“Moses came with Joshua son of Nun and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people. When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you [in song] this day… They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.” ~Deuteronomy 32.44-47 NIV
These are some of my life songs, the ones so dripping with piercing truth that time and again, they are my life, the spiritual blood pulsing through these mortal veins.
I will Praise Him, words and music by Margaret J. Harris 1898
Great is Thy Faithfulness, Thomas O. Chisholm, 1923
There is a Fountain Filled with Blood, by William Cowper, written after his first major bout with depression
His Name is Wonderful, Audrey May Meier, in the 1950s (she also wrote “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” which I love and sang many times growing up)
When I Look into Your Holiness, lyrics by Wayne Perrin, 1980s
He’s All I Need, traditional
They are not just idle words or antiquated melodies for me. They are my life.
I have these grainy-Polaroid-brilliant-colored memories of life at 1723 York Street in Des Moines. I know the idyllic childhood of my memories may be actually less glorious and so much more mundane and average. But if you have a good memory, it pays to hold onto to it, I think.
So when I tell my mom that I watch for that house to sell and that I have dreams about it and long for the barefoot summer evenings of catching fireflies and doing relays with neighbor kids there, when I tell her the watermelon in the backyard pieces of my heart make me want to go back there to remember the little-girl-me, I am always taken aback by her reaction.
She usually wrinkles her nose, shakes her head and says, “Oh, not me. I don’t like Des Moines.”
Shocks me I suppose because while I was having this fairly delightful, carefree (as least as carefree as I have ever been) childhood, my mom was being reminded of painful things she went through as a child. Even being married to the man she adored and having all the babies she ever wanted couldn’t make her forget.
She is writing her story in a book for me and oh, I love hearing her journey. But as a child of divorce before she was even two, there was much pain and shame. And her earliest memories and many of her childhood planned photos were in front of the Polk County Courthouse, where custody was often negotiated, in a time when men just simply were not the first choice.
My Grandma had pain.
Yet another trip to a mental hospital for my grandma when my mom and her sister were very young dealt a devastating blow to the 2 little girls ripped between homes and spaces. For so strong was the contentiousness over custody, my mom’s aunt delivered my mom and her sister to the Polk Count Juvenile Home to be left with cold strangers whose job it was to direct the children.
I recall her showing me the building when I was a little girl. And telling me a few things she remembered that seemed just awful. I won’t tell her stories here, for they are too sacred and terrible to share. But I remembered the cold desolation of it – that horrible place my mom never should have been. May it suffice when I say that those little girls, those sisters who huddled close, whose mommy was just suddenly gone were placed in an institution, not a “home.” There was no nurture, no talk and comfort. Just be good. Do not cry or else. And no one had the decency to call her dad to rescue her.
A couple of years ago she and I went on a quest to find a photo of the building for her book. My cousin Steve recently was able to find photos and old news articles. He sent a new piece to the puzzle today and there was an address. (see below)
The Des Moines Tribune, 1912
I google-mapped it and it was only 1.2 miles from that idyllic house of my heart and dreams. For me, my mom was providing a home, a safe place, a dog-in-the-yard and skipping to school in sunshine. But she was just blocks from her opposite.
Godly parents who raised me well. They are still alive and kicking and doing Kingdom work, after 50 years of marriage and raising 5 kids and 15 grandkids and 4 great-grandchildren. More to come!…
The most amazing and loving husband – Dave. He has spent all our years pressing in to know me and love me. His love covers me. His touch heals me.
My children: Tara, so passionate and her beloved, Dave the powerful, watchful; Stephanie, so sensitive and her gentle and strong Tristan; Mighty Tredessa, out loving the world for Jesus Christ; Rocky, my amazing son and his beauty, Jovan; Stormie my baby, true and real. AND my grandchildren: Gavin and Guini and Gemma, Hunter and the baby girl to be…You’re the reason I was born.
The friends who have stayed true when I wasn’t worth their effort and who refused to be swayed by my hopelessness, but pushed me back into the light – you know who you are.
Home – not the walls and roof, but the safe place where hearts meet, where the laughter rises and the love grows…I have a home!…
Heritage – all the people before -who influenced all the people before -who influenced all the people who would influence me. I come from the good, the bad and the ugly, but also the rich in spirit. It is the gift that my grandparents and parents passed on to me – coming from insurmountable odds – to give me the sweet life I have not deserved, but so enjoyed. It is siblings who are worthy of my greatest admiration. I have gold to pass on.
