Team Francis

I admit it freely. This Mennonite lady is a serious fan of Pope Francis. 

Regardless of one's personal beliefs, his visit to our area has been a gift. Road closures and wall-to-wall media coverage are an easy trade for the kind of benevolent prodding, arresting compassion and general goodwill that man carried with him in his sporty little Fiat. 

Even from the vantage point of my couch, thousands of people sharing communion on the Philadelphia parkway was one of the most beautiful things I have ever observed. I sat spellbound with a cat on my lap and just let those unchecked tears fall. It gave me a glimpse of heaven. 

I love the gentle way this man of God turns the world on its ear, honoring the disenfranchised and reminding those in our society who are blessed (with more than they could ever honestly need) to not just remember, but respect those who have no voice. How humbling and inspiring to see the words of Jesus in action. 

In his parting words, Pope Francis asks that we all remember to pray for him. "Don't forget," he says, with a little twinkle in his eye. No worries, Holy Father. You just keep doing what you're doing. We've got your back.

Being in Love

The road to love is paved with unforeseen obstacles, sappy song lyrics, some distressingly deep potholes, and occasionally a set of counterfeit eyebrows.  Allow me to explain.

The first boy who drove me away from the safety and security of my parent’s house alone in an actual car was definitely too old for me.  I knew it, he knew it, and apparently his mother was vehemently convinced of it as well.  She spent enormous mental energy coming up with reasons a fifteen year old girl should not be dating her nineteen year old son.  My favorite (and perhaps her flimsiest) justification is to follow and why he opted to tell me his mother asked him this question, I will never know….   “Tell me dear….why would you want to date a girl who doesn’t have any eyebrows?”

You see, back in the day, I was a redhead.  My springtime pre-freckled skin displayed an impressive pallor the likes of which is otherwise only associated with things like a fresh slice of Wonder bread or maybe a tube of zinc-oxide nosecoat for the beach.  I was practically see-through. My very blonde eyebrows followed suit and though they were indeed present, without the benefit of stadium lighting my young brows were virtually undetectable to the naked eye. 

The eyebrow inquiry was a low blow but it didn’t really matter as our fledgling relationship never made it into my sophomore year of High School.  But you might be pleased to know that before we parted ways, I did seek out the opportunity to walk casually through my boyfriend’s mother’s kitchen wearing a pair of homemade black construction paper eyebrows.

Everyone who breathes has likely suffered the anguish associated with learning to love.  Teenage crushes are painful without interfering mothers and I would soon learn that making peace with my eyebrows was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  There were other boys and lots more drama as I navigated the learning curve associated with broken heartedness. 36 years later it still makes me cringe to reflect.  It is a truism that crying oneself to sleep is an adolescent rite of passage.

After several more trials and errors, I met the boy who would eventually become my husband.  He was a persistent sort and made several futile attempts to find a way to speak with me before he actually mustered the courage to just dial the phone.  Yes, phones still required dialing in 1979. There were references made to our matching hair color (he alleged that he made it a point to meet all the redheads…); there were visits to the dairy bar at which I earned minimum wage and where he ate entirely more ice cream than is advisable for a person of ANY age.  But since it was the late seventies, my clearest memory of these initially fruitless attempts involved a very loud and very jacked up green Pontiac Le Mans.  It was after school and I was on foot with an armload of textbooks; making the not-too-distant trek to my grandparent’s house.  Seizing the day, Jim (two years my senior) cruised up alongside my teenage self in his impressively noisy car.  As if his V8 engine was not purring loudly enough, the Led Zeppelin eight-track tape thumping menacingly from his speakers surely and unforgettably rounded out the soundtrack for our encounter.  My heart rate was pounding in my ears almost as loudly as his speakers.  I was panicked, thrilled, and desperately intrigued. But the spell was broken when this stirringly mysterious boy gave voice to the cheesiest pickup line in the history of the world.  “Hey Babe, wanna get lucky?” 

