May I Introduce...The V-Day Ghost and her Goblins

I love, LOVE Valentine's Day. With the exception of Christmas, it is my favorite holiday. There is just something about the idea of a day set aside, simply to celebrate love. There is no other day of the year when you can see a boy leading a blindfolded girl through a hotel lobby and think, "Oh, how sweet!" When this day arrives, I feel like I suddenly have license to be as blatant with my affection as I want to be. When you pair my love for the day, with my love for surprises, the product is what I like to call the V-Day Ghost.

The ghost originated in February of 2003, when I was engaged to a medical student who had HUGE tests on Valentines day. Refusing to allow my only V-Day as an engaged girl to be wasted, I skipped all my classes, drove to Birmingham and left a series of elaborate signs, embarrassing gifts, and baked goods all along this poor, unsuspecting medical student's trail. On the front porch when he left the house, outside his testing room, on his car....EVERYWHERE he went he was showered with (embarrassing) signs of my ardent affection. I remember Whitney saying, "It's a good thing you've already got that ring, because if this had happened before you caught him, he would definitely be running away as fast as he could!"

So, every year as the big day approaches, I start to scheme and Jeremiah starts to worry. Every year he warns me of things that really are NOT appropriate, and the biggest area he's been afraid that the ghost would strike, is the operating room. Guess where I got him this year?!! I talked to an OR nurse that's a good friend of his, and I gave her a CD of Jeremiah singing a very beautiful, but very lovey love-song that he wrote. He was standing at the table, cutting away when he heard himself come blaring over the speakers. OH, I wish I could have seen his face! The staff wouldn't turn it off and they listened to a few more songs on his CD, before they finally sucummbed to his pleadings for mercy.

I also got the help of my little goblins, and we shoe-polished his car and wrapped pink and white streamers around it. I don't know if you can tell in the picture above, but there is a very strict dress code for a Valentine's ghost, and the goblins, on V-Day. Only shades of pink, purple and red are allowed, and the crazier the better. My pants are actually purple below that crazy sweater and pink turtle-neck. Pace is wearing a red Valentines jumper, paired with a pink bow, red galoshes, and some fancy beads we bought just for the occasion. Poor Mary Aplin never got out of her pink striped PJs in the craziness of the day, and she is rocking that red shawl if I do say so myself.

Pace and I baked heart-shaped cream cheese and chocolate brownies to deliver to her friends across the street. Natalie and Caroline were also embracing the Valentines spirit in some very sassy, heart-covered pants. No, Mary Aplin did not fall off the swing, but it was close.

Finally, Jeremiah had some surprises of his own on our big love day. I got home around midnight on Valentine's Eve, and I walked in the door to find our dining room table decorated with rosebuds and camelias from our own yard. He had laid a red tablecloth, brought out our crystal, bought pink toile plates with red silverware, placed candles in a sweet circle within the flowers, strapped heart-shaped balloons to our chairs and stocked the refrigerator with everything needed for a steak dinner for two. While he didn't get home from a long day in the OR until around 8, we were able to sit down to a quiet meal, with both of our little goblins tucked soundly in their beds, and talk about the fun of loving each other.

The Chasm

After you say goodbye to someone who you love as much as your own life, you begin to categorize the memories that come. The memories of their smile, their love, their everyday person, are something like a gentle rolling into a valley of your life. You dip in for a moment, you feel the dull ache, but then you glide back out--looking over your shoulder for a moment to smile wanly at what you miss. However, the memories of what they said at a particular moment, or how excited they were when they gave you a certain gift, or the warmth of their arms around you at a specific moment of sadness--these specific memories that make it seem as though they were by your side only a moment ago--are the ones that feel like a gaping chasm opening up in your life. It rips open before you, re-shaping the foundation of all you've assumed was normal, and you plunge in deep. As you hurtle through the air you find yourself grasping desperately around you, wanting to cling, as if for life, to the ones who've been left behind.

*This is ABryanPhoto

Can We Talk About My Morning?