A Savior, and how I have needed one – He walks with me and He talks with me…
My treasure has no value on the open market. My treasure is in the faces of the people I love, the letters with their kind words, the pictures small hands have painted for me. My riches aren’t even the thoughtful and loving gifts my family bestowed upon me on Christmas morning (though they divined my true needs, my heart’s desires in the most carefully attentive way), but the time they sanctified, the hours they set apart to spend with me. My fortune is in the minutes I collect from the people I am most passionate about – this is the true measure of my wealth.
Gavin holding Tuppy-thePuppy and Hunter corraling Steve. Steve Holt, the dog.
Have added a son-in-law and a couple of granddaughters (not to mention the granddogs) and lots of living. The treasure is increased.
Sometimes I read myself and think: wow, that’s good! :) Come on,“My fortune is in the minutes I collect from the people I am most passionate about” ??? That is hilariously zealous, people! Oughta be on Pinterest or something.
We met regularly leading up to “the party.” The days were long and the sunsets were beautiful. The room was filled with chatter and though the meetings were only scheduled to be 2 1/2 hours so people could get home for their work week, these amazing people hung out and often laughter and tears and prayer could be heard for hours on end…
The party.
Just past midnight, after the final song had been sung from main stage, we jumped in to the aftermath, together, like families do. We’d hosted 33,000+ people and it had been lovely, really good.
The wrap-up love-fest
We met on the 88 acres Mark and Lanna have out where Colorado feels rural. There was a 100-mile mountain view for our wrap-up look-what-God-has-done celebration meal. It was a hot day, but we sat under trees and in pop-ups and fellow-shipped around food, memories, a collective sigh of we-did-it. There was a hum of goodwill, friendship, and family. Kids ran happily across the acreage, streamers blew in the breeze, the energetic-competitives challenged each other to lawn games and the iced tea refreshed.
It was the wind-up. It was the culmination of months of hard work that led to Heaven Fest 2011 then through 3 weeks of intensive wrap up. All of our meetings through the months (beginning in April) had been dedicated, challenging work, yet we’d leave refreshed and ignited to fulfill God’s call, together. A random group of people from a gazillion different churches all over the Front Range came together and became :: a family.
And I miss these people. Yes, it has only been a few weeks since the celebration on a summer evening that turned into a warm, inviting night, where we laughed and cried and sang together and recounted the amazing thing we’d just done together. Just a few weeks since we settled into lawn chairs to recount glory-stories and worship and sing and thank each other and just love. Not even a month since we gathered around a bonfire to roast marshmallows and the sweet aroma of unity rose up to please our Father. But I miss these people like crazy.
Update –
SAVE THE DATE: Saturday July 28, 2012, another starry night.
The mamala…the older my kids got, the more of my best-friend-ever she became.
I was the one who turned her into a mom. Every year she gives me kudos for that. :) As the years go on, I am trying to figure out how to honor her more. I SO wanna be more like her when I grow up! I doubt I can ever hope to attain it, but her love (in spite of anything I ever put her through) just remains. “And when the day is done, my mama’s still my biggest fan...” -from a song that makes me cry every-time.
I love the children who made me a mom.
I may have mentioned it before on this very blog. But I am crazy about my kids. Honestly, when I go to their blogs or check out their Facebook pages, but especially when I get to be in a room with them – I just cannot get over what cool people they are.
The Kelley Fam has the most creative photographs. Captures my grandbebes! :)
Omygoodness. These kids, well, they have turned out. And I find it amazing and I am filled with gratefulness for them, for a loving God who created them right there in my womb. That is crazy grace!
A forever fav photo of Ryan and Tredessa, even though you can’t see her face – it was all pure joy!
Tara, Stephanie, Tredessa and Stormie: each so unique, each ravishing in beauty, each creative and passionate and successful and interesting. They are just so interesting as human beings. They are colorful and talented across so many boards it is crazy. And the boy, Rocky. Well, he is the most handsome, zealous, straightforward, protective young man ever. These five. My universe. My past, my future. My pride. My joy. I am so pleased that God was somehow able to make these…from me. Like: speechless awe.
The Powers fam=fun always!
But if I have to add speech, like Buddy-the-Elf in the department store when he hears Santa is coming and starts screaming: “Saaaaaaaaaa-anta!! I know him!” I could do the same of mine, Tara! Stephanie!! Tredessa!!! Rocky!!!! Stormie Dae!!!! I know them!
Stormie posted this on FB this morning. Awww.
I love that the children I birthed have brought along their loves and I get to be the {dreaded} mother-in-love to them.
My kids have chosen well – just the right people for the family. I am so blessed. The main thing I love about Tristan, Dave, Jovan and Ryan is how they love my children. They are all familia. They were born to be one of us. I am so lucky to just get that role by legal default. But also by the ordination of God, favored, blessed! I don’t take it lightly.
Rocky and his girls.
I love that God has made me a spiritual mom to his Bride.
