Breaking and Binding

Some death comes gradually.  You see it as a shoreline, and watch a man move slowly toward it as you wonder and hope that the tide will turn.  During your watching you begin to let go.  You remember, you appreciate, and you prepare while stretching your arms across the widening waves.

But not all death is this way.  Some death comes suddenly.  Shockingly sudden.  One moment you are hand in hand.  You are doing the dishes, making grocery lists and planning dinner for the weekend.  Then you blink and the one you love is gone. Your eyes search the shoreline in vain for one last glimpse of them.  There was no time to prepare.

Death parts people, but it also draws them together.  When death comes we rush with our arms widespread to try to fill a hole to keep a ship from sinking.  Dozens, even hundreds of lives weave together to try to be present because one life is gone.  But the hole is not filled.  It cannot be. That is the miracle of life.  That every life is irreplaceable.

In the earliest hours of Monday morning friends of mine lost a daddy and a husband.  This was the ripping sort of death.  The kind no one sees coming.  I feel shaken.  I feel shaken watching them shake.  Sitting around their dining table last night over chicken salad and fruit I watched their full faces.  Faces full of everything you can feel.  How can someone be so full and so empty at the same time?

Today all I can think of  is my two friends curled beside their mother on the master bed.  Pieced together like shattered vases, trying to make something whole.  I think of them and cry.  I cry at the utterly unexpected parting.  At the finality.  For their pain. I also cry as I see all the unexpected uniting, the drawing together and the outpouring of love.

Death breaks so much apart, but also binds so much together.


Photo Credit

Metamorphosis

It's like admitting something.

There are bins opened across my living room. Bins full of flannel blankets. Of tiny pastel clothes. Of teething rings. Dainty shoes. Bins full of memory.  I stare down into them cautiously and I breathe in.

These are the things I held onto.  Things I thought I would need. Things I saved for people who came, but left before they arrived.

Each year I open these bins. Each year, after a little more time has passed I dig through their contents with resolve. Each year I remove one thing. Five things. Seven. Now the excess is gone. There is not much left. Only that which is truly important.

"I am getting rid of more baby things," I say hastily to my mother through the cell phone. There is a sponge in my hand and I bear down into the counter, rubbing the same stain in tiny circles.

"You know there is another bin at our house," she answers.

"Yeah, I know." I lie casually as I lean harder into the Formica.

I didn't know.

I tell my mom they should sell the pink toddler car seat they had for Vivian.

"What if your sister has a girl next time?"

I pause.  She does not suppose that I will be next. That I will have a girl. She means nothing by it, but the nothing in it signifies everything.

It's like admitting something.

I close my lighter bins and breathe.

We are on our way to Atlanta.  Stopped at a red light I turn my head back toward the silence in the minivan behind me.  Vivian is looking down at a book about vegetables.  Content.  Quiet.  Alone. The emptiness of all the seats mocks me until I turn back to catch my eyes in the rear-view mirror.  They are a stranger's, tired and tearful.

I feel a push from within me.  A stretching, pulling movement from a bolder woman.  I have been trying to live in the woman I wanted to be.  In the life I wanted to have.  Wrapping myself tightly, binding myself in, unable to let go.

We long to fit inside of those people.  Those imaginary cocoons that we craft for ourselves.  The safe people we thought we would be snuggled beside the precious things we thought we would have.

Inside a fuller, larger and more honest woman struggles against my paper thin constructions.  She wants me to let her out.

I know I have to make room.  I know I have to make room for the life I have, not the one I am wanting.  The things I use, not those I want to use.  Contents from the insides of my bins rest in boxes behind me and we keep driving.

"I have baby toys and books if you'd like them," I tell my sister across my parent's living room.

My sister lifts Asher's milky white limbs onto her shoulder, patting and cooing like doves. They are perfect.  My sister oozes with nurture, giving herself as her son, knowing so little yet so much tilts his tiny newborn head into her neck.  Vivian sets down her string of lacing beads and watches my sister sharply, coming closer to study the subtleties and nuances of motherhood. She knows little of babies.  These are new skills.  Skills she has not learned from me.

Back at home she recovers her plastic baby from the bottom of a forgotten heap. The baby I bought her for a quarter and filled with water to convince her to use the potty. She gazes adoringly into her perpetually open eyes with fresh interest.

"Vivian, come eat lunch," I say.

"No! I'm Aunt V!" she shouts militantly. Then she tilts her head with feigned coyness and hushes tenderly to comfort to her offspring.

"And you're the grandma. Rock my baby, grandma." She drops her doll into my hands. The little peach plastic face gazes blankly up at me, smiling. Always smiling. Always awake.

The outsides of me are tearing and I feel my whole skin seize up in knowing that it has finally broken.  I cradle the baby, that hollow, lifeless baby as I tilt my soul toward God. The wishing, the squeezing, the hiding all crack down onto that plastic baby and an accepting, wiser woman flutters out.  A woman who is emptier, but fuller.  In releasing what I wanted to have I gain what I do have.  A colorful, freer, moving having.