Somehow despite that unfortunate line, we found ourselves engaged to be married before I even left for college. Again, too young for such things; for heaven’s sake, even HIS cerebral cortex had not yet fully matured.

We were inseparable, going everywhere together and even dressing alike.  Silly songs about bushels and pecks and hugs around the neck were sung. We were disgustingly sentimental, making up ridiculous names for one another.  Worse yet, answering to them….

He was learning to program computers while I was learning to be a nurse.  His school was more than hour away from my school and yet somehow he managed to hold down a fulltime job as well.  He slept almost not at all during those years, faithfully driving back and forth to see me whenever he had the opportunity.  The “house mother” in the lobby of my school would shake her head in disapproval and concern when she’d find him sitting upright yet asleep on the couch waiting for me to finish preening and come downstairs.  “Oh, the poor boy….”  There was a lot of tsk tsk-ing. 

His mother hated it too, as you can imagine.  Though she often expressed worry over his lack of sleep she was more gracious than my former boyfriend’s mother and thankfully never played the “no eyebrows” card to coerce him into healthier patterns. 

Most of Jim’s wardrobe was in the back of his car and since he’d been doing his own laundry for several years, the majority of his clothing was rumpled and a distinct grey hue. I’m sure anyone taking a look inside his parked car would have imagined a homeless person had taken up residence. My devoted fiancé kept himself awake while driving back and forth on the highway with a practiced routine.  This routine included the exercise of changing his clothing while at the wheel…   As a health professional (or truly just any old person with a brain), I advise against this practice. I have tried many times to imagine his procedure.  His preference for manual shift cars conjures an image whereby I can assume the clutch would have made this quite a delicate process.  I’m sure there was loud music associated with his apparel transformations as subwoofers have always been a necessary staple in my husband’s cars. It is rather miraculous he was never pulled over for swerving, in fact astounding that he survived several years of this ritual at all.

Our wedding took place after my college graduation.  After four years, four months and fifteen days of a very sweet relationship, one might think we would have known what we were doing.  One might assume the drama was over. This was not so.

We loved each other, surely.  There was and still is no one I admire more. We knew how to have fun.  We liked many of the same things.  We had similar beliefs and comparable backgrounds.  We rather adored each other and were hard-pressed to imagine there was anyone else in the world better suited for a life partner. 

We did most things right but we were young and naïve when it came to real communication. Though the pastor who married us spoke cursorily about money and duty, there was no premarital counseling class about how to say what you mean and perhaps more importantly, how to listen to what you might not ever want to hear.  

Our time together was almost always wonderful.  But if there was something serious to be deliberated, we pretty much discovered a way to get around discussing it in a beneficial way.  Having uncomfortable conversations was not something either of us enjoyed so we tended to skirt issues that could turn unpleasant for either of us.  Sometimes we used silence and sometimes we used sound.  Neither requires talking. Turning up the volume of the stereo loud enough, one can almost ignore the warning sirens in one’s head.  Sometimes one of us would bake something and we’d companionably eat decadent desserts instead of dealing with what was hard. 

We worked two different shifts.  This was not at all ideal; in fact it was a terrible idea, particularly since my shift was during the night. 

If I was sad, he’d almost always find a way to make me laugh.  We are still great at laughing; in fact it got us into trouble with more than one marriage counselor.  I don’t want to suggest that humor is a bad thing because it isn’t.  It is, in fact, quite wonderful.  But laughter in place of talking about what is important can eventually make things much harder than need be. 

Sometimes we shunted our energies into caring about very worthy causes unrelated to our relationship.  We took in young stray bachelors, feeding, cleaning, and doing laundry for their sorry selves as though we were their parents.  We could skirt an issue with practiced diplomacy, putting all our eggs into our carefully crafted kindred spirit basket.  We were, after all, clearly made for each other.  Heck, we even LOOKED alike. 