Before I tell you about my morning, let me start you back at last night. My neighbor's church has been having an AMAZING pastoral counselor teaching a marriage workshop on Wednesday nights. Jeremiah and I have been enjoying it, and we invited Ashley and Brett to come "get fixed" (as we like to call it) with us. Gordon had been teaching us about how marriage is not about two good people, it's about one good God. This guy is deep and he is passionate about what he's saying. Tears have been shed on more than one occasion. Suddenly, he says that he wants to read a quote, and he warns us that it's kind of hard to read out loud in a group. I look down at my paper, like a good student, to better follow what he's saying...I can't even bear to type the exact quote, but it involved the word copulate and described the position and manner in which most primates perform that act. I lost it, I didn't hear the rest of the quote, which was really making a great point about the way we are the only primates God created to "copulate" face to face, heart to heart yada yada yada. I'm sorry, but are any of you laughing? Should I have been prepared, in front of God and my Sunday school friends, to hear those words? I had one of those sputtering noises pass between my lips as all my air escaped at once. I tucked my head down, closed my eyes, pursed my lips together as hard as they would go, and shook violently with supressed laughter. Then, I noticed that Ashley was doing the same thing on one side, and pretty soon Jeremiah had joined in on the other. I contemplated making a run out of the room, since I could feel no end in sight, but that would have been even more humiliating. I tried to think about sad things, I even used Mom, but then I just thought how hard she would be laughing too and it got worse. I knew if I made eye contact with Ashley or Jeremiah then that LOUD bubble of laughter would come spitting out for sure. I felt like a 13 year old boy. It was so bad and so obvious, that Gordon actually came up to Jeremiah and I after class to ask us about it! I wish you could have seen how red our faces got. We apologized and tried to quickly change the subject to how great his teaching had been, but I knew he really wanted to tell us that it was going to be hard to have a beautful marriage, with the maturity level of a couple of 7th graders.

Fast forward to midnight, when Mary Aplin wakes up for her first feeding. She eats and as I am putting her back to sleep I notice how cold our house is. We have been having a warm spell, which had obviously ended, and I realized that I needed to turn the heat back on. 4:15 am, Jeremiah wakes me up complaining about how freezing he is. I tell him that I turned the heat on, but we get up and there is frigid air blowing out of the vent. Partly due to Jeremiah's noisy complaining, Mary Aplin decides it's time for meal two. So, I'm feeding as Jeremiah heads down to the basement to "check on things." I don't know why, but Jeremiah can't stand to do projects by himself. This is normally OK, but at 4:30 in the morning when I am trying to nurse in the freezing cold bed, fretting over the cold, bald head of my 3 month old, it is not the time to yell for me to "Throw me a lighter!", nurse nurse "Turn the heat on!" nurse nurse "Wait, no, turn it off!" nurse nurse. He finally comes back upstairs with the bad news that our pilot light won't stay lit, and our 60 degree house is not getting warmer any time soon.

So, I turn off our whirring fans/noisemakers, zip M'Apples up in a fuzzy bunting, and make sure Pace is under her quilt. Then, Jeremiah makes the next fatal mistake. He finds a big down comforter and throws it across our bed. We snuggle in close, and things are starting to look up when I hear, "I'm itching! Are you itching?! There must be fleas on this thing!" he says as he hurls it off the bed. The damage has been done, and Jeremiah suggests that we just get up and eat breakfast.

If you've been reading you know Jeremiah is ALWAYS willing to build a fire, and that apparently includes 5am. Jeremiah is still complaining about how cold he is and I finally snapped that I wasn't going to listen to any more complaints unless he put some clothes on! He does that a lot, complains about being cold while he sits there half dressed. I go and find some warm PJs for him, since I know he won't do it himself, and we sit with our feet basically in the fire and eat breakfast.

It was sweet for a while. We had a devotion and prayed together (although I laughed because Jeremiah only prayed for two things 1-that God would kill the fleas in our bed and 2-that the bill for the heater would not be too high :)), and then parted to start our days. I had two objectives this morning and they were to cook dinner for our neighbors who recently had a baby and to dust. Which would you chose at 6:15? You're right--baking! So I pulled out my recipe for chocolate caramel bars and got going. At around 6:45, towards the end of my bars, I see that I am supposed to have evaporated milk. Ughh! I call my neighbor, thinking surely she is up, and her husband sweetly informs me that he is the only one awake so far, but he will be happy to go and see if they have any evaporated milk. I feel sure that this call confirmed what he was thinking after the marriage workshop last night, "This girl is nuts, and I'm not sure I should let my wife be friends with her!"