I have.  

I kiss the manufactured skin and return the baby to Vivian.  She doesn't know I have handed her my dreams.

With great gentleness she supports her baby's rigid limbs. They scamper off and curl up in a corner under a striped blanket knitted by Zelma. The books are stacked shoulder high beside their plastic picnic spread out with ice cream, a ketchup bottle and a mound of carrots and peas.

Through the hallway I hear a singsongy confidence.

"'Not I' said the duck, the pig and the cat all at once."

A page turns.

Outside in the sunshine, Vivian, baby and I watch birds flit between branches. They rustle and chirp and Vivian tells me a story about where they have been and where they are going. Under her eyes clusters of freckles push upward to bloom on her cheeks. Her baby skin melts like butter on these summer afternoons.

She darts off after a sparrow and I see a child's elbows and knees begin to push through all the soft places. They struggle and stretch her out like elastic, determined that she will not stay this way forever. I wait quietly, waiting for an eight year old to burst out of her the way we waited by the cocoons at the zoo last Friday.

I wait, gathering up the bits and pieces that fall to the grass. The expressions, the slurs, the awkward arabesques. I will pull these from my pockets on nights when I miss her very much.

She comes back to me with giggles and twirls, still adoring, still small, wanting to curl up in my lap. With great patience I support my baby's wiggling limbs. I brush the side of her face with the back of my fingers. She knows nothing of time or age or loss. She knows nothing of change and growth and wings.  She smiles up at me sweetly as though I am very silly.

"Are you happy-sad, mommy?"

I pause as the tears collect around my eyelashes and drip on the hem of her dress.

"Yes, dear." I say with a resigned confidence. "I am happy-sad."

The Atrophied Heart

at·ro·phy 

1.  A wasting or decrease in size of a body organ, tissue, 

or part owing to disease, injury, or lack of use.

2. A wasting away, deterioration, or diminution.

I never fail to be awestruck by photos from the Holocaust.  They catch me in my steps with shock.  

In grade school we watched documentaries in history class and I would pull my knees up under my chin to keep my jaw from shuddering in horror.  I wanted to shut my eyes to preserve the dignity of the dark eyed human skeletons staring back at me. And I wanted to keep my eyes open to preserve the dignity of the same.  What was more compassionate?  To turn away to offer them dignity?  Or to gaze on their pain and see, really see?

We watched a film on a spring afternoon interviewing G.I.'s who liberated the camps in Poland.  One man, wrinkled and worn through, spoke of the caution they had to take in caring for the released prisoners.  Most teetered on the brink of starvation.  Their frail bodies were so accustomed to the minimum, that their muscles and organs were wasting away.  They couldn't be given regular food.  Their shrunken stomachs would have to be slowly healed over time.   The alternative was grim.

One ravenous man had reached for the pack of cigarette's offered to him by the soldiers and ate them.  He hurriedly swallowed every cigarette.  He died shortly after.

I believe that our hearts...our souls...are like our muscles and our stomachs.  Hearts that are too long deprived of love begin to wilt and weaken like bodies that have not been fed.  

Starved hearts are not as easy to spot as starved bodies.  But they are far more common. Atrophied hearts are everywhere. 

Too many of the atrophied hearts I have seen belong to children.  Children in Uganda who have lost those who loved them most or never had their love to begin with.  Like the Nazi death camps, orphanages around the world are too often an overwhelming gathering of severely malnourished hearts.  Those who seek to love these children must take care.  We must take great care as we handle their atrophied hearts.

I know too many boys and girls who struggle to smile.  Struggle to laugh.  Struggle to trust.  Their hearts were not properly loved.

Love is a foreign thing for these children.  Unknown things have the potential to be dangerous so they keep their distance from any appearance of kindness. Their appetites are so  skewed that these children do not even seem to want the love that is offered to them.  Malnourishment has daunted their appetites.  

These are the children that need to be spoon fed gently and incrementally so that they can regain a sense of normalcy.  As the capacity of their hearts expand they will discover new strength.

Yet smiling and laughing are not always indications of a healthy heart.  Some of the most cheerful, most affectionate kids I know are truly the hungriest. They feel starved for love.  Their hearts snatch out for it from anyone nearby, just like the starving man who grabbed the pack of cigarettes.  Their desperation to be loved distorts their judgement and they give their hearts away. They gorge themselves on what they think is nourishing love only to be crushed.   Only to wake up alone and pregnant at 17.  

These are the children that need to be guarded from indulgent affection.  They need to see expressions of sincere love that extend beyond just a touch.  They need to see boundaries and learn their own boundaries to protect them from those that would feed their hearts with poison.  

The process of giving love to an atrophied heart must be persistent, thoughtful and careful.  It takes a great deal of observing.  It takes determination to keep offering yourself to a child who seems impenetrable.  It takes wisdom to bar certain affections from a child when you know it is not nourishing to him.  