Was being vulnerable and talking about things that bothered us really that important?  Apparently it was.  Being a pair who never argued didn’t help our situation.  At least people who scream at one another get things out in the open in a noticeable though sometimes publically embarrassing way.  But we preferred to sweep prickly topics under the rug.  After all, being the good kindred spirits we were, we didn’t like to upset one another. 

So three years in, we welcomed a tiny bald bundle into what appeared to be our idyllic home.  We loved our perfect son to distraction.  We were great at funneling adoration into that little boy yet our marriage continued to unravel in the tiniest and sometimes most imperceptible ways.  When we finally acknowledged there was a problem, we attempted therapy and relocated to another town.  I switched jobs.  We moved into separate bedrooms and even tortured ourselves with mediation because we liked each other entirely too much to involve real lawyers.  Bad choices were made; most of them mine.  Those choices turned into patterns and the patterns soon caused us to feel as though we were irretrievably strapped to the front of a speeding train.  The train’s destination was unclear but the promise of dark tunnels was certain.

After all our practiced sweeping under the rug and several years more of failure to effectively communicate, there was very little left at our house besides a big unfortunate lump under the rug and larger protuberances clogging both of our hearts.  So we did what anyone would do in our situation.  We assumed it was the end.

This is the part of the story where two people have grown so far apart, they decide the only resolution is divorce.  There seemed, in our opinion, not much left to salvage. 

But in a wonderfully unexpected twist, things became clearer when we took a physical step away from each other.  We discovered that the misery of being apart was remarkably more painful than the misery of being together.  This, to me, was miraculous.

With more than a little trepidation that our newfound spell of hope might dissipate, we joined forces and made a real attempt to count ourselves within the small percentage of lost causes who can eventually claim a happy ending.  We bit the bullet and departed for a weeklong crash course in communication.  We went away to a place of very expensive intense marital therapy and make no mistake, it was hell. We took testing to discover our pitfalls.  We learned to sit with our backs against each other and listen without interrupting.  We learned to say what we mean and holy buckets, to truly mean what we say.  We learned to listen to the point of exhaustion and though we did not think we could stand to hear another painful word, we learned to swallow our own retort and tenderly ask each other, “Is there more?”  We learned that there was a whole box of practical things we hadn’t even tried and that all of those tools involved being truthful, being vulnerable, laying all our garbage on the line despite the hurt, and finally learning to hear one another’s deepest pain.

Our bonus, four years later, was a beautiful baby girl.  Our family was complete.  My baby girl is nearing 20 years of age now and there are so many things I want to tell her about finding the right person with whom to share her life.  But from experience, I know that my time of influence has nearly passed.  She’s been watching me for almost two decades and her observations and opinions are essentially formed.  It is a little scary to think that the children we bear are seeing it all.  They take their cues from us, watching us interact with each other on a day to day basis when the basement is flooding, an income is lost, or when the mashed potatoes are cooking over on the stove.  They watch the way we choose to love and the ways we sometimes let frustration override our best intentions about caring for one another.  And so I pray.  I pray for my children and I pray for their someday spouses; something I have done since my children were in utero.

May, 2014. And here is one answer to those prayers - our first official
family photo with my beautiful new daughter-in-law Rebecca. 

 It has been a wild thirty-six year ride and believe it or not, Jim and I are now certain the best is yet to come.  Because we’ve discovered that real storybook endings don’t look at all like pumpkins turning into carriages.  There are no glass slippers and this is an excellent thing since I can barely tolerate a pair of leather pumps.  The romantic excitement of falling in love is in fact a poor cousin to the blessing of waking up every day next to the person who has promised to love you and upon whom you finally realize you can depend for a lifetime.  Sometimes being in love is less about a two page letter from a new admirer and more about a two second look that passes between fifty-something year old partners over a piece of burnt toast.  It is less about sending expensive flowers and more about dancing in the kitchen to a song that only the two of you can hear.