I cherish the people He surrounds me with. His word says He puts the lonely in families. I know this is true. For when my physical family is so far away and when life gets hectic for the growing families my own are raising, no matter where I go, I find myself surrounded by family – and am honored more than I deserved, and received with love.
I love that I got to be the mom to Dave’s children.
Because he said that when he proposed: that he was choosing me to be the mother of his children. What an honor.
He wanted to buy me some crazy-great camera to replace my lost one today. And I would not let him. Although I did allow him to get me the next step up from my last one since it was on clearance at Target (Kodak Easyshare Z5010). I just wasn’t ready to spend the time figuring out a real-live wonderful camera. That is a life investment and Stephanie and Stormie have that covered for me.
From the new cam, a peony after a morning rain
And I asked for a new carpet cleaner. With the same operator {Dave}. He complied.
Dave would buy me flowers and jewelry. He wants to do that. He would bring me breakfast in bed. He would give me the moon as a thanks for the kids we share. But they are the reward. Having them with him is the reward of my life.
Still much to learn about mothering. So glad God trusted me to be a mom.
Happy Mother’s Day to my friends and family far and wide. May your husband praise you today and may your children go all out to call you blessed!
1975, I think. I was 14. Tim would have been about 11.
I was wearing “Jeanie-green.”
All the Little Landers. 1973
Danny was 6. Tammy was 7. Tim would have been 9 (his birthday is near Easter), and Joe would have been 11. Me in my yellow peasant-style (remember Gunne Sax?) dress? I was 13. This black and white photo was taken by a blind guy. No kidding. He was blind and he took pictures. Harold. True story.
Joey-Timmy-and-Jeanie in 1966
My mom’s photos were in a box in Lousiana for many years, lost we thought. Lots of water damage. We were 5-3-and-6. Hated all those pin curls my mom was always putting in my hair.
1968.
Tammy and Danny stole the show, but I loved my lavendar taffeta dress with the cape. Made by my mama. I was 8.
Timmy was a newborn in 1963.
Little Joey was just 2 and I was 3 1/2.
I loved my peach coat.
The piece-de-resistance:
1970. My dad was planning a huge service in a large rented auditorium with our denomination’s radio personality. Some ladies in church took me downtown on Saturday to get my hair done (and yes, that is ALL my hair) because I wanted to be like Dottie Rambo. I came home and had to go door-to-door handing out Easter service flyers with my dad in windy weather. But it held up, even after sleep. Wasn’t I just the picture of a little Pentecostal girl?? I was 10.
Easters meant new clothes and hats, usually. It meant door-to-door flyers. It meant waking up to Easter baskets filled with candy from the sweet mamala. It was long days of church, morning and night, singing hymns that had impossible notes and big Easter dinners (usually ham, sometimes a big egg hunt at Aunt Rosie’s with a coconut cake in the shape of a bunny) and it meant being a Christian is worth celebrating. Our traditions may seem silly, but it is our high, holy day. He lives!
{1} When I was a kid, it was called Easter break and it was always, you know, around Easter.
Jelly beans, egg-hunts, and etc. Sometimes frigid and snowy. Sometime spring-y.
{2} AND only 1 or 2 kids in the whole school actually ever went anywhere. They were the odd ones. Now everyone is off to some exotic locale, but when I was gowing up? You just slept in every day. And that was a good thing, It was just a break.
I “re-pinned” this when I saw it on Pinterest.* One of my first-ever pins, actually…
I believe in personal responsibility. So, it rings true to me that if you aren’t liking something, you should change it. If you can.
But there are things in my life I can’t change. I would if I could, but I can’t.
Because they involve outside influences and other people and situations over which I have little to no control.
Judge Judy says to a trouble-making kid, “I’d personally throw you in jail if I were in charge of the whole world, but I’m not. I am only in charge of this little piece of the universe.”
My universe is way smaller than Judge Judy’s.
Some people say they would never change anything in life because it got-them-where-they-are-today-and-blah-blah-blah and I like how that sounds, but I seriously would change some things. And it isn’t about not being grateful for the life I have.
I have messed up my own life sometimes. But God is faithful, even and especially to me. Forgiveness is available and promised, but sometimes the consequences of my own stupidity remain. Sometimes the reverberations of some one else’s actions have affected my life. And I wouldn’t have chosen it. And some questions will never be answered in my lifetime.
Sometimes, you have changed everything you know to change. You have made amends, you have tried to make the best of bad situations. You have spoken the truth in {because of} deep love, you have repented and changed your ways, you have walked the lined and you acted uprightly. Sometimes you have changed all you can, but you can’t change everything.