Seeing an atrophied heart restored is often painful.  It takes time.  With some of my children it has taken me years to see the flush of health flow up from their souls.  But there are little indications along the way.  I see them strengthening.  Opening up.  Gaining confidence.  Gaining joy.  Little by little some of them grow and the life flows back to their souls.  Others are still struggling in their journey.  I have my concerns and don't know how to intervene for them.  But I always have hope.

The human heart may be the tenderest of organs, but I also believe it is the most resilient.  With God's grace no heart is doomed to starvation.  No heart is too withered to be beyond His healing.  So I continue to extend His love.  

Photo Credit

Bird Brain: Migration Patterns of a Writer's Mind

Words are like birds and writers are like walking aviaries. Great human habitats of fowl and feathers swooping through their mental atmospheres.  Outwardly there may be no indication of the great buzz within.  These aviaries are hidden things housing narrative, dialogue, description, plots, paragraphs and sentences of all sizes and hues.

Writers are people who involuntarily live with noise.  They are people who feel made up by words, built with them.  Words are not so much what writers try to make happen, but what happens to them as they sit in movie theaters, wait in doctors offices, or wash their hair.

This is not to suggest that writing is something that simply "happens."  Catching words, caging them and grooming them is a work of will.  For words, like birds, are transient in nature.

Words move with the wind.  They seek out pleasant climates.  A writer copes with the seasons they way every creative must.  Some more nobly than others.

There are seasons of winter which some dub "writer's block." The scope of the horizon is so unbelievably bleak and barren that committed writers must stalk through the snow shooting off rounds, hoping some scrawny pheasant will burst from the underbrush. They bang their desolate heads against the keyboard trusting that some text of merit might be channeled to the screen.  Those less diligent retreat to caves to drink...or eat ice cream...or play angry birds until they hear the hopeful chirps of spring.  Whatever vice balms the bitterness.

In contrast to winter are the periods of lush uncontrolled abundance. The sky is almost black.  Sparrows are slamming against the windows. Volumes of vigorous words soar in such swarms that one expects to see Tippi Hedren darting down the driveway. The cacophony of cawing makes it difficult to sustain and capture thought.  But try you must!  This trying produces such frenzy that some writers begin to believe they are flying too.  Those who believe too earnestly are sometimes taken off to places where they give people pills and therapy.

These are extremes. Most writers, I believe, teeter somewhere in between Siberia and Hitchcock.  Watching the lovely birds go by.  Wondering, somewhat anxiously, if they are nesting down or headed south.

Words may be flying by, but it doesn't mean they intend to settle down.  The loveliest of all the words seem to appear effortlessly when they are unable to be captured.  While idling at a traffic light you'll see a bright winged beauty sweep up through you. A phrasing. A clip of conversation you weren't expecting. You'll sit helplessly at the junction of Parkway East and First Avenue North simply admiring it. Certain it is the most fluent prose to ever come to you. The light will turn green, you'll have to hit the gas and before you pass the golf course that graceful bird will be off on a distant horizon.

I live with the ghosts of uncaptured fowl. Sentences that will never be regained. They are out there...somewhere... in abstract form, those strings of verbs, nouns and adjectives I birthed but never owned. I am sure I have been spotted in the preschool parking lot muttering repeatedly under my breath, trying to commit a paragraph to memory, working to cling to the words that came because they never return in quite the same feathers.

Therefore every writer needs a good net.

Supposedly Emily Dickinson performed her chores with scraps of paper stuffed in her apron pocket, stopping to scribble "because I could not stop for death" while searching for peaches in the pantry. Anne Lamott suggests using index cards.

I am something of a hybrid. I use index cards when I remember to bring them.  I feel very polished and official when I use them.  They are so...straight edged.  Usually I forget them and reach for what I can find.  The closest notebook. The back of a receipt. While she was doodling in church one Sunday I snatched Vivian's coloring book away to retrieve a row of cursive I'd hastily penned on one of the pages back in September.

You have to pounce on words like a hungry predator. You may not be sure what you are going to do with them once you have them in your paws, but they are yours now in ink (or crayon) caged on paper.

Some captured words turn out not to be the beauties you thought they were. Some are gawky misfits that will collect dust in a dresser drawer until you stumble upon them and laugh. You will need to laugh at yorself that day and be reminded that you are desperately flawed. The reminder is good, but you quickly destroy the evidence of your stupidity...just for insurance.

Other caged words you will trip over while duck hunting in winter. You'll be warmed up from the inside, delighted to discover that your mind was not always the barren wasteland it is at present. In fact, it once produced something quite remarkable. You can gnaw on this one bit of worthiness for days, possibly weeks, saving yourself from immenent starvation.  If you grow efficient at producing abundance it is possible to build up a little pantry of words and ideas to feed you during creative famine.

Either way, pelican or swan, each one serves it's purpose. Each idea, phrase, character or setting is worth netting and keeping.  Because they are yours.  Yours to share or to shred.  Your insanity or your genius.

