It's Wednesday

Thanksgiving week is my favorite week of the calendar year.  While beginnings, in general, are not my favorite; think, new job, new school, new church, new neighborhood, this beginning is overflowing with cherished treasure.  Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday season and we do a bang up job for the next 6 weeks, but in its own right, this holiday filled with tantalizing aromas and all day work, is at the top of my list.

Wednesday is the day we get into full swing. As every established cook knows, this is the day devoted to the baking and the prep work of the meal itself. You know, those highly sought after in-law gigs, (like the putting away of the leftovers),  it's chopping veggies and peeling potatoes.  Wednesday is cheerfully leaving the office behind knowing much of the country is doing the same.  Goodwill is in the air despite our best efforts to smother it with ill tidings.

Wednesday.  

I fussed in my kitchen for several hours this evening. I cranked out two pies (which is a lot for 4 people, but I believe in us) set the table, made the sweet potato casserole, and made dinner before the dinner. (This is the only downside to Wednesday...we need to eat before we eat.). Yes, I make my own crust and you can too - get a food processor.  As I rolled out dough, chopped veggies, and peeled potatoes, these holiday tasks handed down from generation to generation that are preserved by some even in this day, I felt a strong connection to those I have loved. 

I thought about things my Grandmas or Great- Grandmas would have had on the menu when I was a child.  I thought about what my mother or step-mother would be making today. I thought about my siblings and aunties and cousins.  So many people all gathering in the center of the home to produce a meal that is forever remembered and celebrated through memory. My grandkids might one day be doing this very thing the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  "This is what Grandma Angela would make," they will say, and it will be as if I am there with them, measuring flour and humming a seasonal tune. 

Traditions are important to the fabric of our lives, it helps us to know who we are, and it helps to define who we become.  We get to pick and choose what we will keep from our heritage and what we will create for the future, all the while knowing that at some point it becomes someone else's heritage. I am a true traditionalist, and that is something I kept from my heritage. I make no apologies for appreciating being a wife and mother, for wanting a house full of people at the holidays, for making my own pie crust, and for knowing turkey should be roasted in an oven the way God intended.  Yet, while in my heart, I feel traditions strongly, I have, surprisingly, learned to yield.  I don't get a house full of people. I don't always cook my turkey in an oven. I don't, gasp, always cook my own Thanksgiving meal.  That's right - on some occasions - I've let Cracker Barrel do it for me. I would drive to the restaurant, load up the goodies, and heat it in the oven, in order to spend more time with my earthly treasures. 

If I can be so frank, the aging of my children is hitting me so hard in recent months. The other day, those two guys took the car to get a safety inspection and ate dinner at Chick Fil A.  I made dinner and no one was eating, and it felt so surreal. It's a new phase and these earthly treasures of mine are almost adult men, which means I will eat at McDonalds for Thanksgiving if it means I get to spend precious minutes soaking up their humor (these guys are funny), their crazy 20's hair, their opinions, and the way..."love you, Mom," rolls so easily off their tongue.   

I have spent many Thanksgiving weeks as a married woman and homemaker, yet they seem to have passed like a vapor.  I made a heritage for my kids without realizing in the day to day it was happening.  They will not be traditionalists in the way that I am because our life as a family was created differently.  But, they will know what love is; they will know who God is (what they decide to do with Him will be their own choice); they will know the value of family, no matter the size of the gathering; and they will know the importance of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. 

On Wednesday, we take out our rolling pin, the flour, the spices and we open a window to yesterday.  

Traditionalist or not, I hope Wednesday finds you with good memories; and, if not, I hope that today you have the courage to create new ones. Create something new and then it can become tradition, and then...heritage.

This is the magic of Thanksgiving week - full of promise and possibility.  

Heaven and Nature

Gentle Readers....