I am in charge of such a small piece of the universe. I can’t change the past nor the things some one has said, but I can live in the now and speak blessing anyway. I can’t change my age, the passing of time nor the weather, but I can think on whatever things are good, and pure and lovely and I can embrace the seasons and I can pray. Life is a surprise…
And there are things I’d change if I could.
If I could reach the stars
Pull one down for you
Shine it on my heart
So you could see the truth
If I could change the world, I would be the sunlight in your universe…*
In spite of anything and everything, though, I hold on to an unchanging God, ever faithful, who “makes us more and more like Him as we are changed into His glorious image.” 2 Cor. 3.18 NLT
If I can be changed, it’ll be worth it.
NOTE TO SELF: Remember, though, that happiness falls so far below living what God intended, living the life I was made for, both whole and holy. Being “happy” is temporary compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord.
If everyone would just do things the way I think they should be done in the order they should done, the way I would do them and exactly the time I think it should all happen – how beautiful this world would be.
I jest – sort of. But the truth is, even I can’t make my own ways work perfectly all the time. I could if I were the only person in the universe, but the fact that there are others I live with, love, work with, socialize among and co-exist with, well, that changes the whole ballgame.
The Fifteen-Puzzle at Grandma Baker’s house
I actually never heard it called a Fifteen-Puzzle, but that’s what Restoration Hardware calls it (above). They were just little red-plastic squares with white movable numbered tiles and I probably had at least a dozen of these over the years. And I most associate this puzzle with being at my Grandma’s house on York Street in Des Moines in the mid-1960s.
She had a few of these around and the cousins and I would play with them until we solved them. Or not. I recall so wanting to finish it every time – always starting with great-great hope, but being aggravated by it, too. The numbers would be mixed up and you had to move, one space at a time, to try to get them all back in order. I always hated the times I would have the whole thing almost right, but would have to undo other things I had done (that were already in the perfect spot!) to put a stray number in and it would end up messing up 3 or 4 tiles and take me an extra 16 moves – for just that one numbered-tile. Grrrrrr….
I had one like this, which I found on ebay. The tiles were glow-in-the-dark for playing after lights out! {source unknown}
The sliding tile puzzle as a metaphor for life.
The pieces have restraints, connections, they must stay on the board. They “rub elbows” with other pieces. And even when you know you want to get the number {two} from the bottom row second from the last block to the top row in the number {two} position, you can only slide it up or over one square at a time. Maybe you slid it up, but then you have to move the one beside it to the right and down to make space for the one above that to go to the right and down so you can keep moving the {2} tile up. Every movement you want to make {the most sensible and obvious move} will inevitably involve lots of other moves to get it there, some that even seem counter-productive. And, {gasp}, there are even times you have to move backwards, actually undo progress, to make the path ready.
But eventually, you keep at it and it works and it is {whew!} finished.
In life, in love, in relationships – you decide a plan and you can see exactly how it should go, but there are conversations to have, misunderstandings to overcome, celebrations to dance at, roses to stop to smell, there is give and take, and many times concessions to make for the sake of peace. Some days it’s two steps forward and one step back. But other days it may ever be harder. Eye on the prize, though, we just keep going. We rub each other wrong, we bump elbows and move a little spastically by accident.
In the end, we get there. Everything lines up, everything is where it should be. Deep breath of satisfaction – we did it. We solved it together. A good moment in time.
Then some crazy kid picks it up and scrambles the numbers again. *sigh.
Note to self: Gotta get some of these for the grand-boys and maybe Guini. It is time they experience this puzzle.
“Live your life and forget your age.” -Norman Vincent Peale
This is what women do: they criticize their looks and age and weight and everything about themselves all.the.time. Don’t ask me how I know.
When I first saw this huge image pop up in a sneak-preview of the wedding photos, I thought, “Well there are the bags under my eyes. I was still in my sweats. I didn’t have my mascara on” and etc. Dumb. I know. Very vain.
My mom saw it and said to me “Who is that old woman with all those wrinkles?” She is 73 and has yet to recognize her loveliness. Tredessa had already told me that she loved the intensity of the lines on her grandma’s face, the clearness of her features.
And all I could think in response to my mom was, “I so want to be like that woman.” I love her! I love her vivaciousness and love for life and picture-taking and horses and her family and her encouraging ways and deep-felt love for people and the belief in the best of them all. And if the lines on her face were a type of braille, they would read of her unwavering belief in me and love no matter what since the day I was born – even before.
We attack ourselves. We speak badly of ourselves. We wouldn’t let first-graders talk about each other the way we talk about ourselves. Stupid. Waste. of. Time.
Me and my mamala…
I have her nose. I have her blue eyes. I even have two, deep, furrowed lines between my brows exactly like hers. And I wanna be just like her when I grow up. I do. She is the most beautiful to me.