All the poetry in the world can’t measure up to the contentment one discovers on the other side of managing to stay together through the muck.  It does get easier and it definitely gets better. We need to start telling newlyweds to expect the worst because hard times are coming.  If we cared, we would tell them to anticipate that there will be days these handsome young men will not even LIKE their wives, let alone want to spend another minute looking at them. Mistakes will be made and those mistakes will be excruciating.  There will be weeks she will want to toss that annoying guy out on his ear and never look back.  The very mannerisms she found so adorable in those first weeks of dating are the things that take her to the brink of insanity when she faces them every day.

But during those difficult years, if they learn to hear one another and remember the promises they made when they were young and optimistic, their elusive love will return in a new and much more genuine way.  Investing decades in a mutually caring relationship is smarter than investing in any 401K.  Adopting a few basic habits and doing the hard work will pay dividends in trust and constancy because money doesn’t buy happiness, but a little daily effort can buy a truly irreplaceable partner. 

There’s no rocket science here; the tools are simple.  Wake up every day and choose to love your spouse.  If he is being a pain in the neck, has failed to read your mind AGAIN, has forgotten to bring home the milk you asked him to pick up FOUR TIMES and is sitting in front of the television snoring with a snack on his chest, love him anyway.  Ask yourself what you can do that very day to show him you are putting his needs above your own.  It sounds counterintuitive in this age of ME but it is positively the way to loving and being loved.  Because if you’ve done the work the two of you need to do, when he wakes from his ESPN stupor with unsightly cheese dip on his nose, he will be asking himself the same questions.  “Am I putting her needs above my own?”  When he answers that question, there is pretty much nothing that can sabotage the foundation the two of you are building.  It’s messy sometimes but it is worth the sweat.

I’ve always been a fairy tale kind of woman.  I thought I needed the knight on the white horse.  But it turns out knights and noble steeds have nothing on the man I married.  Who knew it could be so fulfilling, FUN even, to fall into the rhythms of aging with someone who loves me?  A person who can tolerate my irrational outbursts, a man who can overlook my favorite sweatpants, who shares decades of wonderful and terrible memories, and who has chosen, after all this time, to be with me.

I’m sure Jim would like for me to clarify that he never fell asleep in the cheese dip.  And from the very fullness of my heart, I would like to say that my construction paper eyebrows and I never imagined we’d have it so good.

GONE

My nest is empty and I've suddenly become sympathetic to bereft mother birds everywhere. Seriously, somebody needs to take up a collection for some lovely birdhouses where these poor creatures can meet to weep together, share seeds, and flap their feathers in shared grief.

My children were born just over eight years apart. A perfect boy and his equally perfect little sister. It was wonderful, the bookends of our experience allowing each of them to live the spoiled idyllic life of an only child yet with one magical decade in the middle where the four of us enjoyed one another immensely. No measurable sibling rivalry, an adoring built-in babysitter for Aubrey, a little girl who thought (and pretty much still believes) her big brother is the greatest thing since sliced bread, only one horrible FAFSA form at a time, and two very content parents. Truly blessed.

Though reasonably tall, my daughter is a slight thing. The waist of her jeans more like doll clothing as I processed her laundry these past years. (An observation while folding which often spurred me to dream up ways to add more protein to her vegetarian diet.) But let me just say, her itty-bitty frame deceives. Because since this little girl departed for college last week, she has left a hole in our home which feels more like a giant sucking abyss. 

It is an ache which recurs in the most unexpected ways. Realizing there is no reason to be quiet as I catch myself habitually tiptoeing to the shower in the morning... finding a partially-used bottle of her hazelnut coffee creamer in the refrigerator...consoling the despairing cat as she paces the floor howling mournfully and races up to my daughter's abandoned bedroom AGAIN to look for the girl who has devotedly loved her furry face for twelve years... emptying her hamper for the last time until fall break (I ask you...who would have thought this could be sad?)... passing by the stupid red-hatted Travelocity gnome in the front garden - a ridiculous inanimate gnome which Aubrey has inexplicably named "Javier."...