For words do no good when they fly off to nowhere.  When we take the time to order our words, arrange them and give them a home in ink their real worth emerges, clean and bright.Writers persevere in the cold and and in the furry and  discover that by persevering a beautiful habitat is slowly groomed where words like to settle down and sing.    When tended our words can become useful, powerful, healthy things, tamed and groomed so that we can release them again out of our heads, to fly toward others who might be waiting in fields with binoculars.

We Never Know

I was once at a dinner where our pastor, while praying over the food, reminded us all to be mindful in our interactions with one another because none of us knew what difficulties and struggles others had faced in the days and hours prior to our gathering. But the Lord knew, he assured us. The Lord knew.  And might we all hold one another's secretly carried hurts with tenderness.

After the "amen" I kept my head bowed an extra 20 seconds so I could compose my face.  No one in that room knew that only days ago I had miscarried another baby.

We never know.  We never know what is lurking behind the hundreds of faces we scan on a daily basis.  At the grocery store.  In a parking lot.  In class.  At the office.  Those we pass in our cars.  Hundreds and hundreds of faces.  Each with a story that isn't fully seen.

The rude cashier who happens to be in the midst of an ugly divorce.  The smiling woman in the Bible study who just started taking anti-depressants.  The stoic couple at the restaurant whose son is an addict.  The friendly flight attendant who still has nightmares about the abortion she had.

Strangers.  Acquaintances.  Even our friends.  There is so much we cannot see.

We never know the wounds that might be buried just below the level of our eyesight. We never know how we might be used to help soothe them or keep from scraping them open again.

Remember to be mindful. Remember to show grace.



Photo Credit: Free images from acobox.com

Blog Tid-Bits and Tips

While in Atlanta last week I asked my mom over breakfast if she had happened to read my latest blog post.  I described the content and she said she "didn't think so."  So I asked her if she got my posts delivered to her email address and she said "Huh?"

Last night over dinner my fairly tech savvy husband told me that he didn't know where to click on my blog to link one of my posts to Twitter or Facebook.

In the last few days I have had several readers message me to say that they were not able to get their comment to post to the blog.  That stinks.

So here is a quick tutorial.

If you would like to get my posts delivered to your email go to the top right-hand box on this page where it says "enter email address."  Type in your email, verify it and you will start receiving my posts in your inbox the morning after I write them.  Posts will appear exactly as they do on the blog, photos and all.  And I promise this is secure.  No spam guaranteed.

You can also become a regular follower of the blog via your google account by clicking "follow" in the followers box on the sidebar.

I tend to be quite a shy, introverted gal, even when it comes to being online.  I like lurking behind the scenes on other websites.  Yet I know as a writer how much it means to know who is reading along.  I LOVE knowing who my readers are!  It is nice to know whether the many hits I get on this website are warm, wonderful people or crazy spam robots.  I blog for the sake of writing.  I have never wanted to blog for income. I keep doing what I am doing as a means of honing my own words, processing my own life and hopefully helping you do the same with yours.  You readers make the many hours I spend on this blog each week so worthwhile!  So I selfishly like knowing who you are.

If you are ever compelled to share a post I have written on Twitter, Facebook, in an email etc. (only do this if you are really, truly compelled) there are buttons for sharing at the bottom of each post.  Simply click the icon for the method in which you'd like to share.  You'll easily be guided through the next steps.

If you ever have a problem commenting, I'm so sorry!  I wish I had a definitive explanation for the commenting problems.  Here is all I can offer.  The blogger format for commenting I use gives you four options for "choosing your identity."  Your google account.  If you use this identity I would suggest you be signed in before you try to comment.  OpenID for those using another platform like wordpress.  Name/URL with this option you can type in your name and website OR just your name.  Anonymous.  This will register your comment as anonymous.  Of course, you can always use this simple option and just sign your name at the end of the comment if you want me to know who you are.

I apologize to anyone who has ever encountered any trouble while commenting.  Your comments are precious and I hate for your time to get wasted or your words to go unheard.  All I can suggest is if you do hit any snags, try switching to a different identity and see if that makes a difference.

I realize that for many of you networked pros these tid-bits are old hat, but I am tossing them out for those who might find them useful.

I have been typing away for the last three days tweaking and polishing several posts for the next few weeks.  I'm looking forward to everyone's feedback!

Crisis 1 Part 3

This is part three in a series. Click HERE to read part one and part two.

There was no hair pulling. My parents, while sad, did not fight my utter refusal to attend church services of any kind. The minivan pulled out of the driveway every Sunday morning while I curled up on the green leather sofa to watch "Breakfast with the Arts."

There was no going back.  There was no longer any use in trying to iron things out. There was no use in trying to find answers in Christianity. There was no place for me in it. There was no place for me with Him.   I would just stop thinking about it.  I would just live as I wanted.  I would move on.  I convinced myself that it was a noble decision.

I could never really shake off the sincere belief that God was very much real.  My new position was not one of atheism.  It was one of hatred.  Pure and simple disdain for this unengaged, uninterested dictator who doomed and damned for His own glory.