However, at 7 Lauren called to inform me that the milk was on our doorstep (notice that she--and her girls--we no longer asleep after my early call). I was laughing with her about our morning as I walked to the door and found the room was chokingly filled with smoke from our unattended fire. I was cold. I was tired, and Pace and Mary Aplin both started crying. Talk about a morning!

Well, That Was Hard.

I went home for the first time this weekend, and it was pretty hard. The weekend started when I woke Pace up Friday morning, telling her we needed to pack and get ready to go to Dothan. What were her first words after hearing 'Dothan'? "We're going to see BEBE!!" I told her no, remember Bebe is in Heaven. To which she responded, "But, we're going to see her soon--OK?" Oh, it just broke my heart. Partly because I had been struggling with the same problem for the past couple days. Yes, I was going home, but no Mom would not be there. It was hard to reconcile that reality with my longing.

I started laughing and crying when she asked about seeing her soon, because she was right. That was what we both needed to focus on. Then something really beautiful happened. Pace, seeing the tears, bent forward and kissed the closest thing she could reach--my knees--standing beside her bed. Then she asked, "You sad Mommy?" I told her that I was, but I really shouldn't be because Bebe was having so much fun playing with Jesus. Then Pace said something that I haven't heard her say since we were claiming Mom's healing. She smiled that big, squinty-eyed grin of hers and yelled, "Hallelujah!" I was shocked. Why did she look into my crying face, as I tried to tell myself to be comforted about where Mom was and still become filled with a joyful thanksgiving to God?! Her spirit baffles me so often, as I see her speaking a truth that I have not been able to grasp. I believe God speaks to me through her in times like these, and it is a sweet message.

So, that was how it started, but there were other difficulties in store. First was arriving home. Dad was still at work, Kendall was in her room getting ready for her Friday night funnities, and the rest of the house was pretty much dark. Mom used to light lamps in all the rooms that turned dark corners into cozy nooks. She was usually standing at the kitchen window when we pulled up, ready to make a squealing run into the garage and get her hands on Pace. There used to be some disorder she was making excuses for and some meal she was anxious to get us to. Instead, the house was dark, clean, quiet, and missing the joy that emmanated from her. It was hard.

By all standards it was a fun weekend. Friday night, Mrs. Linda cooked an amazing steak dinner and Dad came out to eat with us. Saturday, Grandma and I planned and cut out Easter dresses for the girls. That afternoon, I got to take a horseback ride on little Hope with Jeremiah, Dad, Dr. Maddox and Tommy. Sunday, I got to play matron (don't you hate that word!) of honor at a bridal shower for my best friend. It was fun, but to me she was blatantly missing from each event.

"People" have told me that the hardest part would be those moments when I pick up the phone to call her and realized I couldn't or expected to see her somewhere and then realized she wasn't going to show up. It may change, but so far I haven't struggled with that at all. I am just so aware of her absence all the time, that I can't imagine making one of those mis-steps. While we ate Friday night, I wished she could be sharing it with us. While I thumbed through her smocking placates, I found a day gown she'd cut out and had pleated but would never complete. While Grandma and I talked about how cute the girls' matching dresses would be, I felt like I was infringing on the job Mom should be doing. When I saw Dad riding horses, I thought about how happy it had made me to see them riding together. Finally, when I was at that bridal shower, listing Whitney's gifts as she opened them, my handwriting seemed to morph from mine to hers before my eyes, and I could see the lists she'd made of my wedding gifts and even the abbreviations she'd used.

I only cried twice, but the weekend was difficult. I had fun, but everything was tinted by her absence. I remembered to claim Pace's "Hallelujah," but I still struggled with feeling like Jesus had been a little bit selfish. I miss her and sometimes, it's difficult.