Don't get me wrong, Aubrey is precisely where she needs to be. We are so proud of her.  She has gone off to do exactly what we've raised her to do. We wouldn't have it any other way. But here in our home, at least for this season, the absence of her laughter is near deafening. 

Twenty seven years of kids in the house is a blessedly long run and I am thankful for every minute. Stacking those years alongside the brief three married years Jim and I spent before we were expecting Isaac, it is suddenly obvious that we are sorely out of practice at being alone together. There will be a learning curve for sure; but I am optimistic. 

I've said it before and it bears repeating. It really is a good thing we still like each other. So...Though I despise outdoor adventures involving tents, insects, and campfire smell in my hair which doesn't wash out for a week, maybe we'll start brainstorming about buying a camper. We can torment both of our children by driving wherever it is they finally land, parking an over-wide camping monstrosity their driveways, and hooking up to their electric and water for months at a time! Perhaps I will start enjoying the mind-numbing game of football or Jim will unexpectedly realize he's been mistaken all these years and he LOVES watching cheesy chick-flicks and emotional dramas which heretofore have made him want to puke. Maybe in the next decade or two we'll discover we adore playing Scrabble, watching birds, or learning to ballroom dance.  

In spite of my pitiful state of nest-grieving, today I am taking time to thank God particularly for two marvelous things. The first is FaceTime, which makes it seem as though my daughter, son, and daughter-in-law are in the very same room speaking with me.  BEST FUN EVER. And the second is the guy with whom I still share this roomy nest. That man who thankfully took the time to be a kind, loving, and supportive husband while he was still in the thick of being a wonderful father. 

All in all a pretty good start as we begin testing the bold notion that the best is yet to come.

NOT IN CHARGE

It happened again today.  The timing was perfect; the unexpected happening undeniably composed by the master musician.  He is singing over me, even now.  

You call it coincidence but I must heartily disagree.  When these things transpire, I can practically feel the trembling quality of the air around me.  Undeniable movement as God sweeps his mighty hand across the disarray of my day.  

Truth be told, it hurts sometimes; this pruning business. Yet the tiny blonde hairs on my arm stand on end as he rearranges the things I cannot yet see into the patterns he chooses for my ultimate good. 

While I am too tired to muster appropriate thanks, he remains loving and almighty. While I question and even wince at his methodology, I cannot doubt the way he cares for me. 

I’m so glad he is in charge and I am not.  

THE DREADED EARLY MORNING PHONE CALL

The Travelers

My phone rang early and unexpectedly this morning.  I hate when that happens.  I was prepared to ignore it, getting on with pouring my granola, when I saw the name on the caller ID. 

The name which the voice feature on my phone was now trying to pronounce made my heart pretty much stop.  It was the name of a man I met through my husband’s employment.  I’ve known of this nice man for years without really knowing him at all. 

Having recent concerns about my husband’s blood pressure, specifically in relationship to his work, my hands began to shake as I crossed the kitchen to pick up the phone.

“Brenda?  This is S.B.”  (He obviously said his whole name, but for purposes of this story, let’s just use his initials.)  He sounded like he had something important to say and I had a sickening feeling in my stomach.  About the time I was gripping the counter-top for support; my racing mind began remembering that S.B. no longer works with my husband.  In fact I’m pretty sure he left the company years ago. 

Before I had a chance to stop imagining my husband in an ambulance and suck in a reviving breath, S.B. launched my emotional surfboard onto a new wave of worry.  “I got a text message this morning from Emery.” 

Okay, now my hands were in full-Parkinson shake.  Emery is my father’s best friend and he attends church with S.B.  I’ve been feeding cats for the last week because my parents are on a cruise with Emery and his wife.  This could only be terrible news. 

S.B. continued.  “I got your phone number from Steve Shelly.”  Steve is my brother-in-law and in my addled state of apprehension, my immediate thought was something like “Why the heck didn’t my brother-in-law call me or better yet drive the 2 miles between his house and mine to deliver terrible news?” 