I hoisted my tiny revolutionary flag toward the sky in unashamed protest. I no longer cared about what God said or didn't say. What He wanted or didn't want.  I would rather be in Hell, I smarted inwardly, than be in Heaven with HIM.  

I understood the devil.

Anger is a powerful emotion.  It can give fuel to souls that are dried up and weary.  It can give a sense of purpose for a time.  It can temporarily carry a person along.

With my new found spiritual position I gained an entirely new disposition.  I climbed with determination out of my weepy, pitiful despair into a new world.  I had a new perspective on life.  It would require effort and determination to work it out.  The distraction helped lift the sadness.

I was smiles and songs, once again at the top of my academic class, finding my footing in the choir and drama program and Choreographing successful ballets for our little troop. I regained my confidence and appeared adjusted. The limp, languid Jamie who had decorated her entire bedroom in white...ALL white...impulsively purchased supplies at the craft store and painted the trim on all of her bedroom furniture pink. HOT pink. She also created curtains out of purple velvet to hang on her canopy bead. Life was colorful again.  I was colorful again.

But color can be a camouflage, a distraction from damage and pain.  

I found inconspicuous ways to channel my pain. Some teenagers do it through drugs, liquor and sex. Those were viable options, but I looked down upon all that as "common rebellion."  I was above that. I exhibited my rebellion through ideas.

I read poetry. I wrote poetry.  I shunned stupid boys. I didn't curse. I never tasted alcohol. I didn't go to parties. I was a heck of a lot holier than most of the Christ claiming kids in my 9th grade class. That knowledge only fueled my superiority complex. Hypocrites. They were all hypocrites.

It all looked pretty on the outside.  Neat and tidy.  I was a very "smart" girl.  A "nice" girl.  But I was only congenial until pressed on spiritual matters. When confronted with the gospel or any reference to it my claws sprung out like those of a fierce, wounded cat.  The well meaning youth pastor's wife wrote me a kind card that indicated her concern for me and desire that I would return to Jesus.  I tore it to shreds and tossed it in the trash during biology lab.  I received religious admonishment from a classmate over a cafeteria table so I went home and ripped out all the Bible verses from the pages in my "Footprints in the Sand" journal.  I may have even broken the frame housing a poster of the same poem.

To avoid further spiritual skirmishes I learned how to adapt my "nice girl" image in order to keep religious people at bay.  Weirdness.  White suburban Christians are generally intimidated by weirdness. Bizarre people are hard to approach, especially if they seem hostile.  So on the rare occasion that I would accompany my folks to a religious function I made sure to wear fishnets.  Fishnets and vintage shoes. Hats with large faux flowers on them.  Pleated skirts from the thrift store and lace in my hair.

I would sit smugly in my seat, 20 inches above all the smaller beings around me that needed to believe in this  heavenly ruler. I glared and grimaced and shut up my heart with nails of steel. I needed no such ruler.  I needed nothing.

To Be Continued...

Yard Sale Total 2011!

The 6th annual Yard Sale for Ranch on Jesus at Carriage Lane Presbyterian in Peachtree City, GA has come to a close. Four weeks of background prep, four days of sorting and pricing, two days of selling and three and a half hours of cleanup. These things are a marathon! But they are a worthwhile marathon. A worthwhile marathon that raised a record $10,174!!!

10,174 dollars and counting! (We plan on selling off some of our leftover yard sale items online.) Isn't that amazing!?! An amazing total that makes an amazing difference for the 100 children being sponsored by Ranch on Jesus.

My deepest and most heartfelt thanks go to the many individuals that helped to make this sale such a success! We had dozens of hands come together to help transform a massive undertaking into a lighter task. I love you all. I really do.

Ps. In case you were wondering, we sold the cobra costume.

Why "The Help" Isn't Helpful

So I'm going to do it. I swore I wouldn't, but I just couldn't help myself. Ever since I read The Help in July I have wanted to write a post about it. A post explaining why I disliked it.

It seems everywhere I look I see people raving over this novel. And with the movie coming out today I can't turn around without seeing a splash of yellow and purple. I read the book because it came so highly recommended. After reading it I could understand why people enjoyed it, but I did not understand how it became a national phenomenon.

So I am going to do something really unpopular. I have worked up my courage in order to tell you all why I strongly dislike a book that I am assuming the majority of you love. I don't do this to be condescending, self righteous, etc. I just think that someone should politely point out some of the problems with this wildly popular read.

(WARNING: this may include some spoilers.)

Let's just get this out in the open. The Help is not literature. Calling The Help literature is like calling a hamburger a fillet mignogn. I love a good hamburger. But it isn't steak. It just isn't. So let's call The Help what it is. A juicy hamburger. It is not a "classic." It won no awards of any merit. It will not be studied by English majors in 2022.

I did enjoy The Help on a purely entertaining level. Stockett tells a great story. She kept me turning the pages...fast. But as I turned the pages I KNEW what I was consuming was mediocre writing. Sort of the way I can't stop eating mediocre potato chips. They taste good going in, but leave me unsatisfied and malnourished when finished.