I see that I have written in this blog only a few times this year.  I would have to say that it is because I have been lost.  Tolkien said, "not all who wander are lost," and that is true; but, sometimes, we wander because we are.  In my case, the latter applies.  I gave up writing because it does not behoove anyone to beat a dead horse and my heart was not able to find excitement, nor peace, in the humdrum of mere existence.  I hope Jesus understands when we are merely existing.  I hope He knows that we still hold this life in a tight clutch even when we wonder if, or when, the sun will warm our face once again.  Now. Let me clear that the sun in Texas is eternal, so this is rather a metaphorical reference.  

If we're the oldest of friends or the newest of acquaintances,  I welcome you back to this space where I share stories, my life, and my love of God and family.  In this space, I like to imagine we are raising a mug of tea and pouring ourselves out as only good friends can. 

On that note, my big Texas life is starting its third year.  Two full years have come and gone on Harvey Penick....  Dear ones, I don't want to be melodramatic, but it has been a trial of the soul.  You might remember how I shut myself in the water closet a time or two, and let all the life force drain from me.  A person can only take so much, and change is not for me.   In fact, I've said it more than once, and I might still be saying it as of today, "The third time is the last; I will not survive another uprooting and relocation." Well, I'm sure I will physically survive but my heart will not go on and on, and what is a life without a heart? I ask.  

I lost a good chunk of myself in this move. When I say I was lost, I really mean that. It has been two years of going through the motions of life with no heart.  I work at the same company as my husband and my job has overwhelmed my life. It's always present and I have not particularly liked it, but there seemed to be no escape hatch. We talk about work at work. We talk about work in the evening.  We talk about work on the weekends. Mostly we talk about how I can process being miserable. I have no person.  I have no outlet. I have no other resource but my husband.  18 years ago, when we made vows to each other, I think God was thinking of this dark age and He sprinkled extra measures of mercy and grace in Ryan, and in me, He affirmed a foundation of faith.  No matter how many times I have murmured, Ryan has unwaveringly met me in that arena, without complaint.  No matter how my soul has chafed and wept bitterly, of loss and loneliness, or, more frankly, bone dry and resoundingly empty, God has met me in that arena.  I keep coming back, lifting my empty cup, and my husband and God pour back into my heart.  

And then....as it always does...as I know it always will...signs of new life spring from the dry, parched ground. 

I might finally feel a little more at home at work, like maybe I can belong here. I planned a potluck next week and it's bringing people together. (My favorite thing. )

I did the hard thing of becoming a volunteer in a place where I knew no one, and it didn't go well, but I am going back next month, because life is out there in the uncomfortable places. 

I have been inviting people for dinner recently, and it's been well received. One person told me this was their first invitation to someone's home in 24 years. I can't even comprehend that statement, but the joy I felt in being part of changing that, was immeasurable. 

People. It's what I do.  It is my first and true passion...be with people and connect them to each other, and hopefully, to Jesus. It isn't easy and quick, it takes so much more time than you might think to put down roots.  It's painstaking. Sometimes we start to root in an unsafe place and we have to try again in a new spot. It's agonizing. Two to three years is really the tested timeline.

What I know and trust is that God who is full of mercy, looks down from heaven on Angela muddling through and He says, "This one is headstrong, and she is sometimes misguided, but I have a place for her to bloom and I will plant her just so and water the ground beneath her feet. Purpose will I give her and strength to see it done." And, wouldn't you know it, Angela steps back and looks on in wonder at what is unfolding. Heaven. And nature. 

 It's indeed how it happens...  Just like....once upon a time...

I am always humbled when I stop and think of how the Lord orders my steps.  How patient He is with  my shortsightedness. I fail often to see the big picture.  The big picture is this....God is writing a story through all of human history and He has a couple paragraphs in which I am included. In joy or in sorrow, heaven and nature come together to pen God's love letter to the world. 

Rejoice. Rejoice. Glory to God, hallelujah.

Heaven and nature singing together. 

Forever and ever. Gloria.