Don't You Have 2 Kids or Something?

I feel like I have neglected to tell you all about my real life, in the desire to share with you all that is happening in my heart. While Mom is a constant presence in my soul, there are two other little girls who keep me adequately distracted.

Mary Aplin: Oh what a sweetheart she is! She is much more laid back than Pace was at her age. Content to lie on her back and watch her mobile, or sit in her vibrating seat while Pace kisses all over her, or just to be carried around on my hip like a rag doll while I run from chore to chore. When she gets fussy, I just lay her down in her crib and she goes to sleep. I am not saying that she doesn't have her moments, but for the most part, she has been an angel.

There were a couple of weeks in November (when I first got to Dothan to be with Mom), where Mary Aplin had to be bounced every waking moment. It was so bad that one of Mom's friends showed up at our house with one of those giant exercise balls so that I could at least be partially seated while bouncing. Then one day, someone suggested laying her in the bed instead of bouncing, "Maybe she's just tired," they said. More as an act of disgust, to show them just how bad she'd cry if I laid her down, I did it. Lo and behold, she stuck her thumb in her mouth, closed her little eyes and suckled herself to sleep. I was awestruck! It just goes against every ounce of reason to think that if a baby is on the verge of crying while you work as hard as you can to bounce them in the perfect manner, that stopping the work--taking the easy way out--would lead to the cessation of crying. Ever since, when she gets fussy, I just lay her down. Poor Pace, I don't think I ever tried that with her. She spent her babyhood seeing the world as from a very rough sea passage :)

M'Apples (as she has been lovingly nicknamed), very freely shares the adorable toothless grin God has given her. She has a fair amount of patience with all of the attention her big sister feels the need to cover her with. She can roll over from her tummy to her back, and if I nibble on her, she will even giggle out loud.

Pace:
Two, two, two!!! Those are the first words that come to mind when I think of Pace at this stage. She is in to everything and has a fiery sense of independence. "No, Mommy, I can do it myself!" I hear this all day. Anything I offer her is NOT what she wants--I have even tried brownies. It has been frustrating dealing with this need to be two, but it has gradually gotten better in the last week (though not without a lot of spankings). I think that not only was she toying with her twoness, she was also spoiled ROTTEN from all the constant attention she got during our 8 weeks in Dothan.

Then there is potty training. Oh the horrors!!! It deserves its own blog, so I'll just spare you the details of how my life is FILLED with poo, until another day.

On a more positive note :), she really does have my heart. To see a baby grow from a little doll to a talking, moving, playing, thinking person is a the most fun thing I have ever experienced. I feel like Jeremiah and I are constantly trying to hide our laughs as she comes up with more crazy sayings. We were saying her prayers with her at bedtime, and the first thing she thanked Jesus for was cupcakes, followed by b'sghetti, and only then was she thankful for Mommy and Daddy.


She talks about Bebe (that's Mom) a good bit, and this morning I heard her saying to Mary Aplin, "Now, I need to have a little talk with you, sister. Bebe is in heaven with Jesus and you can't see her anymore, but we're goin' to see her later, OK?" In a fit of desperation, to try to keep me from putting her socks and shoes on, she said, "Mommy, Bebe doesn't wear socks, she just wears flip-flops!"

Also, Pace could not love her baby sister any more than she does. She calls her "sister" a lot, and last week she asked me to kneel down so that she could give her a hug. I did, and as M'Apples head was resting on her chest she looked at me and said, "My sister lives in my heart." Is that the sweetest thing you've ever heard?! I have also heard her telling Mary Aplin that she is her "beeest friend."

Pace imitates everything I do (talk about an accountability partner!), and this includes all the little names and oohies I coo at Mary Aplin. She loves to tickle her face and say, "Hey little precious! I love you. We are so proud of you, sweet girl!" It is adorable to see them love each other...I just hope it never fades.