The Help is a predominately plot driven novel. You want to keep reading to discover what happens TO the characters, not necessarily to learn WHO the characters are becoming. A good novel has a mixture of both...but always defers to character development. An Author must always be willing to alter her plot if what she has chosen to occur no longer makes sense for her characters. Stockett's characters made choices based on what needed to happen next in the predetermined plot. These choices were not always in line with their character. I believe most readers easily overlooked these issues because the story was so engrossing. I also believe these problems would be more glaring upon a second reading.

Example: Why did Yule May steal from Hilly? It wasn't like her. Well, she had to steal at that point in the story because Skeeter had to discover the evilness of Hilly. How Skeeter managed to go so long without fully grasping Hilly's evilness is a mystery. One of MANY mysteries. Maybe this doesn't bother you. That's fine. It bothers me.

And about that evil Miss Hilly. Why was she so clearly, relentlessly wicked? Well she, like every other character, was a sort of stereotype. The hateful white queen bee? Check. The sympathizing, bolder white woman? Check. The wiser, maternal black woman? Check. The sassy, firecracker black woman? Check. The ditzy, blonde bombshell? Check. I actually thought Celia was the most interesting character with the most unusual story, but Stockett never fleshed it out or resolved it for us.

These literary criticisms (among many others) have already been leveled from a variety of sources. That's not why I am taking the time to write this post. If The Help was just a mediocre novel gaining a lot of popularity I would simply zip my snobby lips and ride it out, but there are themes running throughout The Help that I find very problematic on a sort of moral level.

The Help seems to suggest that black people need white people to tell their stories. I don't say this simply because Skeeter literally writes out their stories. I got this impression throughout the novel.

Although the story was told in three different voices, Skeeter was clearly intended to be the heroine of the tale. Stockett should have never attempted to write the story from the perspectives of the three women. (Um, why weren't Skeeter's sections of the book written in a dialect like the maid's sections are?!? Isn't she from Mississippi???) I realize Stockett was trying to "share" the story so that it didn't seem like it was centered on the white people. But I truly think this backfired.

Stockett could have easily written the novel from the perspective of Skeeter and been much more convincing. Of course, Skeeter is not a very compelling character. She is thin (literally and figuratively.) She never seems to grow over the course of 400+ pages. Sure she starts halfheartedly sticking up for some maids in front of her white friends and starts dressing like a hippie. But those are shallow changes.

Skeeter never seems to grasp the significance of what she is doing with Aibileen and Minny. She always seems most interested in telling the maid' stories so that she can be daring and break into the publishing world. She never seems to be aware of the thickest of prejudices running through her culture...or even herself. Didn't it seem that Skeeter used the maids to accomplish her personal goal of getting published? It all bugged me. People are being lynched because of their race, a lonely, hurting woman is being ostracized because of other's prejudices, and her mother is dying of cancer, but nothing will keep Skeeter from what she wants for herself. And in the end she gets what she really wants without much personal loss at all.

Sure, she loses the boy, but she was going to marry him. He was racist and she would have said YES. He simply wouldn't have her because of her book. What would have been more interesting, more beautiful would have been if she handed back the ring because she had blossomed into someone who had richer beliefs about mankind and wouldn't marry a man who thought of others as lesser. Someone unafraid to challenge the ugliness in the world.

Skeeter never goes there. To the soul changing, heart transforming place of self awareness. Of pain, of truth of LIFE. Stockett never takes her there. Aibileen gets the closest. But no. It all falls short. And by never taking her characters there, Stockett never takes US there. We get to read this entertaining story about one of the ugliest times in American history and come away feeling sort of nice about ourselves. We never have to face our own prejudices. We never have to dialogue with these characters about deeper issues.

Isn't is amazing that nowhere in the novel do Skeeter and Minny and Aibileen really sit down and hash anything out apart from deadlines and the fear of being caught? It is all nicely glossed over. Sure, one angry maid comes in to confront Skeeter, but Aibeleen quickly shooes her out the door. This is what Stockett does throughout the course of her book. Shoo the most challenging issues and emotions out the door so she doesn't have to deal with them.

Skeeter gets to do this great thing for these black maids and gets to feel good about it without ever having to deal with the most challenging issues and emotions. This, I am afraid, is the story I see played out again and again in my line of work. I see well meaning folks strive to help Africans. They accomplish something and feel kind of good about it. It may even have been difficult. But in the end they never get to the very raw, life changing, soul stripping places through their service. They never go there.

This is why the tremendous popularity of The Help troubles me so much. You may say I am being nit picky, but I can't help but wonder why more people aren't noticing these themes. Why people aren't asking more questions. So I am asking them and hoping by asking them others might begin to ask them too.

Ultimately I believe that The Help cheats us. It cheats the types of women it strives to represent. It cheats the women reading it who are not asked to search their souls. The Help does not help any of us as we seek to learn to understand one another or ourselves.

At least that is my little opinion.

