans turning slowly in the breeze, and of course, gossip.

Bless their hearts.

I was always a tree climber and sitter when I was a kid, and God has sweetly allowed me to have a back porch that sits up in the trees.

I feel like I have my own tree house.

It's not a big porch, but it's big enough for a little trickling pond, lots of plants, and a visiting bird  now and then.

If I'm quiet and still enough, birds will alight within touching distance. It seems once they get used to you being there, they aren't very afraid.

I've seen a Scarlet Tanager  that just about made me faint. And Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. And humming birds, of course.

I hear the cry of the Cooper's Hawk, the caw of the Crow, the laugh of the Piliated Woodpecker, and the sough of the breeze in the trees.

I smell the forest.

Our God Our Father is everywhere. I can read His Holy Word on that porch and hear Him clearer than anywhere else.

I itch for warm weather so I can get out there to "sit a spell", and I stay until fall gets so cold I have to come in and light a fire instead.

But if you are bored or lonely, come on over. We'll sit a spell, drink some tea and listen. You can take off your shoes, lean back and do nothing.

You know you want to. You know you need it.

Bless your heart.

Speaking of Time Travel...

I have always been fascinated with time travel. I read a book in fourth grade (which is still my favorite book) and it involved time travel.

I read every book of fiction I can get my hands on about time travel. Some of them are really, really good books.

According to quantum physics (maybe, I don't claim I'm right), Time is a straight line, and if you could stand outside of it, you could see everything going on at the same time - past, present and future.

Warning: Rabbit trail - That sort of explains how we can have free will and God still know everything that we will do. He stands outside of time, and if He is looking down on time, so to speak, He could see it all occurring.

Anyway, in theory, if one could learn how to manipulate time, we could travel within it. That could come in really handy if we go off the grid.

'Off The Grid' is the new catch phrase (to me, anyway). It means everything technical will collapse and your cell phone will become a paper weight and your computer will be even more useless than it is now, if you can believe that.

But if we go off the grid and some nerd is bored so badly because of this he figures out time travel, we could go back and reminisce about what it feels like to have air conditioning when it's 90 degrees outside and all your bedrooms are upstairs.

I've always thought it would be neat if I could go back and watch my grandfather as a child, living close to where I live right now. He might have even walked this land. I know the Cherokee did, we found an arrowhead.

Wouldn't it be fun to see how the forests here looked before everyone began chopping them down?

Or watch your daddy ask your mother to marry him?

Or see yourself as a newborn?

Of course, if we could travel back, we could also travel forward. But I ain't too keen on that. I think the future needs to stay cloaked in mystery unless the good Lord shows us something.

And when He does that, it always means some hard work for me.

But maybe the most useful thing to do with time travel would be to have the opportunity to say I love you, or I'm sorry when you didn't at the time you should  have.

So, just in case time travel never shakes down, may I take a moment to say to those near and dear to me: I love you.

And if I've ever hurt you, I am sorry.

Thinking about My Grandfather

I've been going through old pictures at my Mother's, and ran across several I don't recall ever seeing.

Of course, when you are young, you look but  you don't really see. I imagine that's the case.

One of the pictures is my grandfather in his World War I uniform. These are the things I know about him while he was in this war:

He was a sharp shooter.
He was trapped in the Argonne Forest in France with nothing to eat for quite a while.
He was also at sea when they ran out of food and ate what they could catch. (If he started into our house and smelled fish cooking or that had been cooked, he turned around without a word and left)

I barely know these facts, because he did not talk about the war to me. I think in his later years (he lived to be eighty-seven), he talked about it some with other soldiers of time past and a bit to my brothers.

What else do I know about him?

Well, he was born here in this county in 1895, and his great-grandfather owned over ten thousand acres. (My house resides on some of this land, but not because I inherited it). His great-grandfather also owned twelve slaves to help farm the land. I was embarrassed when I found this out a few years ago, but there ain't much I can do about it. He was either Irish or Scots, depending on if you are reading about the crest, the name, or where a book said he came from. His wife was Dutch. He died in this county in 1864.

When my grandfather became a young man he wanted his part of the inheritance because he did not want to farm. He bought a great deal of land in town and ran a general store, which was really a grocery store.

I've heard some really sweet stories about his childhood, some I used in "Out on a Limb of the Family Tree".

He had several brothers and sisters, he was somewhere in the middle. His mother was from a neighboring county and I've been told she was half Scots and half Cherokee.

He began courting my grandmother before he went to war, came back, courted her some more and they married. She was born in 1900. Her family came out of North Carolina down into Georgia and were from Scots/Irish decent also. Her mother was half Cherokee.

Apparently  he was a very stern father, and from what my daddy told me, would be accused of child abuse by today's standards.

But when he was my grandfather, it was quite a different story. He was gentle, loving and kind, and I truly thought he was the perfect man.

I know one of his brothers was murdered up north, where he had gone to find work. I also know my grandfather and some others went up north to dole out justice, just in case it wasn't going to be done. I understand they were successful.

I've also been told he joined the army because he had killed a man who was stealing their horses.

Trying to put those two men together in my mind to make up the man I knew as my grandfather is nigh to impossible for me. I can't imagine him being cruel to his children, or killing another man - even in war - which he obviously did.