But S.B. was to be the bearer of the tidings.  “Your mother needed to get a message to you.”  All of my anguish zoomed in on my father.  He always attends overseas trips and cruises with reluctance.  Though his wife is an ambitious and tireless globe-trotter (and he can’t stand when she goes anywhere without him), his heart is really back in Pennsylvania watching golf on television, an appreciative cat on his lap. Dear Lord no, I’m not ready to lose my Dad.

And then S.B. dropped the other shoe.  “Your mother thinks she might have an appointment scheduled on Friday morning for a haircut and a facial and she wants you to cancel it.” 

Seriously?  This one minute early morning phone call which had doubled my heart rate, shot my adrenalin levels to remarkable heights and sent my impressionable brain on a circuitous route through terrors like emergency rooms and ship doctors was going to end at the Classic Hair Salon in Trumbauersville?  I was effectively reduced to a pile of jelly.

It took ten minutes for my hands to stop shaking.  There had best be something better than a My Parents Traveled the Seven Seas and All I Got Was this Lousy T-Shirt in my mother’s luggage.

THOSE FRUSTRATING FLAKES

Impossibly fat flakes are sailing sideways outside my February window, each cumbersome crash-landing adding inches to the frozen tundra which was my lawn.  It would be helpful if the accumulation from last week’s storm had melted in time for the predicted foot of this new onslaught; but no.  The face of the grungy traffic-stained ice pile just keeps adding duplicitous cosmetic layers of white. Although deceivingly lovely, it qualifies distinctly as insult to injury.

Today is snow day number seven and this is getting really old.  Only two snow days are built into the school year and at this point, I expect we’ll be handing out sparklers to celebrate July 4^th with our freckled summertime students.  Some of my coworkers actually love these snow days.  I grow increasingly convinced of the premature senility of said coworkers.

My feelings of intolerance toward this winter grew exponentially and perhaps a bit unfairly last week during an ice storm on my husband’s birthday.  We were without power for only ten hours. Unfortunately during the first three of those hours, our finished basement was quietly filling with ice water while our comatose sump pump looked on in horror. Despite heroic bailing, a cooperative project involving neighbors collecting and running heavy-duty extension cords to someone’s whole house generator, and the continual running of countless fans and dehumidifiers, our home soon took on the convincing scent of a wet alpaca.  Air-freshening plug-ins were employed and at this morning’s juncture (six days later), the innocent fragrance of well-intentioned masking vanilla effectively makes me gag.  Surviving furniture is piled in the center of the room, nearly to the ceiling.  The carpets (which were heretofore the nicest quality in our house) are detached from their baseboard homes and curled unkindly toward the center of the room with their padding unceremoniously ripped from below. The diagnosis is grim and I fear the carpet’s ailment will likely be fatal.  Bags of ruined items have been sent out to the dumpster, leaving lots of work to be done. The whole thing is reminiscent of a war zone and my patience with winter has grown transparently thin.  If the power goes out again with the storm today, it is likely I will respond in an unhelpful manner. 

I should have mentioned one additional tidbit above.  During some of the most exciting water bailing and cord running of the aforementioned mayhem, there was an insistent knocking at our front door.  I answered with my hair standing on end (I had taken a cold and dark shower that morning in our powerless house.) My sweatpants were rolled fashionably up to my thighs, my winter boots peeking beneath my long wool socks, in my hand -a dripping wet bucket and upon my face -a crazed look.  A neighbor (already aware of our flooding plight) looked on sympathetically and with barely concealed amusement as she reported that one of our large ice-coated mulberry trees was leaning convincingly over their driveway and threatening to “take out” our backyard fence.  Jim had to divert his basement preservation attempts to climb up under the massive icy branches and attempt limb amputation by handsaw.  Timing is everything.  Never let it be said that the Shellys don’t know how to party.