So here's your chance. Push back. Argue with me. Tell me why you loved it. Let's talk. I love a good discussion. Leave a comment below. I genuinely want your opinion. I PROMISE I won't think less of you. Did the Help help you? Do my criticisms hold any weight? Let me know.


UPDATE: Make sure to read my follow up post Aibileen's Reading List!

A Cobra Under a Palm Tree

The first day of the yard sale is DONE. It was crazy. I'm not giving away any totals yet, but I'll just say that things are going well. Here are a few snapshots from the day. When you do an intensive yard sale like this you get a little...um...slap happy toward the end.

Like my look? This is KANZI jewelry, but I think our "sale worker" yellow t-shirt really makes it shine. I am considering wearing bright yellow every day from now on. Especially when I am sleep deprived and frizzy haired like I am today.

Doesn't Heidi Sweet look sweet holding this stuffed jaguar? Heidi, a "top saleswoman" in our yard sale operation uses the Vanah White approach to moving merchandise. Carry it around with a smile and showcase it to shoppers. It works.

What are we doing?

Highlighting our most desirable items! A glamorous cobra costume modeled by Hannah under a fabulous beach umbrella. BOTH of these items are still available. Come by the church tomorrow if you are interested in snatching them up!

Overall it was a good day. There were some ugly moments of dishonesty early in the morning which made my mama bear blood boil, but overall it was smooth sailing.

We'll be there again tomorrow from 7am to 1pm. We've sold a lot of stuff but there is still plenty left. Come and get it! Please.

In the Clothing Room

Tomorrow is opening day for the Ranch on Jesus yard sale at Carriage Lane. At 6:30 am there will probably be a clump of eager folks peering in through the church doors, just itching to get their paws on all our stuff. There is lots of stuff. I don't think you can fathom how much stuff until you've seen it in person. An entire fellowship hall is crammed plus four Sunday School classrooms. The stacks of items are thoroughly organized and priced. It would be more appropriate to call it a "weekend thrift store."

It takes a tremendous amount of work to pull off this kind of sale. So many wonderful people give their things and their time to make it successful. Overall it is a very intense and exciting week.

Tonight we opened the yard sale early for a special volunteer shopping hour, giving our hard working helpers the first opportunity to buy. The room quickly filled with chattering browsers and it seemed everyone was in a good mood. Everyone besides me. I don't know why these sales make me so weary. It is not a physical weariness. It is something buried deep, like a dormant coal that begins to slowly burn.

As the evening waned on I wound my way to a quiet corner in the clothing room and began to cry. Sitting by the tennis shoes, discreetly drying tears in solitude while I priced flip-flops with pink stickers I could feel myself hover outside of time and over a moment where everything in life felt so small. So silly. So insignificant. A moment where I knew clearly who I am. I knew who we all are. Lined up like blades of grass in a field so wide no human eye could see the expanse.

I cried for God to meet me there in the clothing room. To meet me like a wave or a wind to wash and blow away the nothingness. To carry me to the place where things are built with permanence.

I could feel Christ's eyes watching from the caves and hillsides where he used to go to be alone. Watching all of us with burning love and sadness and knowing, knowing that none of it is as it should be.

Did he flee for the same reason I fled? Not to get away from things but to get to something. To climb out of the pettiness. Out of the fallen brokenness of everything we touch in order to grasp for the substance of glory that hangs invisibly around us. To abide with Him, knowing that we have no right to, but also knowing we were made to.

Perspective

Thousands of children are currently dying in East Africa from famine brought on by drought. While fleeing their country, Somalian mothers carry the wilting bodies of their toddlers until they take their last breath. The mothers then leave the bodies of their dead babies behind in the desert sand.

I am currently unloading boxes full of hundreds of dusty knick-knacks. For two days I have sorted through sparkly wreaths, ceramic kittens and miniature snow globes before branding them with stickers that say "fifty cents." As I set each one out on a yard sale table I stop and think about a Somalian child. I stop and pray they will make it.

This may sound a little melodramatic. It is. But I can't help it.

What if we all bought less stuff for ourselves and gave more stuff to others? What if we stopped building little kingdoms for ourselves out of porcelain cherubs and woven baskets and determined to build a kingdom where no mother has to lose her baby for lack of food? A kingdom where no one wonders Where is God? as they look at the bodies of babies left in the desert because they will say, See, there is God. He is there in the hands of those people who call Him Father.

Crisis 1 Part 2

(This is part 2 of a series.  Click HERE to read Part 1.)

A search committee at church was looking for a new youth pastor. The standards were pretty high.  This was to be no pizza slinging Nintendo bonding pal of a pastor.  This guy had to be serious, in a lighthearted way of course.  We were covenant children in a presbyterian congregation who needed doctrine vitamins to grow up healthy and fight off worldly infections. But not so many supplements that we became legalistic zombies.   A challenging feat indeed, but more than a few applied for the task.

One blond candidate was especially intriguing. He was fresh out of seminary, though not quite as young as many of his counterparts.  He came to Christ after college in what some would describe as a rather "extreme" testimony.