In World War I it was  hand to hand, eye to eye, not from some far away plane or pushing a button or dropping a bomb.

But for me, he was the  man that told me stories while he picked beans, let me name the cats and puppies and "help" with the baby chicks and gather eggs and sleep late as a teenager, even though he didn't believe in it.

He's the one who took me to church and showed me a real man read the Bible and studied over it and prayed out loud.

He's the man who showed me how to love a wife, baby her, please her, cook side by side, clean side by side, worship side by side.

He suffered a lot the hours before his death. He begged God to take him, to end his suffering quickly.

And God finally took him home.

Do I believe I'll see my grandfather again?

You betcha.

Do I think he paid for wrong he had done while here? I think we all have consequences in our lives, good and bad, even when we are forgiven by those we love and by our God.

Maybe he mellowed with age to change into the man I knew. Or maybe he was convicted of some of the harshness he displayed in his early adulthood.

Or maybe he never saw anything wrong in his behavior, as he was a part of the Victorian era where children were treated quite differently than they are treated today.

I don't know.

But I still miss him, all the time. And he's been gone almost thirty-one years.

I imagine  he'll be one of the first to greet me with a grin and a big old hug.

Some days, I just can't wait.

They Say God Doesn't Give You More Than You Can Handle

This is a phrase that has become very popular in the past few years. I've seen Mother Teresa given credit for it, and maybe she did say it first. The rest of the line is "but I wish He didn't trust me so much." It sounds like, if she did say it, she was joking a little.

But as far as I can find, it isn't particularly biblical.

And I don't like it much, because I don't think it's exactly true.

First of all, it suggests that God gives us bad stuff to see if we can handle it.

He doesn't.

I'll be the first to tell you He allows bad stuff in our lives.

We live in a fallen world because we chose our own will over God's will, and that's the consequence of where we are in history. The Bible says it rains on the just and the unjust. All of us will get wet once in a while. There's been times I was sure I was drowning.

And God certainly does test His children. But that isn't to see how much you can handle, rather that is a test of your faith. Do you trust Him? Will you obey Him? And, if you fail the test, you get to take it again. And again. And again.

But God never tempts you. Temptation only comes from Satan. And when  you submit to the temptation old Satan is one happy camper.

Even if your get forgiveness and repent, that is, decide to turn away from whatever that temptation was and never do it again, there still are consequences. God rarely takes those away.

Of course you are going to have more than you can handle in your life. Probably more than once.

That's where God comes in.

He says He is strong where we are weak. He wants to work in us with our weakness so that when His strength prevails through us it glorifies Him.

That's why we are here, after all.

So next time you are in a place where you don't think you can handle it, think about turning to Your Father. He's always eager to lend a Hand.

I No Longer Control My Life

I no longer control my life.
Pain tells me: Get up! Go to bed! Stop walking! Stop sitting! Stop standing!

Awakened in the middle of the night by a roaring, raging beast,
Only to be corralled by chemical relief,
Becomes a slumbering dragon breathing slow fire.
Waiting till I can be caught off guard, it pounces again, attacking.

But Saints called down the  Word of God.
An avenging angel stepped forward.
He guards the place that is really me,
And allows no demons near.

With strong arms 'cross his mighty chest,
And wings unfurled, at rest,
He says: "This place belongs to the Almighty,
You will not enter in."

In this refuge full of serenity's light,
I float upon living waters.
Encased in purity, love and peace,
My spirit rests within.

So, though the fire and thunderstorm of pain
Can, rumbling, wake me from my sleep,
Its lightening flashes cannot burn the me within
That's in my Father's keep.

I fiercely fight the pain with prayer,
For those I love need covered.
Lost sleep is not for ought
If graced by Holy conversation.

It soothes my soul and gives drink to thirst,
Where tranquil whispers sweeten
Darkness. Shadowed deep with softly sung
Lullabies from God.


by: kathi harper hill

Where The Rain Begins

Which, by the way sounds like a really neat title to a book. Remember that for me, will ya? I might use it someday.

When I was a kid, maybe nine years old or so, we had a very hot, very dry, summer. My granddaddy had a garden, and it was a good sized one.

He and my grandmother had retired and moved to the country after selling the grocery store, and the farmer in him re-blossomed, I guess.

He had a garden up until the year he died, at age eighty-seven, even though he couldn't stoop anymore. He just used an old potato sack to put his  knees on, and crawled from plant to plant to weed.

Anyway, there had been prayers sent up on a daily basis for the Lord to send rain to water the garden, and all one could do after that was wait.

One afternoon I was playing in their backyard when a dark cloud came up. I could hear thunder, but could still see the sun shining too. I stood up and walked to the edge of the yard, right where the garden commenced.

It started raining. Not on me in the yard, but in the garden, right in front of me.

I would stick my arm out and let the rain fall on my hand, and my arm would stay dry.

It did this for about ten minutes, then slowly tapered off, the cloud spent.

Now, I know rain starts and stops somewhere, everytime. It has to. And I've seen pavement be suddenly dry (or wet). And I've 'run into a rain' in a car, driving in and out of it.

But this particular rain was a very elementary lesson to a little girl.

Sometimes God gives you exactly what you ask for.

Nothing more, nothing less.