One of the best reasons to take a school nurse position is to avoid driving in contrary snowy conditions.  I am not the world’s greatest driver to begin with (I know this about myself but will argue it vehemently if suggested by my husband.)

Driving at night in this year’s winter weather has become increasingly difficult.  My 52 year old eyes are just a small part of the problem.  The larger issue is the veritable minefield of potholes which has developed, seemingly overnight.  Some of these fissures are enormous, swallowing entire front ends.  Almost every time I venture outside, I see some poor sod stuck along the road with a flattened tire. My husband is just one of countless victims.

It is almost impossible to see these holes when blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car.  Seemingly out of nowhere, I hit an impressively deep hole last night. Most of the lights on my dashboard blinked simultaneously in a demonstration of protest and I was sure I’d be calling for assistance.  (In fact when asked last night, it occurred to me that I have NO IDEA if there is a spare tire in my trunk….) Somehow there was still air in my tire when I drove the car home.  I’m a little afraid to go out into the garage this morning to see if my luck (and the air) have held.

The widespread road damage being what it is, I don’t think there is any way to patch all these holes.   I’m wondering if it might make more sense to install some small air pressure machines, chocolate-containing vending machines, and supportive escape ramps inside the holes to make the cavernous ruts more user-friendly. 

This is the part of the writing when I start to feel guilty about whining.  I am, after all writing this in a warm and well-lit house and on a computer that is functioning. The clothing dryer is rumbling in the background and Aubrey’s favorite English classical radio station is streaming from the kitchen. Electrical access is a beautiful thing.  I’m going to put my 

chin up, ignore the scent of vanilla, and think about utilizing the two ugly bananas in my kitchen to bake something delicious.  Here’s hoping the power stays on until I lift those banana bars from the oven.

A FISTFUL OF MARVELOUS

Knowing I’m a sucker for this kind of nonsense, I’m pretty sure God thought of me, smiled his omniscient fatherly smile, and grew this remarkable sweet pepper just to amuse me.  He’s awesome like that.

I was garnishing raw vegetable plates at a taco soup fundraiser for my daughter’s trip to a Mexican orphanage on Sunday when I lifted this angry little red fist out of a bag of assorted bell peppers.  I was immediately and wholly smitten. 

Like my maternal Grammy, I’m a force-feeder from way back.  I bake, I cook, and I love to stuff people with treats. But I could never allow someone to eat a natural masterpiece the likes of this charismatic pepper.  Should I try to sell it on Ebay?  Though cinnamon toast with the Virgin Mary’s image has sold for big bucks (and it would be marvelous to push our fundraising profits over the top), I opted instead to just write about how a silly miniature vegetable made my sentimental heart smile. 

As noted by the great host of coworkers mercilessly subjected to my show-and-tell with the magical pepper this morning, it does not take a lot to amuse me.  I realize this about myself but remain unapologetic. 

This big earth holds a whole lot of hurt.  People are hungry.  Some are without a decent income, no measurable way to feel one's worth or support one's family.  The Christmas season I adore so much sends others into the depths of depression because they are experiencing these festivities alone. Loved ones are fighting terrible diseases, even dying. These painful trials are happening every minute of every day and while implausible to the person facing devastating loss, life just keeps rolling along.  

I say we are in need of marvelous distractions like incredibly expressive peppers.

One of my favorite greeting cards portrays a pitcher of lemonade on the face of the card. Predictably, it states, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”  But the inside is the fabulous part.  It says something like “But if life gives you crap, don’t make anything… Trust me on this one.”  It isn't easy to laugh in the face of disappointment and fear.  But I contend, if you don’t find joy in the ordinary, if you aren't actively searching for the beauty in the rain-clouds, this path we are walking will feel so fraught with picker bushes, you will lose your will to keep walking to the splendor on the other side.

Call me sappy but I am in love with this little red fist.  Its tiny grasping fingers remind me to look for the good around me and its unanticipated and delightful appearance speaks volumes to my soul about how much we are loved by the one who created us all.