I ate up his story, licking it off the spoon as he shared the details during a Wednesday night "courting session."  The search committee had put him up for scrutiny before the entire youth group, testing his powers and our response.  He was warmly winning.  Zealous.  Intelligent.  But cool.  He had played professional soccer.  They hired him.

I was still in the thick of my adolescent faith crisis.  I wasn't sure who to turn to as a moody, artistic 14 year old who wanted to talk about the problem of evil instead of the Backstreet Boys.  The arrival of this winning youth pastor inflated me with a fresh hope.

It was very exciting to me that this new youth pastor did not grow up in the church.  He wasn't fed the answers to the problems on spoons engraved with Scripture.  Christ had won him even when he was a raging pagan.  I wanted to know why.  I wanted to hear about what sold him on Jesus.  I also had this silly little inkling that maybe he would finally "get" my issues, that he more than anyone would understand my dilemma.

My mom confessed that she had that little inkling too.  So she invited him to our house to have lunch one warm afternoon.

That's how I ended up eating crescent roll sandwiches and sitting on coral roses.  He faced me on a fancy chair he'd pulled in from the dining room waiting for me to talk.  He was told that's why he was here.

I don't remember what came out of my mouth.  If it was a trickle or a pour.  I could hear the Jeopardy song playing in my head.  I remember gazing out the window while I murmured about my confusion.  My sadness.  My doubt.  My worry.  My paranoia.  My thoughts of suicide.  The tears were steaming hot around my eyelashes.  I inhaled them with intensity, determined not to let this composed authority figure see the full throttle of my despair.

I breathed.  Waiting for his answers.  Waiting for him to acknowledge my struggle.  To respect my depth.  To engage my honest complicated crisis with an honest sort of complicated concern.

He reached into his pocket where he plucked a pen and began to draw me a very crude illustration.  It took only moments to realize we were in the early stages of a gospel presentation.  The very kind I had been trained to give to others during hours of childhood Sunday School participation.  In all sincerity this nice, well meaning man steered me down Roman's Road and explained how Jesus had died to make it possible for me to be in God's presence.

I was a red eyed paralytic, sitting hypnotized by the smooth, unhesitating tone of his delivery.  He drew me, a little stick person, my flat feet nudging over the side of some canyon, gazing at a cross which suddenly appeared to be a bridge.

Curse words were popping off in my head like firecrackers, but I was mute.  Boiling up from a pit of anger so deep it could have filled a thousand cartoon canyons.

Thankfully the speech was short.  Duty done the good intentioned youth pastor said goodbye to me.  Before my mother could even ask me how it went I was through my bedroom door with a thud.  The thousand cartoon canyons spilled over into a scream that I muffled with the duvet cover.  A scream I meant at first for him.  And then for God.

That day was the great break-up.  The great "goodbye."  For months I had been backpedaling near the borders of apostasy.  Teetering on some fence between Christian girl and non-Christian girl.  Remarkably it was a presentation of the gospel that knocked me to the side of non.  A presentation that was given in the assumption that those who hurt and feared were not actually believers at all.  Maybe my reaction proved him right.  But for years I have wondered what I would have done if he had answered me in a more empathetic way.

I informed my parents that I would no longer be attending church.  I might have used langue to the extent of "even if you drag me by the hair you can't make me go in."  I was finished with the holy huddle of hypocrisy, the pack of pat answers.

For fourteen years I had heard about what Jesus did and why He did it.  I knew the verses.  I knew the reasons.  I knew what it was all supposed to mean for me.  But when I stood on the back porch of my parent's house staring down at the cobblestone patio, wondering how far I'd have to fall to snap my neck, it didn't seem to have much to offer.  All the people who believed it didn't have much to give.  If I could have no waivers to my belief then I would not believe at all.

It was time for me to try something of my own.

To Be Continued...

A Look Ahead and a Quick Glimpse Back

I'm hard at work behind the scenes cleaning things up around the blog. I'm relabeling, reorganizing and setting up some new pages. Overall it's pretty boring, especially for you readers. Yet it's necessary.

I am also gearing up for our BIG annual yard sale for Ranch on Jesus next week! I'll be spending Monday through Thursday organizing and pricing mounds and mounds of donated goods then trying to hock them off over the weekend. This is less boring for me, but unfortunately still dull for y'all...unless, of course, you come to work at the yard sale too!

But I don't intend to leave this little space desolate while I dig through old t-shirts and kitchen appliances. I'm prepping some posts to spread across the span of the next couple of weeks, including the follow up to Crisis 1 Part 1, an amusing romp through a writer's mind and a tribute to a super hero. So make sure to swing back by.

In the mean time, here is a little glimpse back. I first posted Why People Shop at Yard Sales after the yard sale in 2009. The feelings expressed there still encapsulate my love hate relationship with yard sales. And it was a good reminder for me to read it before I once again found myself entrenched in "things."

Click HERE to read Why People Shop at Yard Sales.

Be blessed and keep our yard sale fundraiser in your prayers!