I Hate Myself

Why do I hate myself? Because I feel like I've sounded like a spoiled brat to a sweet girl whose home-literally-is the Pine Lake Motel. She really says it best in her blog: http://www.pinelakemotel.blogspot.com
I want to genuinely apologize for belittling something that is rare in this country--a hardworking American family, taking pride in what God has entrusted them with. I am really sorry, I just never thought about the fact that it belonged to somebody. What nobody has said on either blog, is that the Pinelake has undergone a renovation since those pictures I posted on my blog. They painted the brick and added trusses made of thick dark wood. It truly looks good, but I didn't add that in my first blog (because it seemed funnier not to clarify).

Second, about the whole Altar Call "debate" going on in the comments: I was not trying to put up an argument for or against having altar calls in church service. I, honestly, don't know where I stand on that issue. I think a little brotherly Christian discussion is good, as long as we all know that it's not what matters at the end of the day. Spar on if you need to, but just keep it nice (like you have...I think). I actually had somebody walk up to me and, laughingly say, "Well you USED to be Baptist."

Whew! My first controversy and it all happened in the same day. I guess when you put "stuff" out there, you have to be willing to take what comes back to you :)

Altar Call

I've been a Christian for a long time and a Baptist even longer. Therefore, I have been present at a LOT of altar calls. I guess you all know what those are...the time when the preacher, at the end of the service, calls for anyone who would like to make a public profession of faith to come forward (people also go down to just kneel at the altar and pray, or ask the preacher questions, or join the church...). Basically, they all end with, "If the Lord's leading, won't you come today."

I think it may be a requirement in the Baptist church to do this after every meeting. Jeremiah's grandfather was a Baptist preacher, and they even did it at his funeral! While I think that they are a good idea, there have definitely been revivals or seminars I've attended where I felt like the speaker basically guilted half the congregation to come forward :). I say all that to tell you, that oftentimes the preacher will ask anyone who has made a decision to pray with him, and then he'll proceed to pray a prayer that ends with you being a believer. I pray that prayer EVERY time. Then they usually ask you to raise your hand or come forward if you prayed it, and I never do. You see, while I've had the Holy Spirit living in me for 17 years or so, I felt like it never hurt to ask Him to come in one more time. When somebody starts saying, "If you have ANY doubt that if you died driving home from here tonight, you would find yourself in the presence of the Lord, then you need to pray this prayer with me right now."

That's some pressure, isn't it? ANY DOUBT...ANY. Well, I am here to confess that I sometimes have felt doubt. Can this all really be real? Doesn't it sound a little too good to be true, that the King of the Universe died a gruesome death, just so that I could spend eternity with him? I love magic and mystery, but I spend so much time telling myself that the books I read aren't real, so could the Bible just be another elaborate story? These questions have never plagued me, but I have thought them. Therefore, when that preacher has said ANY DOUBT, I have always been ready to add a little more security to my promise.

Then, Mom. I always thought that if God chose to take Mom, I would really start to struggle with those questions that have always wanted to creep into my heart. If one of my rocks of faith was wrong, what would happen to my own faith? I am here to proclaim to you that the exact opposite of what I believed would happen, has happened. Our God is beautiful and mysterious, we can never understand His ways, but He is also all-knowing. I believe that if he had healed Mom, miraculously, like I so desperately begged Him to do, then I would have had a quick fix. An adrenaline rush that probably would have lasted for a year or so, followed by a truly awesome story to share with others for the rest of my life. Now, those who saw the miracle first-hand would have hopefully believed, but do you think that every person I shared her story with on the street would have believed? To believe in a God who does miracles, you must first BELIEVE in God. My testimony could never be as convincing as the argument He's already made for himself in His word.

So, that was the hypothetical, but what's the reality? The reality is that I sat in a church service last week, and I heard the guilt trip shpill at the end, and for the first time my heart didn't quaver. A smile came across my face, and I thanked Jesus that I didn't have to wonder any more. He has carried me through a raging fire, but He showed me how to tuck my face into the hollow of his neck, to shield me til we reached the other side. He's put my feet back on the ground, but he's still holding both of my hands and coaxing me forward. He's become so real in my every-day, that I don't have to be immersed in His word or prayer to feel His presence. He is real. He is dwelling within me. He has shown himself to be enough no matter how hot the fire. And now I can smile through those altar calls.